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CO NT E NT S
I
Introduction
r9
1. ImPerial Pan-Islam
England's Brothers 47
2.
65
3. Islam Meets the Cold \Var
The \Var against Nasser and Mossadegh 94
4.
rzo
5. The King of All Islam
r47
6. The Sorcerer'sAPPrentice
r68
7. The Rise of Economic Islam
r90
8. lsrael's Islamists
Ll 4
9. Hell's AYatollah
L++
lO. Jihad I: The "Arc of Islam"
L70
Asia
I l. Jihad II: Into Central
12. Clash of Civilizations? 303
Notes
143
369
Acknowledgments
17r
Index
TJ
INTRODUCTION
TE
Dr v r l' s Gel.e
the left, of Islam. It is, in fact,a perversionof that religious faith. That is the
rrre 3 re JUSt mutant ideology that the United Statesencouraged,supported) orga-
:re calendar nized, or funded. It is the same one variously representedby the Mus-
lim Brotherhood, by Ayatollah Khomeini's lran, by Saudi Arabia's
- - : : :l ;:ll\' \l'as not ultra-orthodox'$Tahhabism, by Hamas and Hezbollah, by the Afghan
- :lat
-^-- era,
^ -^ *L
tne fihadis,and by Osama bin Laden.
- : .:.,-:i-dlvsign on
: , it:rl and in par-
- - .- : :nspiresuch II
E
,.:-+l*i*r
4 . DEvrr's Gelrr
:-.:,-: . lndotherorgani- and confused.During the r99os, the United Statesfaced a seriesof
:*- ,' - -. ,..amiStmovement. criseswith political Islam: In Algeria, the United Statessympathized
!. :' :- : ::. retreatOf Arab with the rising forces of political Islam, only to support the Algerian
: " .', :: ,l beneathmany of army's crackdown against them-and then \Tashington kept open a
dialogue with the Algerian Islamists,who increasinglyturned to ter-
i, - : -: :.:..,,,rrSadatusedthat rorism. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, includ-
i- :.-- : -:rcalbase;in Paki- ing a violent undergroundmovement,poseda dire threat to President
:, - : :.e and established Mubarak's regime; yet the United Statestoyed with supporting the
Brothers. And in Afghanistan, shatteredafter the decade-longU.S.
: - : - --: ihe sametime, the jihad, the Taliban won early American support. Even as Osama bin
!- : - -- i:-. -rsa tool to be used Laden'sAl Qaeda took shape,the United Statesfound itself in league
:- : i .:-\fghanistanand with the Islamic right in Pakistan,SaudiArabia, and the Arab Gulf.
- ..: S..\'ord aimed at the And then came 9lrt.
-.-:-
-. -, -.::,,nunfolded,latent After zoor, the Bush administration appeared to sign on to the
-. .:-..tJ U.S. ignorance neoconservativedeclaration that the world was defined by a "clash of
' :--..:.ilsto seeAyatollah civilizations," and launched its global war on terrorism, targeting Al
-: - -:-rnfials as an anti- Qaeda-the most virulent strain of the very virus that the United States
-: - r.::,rphicallyunderesti- had helped create. Still, before, during, and after the invasion of
Iraq-a socialist, secular country that had long opposed Islamic
- - - - :-. 'JnitedStatesand its fundamentalism-the United States actively supported Iraq's Islamic
.. : , J r n ocrn r JS, Un CO n- right, overtly backing Iraqi ShiiteIslamists,from Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
: - . 'l dollars to support to radical Islamist parties such as the SupremeCouncil for Islamic Rev-
-
.. :..n n'ereled by Mus- olution in Iraq and the Islamic Call (Al-Dawa), both of which are also
- - r:- >::res also looked on supported by Teheran'smullahs.
. :=i. rerrorists from the
' - ::J :s ]sraelencouraged
III
:-- - ::.; oCCupied territories,
":- .r :. iotnedthe CIA's Bill The vaunted clash of civilizations,that tectonic collision betweenthe
. - - :-.,:nllah Khomeini. 'West
and the Islamic world, if that's what it was, began inauspi-
'War
.- l-. ii.litical utility of the ciously. Amid the wreckage of \forld II, America stumbled willy-
' -': :lr.lteglstsarguedthat nilly into the Middle East, into a world it knew little about. If the
:;plaeing communism United Statesmade mistakesin dealing with Islam in the secondhalf
' : :,. '.i':idlvexaggeratedthe of the twentieth century, it was in part becauseAmericans were so
.: - : :. undevelopedstates. profoundly ignorant about it.
-r : ,:-r1\\'f,Sa force that the Until r94r the Middle East, for young America, was a fearsome
and wonderful place,a fantasylandof sheikhsand harems,of turbaned
TN
.,,,,H'tsF.
.-...1*.' F€#*5#lllHffi.*
D s v rr' s Gaun
- :.:l i ,r3 S f S , py r am ids , ern Middle East had begunto intrude on the Americanconsciousness.
- "'.. :i. 1\elogues - it Still, it was filtered through a layer of romanticism and ignorance.
. -: --r S . r v of yand t he Lawrence'ssexuallycharged,desert-romanticaccounts,including his
r ' " ^^' r l- 'Wisdom,becameU.S. bestsellers,
as did oasis-
- ." -1 \ rllE lvlulr)L famous SeuenPillars of
to-oasistraveloguesby various adventurers.For most Americans,the
-: -,:.: 1\ 'Connot
e at ion Middle East was most memorably encapsulatedin film and song.
Rudolf Valentino's The Sheik (t9zr) embodiedwhat would become
- the standard-issueAmerican idea of the Arab, along with its accom-
,. ..:':,tcents
Abroad
panying rgzr song, "The Sheik of Araby," whose lyrics included the
-. ' l :il..l'S mOSt acute vaguelythreatening:"At night, when you're asleep/ Into your tent I'll
, ':' :-.::s-long
sojourn creep." Its influence lasted decades.Benny Goodman recorded the
:i :lgel)' rnfluential song in r.937,as did the Beatlesin t96z and Leon Redbonein t977'
-- . . , - -. (' r t L i l l . 1 [ e r y
-.,,,-^.-1,, L
^ ^U,n - Little if any professionalAmericanMiddle Eastexpertiseexistedin
'World
-: .*.-; eqainstthings the years leading up to \Var II. From the nineteenth century
. -:r :r. and Palestine, until well into the twentieth, pretty much the only Americanswho ven-
: r i .,.!rhe barbarism tured into the region were membersof a band of Protestantmissionar-
: - . :: and alow with ies, educators,and doctors who took it upon themselvesto bring the
. - .-: " Horv they hate gospelsto the heathenmassesand to preach among the Christiansof
1.1'rammedanpur- the Ottoman Empire,in Syriaand Lebanonespecially. Pioneerssuchas
.,:r-:i .lre the ugliest, Daniel Bliss,his son Howard Bliss,and the Dodge brothers(Reverend
- ,,: :,i rhe Holy Land David StuartDodge and \Tilliam Early Dodge),who built and ran Syr-
ian ProtestantCollege-renamed the AmericanUniversityof Beirut in
the rgzos-and Mary Eddy, a missionary'sdaughterwho founded a
: ::: no r ags ;no clinic in Lebanon, alighted on the shores of the Ottoman Empire's
: - ..,n o bes ot t ed Arab provinces.The Blisses,Dodges, and Eddys would becomethe
. : :he donkey's
parents, grandparents,and great-grandparentsof America's priest-
-:--;S: nO S t enCh
hood of "Arabists" who emergedafter'World'WarII.
: ,s'der placed
- - : ::iect and give
- .:'.r.ouldalway s
IV
il
',,1i#{iil
,:ls#|i
.-_.*r;!fi=i :*i4ri:#lA&FF
D p v rr' s Geun
But as America's energy flowed into the Islamic world, the united
states began its long-running engagementwith little or no compre-
hensionof the forcesir was dealingwith.
Until after the second world \Var, Middle East studies in the
united states were virtually nonexistenror relegatedto a subsetof
theology. Partly sponsored by the government, centers for Middle
Eastern affairs began springing up after 1947, when princeton uni-
versity createdthe first Near East cenrer in the united States.But it
would be many yearsbefore the United Stateswould have a cadre of
academicexperts who had a grasp of Islamic politics, currure, and
religion.
From FDR on, leading u.S. politicians were prisoners of mis-
guided srereotypes.They seemed entranced bv the almost other-
Introduction
- -', \\'or ld W ar I I :
. . ,l nr r r ings l. V
: ) .l raeSt.hey
':: i eller $f a The American attachment to a romantici zed fantasyof Arab life and a
': :L cellr ' ,t he racist-fed, religious disdain for the Arabs' supposed heathenism
r. iller g Y lnto
proved a deadly combination when the time came for America to
engageitself politically and militarily in the Middle East. Perhaps
: i ,1i S. illtTl1€S,
-. i , 1 n a t i o n is
thosestereotypesled American policy makersto seeMuslims as fierce
: : : ' ()L i t O f t h e
warriors. Perhapsthey believedthat the fanaticism of their religious
renetswould lead them ro resistatheisticcommunism.Perhapsit was
, :1.1.the United the notion that in southwestAsia the traditional religious establish-
- - r)f nO Compre- menr was a bulwark of the status quo. But it never dawned on u.s.
officials that Islamist organizationssuch as the Muslim Brotherhood
,.: studiesin the wefe a qualitatively different phenomenonfrom the comprador cleri-
'Vfar
cal establishment.Certainly, as the Cold progressed,the big
.:,1 to a subsetof
for Middle
:r-.tc'rS enemy, the uSSR, and its alleged accomplice, Arab nationalism,
'::-. PrincetonUni- seemedto have a common enemy:Islam.
" :..J Srates.But it In someways, the cold war itself beganin the Middle East.Presi-
dent Harry Truman proclaimed u.S. responsibility for Greece and
- : ir.rvea cadre of
Turkey, replacingGreat Britain in that role, in 1947, and confronted
::-s. culture, and
the soviet Union in northern Iran's Azerbaijan. England's imperial
presencewas shrinking: London abandonedGreeceand Turkey, then
:oners of mis-
India and Palestine,and the retreat was on-with only the United
elmost other-
t
.,.:-+.:r*ii"
ro . Drvrr's GauE
-
' : I > lamic rng Arabists has becomea cottageindustry.Virtually all of them were
-::.d the ercluded from prewar planning on Iraq. To a man, most Arabists
\\.erestrongly opposed to the preemptive war. But by excluding them,
,,.:- r)f rhe the Bush administration guaranteedthat planning for the war would
-:-:'rs-the be carried out by know-nothings.
: . l o . r i f-'
- - :t(l n w as
VI
:- i e a b e t-
: -: :-ff'ed aS Somemay argue that the United Statescreatedneither Islam nor its
"
: ,:-:'iL-fOUSIy fundamentalistvariant, and that is true. But here we need to consider
. '. :re a fte r - an extendedanalogywith America'sChristian right.
-- .rd ed n o t Conservative and evangelisticChristians have been present in
Largenumbersin America sincethe colonial era. But in another sense'
'. 1. :d l e Eas t rhe emergenceof the Christian right in the United Statescan be dated
-. : ro d u ci n g ro the late r97os, with the formation of the Rev. Timothy LaHaye's
:r,r kers for California allianceof churches,the creation of the Moral Majority by
- \ a n d the LaHave and Jerry Falwell, and the role of those two men and others
. : rrke Ara- :n rhe rise of the Council on National Policy,the Christian Coalition,
. . : - : a s. a n d a -lnd organizations like Pat Robertson's broadcast empire and Dr.
.: ..i ri'orking T-rmes Dobson'sFocus on the Family. Until then, conservativeChris-
::'"\' of them ::-rns\\'erea politically inchoateforce. Relentlesslyorganizedover the
t
,..''.ij!;.anB
tz . Dn v t r 's Gel.e
'.,-,,.rs. politically
blind fanaticism among their followers. It's no accidenrthat among
followers of both christian and Islamic fundamentalism,the world
-:,-.. ,rlJfv tendenc y
indeedappearsto be engagedin a clashof civilizations.
- - :r- ) aarliestyears,
rn
--+-*rb
r1 D rvrr' s Gel .r
- . :. * .:: ,rbserver,FDR So what can the United Statesdo ro turn down the heat?To lower
the political temperatureunderneaththe Islamistmovement?
- " : {- Qaedais use- First, the United Statesmust do what it can ro remove the griev-
- : -' :ie rtd, for every ancesthat causeangry Muslims to seek solacein organizationslike
- :, ;. into Islamist the Muslim Brotherhood. Not all of thesegrievances,of course, are
causedby the United States,and not all of them can be sofrenedor
ameliorated by U.S. acions. At the very least, however, the United
- " - ,.---:sfit nicely with Statescan take important steps that can weaken the ability of the
:- '. ::riding and pre- Islamic right to harvesrrecruirs. By joining with the UN, the Euro-
. - -: - ' :-:.:aS tO COn StfUCt peans,and Russia,the United states can help settle the Palestinian-
': '- " i,:st Africa deep Israeliconflict in a manner that guaranteesjusticefor the palestinians:
--- \ problem that an independentstate that is geographicallyand economicallyviable,
_ _. ____ : .-r crecial
I s(,) dr t u J[ tied to the withdrawal of illegal Israeli serlemenrs,an Israeli return
- .' " -- i:J legalaction, roughly to its t967 borders, and a stable and equitable division of
- *: l:1S e me asUfes- Jerusalem.That, more than any other action, would remove a global
casusbelli for the Islamic right.
Second,the United Statesmust abandon its imperial pretensionsin
- : lslamicfunda- the Middle East.That will require the withdrawal of u.s. forcesfrom
-: Afghanistan and Iraq, the dismantling of U.S. military basesin the
- :rplicated.
: ,rd. Unlessthe PersianGulf and facilities in Saudi Arabia, and a sharp reduction in
..uld resuscitate the visibility of the U.S. Navy, military training missions,and arms
l---eda-styleorga- sales.Many U.S. diplomats who lave worked in the region know that
::-'.ln anger and the provocative U.S. presencein the Middle East fuels anger and
): groups,suchas resentment.The united Stateshas no claim to either the persian Gulf
,-: n'ith a mostly or the Middle East,whose future economicties and political relation-
:... The violence- shipscan and must be determinedsolely by the leadersof the region's
Elst draw finan- states,evenif it redoundsto the detriment of U.S. inrer:ests.
.i recruits from Third, the United Statesmust refrain from seekingto impose its
: -nsritutionsthat preferenceson the region. Since zoor, the United Stateshas done
...r' er-eryMuslim incalculabledamage by demanding that the "grearer Middle East"
r: of rvhich only a conform to American visions of democracy.To be sure, for the more
.: rhe Middle East radical idealistsin the Bush administration,Bush'scall for democracy
::rmering.Out of in the Arab world and Iran is seenprimarily as a prerext for more
-ertremists who intrusive u.S. involvement in the region. Even taken at face value,
- xrsting terrorist however,the initiative ignoresthe fact that the nations of the Middle
Eastmust find democracyat their own paceand in their own time. An
rn
I6 D n v r r 's GettE
- : iI l' at ln $ from civil society in the West: from NGOs and universities,from
.: \ i t llle of researchcentersand think tanks, and more.
: :l-;tiC f t1tlC The peoplesof the Middle East must engagenot only in nation
: ,: :L n gt he building but in "religion building." As the hothousetemperaturesin
:.:'. or Middle East political discourseare lowered, Muslim religious schol-
--..1h.
Jeliver ars, philosophers,and social scientistscan come together in a great
::: States debate to hammer out a twenty-first-century vision of a tolerant,
--.,-'. in the modern Islam, to createa new culture no longer held hostageby self-
dealing mullahs and ayatollahs.A consensuscan emergeorganically
in the Muslim world that reinterpretsancienttexts and traditions in a
manner appropriate to an enlightenedworld outlook, and then that
consensusmust find its way into everynook and cranny,beginningin
the major cities-Istanbul, Cairo, Baghdad, Karachi, Jakarta-and
spreadingto every village and mosque. It will mean reforming the
educationalcurriculum in the Muslim world, deemphasizingreligious
universitiesand so-calledmadrassasin favor of modern education.It
will require new mass-mediaoutlets in placeswhere they can flourish,
-: '.Jl l on by and the use of radio, satellite television, and the Internet to reach
-' :.:n i ze t he placeswhere they cannot. All this will take many years. It cannot
. :n e f f or t occur unlessthe armed conflicts that roil the region are ended, and
- ::-..a gabout unlesseconomicconditions move steadilyupward. Religion building,
- : :-: ,trl belief like nation building, can take a long, long time.
. :,. sci enc e,
- : :::i l i o n s of
::ll l S S OIT IC-
- : .:'.i .l n d c on-
- , ...'.:Itsm , or
- : -:,.)r Isr ael' s
- ,:', l o rc e. I n
- : '.. d i vine is
^ : :'r SeParate
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-- : * i tl te s. I t is
t-: . ::,rti l 'e f r O m
- -: , : .',.i . SuP P or t
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T HI A M I RI CA f I\ M
I P I RTP Rl| J T C I
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IM PERIAL PAN- ISLAM
*
2"o . D E v r r 's GeuE
throats for the greater good of Her Majesty's realm, were intrigued
with the idea of fostering a spirit of Islamic revivalism-if it could serve
their purposes.Both Russiaand Francehad the sameidea, but it was
the British, with their tens of millions of Muslim subjectsin rhe greater
Middle Eastand SouthAsia, who had the advanrage.
The man who, in 1885, proposedthe idea of a British-ledpan-
Islamic alliancewas Jamal Eddine al-Afghani. From the rgTos to the
r89os, Afghani was supported by the United Kingdom, and at least
once, the record shows-in r882, in India, according to a secretfile
of the Indian government's intelligence service-Afghani officially
offered to go ro Egypt as an agentof British intelligence.2
Afghani, the founder of pan-Islam, is the great-great-grandfatherof
osama bin Laden-not biologically,but in ideologicalterms.'werewe
to constructa biblical genealogyof right-wing Islamism,it would read
like this: Afghani G838;t897) begat Mohammed Abduh
GB+S-
r905)' an Egyptian pan-Islamicactivist who was Afghani's chief dis-
ciple and who helped spread Afghani's message.Abduh begat
Mohammed Rashid Rida (r865-r935), a Syrian discipleof Abduh's,
who moved to Egypt and founded a magazine,The Lighthouse, to
advocateAbduh's ideas in support of a systemof Islamic republics.
Rashid Rida begat Hassan al-Banna (19o6-1949), who learned
Islamism from Rashid Rida's The Lighthouse, and who founded the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in .'928. Banna begat many offspring.
Among them were his son-in-law,said Ramadan,the Muslim Brother-
hood's international organizer,whose headquarterswere in switzer-
land, and Abul-Ala Mawdudi, the founder of the Islamic Group in
Pakistan,the first Islamistpolitical party, who was inspiredby Banna's
work. Banna'sother heirs set up branchesof the Brotherhoodin every
Muslim state,in Europe,and in the united states.Another of Banna's
offspring, a Saudi who took part in America's Afghan jihad, was Al
Qaeda'sOsama bin Laden, the family's blackestsheep.
In the half century betweenr875 and t9z5,the building blocks of
the Islamic right were cementedin place by the British empire. Afghani
createdthe intellectual foundation for a pan-Islamic movement-with
British paffonage and the support of England'sleading orientalist,
E. G. Browne. Abduh, Afghani'schief disciple,founded.with the help
Imperial Pan-Islam zt
, ::.- inrrigued of London's Egyptian proconsul, Evelyn Baring Lord Cromer, the
- : ,iruld serve Salafiyyamovemenr,the radical-right, back-to-basicsfundamentalist
current that still exists today. To understand the proper role of
-.-,.. il,rt lt was
. : :hc greater Afghani and Abduh, ir is imporranrro seerhem as experimenrsin a
century-long British effort to organizea pro-British pan-Islamic move-
:-:.r-ledpan- ment. Afghani, a quixotic and slippery ally, shopped his servicesto
-:.i-istothe other imperial powers, and ultimately his mysrical, semi-modernist
*'. ..-:rJ.rt least version of fundamentalistIslam failed ro rise to rhe level of a mass
- . ,--s.cret file movement.Abduh, his chief disciple,attachedhimself more firmly to
.-,:: officially the British rulers of Egypt and createdthe cornerstoneof the Muslim
- Brotherhood,which dominatedthe Islamicright throughout the rwen-
-t
--- .,:Jf.rtherof tieth century. The British backed Abduh even as they launchedtwo
.:rrl'.:.\\'erewe other pre-'world war I schemesto mobilize Islamic fervor. In the
- . : .,'.rruldread Arabian Peninsula, the British helped a desert band of ultra-
j --,.t1 tg49_ fundamentalistArabs, led by the family of Ibn Saud,createthe world's
-,: '.;hief dis- first Islamic fundamentaliststate in Saudi Arabia. At the same time,
-.-:.rh begat they encouragedthe Hashemites of Mecca, a second Arabian family
. : : \L'rduh's, with a spurious claim to be descendedfrom the original prophet of
Islam,whose sonsLondon installedas kings of Iraq and Jordan.
-,':i:,tttse,to
':' :epublics. originally, the Hashemires,as guardiansof the Arabian holy cities
-
, : , learned of Mecca and Medina, were supposedto have assumedthe leadership
' :nded the of the entire Muslim world, with the idea of establishinga pro-British
- '.' .. \,ffspring. caliphateto replacethe faltering one in Turkey.That plan never quire
, .- .::i Brother- came together,but a parallel one did. From the rgzos on, the new
'$Tahhabi
: '- r:1Switzer- Saudi state merged its orthodoxy with the Salafiyya,now
::'- Gr oup in organizedinto the Muslim Brotherhood-and the resurgenceof Islam
-:: lr Banna's was under way.
: -t ,,rdin every It was Afghani, however,who startedit all. Like many of his prog-
" :r of Banna's eny, Afghani made common causewith the imperial powers as they
' .::d. rvasAl competed for influence over the vast swath of territory between east
Africa and china. Years after his death, many-but not all-of his
:.:g blocksof biographersand chroniclers have painted him as a believer,consis-
:rre. Afghani tently advocatinga renaissanceof Islam; as an anti-imperialist,thun-
.:-:nent-with dering againstthe great powers; and as a liberal reformer,seekingto
. Orientalist, blend medievalIslam with the scientificrationalism of the Enlighten-
r rrh rhe help ment. while elemenrsof all this are presentin Afghani'scareer,he was
m
z2 D E vrr' s Geur
'we
do not cur the headof religionexceptwith the sword
of reri-
gion.Therefore,if you wereto seeus no% you
would seeascerlcs
and worshippers,kneeling and genufiectrng,never
disobeying
God'scommandsand doingall that they areordered
to do..,
-
erned by "sound Koranic orthodoxy"8 mixed with a modernisticout-
l )lt ne\ ' l n g
: i, ).
look, while Wilfred Cantwell Smith called Afghani "the complete
Muslim of his time." In his landmark work, Islam in Modern History,
Smith wrote breathlesslyabout Afghani's allegedanti-imperialism:
-,: :h:rt one of
.-J approved-
He [Afghani] saw the Westas somethingprimarilv to be resisted,
-'.: rhe method
because it threatenedIslamand the community.. . .He was vigor-
',.'. devotion."6
ousin incitinghis Muslim hearersto developreasonand rechnology
F
2-4 [)r vrr,' s Geur-
, : : 11SUrg l n g
j-.lirecting
. ATcHANI AND HIS FoLLowERs
: -:.si b l e or
Afghani'spublic life beganin r869, when he left Afghanistan.Little is
known about his life beforethat. He claimed to have beeninvolved in
Afghan politics in the r86os, and according to a leading scholar he
.::rc A r ir b did so while actingas a Russianagent.r3But his lastingimpact began
-: . '.'.rs b ot h only in 1869, when he undertook a rernarkable,quarter-century-long
, t:'.r.rh .He odyssey.
' ,.-.r\ ivith Even in brief outline, it is dizzying. He r'ventfirst to India, whose
-::,...H e British-ledcolonial authoritieswelcomedthe Islamicscholarwith hon-
-, He a dv o-
ors, graciouslyescortinghim aboard a government-ownedvesselon an
- -. -'-:.ler-rlclf all-expenses-paid voyage to Suez.After visiting Cairo, he traveledto
' :':-:rl n lllit y
'.:-.-r Islam Turkey, where his unorthodox religious views causeda furor among
the religiousestablishment,leading the Turkish governmentto expel
him unceremoniously.Back in Cairo, Afghani was adopted by the
. ::I rer.ivalist Egyptian prime ministeq Riad Pasha, a notorious reactionary and
- .:.ntagonistic enemyof the nascentnationalistmovementin Egypt. Riad Pashaper-
: :.rg i nat or of suadedAfghani to stay in L,gypt,and allowed him to take up residence
- -:rl tu r y lat er at Cairo's 9oo-year-oldAl Azhar mosque, consideredthe center of
Islamic learningworldwide, where he receivedlodging and a monthly
.. :.'r clvnamic governmentstipend.It was Afghani's first official post as an lslanric
. -Lrleas god- scholar,and the first (but not last) time he would be on the payroll of
:'.ihe Islamic one of the imperialpowers or their stand-ins.Afghani spenteight years
,. :rr)doubt be in the midst of Egypt'stumultuous politics, up to the eve of England's
:r-:.F,ddineal- shellingof Alexandria and the British occupationof Egvpt.
... Richard P. Fetedby the British in India, transportedby l,ondon to Egypt, and
, -r:sthe defin- sponsoredby England'sagentsin Cairo, Afghani patientlylaid the cor-
-:: :or the mil- nerstoneof pan-Islam.But the vicissitudes of Egyptiancolonial politics
: F-gvptafter wcre not always kind to him: as nationalismin Egypt gainedstrength
-: l- : ilw th em- (until crushedby the British),Afghani'sinfluencedeclined.In r879,he
- ::r identified u'as expelledfrom Egypt, beginninga sojourn that took him to India,
.: \bduh, and London, Paris(wherehe stayedthreeyears),Russia(wherehe spentfour
:. :clt a special lears), Munich, and Iran. In Iran, the shahmade him war ministerand
.:'- l-novement then prime minister,but Afghani and the shah soon parted ways, and
-\fghani beganagitatingagainstthe Persianmonarch. Foreshadowing
E
D p v t r 's GalrE
:.:rne to the this time, or-more likely-in cooperation with London or Paris, is
" .t cOuntless unclear. Immediately afterward, however, the French government
:',r leir-wing halted publication r>fThe IndissolubleBond, and Afghani and Abduh
traveled to London, ostensibly to discussthe crisis in the Sudan,
:, , rntellec- where they proposedthe notion of a pan-Islamicalliancewith Great
.'..i' hnally Britain. The proposal was advancedin the midst of a tribal-religious
_-,.:rizrng"a rebellion against the British in the Sudan, led by the charismatic
' : li'f Cl' lC e tO Mohammed Ahmad, a Sudanesesheikh who proclaimed himself the
-
:oreshad- Mahdi, or savior,and led a puritanicalIslamic revolt. Two versionsof
'' . \ luslim Islarnism carne into conflict: the Mahdi's, a feral, angry revolt in
..J Abduh which nationalist sentimentswere in part disglrisedby religious lan-
r. rnd he is guage,and Afghani's,an Anglophilic version of Islamismthat viewed
: '. rriled to the Mahdi as primitive and uncouth. In r 8 8 5, the forcesof the Mahdi,
:r I'rris and the Helpers of the Prophet,defeatedand killed the
calling thernselves
-:
. 1'upre Sen- celebratedBritish general,Charles Gordon, and captured Khartoum.
Afghani sought to maintain his pan-Islamic credentialsby paying
:-t-1.then to lip service to the Mahdi, but-continuing to cultivate his British
::tl g ri lt ed t o patrons-he opposedthe Sudaneserebel behind the scenes."I fear,as
..rl .o ri r t ion. all wise men fear, that the disseminationof this doctrine [mahdism]
-. :r l .u i lt t he and the increaseof its votarieswill harm England and anyonehaving
il-r't\\'O IT ICII rights in Egypt," wrote Afghani. In a separatepiece,entitled "England
.:t)rl r' B ond. on the Shoresof the Red Sea," Afghani argued that the Mahdi was
, , : tn tl lr enc e. attracting the support of the "simpleiminded." He suggestedin
-,:-{.sts t hat another articlethat the Mahdi's revolt could be met only by an oppos-
-i r.\fg l- r ani
ing challengethat usedIslam as its organizingprinciple. "The strength
. - -l q e nt was of an Islamic preaching," he wrote) "cannot be met except by an
::.':1 ct ebiog- Islamic resolution,and none but Muslim men can strugglewith this
::'.i ()r gan of pretenderand reducehim to his proper stature."21
' \ t gh a n il, Afghani, in other words, proposed fighting fire with fire-Islam
:-.1\r'ria, the with Islam. The British, apparently,did not take him up on this pro-
' :::t from t he posal,a rejectionthat angeredAfghani, though Abduh remainedfaith-
:::r rr-rdguide ful to I-ondon. In going their separateways, Afghani went to Russia
'.,,
rtrganiZ ed while Abduh journeyedto Tunis, in North Africa. From there, Abduh
-:.cJti on of a
"then traveledincognito in a number of other countries,strengthening
the organizationof the societythey had founded."22Their message,to
:- i n i ti at iv e at the massesat least,was one of pan-Islamin its purestform:
I
3o D E v r r - 's GanaE
: ;isguiseduring He reportedly tried to sell Moscow on the idea that he could help
spark a revolt in India, the very heart of the British Empire. According
--i \\'crescattered
-- -.: ior r.vithLord to a British intelligencereport from r888, Afghani "had impressed
^ lr r 888, with upon someRussianofficialsthe prospectof a generaluprising in India
' - :, )ok the first of rvheneverthe Russianschose to give the signal."28It seemsthat the
- -:,.:rspoke quietlY Russiansdidn't buy what Afghani was selling,and soon afterward he
, ' - rrq l-riscollected back in London.
i'u'as
Afghani's London contacts r,l'erediverse.He plunged into a world
-: :s clearthat . ' .
: :reethinker,like rhat includeda swirling mix of freethinkers,Masons,Gnostics'mystics,
t
D r:vrr' s Gevn
D
)+ D r , v r r 's Gal,.r.
sick bed at the time, and conveyedto the Turkish border."31He would
bounce back and forth betweenTurkey, Afghanistan,and Persiadur-
ing the r89os, "attractingr"Kedouriesays,"the affention... of secu-
rity and intelligencedepartments."32 At the very end of his life, the
British bailed him out once more. "In r895 Afghani, then at Istanbul,
some two years before his death finding himself in Sultan Abdul
Hamid's bad books,and threatenedwith extraditionto Persiawhere he
was wanted for subversion,appliedro the British Ambassadorfor pro-
tection as an Afghan subject."-r3
The British consulategave Afghani a
pass,allowing him to leavethe sultan'sterritory.He eventuallyreturned
to Turkev,where the itinerantpan-Islamistdied of cancerin r 897. E. G.
Browne ensuredthat Afghani'sfame would last long beyond his death
by lionizinghim in his rgro classicTbe PersianReuolution.
But Lord Cromer, ever the practical imperialist,wrote perhapsthe I'
.-.. ,.r'ould
: : -.:.t dur- AeouLLAH PHITBY's BRoTHERHooD
: secu-
. t:. the From 1899 through the aftermath of \7orld'V7ar I, Great Britain
,:.:.tnbul, embarkedon one of the most remarkableimperial gambits ever con-
-..." \bdul ceived.The Ottoman Empire, the nineteenthcentury's "sick man of
. ' :]rrehe Europe," was finally in its deaththroes.The rise of the imperialnavies,
: : ': pro- railroads, and finally the development of the internal combustion
-.-.rrni a engine and the automobile created an insatiable demand for oil.
: . :l . 1 f ne d Despitethe growth of Texas,Romania, and Baku as centersof oil pro-
. -. F "G
. . duction, it had also begunto dawn on imperial strategiststhat Persia,
: . .lerrth Iraq, and Arabia had untold petroleum wealth. Hard-headedimpe-
rialists saw southwestAsia as a gigantic chessboard, and they were
' :: -,l f i t he playing for keeps.London'sgambit was to make a play for the loyalty
:: . 1:,1 Il Of of the world's Muslims, not by appealing to the Islamic world's
:l * r\\'t O enlightened,modernizingMuslim elite but to its traditionalist-minded
' ':' sllffi- massesand autocrats.
l-:'' \\'ere While fending off the French in the Middle East, the British had
- . Lrke a simultaneouslyto deal with three other powers. The Russians,seem-
--, ing to pressinexorably down from the north, were one concern.The
-: ()l T ler
: - . l l l Jior Germans,whose global power was expandingunder the Kaiser,were
^ .:'.,1u'ell fast building ties to Turkey while making plans to constructa rail Iine
: - rrhad from Berlin to Baghdad.And the Turks, whose'empire'slife force was
- : : : l iz e rS. ebbing, still had an ace in the hole, namely, the existence of a
.-- J Ri d a , caliphate in Istanbul that, nominally at least, could claim the alle-
:: \ t gha n i gianceof orthodox Sunni Muslims everywhere.
:- : -\l u s- London was firmly in control of India (including,of course,what
.l : : l l ! ' . the is now Muslim Pakistan),and thanks to Lord Cromer the British had
:::': >t rildi- locked up Egypt and the SuezCanal as their lifelineto India. They had
.:: , c F-ast: significant,even dominant influencein Afghanistan and Persia.And
they had important surrounding real estate' from Cyprus to East
Africa to Aden that could be used to bring power to bear in the Per-
sian Gulf. For their gambit to seizecontrol of Iraq and Arabia, they
neededa force to challengeTurkey's control of that vast expanseof
sand-coveredterritorl'.
The first step in accomplishingthat feat was the forging of an
D l l 'It-'s Gel tP
J6
SaudiArabia-
alliancefor the Englishthrone wrth the future king of
\wahhabi Islamic movement.To under-
and with the long-established
must first take a
stand how the British-Saudialliance developed'we
betweenthe
stcp heck into the cighreenthcenttlrv'when rhe entente
Wahhabi fam-
Al Saud,the future royalfamily, and the Al Shaikh,the
ily of the Islamists,was first cemented'
Muslim
In the middle of the eighteenth century' an itinerant
the
preacher,sort of an Arabian Elmer Gantry, began crisscrossing
from
northern reachesof the peninsula and the Fertile Crescent'
Baghdad'
Mecca and Medina to the al-HasaOasisin the eastto Basra'
in r7o3) was
and Damascus.Mohammad ibn Abdul \(ahhab, born
learning that
not a city dweller,and he didn't bother with the kind of
Spreading the
occurred in the Arab world's intellectual centers'
\wahhab thunderedthat
Islamic version of fire and brimstone,Abdul
that had been
the Nluslims nee.dedto purge themselvesof everything
It was a
learnedsincethe days of the Propheta thousandyearsbefore'
packing
revivalistmovementin the classicsense'with eagerfollowers
tents thrown up by Abdul'Wahhab'sorganizers'
Abdulwahhab,smostlmportantconvertwasthefounderoftheAl
saw himself
Sauddynastv,Mohammed ibn Saud'Ibn Saudapparently
Mohammed' con-
as an eighteenth-centuryversion of the Prophet
To
quering lands for Islam and imposing his faith on the conquered'
their followers
reinforcetheir message,Abdul'Wahhab,Ibn Saud' and
disagreedwith
had the unfortunate habit of slaughteringanyonewho
their shrines'
them and demolishingtheir cities,their mosques,and
in Arabic,
Abdul wahhab was called "the Teacher,"or al-sbaikh
clan were
and from then on the descendantsof the Abdul wahhab
and the AI
called the Al shaikh.3aThe alliance betweenthe Al saud
rgzos.It wasn't
Shaikh families evolved into the saudi state in the
through the
without its ups.and downs, however; from the rToos
in turn' be
r9zos, the Al Saudrepeatedlyfounded statesthat would'
Ottomans
swept awav either by the more worldly, and lessfanatical'
and their alliesin Egypt, or by rival Arabian tribes'
'srahhabis,it is usually said,
In standardaccounrsof the rise of the
and moderniz-
often with respect,that the \Tahhabiswere reformers
the idea of
ers. or that they united the Arabian Peninsulaaround
Imperial Pan-Islant J7
rXlahhabismis consideredsome-
_
I . ' 1, 1-
tauhid, or monotheism. (The term
,: : t d er- what insulting by its adherents,who prefer the term IJnitarians,from
"unity of God.")35And Wahhab is often describedas a thinker, whose
, '::: l l he philosophical work and interpretation of the Koran were ground-
lwahhabism:A critical
' ,- fln1- breaking. Not so. Hamid Algar, aurhor of
Essay,notes that the Arabian desert and Abdul Wahhab's so-called
\ ' i , l s Lm theology had something in common. "lts topographical barrenness
.. : - : t h e seemsalways to have been reflectedin its intellectual history," he
: '-l. f f OIT l wrires.36In discussing"what might charitably be called the scholarly
output of Muhammad b. Abd al-Sfahhab,"Algar saysthat his works
-'.:ir.lad,
-::. \\'as are simplistic and superficial,comprised mostly of reprinted collec-
"- :r j tllat tions of the Prophet'ssayingsand containing little or no "elucidation
'Wahhabism,notes Algar
:.-:'. j the or commentary." Even the custodians of
wryly, are "embarrassedby the slightnessof [his] opus."t- A great
- : :': . 1 t hlt
- . ,J b e en thinker he was not.
= . : $ -l 1Sa But Abdul \Tahhab was a master at hurling polemicai thunder-
- : , i c k i ng
bolts at moderate Muslims, accusingthem of abandoning Islam, of
the
apostasy,of heresies,and worse. Joining forceswith the Al Sar-rd,
: :rheAl \Tahhabisassembleda mighty army of followers,who spentcenturies
, :llrself wreaking havoc acrossArab territory. They were, in the words of a
:- :: . CO n- nineteenth-centuryEnglishwriter, notorious for "preferring slaughter
to booty" in their conquests.38 The slaughter never ended. In the
- - - :: e[ 1.TO
L( )w e rs alliance began a "campaign of killing and
r7oos, the Saud-\il7ahhabi
: -. ...1lvith plunder all across Arabia," first in central Arabia, then in Asir in
. -.:-:lles. southern Arabia and parts of Yemen, and finally in Riyadh and the
'- .\rrrbic, Hrjaz.3eIn r8oz they raided the Shiite holy citl' of Karbala in what is
a. ,lll \vere now Iraq, killing most of the city's popr-rlation,destroyingthe dome
. : t heAl over the grave of a founder of Shiism, and looting "property,
,: $':1Sn't weapons,clothing, carpets,gold, silver, [and] precious copies of the
"signa-
: - ,rsh the Quran."40In fact, Wahhabismwould be weirdly marked by a
ture activity of dome demolition."4l Domes in Mecca, too, would be
: - :Llrn , b e
' :: om a n s destroyedin the early part of the nineteenthcentury. (It is a practice
that continuesroday. In the former Yugoslavia,Saudi Arabia would
., - . . ii' sa i d , demand radical changesin Islamic sites."Saudi aid agencies,"wrote
: r - )dern i z- John Esposito, "have been responsiblefor the destruction or recon-
:: . : Lc i e ao f struction of many historic mosques, libraries, Quran schools, and
j8 . Dtvrr,s Ger.rt
-,' : i c lure, burgeoning oil interests in southern Persia, Iraq, and the Gulf.
: ,t rhhabi William Shakespear,the felicitously named British officer who was
appointed political agent in Kuwait, becamethe first of severalleg-
,,.::r:r'ulti- to the Al Saud, and he forged the first formal
endary British liaisor-rs
:-:,fheAI treaty betweenEnglandand SaudiArabia,which was signedin r9r5.
: .:: iolonel Punctuatinghis accomplishment,Shakespeardied in battle alongside
. - - :.fft Clt I the Al Saud in a desertconfrontation wrth the rival Al Rashid tribe.
: :-: , t a twa s But the treaty he designedbound London and Arabia, years before
: - , rile rs o f Saudi Arabia was a country. "It formally recognizedIbn Saud as the
: , ): r e g re w independentruler of the Neydand its Dependenciesunder British pro-
tection. In return, Ibn Saudundertook to follow British advice."47
- . . : nc p ro - With the outbreak of war tn r9r4, Great Britain saw a golden
: :::ewah- opportunity to oust Turkey from Arabia. As the Ottoman Empire
: ,r r u ' i l l i n wobbled, two British teams backed two drstinct-and opposing-
-.'. ir.Illrate Arab playersin the barren, desertstretchesof the Arabian peninsula.
. - ''rn c r i r l
-] ] t ' . | - ' The first team was led by Harry St. John Bridger Philbg a British
. J iregin operative well schooled in the political utility of religious belief by
- .:. Pe1lin- none other than E. G. Browne. Scion of a modestly distinguished
-- .'rrtched British family with ties to Ceylon and India, Philby was a product of
: - ::()m the England'smost prestigiousschools,including \Testminster,where he
--:. and it was a Queen's Scholar,and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he
:r.: Broth- At the dawn of the twentiethcen-
becamea discipleof E. G. Browne's.aE
: -' - , ,1lected tury, Cambridge was a training ground for empire builders, and he
. -r[gious rubbed elbows there with England's(and the world's) best and bright-
, '. -.:nhered est. Grounded in the ties betweenchurch and state in England, and
. -Hirsain with an intimate familiarity with the Anglican establishment,Philby,
though an atheist,exhibrteda strongappreciationof religion'sinfluence
. ,f orl in on politics,and he describedreligiousbelief as "of all conventionsthe
- . '-really greatest,...so strong in its resistance to all opposition."4e
At Cam-
-: '.. qreat- bridge he studiedphilosophy,oriental languages,and Indian law, and
. --rders- then joined the Indian Civil Service.Philby-who would later undergo
' ,: - l: il C S lt e. a sham conversionto Islam, adopting the name "Abdullah"-would
:. t nk i n a carry Browne's lessonswith him to India, where he servedas a minor
i- -: . functionary,and then to Arabia, where he succeededShakespearas
-l l -l p lf e
- - - r<i nolrr GreatBritain'sliaisonto Ibn Saud.
: : : c t th e i r While Philby's team, Britain's India Office, backed the Al Saud,
4o D p v I l 's Ger,tr
their friendly rivals were basedin Cairo at the Arab Bureau' a branch
of British intelligence,which sponsoredthe famous T. E. Lawrence
("of Arabia"). The Arab Bureaubackedthe Sharifof Mecca,Hussein,
head of the Hashemite dynasty,and his sons, Abdullah and Faisal.
They were the rulers of the Hijaz,the province in westernArabia that
included Mecca and Medina. The Al Saud, meanwhile, controlled
most of central Arabia's Neid from Riyadh, which is now the Saudi
capital. In the end, of course,the Al Saudwould conquer Arabia and
name the counrry after their family. The Hashemiresons, Abdullah
and Faisal,having lost to the Saudis,would be installedlike replace-
ment parts as kings of two other nations whose borders were drawn
up by Winston Churchill: Abdullah as king of Transjordan,and Faisal
as king of lraq.
In both cases-the Al Saud and the Hashemites-the British
sought to mobilize {slam. The Hashemitesboastedthat their family
was directly descendedfrom that of the Prophet Mohammed, a claim
made by any number of scurrilouswould-be rulers in the past century.
The British, naturally, saw the Hashemitesas potential claimantsto a
new, and pro-British, caliphate based in Mecca. The Al Saud, pro-
pelled by the warriors of \Tahhabism, were a formidable Islamic
strike force that, the British believed,would help London gain control
of the westernshoresof the PersianGulf.
Initially, around t9t6,it seemedthat the Hashemiteshad the upper
hand. Becauseof their position atop Mecca and Medina, the British
believedthat Hussein and his sons could rally Muslims from North
Africa to India to the British cause.At the time, the tottering Ottomans
controlled a decrepitcaliphate,which nominally exercisedsway over
religiousMuslims worldwide. But the Ottomans were besiegedon all
sides,and the British took the lead trying to use Islamic loyaltiesas a
force againstthe Turks. It was a policy cooked up by London'sMiddle
East team: Lord Curzon, the ultraimperialist foreign secretaryand
former governorof India; the aristocraticRobert Cecil,and his cousin,
Arthur Lord Balfour,who with RothschildbackingpromisedPalestine
to the Jews;Mark Sykes,the duplicitous chief of the Foreign Office's
Middle East section;and David George("D.G.")Hogarth, the head
lnryeridl Pan-lslam - 4l
::rnch of the Arab Bureau, the author of The Penetration of Arabia, and an
i .,,rence archaeologist, Orientalist, and keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at
i -:'sein, Oxford. Churchill, Arnold Toynbee, and other leading lights of
:F.risal. B ri ti s h i mp e ri a l i s m j o i n e d i n. Outl i ni ng the pol i cy, Law rence sai d:
::.r rhat
:.::,llled If the Sultan of Turkev were to disappear,then the Caliphate by
r-:rudi common consent of lslam ',vould fall to the family of the prophet,
:: . 1 . l n d the presentrepresenrariveof which is Hussein,the Sharif of Mecca.
Hussein'sactivities seem beneficialto us, becauseit marcheswith
:::rllah
our immediate aims, the breakup of the Islamic bloc and the dis-
: : : ' , JCe -
ruption of the Ottoman Empire, and becausethe stateshe would
:
-: . 1\\rn set up would be as harmlessto ourselvesas Turkey rvas.If properly
* I'.risal handled the Arab States r,vould remain in a state of political
mosaic, a tisslleof jealous principalitiesincapableof cohesion,and
r: rilsh yet always ready to combine againstan outside force.
- .,.nilv
.,-,.rim The idea seemedsimpleenough.The Hashemiteswould sragean anri-
'-. Ottoman revolt, complete with swashbuckling,romantic images of
- : I Llt\'.
-.. to a Arabs led by Lawrence charging across the sand to liberate them-
selvesfrom Turkish rule. Behind the scenes,Britain would try to forge
- : -lnliC an alliance between the Hashemitesand the Zionists, with the goal
-:', t r o l of installing a pro-British Jewish state in Palestine,and with the
Hashemitesruling present-daySyria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and the
Hijaz along Arabia's west coast. Uniting it all would be a Mecca-
::trish based,and British-controlled,Arab caliphate.Egypt and Sudan,of
- \orth course,would remain in the British camp, too.
l-1lt ) Philbn meanwhile,was working the easrernflank. Sir Percy Cox,
'. the political representative
of the India Office in the PersianGulf, was
-: r )\'e f
: 'r rtll the man in chargeof England'seffort to securethe preciousoil rerrito-
l.:. .l S 2 ries, whose potential was just beginningro emerge.PhilbX then a jun-
).i. Jdle ior officer, worked with Cox and with the legendaryexplorer and
i :', .tnd super spy, Gertrude Bell, whose intimate knowledgeof Arabian tribal
- '. i s i n , lore and the genealogiesof its families,along with her experrlinguistic
-,-r itine abilities,made her an essentialmember of the team. Cox dispatched
, ,:ice's Philby to meet Ibn Saud in r9t6. While London was mobilizing the
-.. :lead Meccansagainstthe Turks in westernArabia, Philby was assignedto
4z D E vrr-' s Genp
British pan-Islam.
Britain'simperial exercisein redrawing the map of the Middle East
and building a new caliphate foundered, however. Great Britain, of -\
course, remained the dominant player in the region by virtue of its
sheer imperial power. But the Arab-Zronist deal didn't quite work,
and lraq proved troublesome,and deadly,for British troops. Further- 1: J.
more, the French insisted on booting the British out of Syria and ..' ::
Lebanon, and the Bolshevikstook over Russia and revealeddetails
about secretAnglo-French understandingsthat proved exceedingly
embarrassingto London. And, though London placed most of its
chips on Hussein'sHashemites,IbnSaud'slegionsswept through Ara-
bia, conquering all before them-including Hussein'smini-realm in
the Hijaz. Gertrude Bell, speakingof Iraq but in a manner that could
have referred to Britain's entire Middle East policy, said, "'We have
made an immensefailure here."-51
Philbv, still in British service,maintained his connectionto the Al
Saud.Indeed,he seemedalmost to worship the uncouth Ibn Saudand
his Bedouinthugs, the Ikhwan:
-,,t.hid,who dynasty.'t3
Even some of Britain's most hard-coreimperialists,includ-
-.: -rl-,ra. ing D. G. Hogarth, saw the Al Saud,and in particular their'vfahhabi
l- ^^^u
- 1 l ) r uu warriors, the Ikhwan, as rather unsavory. "To men [like Hogarth]
.i.-.
'- ,1t t L^+
L\ r trt at , with experienceof Islam in India, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and the
:'-t him on Htjaz, the proselytizing of Ibn Saud's lkhwan was a menace, and
_.::-en-year- \x/ahhabisma fanatical creed unsuitedto
most of the Islamic world."
: rf London wrote Philby'sbiographer.ta
', :'e. and to In the rgzos conquest of Arabia, philby's ,,democrats," the Al
,..:a of pro- Saud,left 4oo,ooo dead and wounded, carried out 4o,ooo public exe-
cutions, and ordered, under its strict interpretation of Islamic law,
'--.\ir.ldleEast
35o'ooo amputations.ti The scorched-earthbattles by which the
'- .: llritain, of Ikhwan conqueredArabia for the Al saud gave Britain an unbroken
- :rue of its chain of vassalstatesand coloniesfrom the Mediterraneanto India.
-. : -,rite \vork, Yet even as the Saudi statewas being established,the bloody Ikhwan
:.. Further- were seenby somein London, and by someArabs, as a double-edged
- : ivritr and sword. A Lebanesefriend of Ibn saud's describedthe Ikhwan thus:
- - :....'d details "Today a sword in the hand of the prince, a daggerin his back tomor-
: - : rccedingly row."-56Hussein, the British-backedSharif of Mecca, pleaded with
:- . - ttL)S t of its London to force Ibn Saudto dismantlethe Ikhwan. In a missiveto the
- - -' ' rrr(Ih
"t-'_^_*
Arr- British Agent in Jeddah in r9r8, Husseinwrore: "whar concernsme
-. :-.:-realm in above everythingelse. . . is that H.M.G. should compel [Ibn Saud]to
.' .-:- :ir.rtcould abolishand dispersewhat he calls the lkhwan-the political societyin
- -.. "\\e have the cloak of religion." The British coolly refused.5T
Ibn Saud tried to maintain that the Ikhwan were an independent
:r ro the Al force, but the British knew otherwise,of course."He doesnot want it
^:r S.rudand to be known that he himself is at the bottom of the whole thing, and is
fostering and guiding the movement for his own ends," cabled a
British official in t9zo. Yet, other, far lesswell informed Br:itishoffi-
: " J rltost
' i l L rd i s cials warned, rather stupidly it would now seem. that the Ikhwan
-...rrthat were Bolshevik-inspired !58
,:l s:rn d Theoretically,at least,Ibn saud still had the option of creating a
secularstate, one in which fundamentalistIslam would not have an
official part. But he was propelled by the momenrum of his alliance
- '.' e n d Arab with the \Tahhabisand with the Ikhwan, as rhe shrewd British politi-
::.rlAl Saud cal officer Percy Cox realized:
r
11 D r v r l 's Ger,tr
: : -- : l IO
A Muslim missi'n from India visited
-- )ilti -
Jeddahand demandecr that
-t the king handovercontrolof the hor1,pracesto a commirree of reo-
, : l t eV resentarivesto he appointedby all Muslim counrries.Ibn saud did
not respondto this demandand sentthe missionback
to India bv
: : -: : ()Ll S sea.In .funeof rhe silmeyearhe conveneda. all_Islami.
Congr.r,
l.i.l.lle in Mecca,i'viting the sovereignsand presidentsof the independent
Muslim statesand representatives from Muslim organizationsin
- -:irin
countriesunder non-Muslimrule. Sirty_ninepeople
-..of attendedthe
congressfrom arl over the Isramicworrd. Addressing
- : l: 1 . 1 I l them, Ibn
Saudmadeit clearthar he was now the ruler of the
iiyaz. . . . At
::.;fill the time he evokeda mixed responsefrom his.guerts.
Som. dis_
' : j o\'- sentedand departed;others acceptedand reccignrzed
the new
. . *- : ti -]e d order.6a
'.1,..1ims
': :.. tlle Ibn saud also finally had to confronr the Ikhwan.
By the rate
' r
- :l O n. rgzos' their lob done, the Ikhwan were resrless,
and increasingly
_ .- rtl-rt_
resenredIbn saud's monarchy. They clashed,and
by ryz9Ibn Saud
.. \tf ll- had dismantledthe Ikhwan and transformedremnants
of the Bedouin
. r---.\
ing force into the Saudi armed forces. Still, rravi'g
crushed the rkhwan,
1,.l.;lim Ibn saud did not abandon wahhabisrn.Indeed,
to consoridatehis
power in the more worldly, and lessrerigious,
Hijaz, rhe king created
-'.1-r.lim the religi.us police to enforce five-times-a-rlayprayer,
dress codes,
: _-:. \\'ilS and other srricruresof orthodox wahhabism.In
the early r93os Ibn
... :i1at e saud also crearedthe society for the propagation
of Virtue and the
- * : Sta f Suppressionof Evil, who were composed of "iiliterate.
fanatical
D E v t t - 's Getrao
For the British, the emergenceof the state of Saudi Arabia gave
London a foothold at the very heart of Islam, in Mecca and Medina.
For the more pfagmatic among Britain'simperial strategists,it seemed
that Ibn Saud'sarmed forcesproved themselvesto be of greaterworth
than the mystic-theologicalcurrentsadvancedby Afghani and Abduh
and their secret societies.And clearlS London's experiment with
Afghani and Abduh was not completelysuccessful. Afghani, in partic-
ular, proved to be an elusiveimperial asset,and while his vision of a
pan-Islamic alliance might have appeared attractive to the British
elite,it failed to capturethe imagination of the massesand it met with
determinedopposition from rulers in Turkey and Persia.
The creation of the Saudi stateby the British gaveIslamisma base
out of which it would operatefor decadesto come' For England,and
then for the United States,SaudiArabia would serveas an anchor for
imperial ambitionsthroughout the twentieth century.Yet'Wahhabism,
for all its power, was still primarily a religious, not political, force. It
could win the devout allegianceof Saudis,and it could be proselytized
to Sunnisfar and wide. But in the modern sense,true politicalIslam had
not yet emerged.Missing was a mass-basedIslamist political force
that could hold its own againstthe new century's most attractive anti-
imperialist ideologies,communism and nationalism. Yet the seeds
r'X/ateredand
planted by Afghani and Abduh were about to sprout.
carefully tended by Saudi Arabia's \Tahhabis and the British intelli-
genceservice)a new Islamist force was about to arise on soil sown by
Abduh. For the first time, a true grassrootsIslamic fundamentalist
party would begin in a city on the SuezCanal, not far from Saudi Ara-
bia: Ismailia,Egypt.
::.scnptlons
:r rddition to
- :s."^i It still 2
-. -\rabia gave
, :rd ,\Iedina.
:..:.. it seemed
: ::.ller worth ENGLAND' S BROTHERS
... :nd Abduh
: ::: ne nt With
-.-r in ne r t i c -
- : ',tsion of a
: the British
, - : rr met with
rrsm a base
,:::land,and IN rrs posr-Wonro \Var I struggleto maintain its empire,Great
: .rnchorfor Britain made deals with many devils. From the late rgzos until the
\ ahhabism, failed invasion of Suezin 1956, those pacts included support for rwo
-,ri. force.It fledgling Islamist movements in Egypt and Palestine.In Egypt, in
:roselytized t928, a young Islamic scholarnamed Hassanal-Bannafounded the
: r, Islamhad Muslim Brotherhood,the organizationthat would changethe course
- -- : -ltrcalforce Middle East.And his palestinian
of history in the rwentieth-cenrury
- .. .::::.l.tiveanti- confrdre was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the demagogicmufti of Jeru-
-:.: the seeds salem.Both Banna and Haj Amin would play imporrant roles in the
: t\':rered and growth of Islamism in the decadesafter Vorld \WarI-and, like the
: --: !::rish i ntelli- Saudiroyal family both owed rheir start to British support.
"--r : .,.i1sown by Banna'sMuslim Brotherhood was establishedwith a grant from
- - -.:iamentalist England's Suez Canal Compan5 and over the next quarter cenrury
-:- -- ::r SaudiAra- British diplomats, the intelligenceserviceMI6, and Cairo's Anglophilic
King Farouq would use the Muslim Brotherhood as a cudgel againsr
Egypt's communists and nationalists-and later against president
Gamal Abdel Nasser.Meanwhile, in Palestine,Haj Amin, the Nazi-
leaning,viciously anti-Semiticfirebrand, climbed to power beginning in
the rgzos with overt backing from the British overseersof the Palestine
Mandate. Together,Banna and Haj Amin would be responsiblefor the
t
IR D t - t 'r r 's Cer,tr
,ri. j-stvle trying to balance the king, the tribal leaders,the emerging middle
- \'_
fo-''"-
h rn-'i classes,the armg and the clergyin eachof thesestates,alwayswith an
.:'.1\\'ned eye toward preservingBritish power. sometimesthe king would get
too srrong,and form an alliancewith the army; in that casethe British
- - ,nrpler. would try to break the allianceof king and generalsby favoring tribal
-- - ,.incline, chieftainsinstead. somerimes,if the tribes or ethnic groups gor roo
- -- .:r Brit- uppitS the British would deputizethe army to crush them.
- ' i politi- The Islamic right emer:ged
amid this shifting balance.It provided a
: . 'l '.'c-fSe ln vital counterweight to England'schief nemeses:the nationalistsand
- : ' , . : l tlS ed the secularleft.
S
'-':- ,rnd its
:- - - {Jn l za -
.' - 'ljrot he r- Is lel,.'s ANTI-NATtoNALrsrs
': - ..l rl t lS X t ld
G
D rvrr' s Gel rr,
main options were first, the combination of the Wafd and rhe commu- -\lLrslinrF:
nists; and second,the secretivealliancebetweenthe Muslim Brother- ,: rhc r: :
hood and the military officers.Neither the British nor the Americans :: i:i. :::. - ,
wanted the'sfafd-communisroption; the British seemedinsisrenton
propping up the monarchy, while the Americans opted for supporting
Nasser'sFreeOfficers.The Brotherhood,with ties to both the monar-
chy and the Free Officers,played a double game.
The \Vafd Party itself was divided into competing factions and
plaguedby corruption. Yer an importanr sectionof the'Wafdsoughtan
alliancewith the left and the communists,which worried the palace,the
British-and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brothers worked hard to
destroy any possibility of a \Wafd-communisraxis, and the \Vafd struck
back at the Brotherhood,portraying Banna'sthugs as beingin the pay of
the British and the pro-British prime minisrer,Ismail sidqi. The commu-
nists and the'wafd accused.theMuslim Brotherhood of being "rools of
the imperialists." The \Vafd charged that "phalanxes of the Muslim
Brothers" were carrying out "acts of fascistterror." It called for disso-
lution of the Brotherhood's (government-funded)paramilitary unirs,
and it documentednume.rousinsrancesof strike-breakingby Muslim
Brotherhood goons.31But the Brotherhood would gain strength from
an unexpecteddirection in r948: the war in Palestine.
I
6o . D p - v r r . 's G.q.r.rn
6z I ) r . v i r 's Gar.rs
the street car line that runs out from Alexandria to the suburb of
Ramleh," a lrlew York Tintes report in August 1946 proclaimed.
"There is an Egyptian soldier about every eight or ten yards around
the garden, and the mufti has private bodyguardsinside."a0Another
report said that the mufti's political work was "lavishly financed" by
SaudiArabia's King Abdel Aziz and Egypt'sKing Farouq.ar
Apparentl5 the British didn't hold a grudge against the mufti,
becausethey soon hired him as a propagandist.In Cairo, British intelli-
gencehad establishedthe Arab News Agencyand the Near EastBroad-
castingStation (NEABS),whose "first director was Squadron-Leader
Alfred Marsack, a devout Muslim who had servedin the Middle East
beforethe war and who had devotedthe best part of his life to Arab
affairs,and had evenconvertedto Islam."42Perhapsimpressedby his
experienceas a Nazi broadcaster,the MI6 outlet hired Haj Amin. The
man who oversawNEABS, through MI6's Near EastAssociation,was
Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, an aristocraticBritish banker who'd headed
the Arab Bureau,the Cairo headquartersof British intelligenceduring
World'Vfar I and T. E. Lawrence'sbaseof operations.a3
ln t946, the mufti and the Muslim Brotherhood jointly organized
a paramilitary force in Palestinecalled the Rescuers,with up to
ro,ooo men under arms.a4The Rescuerswere either tolerated or
ignored by the British authorities.In Egypt, meanwhile, Banna and
the mufti establisheda working relationship. One of the Muslim
Brotherhood's military units, stationed in Gaza, was put under the
command of a Sudaneseaide to the mufti.ai And in Cairo, Hassanal-
Banna backed Haj Amin as rhe head of a new Palestinegovernment.
Perhapsthe high point of the mufti's careercamewith his triumphant
return to Gaza in September1947, where he proclaimed the state of
Palestineand himself as "Presidentof the Republic."a6With the Arab
defeat by Jewish forces, however,Haj Amin's fledgling state was no
more. But Haj Amin would survive, prosper,and return to battle in
the r95os.
Banna, meanwhile, was nearing the end of his fiery lifetime. The
regime of King Farouq was on its last legs,and the political vultures
were circling. The r948 Palestir-re
crisis fatally undermined Farouq's
regime, making it difficult for any of Egypt's political forces to ally
England'sBrothers 6j
iii,l
ijlttrn
66 D nvrr' s Gavr
Jg"
-
68 D n v r L 's GatrE
a: : rn s ! lef t don was dominant in the region, including southern Persia and Iraq,
: rirnself. there was a sometimesbitter rivalry betweenthe United Statesand the
:-:t least British-and to a lesserextent, France and Italy, too-over oil in the
:.::ldSand Middle East.All jealouslyguardedtheir companies'advantages.
=::r.t;rking Four yearsbeforehis shipboardencounterwith the king, FDR had
- : : { -O f a seemedwilling to let Saudi Arabia be handled by Great Britain, since
-: ; be for London was virtually all-powerful in the region, and the United States
'- had little experiencethere. "Will you tell the British I hope they can
Having
:r Philby take careof the king of SaudiArabia?" FDR askedan aide. "This is a
; friends little far afield for us."11But StandardOil of California and the Texas
- - -r . ', lt i^ l o Oil Company, partners in what would soon be renamed Aramco,
.:. His real would have none of it. They convinced Interior SecretaryHarold
. ..trr'1
that Ickes,FDR's right-hand man, and then FDR himself, that the United
: r.-Qirsh, Statesmust stand up to the British, who, they said, were "trying to
-:..^-_^^
_. \ ll lf ) 5c5, edgetheir way into" SaudiArabia.12In the midst of \forld'Vfar II, the
'.---rhough two allies eventually struck a deal, carving up the region's oil.
::.:.l.1lh'he Roosevelttold Lord Halifax, the British ambassador,"Persianoil . . '
'We
.. ,.singhis is yours. sharethe oil of Kuwait and Iraq. As for Saudi Arabian
oll. rt s ours. ' '
rrll
::lirv into
---.,. ^.;^^.
_.: 11 yrr!1, To rX/instonChurchill, FDR cabled: "Pleasedo accept my assur-
: ,1.1.
The ancesthat we are not making sheep'seyesat your oil fieldsin Iraq and
:t:.es.half lran." Replied Churchill, who'd almost single-handedlybuilt Lon-
- ,- __ 1 rrlv
r.!u
.. ,,,^.,
a/ don's overseasoil empire, "Let me reciprocate by giving you the
- , 'r rpd hrr fullest assurancethat we have no thought of trying to horn in on your
-::-. E\xon interestsor property in Saudi Arabia."la (Both men, of course,were
lying. The British had long coveted Saudi oil, and the United States
-::-.ceforth would soon elbow its way forcefully into the oil concessionsin Iran
:. -::i'elop- and Iraq.)
:.,..to the FDR's meeting with Ibn Saud did mark a consummation of the
U.S.-Saudipartnership.To transport the king, who'd never been out-
' -: f e \ v 2S side of Arabia before, the United Statesbundled him onto the U.S.S.
- : .'fe WaS Mwrphy, complete with familS retainers, servants' and sheep for
: Soviet slaughter,and the desertpotentateset up a tent on deck for sleeping.
', .:. I tactl- Elliott Roosevelt,the president'sson, describedFDR's encounterwith
,.:h Lon- Ibn Saud,as the king was known, aboard the Quincy:
ffiww-
7o D E v l r 's Ga,l,rr
i$fiffil
i#-xr
72 . D r , v r r 's Gavs
In the late summer of t953, the oval office at the white House
served..asthe stage for a little-noticed encounter between president
Dwight D. Eisenhowerand a young Middle Easrernfirebrand. In the
muted black-and-whitephotographlerecording the event,the grand-
fatherly, balding Ike, then sixty-three, stands gray suited, erect, his
elbows bent and his fistsclenchedas if to add musclero someforceful
point. To his left is a young, olive-skinnedEgyptian in a dark suit,
with a neatly trimmed, full beard and closelycroppedhair, clutching a
sheafof papersbehind his back. staring intently at the president,he is
just twenty-sevenyears old, but already has more than a decadeof
experienceat the very heart of the Islamic world's violent and pas-
sionate politics. Alongside him, some dressedin 'western attire and
otherswearing robes,shawls,and Muslim headgear,are membersof a
delegation of scholars, mullahs, and activists from India. syria.
Yemen, and North Africa.
The president'svisitor that Septemberday was Said Ramadan, a
militant official and ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood. The
young man even had a claim to semi-royaltyin Brotherhood circles,
since he had married wafa al-Banna, Hassan al-Banna'sdaughter,
making him the son-in-law of the organization'sfounder.As he stood
at the president'sside, Ramadan appearedrespectableand harmless.
Yet the Brotherhoodwas known throughout the Middle East,sincear
leastthe late r94os, as an organization of fanatics and terrorists.Its
Islam Meets the Cold \Yar . -72
city under the PalestineMandate, where the storm croudsof the war
between the Arabs and Jews were beginning to gather. Over the
comrng years' Ramadan would spend a great deal of time traveling
between Jerusalem,Amman, Damascus, and Beirut, building the
Brotherhood'schapters.On October 26, 1945,Ramadan openedthe
Muslim Brotherhood's first office in
Jerusalem,22founding the orga-
nization that, by the r98os, would become known as the Isramic
ResistanceMovemenr (Hamas).By ,947, twenty-fivebranchesof the
Muslim Brotherhood existed in palestine,with between rz,ooo and
2o'ooo members.23 rn t948, Ramadanhelpedto organizetheMuslim
Brotherhood'ssymbolically significantIslamic force that battled the
Jewishforcesthat establishedIsraelthat year.
Ramadan also made the first of many visits to pakistan in the late
194os' taking part in the first meetingsof the 'world Muslim congress
in Karachi in ry 49 and.r 9 5 r, where he flirted with becomingsecretary-
generalof the organization.24lThe congressitself was denouncedby
the Pakistan left as having been organ izedby "Anglo-American impe-
rialism.";2'rPakistanhad achievedindependencefrom Great Britain a
year earlier, and as the first Islamic state it became a magnet for
Islamistideologues,organizers,and scholars.A young Islamistnamed
Abul-Ala Mawdudi-who'd founded a Muslim Brotherhood-style
movement in Pakistan called the Islamic Group-was transforming
his movement into a political party. For the next decade,pakistan
would become a kind of second home for Ramadan. The fledgling
Islamic stategave Ramadan a broadcastslot on Radio pakistan, and
he enjoyed good relations with the \Testern-leaninggovernment of
Pakistan,including with Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who wrore
the prefaceto one of Ramadan,sbooks.26
Ramadan'ssray in Pakistanwasn't entirely voruntary.The Broth-
erhood had beenbannedin Egypt, and Hassanal-Bannaassassinated.
Ramadan returned to Egypt in r95o, when the Brotherhood made
one of its many comebacks,but he would periodically spend long
periods of time in Pakistan,where he worked croselywith Mawdudi
and his Islamic Group. Ramadanalso worked with pakistan,sMuslim
League,and with official Pakistani supporr he traveled and lectured
Islam Meets tbe Cold'War .
75
: rhe war throughout the Arab world. At the time, politics in Pakistanwas split
Ci'er the among radical Islamists,moderateIslamists,secularnationalists,and
.: :raveling the left. Meanwhile, the country was being drawn into pro-Western
' - l i no t hc military alliances.During severalyears in Karachi, Ramadan helped
:ined th e Mawdudi organizea muscular phalanx of fanatical Islamic students
: :ne o rg a - that battled Pakistan'sleft, especiallyon university campuses.The
:-. : I s lami c so-called Islamic Student Society, known by its Urdu initials as
:: : . e s of th e the IJl27 modeled on Mussolini's fascistsquadristi,was a Ramadan
:: . t 30 and project. "Although organized under the supervisionof the [lslamic
::.: -\luslim Groupl, IJT was greatly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood of
d the
:,,.:tle Egypt. Between t95z and 1955, Ramadan helpedIJT leadersformal-
ize an administrative structure and devise an organizational srraregy.
' .:- rhe late The most visible marks of the brotherhood's influence are IJT's 'study
:. Longress circle' and all-night study sessions,both of which were means of
::a -a f e taf y- indoctrinating new members and fostering organizational bonds,"
- . . -o . l h.t according to one expert, Vali Reza Nasr. The often-armed IJT thugs
:,-:n impe- clashed repeatedlywith left-wing students on campus. "Egg ross-
:: Brrtaina ing gradually gave way to more seriousclashes,especiallyin Karachi
:.-...net for and Multan," wrote Nasr. "Antileftist student activism had become
::-:.:named the IJT's calling and increasinglydetermined its course of action. [The
:: ,rd-style IJT becamel a soldiers brigade which would fight for Islam against
::..i O f mlng its enemies-secularists and leftists-within. the government and
-. Pakistan without."28
jcri olino
- - In betweenhis trips to Pakistan,Ramadan also apparentlyworked
r . l.l 1 1. z f ld with Arab fundamentalists,especiallyamong Palestiniansand Jorda-
a :: - -rent o f nianswho founded the so-calledIslamic Liberation Party.2e(Later,the
-.',lo \\rrote Liberation Party metastasized,relocating its headquartersto Ger-
many and then spreading through Muslim Central Asia. It was
l^: B ro th - increasinglysupportedby Saudi Arabia. By the r99os, it had become
i: - :).Slna te d . an important violence-proneforce allied to the Islamic Movement of
.- 'd rnade Uzbekistanand to Al Qaeda.)While in Jordan in the r95os, Ramadan
!:: : 'id l o n g also helped found the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
- \l. r rvd u d i The leader of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood was Abu Qurah, a
,:, . -\Iuslim r.vealthyJordanianmerchantwith closeriesro King Abdullah and the
:.: iectured British-backedHashemite monarchy. According to Marion Boulby,
',,ji:ii
D t v r r 's (l .lvr
76
'were
Ramadan,the Muslim Brotherhood,and the Islamicright useful
alliesin the cold war struggleagainstcommunism?was lslam itself a
bulwark againsta foreign, atheisticideology?In one sense,rhe answer
was no. Both communism and nationalism could and did easily
attract adherentsamong the massesof Muslims. In Iraq, for insrance,
ffi
8o D E v r r . 's CiauP.
the Iraqi Communist Party, the Arab rvorld's largest,won the alle-
lWorld \Var
gianceof millions of Iraqi Shiitesduring the period after
Il, and by the late rgios the party was strong enoughto organizca
demonstration in Baghdad that attracted more than one million
Iraqis. And Egypt's Nasser,whose Cairo-basedVoice of the Arabs
radio broadcastscarried his nationalist messageinto Syria, Jordan'
Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, gathered an enormous following
and for much of the r95os and r96os was by far the most popular
Arab political leader.Just as christians in Europe joined the commu-
nist parties en masse,in the Islamic world Muslims unhappy with
their statusor their quality of life, or who were opposedto Western
imperialism and Anglo-Americaninfluencein the Middle East, opted
for cclmmunismor, more often, for Arab nationalism'
Yer even if Muslims were attracted to left-wing ideologies,some
Orientalistsand U.S. policy makers felt that there was still reasonto
believethat political Islarn might yet be mobilized in forms that were
explicitly anti-commulist. In the Micldle East, organizedIslam took
ntany frtrtns, of course. First and frtremost was the traditionalist,
clergy'-based religion, organized around mosques' religious founda-
tions or endowments,Islamic courts, a1d other institutions.many of
which had a powerfLrlsocial imp:rct but were not explicitl,vpolitical'
Next, therewas "state Islan," such as existedin SaudiArabia since
its foundingin the rgzos or in Pakistansinceindependence (and cspe-
cially sincethe r97os), in which entire nations werc organiz.edaccorcl-
ing to religigus identity and islamic law, and it was sonletimes
difficult to see the dividing line betr,veenIslam and the state. And
finallv, there rvas the emerging "Ne1a,Itight" in the Muslinr r,r'orld,
includingthe Muslim Brotheriroodand other erplicitll'poiiticalorga-
nizations or parties committed to the establishmentof an Islamic
republic. To those in the West looking for ideological forces in the
Midclle East that could provide an intellectualcounterweight to the
radical appeal of communism, all three of theseforms seemedattrac-
tive at one time or anotheq and indeed there was overlap among
them.
ln the United States,there was :rlarm over the fact that the Arab
,.sll1s,'-6hrt is, opinion leaders,intellectuais,politicians,journalists,
Islant Meets the Cold War . 8r
Lewis'sessaywas
At the Princetoncolloquium, heid the sameyear
scholar'Mazheruddin
written, a marker was laid down by a Pakistani
Siddiqi,afellowatthelnstituteoflslamicCultureinLahore'Afor- Ttffi
at the university
mer government otficial and prolific writer, educated uil
Islam and Communism'
of Madras in India, Siddiqi was the author of rfr
Marxismandlsla.m,^ndHi"o'icalMaterialismandlslam'Inhis f,n
it clear that commu-
addressto the Princetongathering,Siddiqi made (t/f
faith-basedand built
nism could be resistedonly if its opposition was lfim
onlslamicfundamentals.SiddiqiattackedMuslim..authoritarian- oil1
Islamic world's sec-
ism," but also unleasheda bitter salvo againstthe 'r01
intellectuals who
ularists, "the pseudo-scientistsand half-baked
Islam Meets the Cold War . 8t
-a -
-
rrlIlg
.,.'5r surreptitiously or openly advocate the gradual annihilation of reli-
:- :mof gion," and who argue that religion is "a mass of superstitions, dog-
: a .1tl IO - mas, and supernatural doctrines which tend to belittle the power of
: : :- . :l V of reason." Secularists, not communists, are the greatest danger to the
stability of Pakistan and, by implication, the broader Middle East:
., .-.-\1us-
,. : Lrlti- Communist atheism [Siddiqi said] has a power of inspiratron
which pure rationalism does not have. It is a faith as well as a sci-
ence,a social gospelas well as a metaphysicalsystem.It is the only
real substitute for religious faith which the champions of science
and technology are seekingto undermine in Pakistan.
It is the socio-economicsignificanceof Islam that makes it a
standing barrier against Communism. The Muslim masses are
attached to the Islamic idea, just becauseit offers them the prom-
ise of social and economic equality and freedom of expression.
If any attempt is made to deny the socio-economiccontent of
Islamic teachings, Communism is sure to rush into the vacuum
that would be created. For, as I have pointed out, Communism
offers both the emotional satisfaction of religious faith and the
promise of social and economic security.. . . In the Islamic world,
the choice is not between Communism and seculardemocracy,but
between Communism and liberal Islam. . . . The greatest danger
to the stability of Pakistan comes neither from reactionary theolo-
gians nor from the Communists who can offer nothing better to a
Muslim, but from those who without any knowledge of the deeper
aspectsof Islam . . . are trying to create a spiritual vacuum in our
life that would safely let in Communism.3T
: . a ,:.\ \\'aS
.World
-::uddin Kenneth Cragg, The Muslim editor, had a similar message.
::. -\ for- Cragg's paper, "The Intellectual Impact of Communism upon Contem-
againstMoscow as an "overstatement."
"There was a view that lslam and communism were simply anti- i'il
which I servedand making the point that the quicker you get rid of "t'I
Islam, the more quickly you are going to develop,becauseIslam was ,':"
11
seenby them as a barrier to economicdevelopment."
John C. Campbell, for decadesthe Council on Foreign Relations'
iiiitl
: slr- the establishment. For Campbell, Islam may or may not have been a bar-
",\lay it rier to economic growth, but it didn'r appear to be a barrier against
i :l \ \ \ -ef t O rh e U S SR :
,pportu-
{cep the The inherently anti-Western bias of political Islam, thought Campbell,
. '.r qeneral ought to preclude any idea of its usefulness in U.S. strategy.3e
- ,. ',r'asthat Despite such warnings, the United States experimented, often
j j , . . ; '.i .7l a w' clumsilS with Islamism in the years berween r945 and 1957.
,- . -. lre mb e r Even as early as r945, when British and American planners began
: , . .tl rri e Si n rhinking about how to build alliances and a sysrem of defense against
, : . f ri d of rhe USSR across its vast southern border, Islam was factored in. The
. .. I . L l tn r'va s British-inspired League of Arab States, for instance, was considered
n-eak because it didn't include Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. So, ir was
:'- R.clations' proposed at one point to convert the Arab League into a League of
-.J rn 1954, Islamic States,to include at least some of the Northern Tier countries.a0
*'*r*41
86 [)nvrr.' s Ger,rr
i:
U8 . Dr,vrr-'s Gaur,
- ii'hether
In SaudiArabia, the Yemen,and the Hadramaut,the primitive
: . rnati ve
and austerecharacterof Islam has indeedproven,practicallyas
: . B ut we
well astheoretically.
a barrierto Communism.ae
Ireland did not put much stock in the theocratic version of Islam,
expressingthe hope that somehow Muslims would be able to blend
Islam with modern political theories.LeadingU.S. strategistsworried
a nd that as Islam modernized,Muslims would abandon their faith for sec-
i :! e n d ularism, and that such a trend would open the doors to the spreadof
,. :-relis Marxist ideasin the Middle East.BayardDodge, the highly influential
L)2 . D l vrt.'s Gal l n
- \Lt-
:he
: t. l . -
: l i rs
-i. . -.1L l -
-tre
ri : [O
.i r il S
.:'.. ir
.' rrh
) t: 1di
'.. il.re
:- ,t lt \'
. > lll,
li
"-
li llll
- . 1-
fltt" --+
4
officers in Egypt came during an erawhen the entire Arab world, from
Morocco to Iraq, was locked in the grip of a political ice age.Morocco,
Algeria, and Tunisia were French colonies;Kuwait,
eatar, Bahrain, the
United Arab Emirares,oman, and yemen were British colonies. Iraq,
Jordan, and saudi Arabia were kingdoms ruled by monarchiesinstalled
by London. And Egypt, under the wobbly King Farouq, was the politi-
cal and economic cenrerof the Arab world. By taking power in Egypt,
Nasserelectrifiedthe political classin the Arab world, inspiring a host of
would-be imitators, liberation-mindedpolitical parties, and army revo-
lutionists.From 1954 onward, through agenrs,political supporr, and
the powerful Voice of the Arabs radio in cairo, and by virrue of his
charismaticappeal,Nasserled the independencemovement in the Arab
Middle East. From '956 to 1958, Lebanon,
Jordan, and Iraq were
rocked by rebellions, Iraq's king fell, and Syria united with Egypt in
Nasser'sunited Arab Republic, a short-lived but exciting experimentin
unifying the Arab world. The Algerian'evolurion drew moral and mate-
rial support from cairo, beforewinning independence in tc)6z,thesame
year that Yemen underwent a Nasser-inspiredrevolt, triggering a proxy
war pitting Saudi Arabia against Egypt. Even as lare as 1969, a year
before Nasser'sdeath, Libya's king was overthrown and Sudan,sright-
wing regimeeliminatedby military leadersloyal to Nasser.
In the Manichea', with-us-or-against-usworld of the cold rwar,
Nasserwas loathed and demonizedby London, \Tashington,and Tel
Aviv. Around the world, from Guatemala to the congo to Indonesia-
and in Iran-the cIA was busy getting rid of leadersnot becausethey
were communists, but becausetheir independentstreak made them
untrustworthy interlocutors in the war between the superpowers.
Nasserwas no exception.
unlike other leadersin Latin America or Africa, however, Nasseq
with his revolutionaryoutlook, threatenedthe very heart of America's
post-\7orld \Var II srrategy: rhe vast oil fields of saudi Arabra. Not
only was Egypt a potential military rival to SaudiArabia, not only did
cairo clash with Riyadh in a shooting war in yemen, not only did
Nasserinspire Arabs in saudi Arabia with republicanideals,but the
Egyptian leader even won over some of saudi Arabia's royal family.
The War against Nas-<erand Mossadegh
{iG!58
98 D rvrr' s Gaur
that Nasser might succeedin unifying Egypt and Saudi Arabia, thus
creatinga major Arab power. One of the ironies of the Arab world is
that Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine,which have historically
been the centersof Arab learning and political movements'have no
oil. On the other hand, except for Iraq and non-Arab lran, the oil
states-Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Qatar-have tiny populations and no intellectual tradition (except
ultra-orthodox Islamic theology),and are ruled by royal kleptocracies
whose legitimacyis nil and whose existencedependson outside mili-
rary protection. Most Arabs are aware that both the monarchies
themselves,and the artificial bordersthat demarcatetheir states'were
designedby imperialistsseekingto build fencesaround oil wells in the
.J r9zos. From a strategicstandpoint, the Arabs would gain much by
marrying the sophisticationand manpower of the urban Arab coun-
tries (including Iraq) with the oil wealth of the desertkingdoms. At
the center of that idea lies Egypt, with its tens of millions of people,
and SaudiArabia, with zoo billion barrelsof oil. Underlying the rhet-
oric of secular pan-Arabism is the reality that uniting Cairo and
Riyadh would create a vastly important new Arab center of gravity
r.vithworldwide infl uence.
So, after its initial flirtation with Nasser,the United States-led by
Secretaryof StateJohn Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA director
-{llen Dulles-lined up with London againstArab nationalism' British
prime minister Anthony Eden,who had beenviolently anti-Nasserall
along, considereda British-sponsoredcoup d'6tat in Cairo as early as
r953. The only political force in Egypt that could mount a challenge
to Nasser-except for the army-was the Muslim Brotherhood,
u'hich had hundredsof thousandsof followers. The Brotherhood also
had the sympathyof someEgyptian officers,including BrigadierGen-
eral Mohammed Naguib, a longtime Muslim Brotherhood fellow
rraveler who was a conservativemember of Nasser'sFree Officers
movement.In t952, after the officers'coup toppled the king, Naguib
u'as named president and prime minister of Egypt' with Nasser as
deputy prime minister.Behind the scenes,Nasserwas the real power.
"William Lakeland, the [U.S.] embassy'spolitical officer, realized
almost immediately that Naguib was only Nasser'sfront man," wrote
:jnF+
roo . D r , v I t . 's Gamn
Miles Copeland. "'While the Egyptian public and the outside world
were cheeringNaguib, the embassy,through Lakeland, had begun to
deal with Nasser as the one who really made the decisions."l0But
Naguib, though lesspowerful than Nasser,had close ties to Hassan
Ismail al-Hudaybi, the man who had succeededHassan al-Banna as
the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultimately, a power struggle
between Nasser and Naguib would develop, and Naguib-with
British support-would reachout to the Brotherhood as his chief ally.
Nasser'sown early relationshrpwith the Muslim Brotherhoodwas
tricky and nuanced.rl On taking power in t952, the Free Officers
were very careful not to alienatethe Muslim Brothers.Severalmem-
bers of the officers' movement were members, and most of them,
including Nasser,had extensivecontacts with the organizatron going
back to the r94os. At the start the military junta faceda diversecoali-
'Wafd
tion of opponents,including the and the left, the monarchists,
the fascistYoung Egypt party, and the Muslim Brotherhood.Nasser,
who personally oversaw the military's delicaterelationshipwith the
Brotherhood, decided at first to co-opt and neutralize the group
rather than confront it. When the new Egyptian regimebannedpoliti-
cal partiesin t953, it exemptedthe Brotherhood.
There was, however, little chance that Nasser and the Muslim
Brotherhood would ever seeeye to eye. The Brotherhood wanted an
Islamic societS Nasser a secularone. Perhapseven more important,
Nasser wanted reforms, including land reform and educational
changes,that the Muslim Brotherhood bitterly opposed.In conversa-
tions with U.S. ambassadorJeffersonCaffery-the sameCaffery who
recommendedthat the Brothers' Said Ramadan visit Princeton and
'White
the House in r953-Hudaybi, the Brotherhood's chieftain,
said that he "would be glad to seeseveralof the [FreeOfficers] 'elimi-
nated."'12At around the sametime, a senior British diplomat, Trefor
Evans,the "oriental counselor" at the British embassyin Cairo, held
at least one meeting with Hassan Ismail al-Hudaybi, the supreme
guide of the Muslim Brotherhood-a meetinglater cited as treasonby
Nasser when he cracked down on the organization. Both British and
American officials maintained an ongoing relationship with the
group.
'War ror
The asainst Nasser and Mossadesh '
liwffi
ffi
D rv rl ' s Gens Tra \\,;' .:-
m -d
,,ii=ri*,&i*ffiryre
r o4 D svrr' s Gaur
Br it r : h i'. :
'
llfr tll! ! ll:
t r\ ' : t t : l i , r-.
TsE CIA eND KrroMElNt's GoDFAIHL.u r "' --
' . , , ()l : ! l \ \ l , -: I - l
It is one of the ironiesin regardto both NasseranclMossrrdegh that , , '''.1, ,". .:' --
- :
tary stro'gnrar who took control of lrirn in the early r9zos, admired
I(crnill Ataturk, rhe scculirrTurkish rcpublican leader,and wanted to
declarelrar ir repr-rblic j|,
rn rhe Turkish model.But the mullahs,includ-
itg Kirshirni,fearedthat a secularrepublicwould fatally undermine
their p'wer, irrd sr they clemandeda m.narchy. princess Ashraf i$
Pahlavi,the shah'stwir sisteqwrote in her memoirsabout the clergy's 1l
reslstlu'lccto republicanism:"My father favoreda republic like that of
Turkey,trnd hc pr.posed this idea to the leadingshiite mullahs. Bur ar
a meetirl; in the holy city of Qom, the clergy-staunch supportersof
the feudal system,the monarchy, and all tradition representingthe
statusquo-told my father they would opposeany plan for a repub-
lic."28 Not ready to challengethe powerful religious establishment,
Reza abandrned rhe idea of a repr-rblicand proclaimed himself king.
The young l(ilshani was one of the kingmakers.
over the next twenty years,Kashani would have two enemies:the
The tilar against Nasser and Mossddegh
: ,!-
"Prospects
a. - well awareof Kashani'spowcr.In rr rcport in october l9-tz,
for SurvivalOf M0ssrldeqRegitnein Iran," thc CIA notccl:
^. , r n l i C
rcturncdto p()werin Julv r9,52tl'rerclravebeen
SirrccMossrtclecl
::' .a o U f -
c ()l ttl l l u ()g src p ()rtso f ;rl ots t< l tl verthrrl w hi rl l . K l rshl rnitrnd artny
-1n ter- < l ffi c e rsrrc fre c l u e n tl vmenti oneclrrs l crl ders.... A c< l rl testi rl the
-:: right strccts bctwcen the forces sr-rpportingMossadecl rrnd K:rshani
r' '
rv o ttl .ll ' .rch i ttc ' r'rttttltl t ' strttcti vc'
. - , ...;l -
ies. "In fact, his niece married a [CIA] case officer." But soon the
The War against Nasserand Mossadesh rr5
'.
Er.enas Americansbeganro side with the British, who despisedMossadegh.
.-:.-:.0\'e ft- "We had an obligation to our old ally, the British, and oil was an
::. rze his issue." According to'Waller, one of the main props holding up
.: .t r95z Mossadegh were the mullahs and the bazaar. ,,The bazaar and the
--., ]',- t ino mullahs were very, very close. And the mullahs had control of the
-.:
- i)l l -]Inu-
people,especiallythe lower classes,"he says.a0
of all of the religious leaders,the most important was Kashani,
,-.r half a sayss7aller,who as the cIA srarionchief, developeda warm relation-
.,: J other ship with the fiery ayatollah during the sevenyears that he was sta-
.,.::."Reli- tioned in Iran. "I did a porrrair of Mullah Kashani,in pastels,"waller
:: funda- recalls,with a smile. "or, I should sar Ayatollah Kashani.He sat for
:: .." The me for a bit, and I finished it from photographs." waller insiststhat
,:r. lnclud- Kashani never becamea full-fledgedclA "agent"-*you don't make
:..rt.tined an ayatollah your agent," he says-but adds that the United states
-: :.lLr.The and the Br:itishhad severalimportant agentsin the anti-Mossadegh
\i.raclegh coalition, "some of whom were extremelyadroit at handling both the
:-. rcPort- bazaarand the mullahs." And 'Wallersavs:
: : ii\So f at
\fith Kashanion board, the CIA and MI6 for-rndit easierto stage
streetriots ancl dernonstrari()ns
egainstMossadeghand againstthe
communists.Kashani'spower among the massesof Teheran'sslums
and in the nosclucswas ccx'rsidcrable
. The military collp that oustcd
Mossadcghwas coupled with clemonstrations financedby the CIA,
usingthe crowds loyal to Kashaniand organizedby the clergyar-rdhy
gangsof thugs ir-rthe pay of nrobstcrs.Waller rcturned to \iTashingtor-r
and in thc field the lcg-
to overscethc cor-rpd'€'tatfrorr-rhcaclclLlarters,
ertdaryKcrrnit Roosevcltr:rn the opcrationon the grouncl.Two lrirn-
ian brothers, the "Boscocs," under (llA control, and thrcc otl'rer
Iraniirn brotlrers,the Rashiclians,under MI6 corrtrol, joined with
Shaaban.faafari,l farnous lranirrn athlete ancl pcrfornrer,to work
with Kashaniin assemblingthc rnobs."Orre of our irlielltswrrsa man
called'the BrainlcssOnc,"'recirlls \flaller."Hc was a sportshcro, it
juggler-getting hirn to work with us wrrslike gettingBabelLuth.He
could gct a r-nobtogethcrfast.We paid for those."
"Through the Rashidians,"wrr)te[)orril, thc C]lAand M16 "cstab-
lishedcontirctwith conservrrtivc
clcricssuch as AyirtollahsB<lrujerdi
and Behbchani,who feirrcd that Mossaclccl's'leftist aclvanccswere
endangeringnationill sccurity;' rrrrd dissidcnt rnr.rllahsfrom the
National Front, Kashaniand Makki, who clrinrcd that the ministrics
were full of 'Kremlin-controlledirthcists."'alRecallsWaller,"At thc
time Islar"nhildn't raiscdits hcrrdin an orgl.rrrized
way. BLltcornmunisnr
and lslam havenevcrbeencornpatible."al
An important part of thc ClAs worl< in lrilr.rin the early r95os
involved efforts to rnobilizeIraniirn rcligiorrssentinlentagainstthe
USSR.It cameduring a time when thc United Stirteswas experlment-
ing with Islarnistanti-communistfervor in Egypt,Pakistan,and else-
where. In lran, much of the (lIAs focus was directed against the
communist Tudeh Party, although the Tudeh was never really a serr-
ous threat.Mossadeghwas no communist,having come to power rn
part with U.S.support.But once he was placedon Washington'sene-
mies list, the CIA went all-out to discredithim by portrayinghim as
communist-controlled,especiallyin propagandaaimed at the mul-
lahs. The propaganda effort was coordinated by two CIA officers
whom we shall meet later.Donald Wilber and Richard Cottam.
The -V/aragainst Nasser and Mossadegh . r r7
,:j -ri l t st t he
Ir:rniansinto believingthat a vicfory for Moss:rdcc1would be a vic-
-. ...ir rr seri- tory for the Tr"rdeh,
the SovietUnion, and irreligi<ln."a5
: ir()werin
' - *iL )l l 'S e l'. | e- After thc restoration of the shah, efforts were madc to put the
i. :: rq hi m a s Is l a mi s t g e n i e b a c k i n the bottl e. B ut the force of pol i ti cal Isl am,
, , . : f he mu l - re p re s s e di n Ira n s i n c e the r92os, had now revi ved, thanks i n part to
,. l \ officers th e a s s i s ta n c eo f th e C IA and MI6. It w oul d not be so easy to qui et i t
:: . 1 lll . down again, and in a very literal sensethc forces that toppled the shah
l )pvrr-'s (i A Ml r
he wasradicallyopposecl to secularisr.r.r,
believecl in the
adirrnantly
ruleof tlteshdrid,irnclhadactivisttenclencies.
He hadabsorbed, in
other wclrds,someof the ideasof the Fediriyan perhapsin the
courseof conversations with NavvabSafaviwl.ro,accordingto the
latter'swidow, wasa frequentvisitorto Khomeini'shclme.as
.--_. rLl) t
ot a ,ornt strategy with Great Britain
called "omega.,, Eisenhower
, : Cr N
- t -,
insistedrhat "our efforts should be toward
separati; the saudi Ara_
bians from the Egyptians."sThe president
and the Dulres brothers
:- ' -t a t t of
were even more encouragedwhen King
Saud requestedan Islamic
: :: . : : t he Iegal ruling from the wahhabi clergy
. -. i forbidding Musrims from
_ i u Jll
acceptingaid from the Sovietbloc.
-- - \r r| lp f
An effort to cobble togetheran ,,lslam
-. - -' n h r - strategy,,emergedearly in
1'257."Following the saud-Eisenhower
- . : : OWn
summit, the administration
continuedto cultivate Islam as a bulwark
- -.. . : n l
againstcommunism,and as
in part of this policy it sought opportunities
ro overcomethe social frag_
: , :,treful mentation that afflicted the Middle Easr,"
wrote citino, who con_
ducted a study of u.s.-saudi rerarionsduring
the Eisenh.weryears.
- i:lam "In Iare January,the Nati.nal Security
- - _l'rf
cor-rncirstaff estabrished a
tOc
working crmmittee on Isramicorganizations
that compireda list .f
: . : - W aS
Middle Easrernand North African s.cial,
curtural, and religi.us
;:-lr U.S. groups' such as sufi brotherh.ods, which
the United states lnforma_
: - e -o s,5
tron Agencycould target with propagancla.,,e
' - ' q g l e st
The cIAs chiefspeciarist on Isramat the time was none .ther
.: , i s d is- than
l)onald Wilbea the operativewho had hetped
organizethe r953 coup
l -:JSU re, d'etat in Iran. "xTilber knew a lot about
Islam," saysJohn $'ailer, a
:, >. W i t h retired cIA official who oversaw the coup
from crA headquarrcrs.r0
:'' l : 2 nd But in his memoirs, Aduentures in the
Midcile tasl, Wilber rafher
,::r\. All modestlydescribeshis work on lslam at
the time:
:urld a
-:..ro the one subject'n which I was c.ntinualry
actlvewas Isramand the
Muslimsof the MiddreEast.F.r lackof anyone
betterquarified, I
:Ja J a nd becamethe Agency'sspecialist on Islam.In the spring'of t957|
.e !
l, r LJ-
was the CIA memberof an inter_agency working group on lslanr,
:.-ttured, and thenthe co-authorof thegroup study.
rn the fielcrilnd at heacl-
quarrersI reviewedfilesand alsoc.llected
' ,:.Ilever publication, inf,rr_
mationon trips,and I authoredseveralstudies:..lslam ",.,d
i: s ay - in Iran,,,
"Islamin pakistan,"..Islamin Afghanistan,,,
:n t )U gh lerc.l.More exhaus_
tive than any publishedmaterial,thesewere
r3r c on-
to serveasguiderines
for workingwith Muslimgroups.ll
f'r,tt"the
\.rthan Wilber also included in his surveysresearch
into the extent to which
r'ls part the Central Asian Muslim population inside
the Soviet Union could
t2-a. . D tvtr-'s (i ,tl ,ttt
: i' r 'C al c d
:o help
'. .lgainst
D r . v r t , 's Ciavr
Initially Sirr"rdi
Arabia suppliedthc Muslim Brotherhoodwith money
only.Aftcr r 9.y4,howevcr,the c()Llntryitselfbecamea chief baseof its
oprerations.When Nassercrackeddown on the Muslim Brothcrhood
in Flgypt,Sar-rdi
Arabia provided :rn important refuge for the organtza-
tion, and mirny of its mernbersflockcclto the dcsertkingdom. This
rnigrationoccurrcdjust as the Unitcd Starcswes giving up on Nasser
anclturning to Saudi Arabia. The Brotherssettledin Jeddah,wherc
tl-reywent into business,and in Riyaclh,Mecczr,and Medina, where
they rirdicalizcdthc Wahhabi movcnlcnt.For thc next half century,
SaLrdiArabia would be thc llrothers'ultimirteredoubt,providingsuc-
cor and support,along with virtually nnlirliteclfinar-rcing.
"Onc of the slupiclcstthings l-'aisirlevcr did was to invite the
Ikhwrrr-ris
into SaLrdiArabia," saysDavid [-or-rg, who'd servedin the
Statel)cpirrtrnent'sIlurear.r "But it seemed
of Intelligenceand ll.esearch.
innocuousat the tin-rc.At the timc, cverybodywas fightir-rgCommu-
nism,and so wcrc we. And so wrrsF:risal."l7Faisal,the crown princc,
woulc'ln'tbecomcking of SaudiArabia until the r 96os,when he ousted
Sirudin a palacecoup, but hc was widely seenas morc sophisticated,
rnoreenlightened,
ilnclfar shrewderthan the dissoluteSaud.
The Muslim Brotherhood,a highly political organizationdedi-
cateclto creatinga worldwide caliphate-basecl
Islan-ricstate,was both
an ally and a threat to Saudi Arabia. "The SaLrdisweren't terribh
hrppy with the Muslim lJrothcrhooc'I, but if you-and the Saudis
were-scared to death of Nasser,the Mr-rslimBrotherhood was still
the only game in t{)wn," says Jol-rnVoll, a Georgetown Universin
professor.rsIn its foreign policy, Saudi Arabia r-rtilizedthe Brother-
hood againstL,gypt,Syria, and Iraq, built its power in Sudan,encour-
agcd it in Afghanistanand Pakistan-where it allied with Abul-Ala
Mawdudi's lslamic Group-and even toyed with supporting it in
SovietCentral Asia. But internally,the royal family did not tolerate
Muslim Brotherhood action. "The Saudiswere very tolerant of the
Muslim Brotherhood, and they encouragedit in Egypt, Sudan, and
elsewhere,but they were adamantly opposedto fBrotherhood] actir'-
TheKing of All Islam Lz7
irv inside Saudi Arabia," says Ray close, who served as the clA's
chiefof stationin SaudiAr:abiafrom r 97o to 1977.le
"The Saudis,as you know, oppose all political parties," says
' .j
Hermann Eilts, one of America's most experiencedArabists, who
servedas ambassadorto saudi Arabia. "And the Saudiregimehad the
-l
erperiencein the late rgzos with the Ikhwan, not exactlythe Muslirn
r: -- -1- Brotherhoodbut the tribesmenwho wcre becomrngrather fanatical.
Now what Hassanal-Bannaand thc Muslim Brotherhoodwerc doing
, - t- . . : f
in Egypt,and in Syria,was somerhingthat was generallyin line with
Saudithinking on the irnportanceof Islam, as opposedto national-
., : lU
ism, as a uniting factor. Nevertheless,thcy were not eagcrto have thc
-. :,::\'. Muslim Brotherhood,or any other political force, organizethem-
selvesin saudi Arabia.Thcy were unwillingto allow any politicalpar-
ties, including Muslim political parrics."2l)In facr, in r946, whe'
::h C Hassan al-Banna tried to opcr 11Muslim Br.therh'.d branch in
- :ne l
:frIEb*+-rc
r28 . D r v r l 's (lavr,
" A bul -A l a Maw dudi , the founder of P aki stan' sradi cal -ri ght
Islanric Socicty (.lamaat-eIslami), who is the single most impor-
ta n t rtrchi rcct of the noti on of an Isl arni c R epuhl i c, and w ho
p l a y e d a cruci al rol e i n batteri ngP aki stan' sl eft-secul aropposi ti on
l n o v e ntent and i n pushi ng P aki stan i r-rtothe hard-ri ght Isl anr ic
c :rn rpunder Zi a ul -FIaq,the di ctator w ho sei zedpow er i n t977 .
The struggle between Nasser and Faisal erupted into open warfare
from t96z to r97o, when Egypt and SaudiArabia fought a bitter and
bloody proxy war in Yemen.The two protagonistswere at the height
of their powers in the r96os. Nasserwas an Arab icon with followers
in every Arab country, and Faisal-who edgedour King Saud in the
early r96os-was using Saudi money,the Muslim \X/orldLeague,and
the \Tahhabi movement to bolster the conservativecoalition. The
Egyptian leader,wielding his typically colorful rheroric, blasted the
desertkingdom for acting on behalf of U.s. imperialism,while Faisal
equatedNasser'sArab socialismwith "atheisticcommunism.,,
Although the war was by and large invisibleto the American pub-
lic, it had a very significantimpact on u.S. policy in the Middle East,
strengtheningAmerican ties to the conservativeArab statesand above
all to SaudiArabia and its Islamic bloc. The story of rhe yemen war's
The King of All Islam t39
Doc- impact on U.S. Middle East policy is told in some detail in \Tarren
-...^^
-_-l f J Bass'sSwpport Any Friend, an account of the Kennedy administra-
'Vfith
i ro- tion's flirtation with Nasser. the departure of Eisenhowerand
: '. , , ' LSS his uncompromising attitude toward nonalignment, rhe Kennedy
-1 J.t 1. l- t administration offered an olive branch to Egypt. Under Kennedy',
lro- someU.S.officialsacceptedthat Nasserwas independent,not a Soviet
- 1. pawn, and that lfashington would have to reach an accommodation
i: rs, with him. Optimists believedthat Nasser,who was no communist-in
fact, he ruthlessly locked up members of the Egyptian Communist
>,(i ll Party and other leftists-might be convinced to abandon his ties to
the USSR. More realistic analystsfelt that Nasser could at least be
: lhe persuadedto reach a modus vivendi with the United States.And, of
.,r,-C
fe course,still others,especiallypartisansof Israel,saw Nassermuch as
SaudiArabia did, as the devil incarnate.
l rln
"Our relations with Nasserwere difficult," recallsTalcott Seelye,
1i t o who headedthe StateDepartment'sArabian Peninsuladeskduring the
: ( )I l Kennedyyears." We saw that his movementconstituteda threat to the
Saudi regime,and there was a reactionin Saudi Arabia, too. Prince
Talal Ione of the so-calledSaudi 'Free Princes']defected[to Irgyptl,
and two Saudipilots did, too. So we were very worricd about the sur-
vival of the Saudiregime."aaThe CIA prepareda National Intelligence
::. 1r e Estimate(NIE) called"Nasserand the Futureof Arab Nationalism,"
' .l nd which told the White House:"Militant nationalismwillcontinueto bc
.: gh t the most dynamic force in Arab political affairs, and Nasser is very
'.i,crs likely to remain its foremost leader and symbol for thc foreseeable
l ihe futurc." It went on to warn the young presidentthat "the long-term
, :nd outlook for the conservativeand Western-alignedregimesis bleak,"
The and that the Saudiregimewas likely to be swept away.45
I rhe Kennedy thought it worthwhile to explore an opening to Nasser,
: l: . ll to the chagrin of both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and he begana series
of exchangeswith the Egyptian leader,through diplomatic contacts,
:ub- letters,and personalmeetings.To Kennedy,Nasserwrote: "Why does
E.tsr, the United States,a country establishedon foundations of freedom
and by meansof a revolution, opposethe call of freedom and revolu-
1 -tr's tionary movements,and line up with reactionaryforces and enemies
r4o . Dlvrr.'s (,aul
. -t
\ ()l
I w rrsrrtIN R i n 1 9 7 o ,rtn c lI tri ed to r,vri tcabout Isl am.B ut therew as
no lnarket for it. I felt that there was still a boclv of clisenchirnted,
. in p c o p l ew h o w c rc sti l l focusedon anti -c< l l oni al i sm,
c l i s a ffc c tc d even
-L .i \- tlr<rrrghthe t.)67 rvar had shattered the myrl.r of Nasser.I silw
i n c rc a s i n gc l i s i l l trs i < l n rn cwnti tl ' r A rab nati orral i snr,
but rn()stpeop[e
.: JS
clicin'tseeit. Sooner()r lrlter,I felt that thcsc gr-rvs woulcl latcl.ron t<l
s o l re th i n g ,a rrc th l a t th a t s o r retl .ri ne rni ght be Isl arr,si ncethey w cre
: , )lt
s trl l c l i s a ffe c te dIj. u s t fe l t that Isl arrrw or-rl dbe the new paradrgrn,
: i)f
b u r d re h i g h c r-u p sw c rrcs ti l l fol l ol vi ng the ol cl scri pt. I w as scl rsi rrg
: , l ic
th a t c l i s i l l u s i o n n rc nltv i th Arab rrati onal i snrand N asseri srr w as
'.1
s e tti n gi n . I b e c rrrn e
p r< l fo u ncl l vsuspi ci ousthat fhere w or-rl cl
not bc
T-.
r,, rLl a f<lllorv-<lrr to Nasser,t() crerltethe transnational nr<lvementthat
' .:: l i t w o u l d a p p c a l to th e n ra l c orrtents.I cl i cl n' t sce anyri rrecol l nnl l
. .1ll along, except Islar.r'r.t"'
^. . l-
: :he 6
r , ;ln
'-' t l 0
^rrto
T H E S OR C ERER' S APPRENTICE
:..tni
:c 5 -
:he
'r )ll.
i : t11.
with Adham, the clA, and Henry Kissinger, the U.S.narirnal securiry
adviser.ln tc)7r, within a year rf assumingcontrol, Sadat.ustedthe
Egyptianleft fr.m the grvernrnent,:rnd in r97z he stunnedMoscrw
by expellingthe Sovietforces.Afrer the r973 RarnadanWar-waged
in conccrt with Saudi Ar:rbia a'd ar.und Islamicthcmes
'rsanized
rather than Arirb nationalism-ligypt and thc Unitcd Sraresreesrab-
lishedties.In r 977, Sadatflew tr Jerusalern, splittingthe Arab w.rld
and opening with lsracl that lcd to the camp David
'eg'tiatio'rs
Egypt-Israelagreenrenr. By r 9flo, Ilgypt was Anrerica'sleaclingAral-r
ally, engagedin supportrngthc U.S.iihacli' Afghanisrarirnd provid-
ing a basefor U.S.influcncein thc oil-rich l)crsianclulf. l-or cven thc
most cynical U.S. N,licldlcL,astspccialisrs,tl-rcchirngcin l]gypt, frorn
foe to ally.wes drzzyirrg.
At thc beginning,few expectcdverv r"nuchfrom Sirdat.For thirty
years'he haclopcrirteclin Nasser'sshadow.He'cl becn a memberof
the Muslim lJrothcrhoodancl playcd thc role of intermccliaryin the
intrigue between thc pi:rlircc,the l]rothcrhoocl,ancl thc Free officers
movenent.After Nasscr'scor-rp, Sirdrrtservedas the Egyptianleader's
liaison t' the llrotherh.'d, then functi.ncd as L,gypt'sunofficial
ambassadorto Islirrnists
worldwide.Br-rtto L,gyptians
trndro U.S.offi-
cials, sadat ncver scemeclt. bc r'.re than a scc,nd b;lnana.After
Nasser'sde:rth,in October r 97o, Sadatwas widely sce' as a placc-
holder who would be ,usted afrer a hchinc'l-thc-scencs struggle for
power in cairo. "ln the UnitcciStates,cxpect:rtionsof Sirdatwere
zip," saysDavid [..ng, a f.rmer U.S.f,reign service'fficcr...He was
the bumblingvice president."l
In his autobiography,In Searchof ldentity, Sadatwrore that when
American envoy Elliott Richardson returned home t' rx/ashington
after visiting cairo to offer condrlenccs rn Nasser'sdeath, he pre-
dicted that sadat "wouldn't survivein power for mrre than four or
six weeks."zInsideEgypt,Sadatfacedformidableopponents,includ-
ing Nasser-stylenationalists,who were deeply suspiciousof Sadat,
and communist-leaning or pro-Sovietofficials.sadat himselfhad no
real political baseor constiruenc.v.
Yet not only did Sadatsurvive,he
succeeded in engineeringa completeabout-facein Egypt'sforeign and
domestic policies. Where Nasser had forged ties to Syria, Iraq, and
Tbe Sorcerer'sApprentice . r49
' i . : 1.1 Il n g
using Islam to consolidatehis power. "To escapeliving in Nasser's
shadow, Sadat shifted gears and made strong appeals to Islam,"
i.)ut of accordingto John Esposito.He added:
. '. rvith
.,,. But Sadatassumed the title of rheBeliever-President,
an allusionto the
Islamiccaliph'stitled Commanderof the Faithful.He beganand
endedhis speeches with versesfrom the Quran.TV broadcasts fre-
: Feisal's
l, . r'rh i n
quently featuredhim in a mosque,cameraszeroing in on his
'
prominentprayermark, a calluscausedby touchingthe forehead
:;i lrrrge
to the groundin prayer.l5
i:\' and
"
:qt nlz - Islamic Community studentgangsreceivedbehind-the-scerles sup-
\ ) t hers, port from sadat'ssecretpolice. "After December 1972 the fortunesof
.. r thc m- the Islamist studentstook a turn for the better," wrote Kepel. ..They
'. '.:
- 1 \ \.tlt l,
finally found the key to success:discreet,tactical collaboration with
\ l L r slim the regime to break the left's domination of the campuses.,'16 Like
: j. l l r i zll- Islamistgroups everywhere,they usedheavy-handedtactics,violence.
>.rclat's trnd intimidation againsttheir opponents,and they often had signifi-
: other cant financial backing from Saudi Arabia and from right-wing Egyp-
tian businessmen."The'jama'at islamiyya [Islamic Communityl were
Islamist student associationsthat becamethe dominant f,rce on
Egyptian university campuses during Sadat's presidency," wrote
Kepel."They constitutedthe Islamistmovement'sonly genuinemass
-..i'tl rrncl organizaticrns."
Soon chantsof "Democracy!" clashcdwjth "Allahu
-. urfacc Akbar!" in student demonstrations.A few years later, the Islamic
l:-l- . l t l O i l . community groups had virtually seizedcontrol of universiriesi'
: , 5 lt ud i Egypt and forced the left-wing groups into hiding.l7
t -. . ilt es s- One of Sadat'saides played a critical role in gerting the lslamic
:l ci l nl- Community up and running. Mohammed Uthman Ismail, a former
: ;a. t t l ()n s . lawyer,had in r97r worked closelywith the Egyptianpresidentas he
.- - ! ...
u l rty+. ,
-l
outmaneuveredand then locked up his opponentson the left. Ismail is
f icl't ITle "consideredto have acted as the godfather of the jama'at islamryyd,
: )rntally in Cairo from late r97r and throughout Middle Egypt beginning in
.: rpread r973."t8 ln t973,Ismail was appointedgovernor of Asyut, long a
stronghold of the Islamists,from which post he continued ro ur€ie
p roto- the lslamic Community groups to "fight against the communists.,'
u 'av o f Reminiscentof the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood, when the
154 D rvrl ' s Gaue
rl ' .
with lslamic pcp talks about liberatingthe Al Aqsa Mosque in .feru- .:.
. r ::t rst lTlove- "None of theseideas were very inspired in the first place, and more
- J i, a1. , l^ -
. \ - l lI l.lUA llt " important, weren't working. So the idea to base that war on Islam
- - rhe battle \\:ASvery intentional:units were renamed,call signalschanged,and so
.-- r; in Ieru- on, all to reflectIslamic themes.I mark the rise of political Islam, at
... Hermann Ieastf<rrthis cycle,with the wal"24
' r r')l
But the return of political Islam to Egypt proved double-edged.
' : .'. he r9 6 7 LJnderneaththe piety, conservativedress, and sharia-stylejuridical
:: . f lil u rc o f unbeknownsteither to Sadator to the CIA, dangerousnew
rr.rlings,
: .. : t he r 9 6 7 forceswere gatheringmomentum.
- . .lr sp i rra g c-
: : rc Isl i l mi c
Thc Qutb Factor
, ,., r : . r s a si g n
" .'. Toward the end of the rc)7os,and especiallyafter Sardat rnadehis trip
: : ' hl tcl n o t
' -: - : ! l th c crl t- to .ferusalemancl began talking to lsrael, the Islarlic right became
. : t hc Su cz incrcasinglyradicalizcdand many of them movedinto outright oppo-
. c olt - sitionto Sadirt-or plotteclsecretly.
Vhile backingthe Islamistsmight
-I()fv r
-'i\.rr to the havcsccmedlikc a cleverideato Sadatat thc time, it was too cleverby
\1 rslinr rulc hrrlf. Evcn as thc rnilitantsof H,gypt'sIslamic C)ommurritybattered
-,.:-'rnrcrecl
at \rrclat'spolitrcalrivalson thc left, they fell increasingly
underthe spell
of raclical,irrdependent new inramswho preachednot only art anti-
-.-,.1.rtclicln't
- - : : \ \\' llf W aS
corrrnunistmcssrlge) rn onc.
but an anti-Weste
:: : r\ . T<l th i s The first inkling that sonrethingmight bc wrong came as early as
:: : '. rt e l vp l o t- r974, whcn a gan!lof lslarnists,mostly lrgyptiansbut leclby a Pales-
-.lcr to colT)- rinian, sparkcdir bloody uprisingat thc military'sTechr-rical
College,
' : :r .c . Wh a t i s itn cventthat was supposedto have led to the assassination
of Sadat.
:: . \ \ ilf p l a n s, \lany werc killccl,and more arrcstecl, irnd Sadatofficiallyblamedthe
.: : r ' . i. l-tt<l n ths revolt on l.ibya. Its leader,Salih SirriyA,was from a small town near
. -: ll cC S erViCe Haifa, Isracl,which was the birthplaccof the founder of the Islamic
, .:JrngSaudi I-ibcrationParty,a far-rightgroup dcdicatedto restoringthe lslamic
: t I.\ station and which had closetiesto Said Itamaclananclthe Muslim
crrliphrrte,
Brotherhood.Sirriyawas, most likely,an adherentof the Liberation
' .:. ol politi- Accorclingto GillesKepcl,
I'rrrty.25
: r 9-.1Arab-
- -1 .
't 'l'\. ^ r i', 'rl,u
,1 Si rri y a l i v e d i n J o rdan unti l T9Zo. H e then spenta yei rri n l raq, br" rt
: r r L. rl ro p e a n linally had to flee Baghdad, where he was sentencedin :rbsentiain
:-. " s h c sa ys. r 97 z f ctrnrembershil-r in the party. He then moved to Cairo. \Vhen
r5ll . Drvrr.'s (l,l,r,rr-.
I --.1..o.
follow the ultra-orthodox views he espousedto the barbariannomads
,-. 1 , l . t h e
of Arabia who existedin a state of "ignorance" before the arrival of
i: r' g u l a r
the prophet. Qutb and his followers used this theory as a justifica-
tion for assassinationof Arab leaderswho were lessthan devout.
Aithough Qutb's theorieswere confusedand inconsistent,some\West-
;: :ire events hailedhim as a thoughtfulcritic of secularismin the
ern C)rientalists
.. .:nderlying Middle East.It was Qutb, and his book, Signposts,that inspiredthe
: .,tvs, "they most radical(and the most violent)EgyptianIslamists,mosrlyoutside
: ':uch more the purview of both Egyptianintelligenceand the CIA.
. ] l t t e nt was
Accordingto F.ilts,Sadatfailed to seeany dangerin encouraging
,:rtclligence radical-rightIslamicgroups,but someothersin his imrnediatecircle
' : the Mus-
did, includinghis wifc,.fihan. "Sadat,who haclbeen,aftcr all, ir Mus-
:: :. ri'ho had lim Brother earlier,tclok the view that the growirrginflucnceof Islam
:i rstanding and thc Muslim Brotherhood,cspeciallyin thc universities,wASno
. i-.rlts.
"And
more than young people erprcssingtheir views," says F-ilts.BLrthe
: ::-,r-\{uslim adds:"I rcmcmbcrmany people,includinghis wifc, sirying,'Ytruhave
. : l- L'l l [t ilnd it
to watch thesepeople,'and sayingthat they are clangcrolls,and hc
. : t , )n o f co n -
would just wave his hanc'land say,'Oh, they arc just young pcoplc.'
: : . 1lt iz a ti o n He simply did r-rotbclievethat their intcrestin religionand the Mus-
lim Brotherhoodrepresentecl a threat,and l-rccould not hc persuaded
' : :: r . ibl y d o c- by someof his rlinisfersthat they werc."r0
-. :r()Llp sa n d
So, too, few U.S. diplomatsor CllA officerstruly understoodthc
:> r nrili ta n ts ..1epth
of thc Mrrslim Brotherh,,otl'spcnctrilti()n.,f l-gyptiensocietyirr
: : rq. lg i n g i n the late r97os, nor dicl thcy grasp the fuz'zyrelationshipanrongthc
:: j .lI l to l i ve officialMuslim Brotherhood,thc lslamicOomrnunity,:rnclthe undcr-
. .. r vs Sa i d .
ground groups and followersof Qutb. Irilts,along with Li.S.intelli-
:: . t \ ils sttssi - gence officers in Egypt, observedthe Islamicizationof Egypt, hut
: .1 bcgan to found it hard to read. After all, Sadat wirs enc()ur.rging
it, irnclthc
:.rre.When Egyptian leaderseemedto bclicvethat it was both useful and Lrlti-
. - r t iea l wi th matelyharmless."There was an awarencssthat somc elenrents of thc
l .lr t mi sts- religiousmovementwcre troublesome,"says tilts. "l took the r.iew
:: -WOU l d that it was somethingthat had to be watchcd carefully." But Flilts
believedthat the Egyptiang()venrrcnt cor"rldcontrol thc phenorne-
,:' r id Qutb, non, and that the more establishcd,
conservative
leadersof the N'Ius-
. Qutb had lim Brotherhood,such as Telmassani,were avcrscto violent tilctlcs
: ) did not and militant actions."Telmassanidenouncedlthe radicalsl,but did
r6o D rvrr-' s Gar,ru
Even after the stunning eventsof the next severalyears-the revolu- led:.,
tion in lran, the seizureof the Grand Mosque in Mecca,sadat'sassas- E^, ^-
sination, Hezbollah'struck bomb in Lebanon that killed zar U.s.
Marines-the Islamic right was still viewed as an ally. above all
dur_ fr e c - :
ing the Afghan 1ihad. , - .- - 1T
t\11,.
::-. : ::
The Brotherhood's Bank
led regimesinto confrontations with the left and with labor unlons.
Egypt was no exception.The IMF's strict demandsfor austerity and
cutbackswere the direct result of vigorous U.S. efforts to encourage
free-enterpriseeconomicsin the Third'STorld and to combat social-
ism. In Egypt, right-wing Islamistsand conservativebusinessowners
quickly found common cause.
The Call, the magazineof the newly liberatedMuslim Brotherhood,
receivedsubstantialfinancial support from wealthy Egyptian rightists.
Businessescapitalizingon Sadat'sinfitah policy provided the bulk of the
magazine'sadvertising."Out of the total of nearly 180 pagesof color
advertisingin al-Datua lThe Calll, 49 were bought by real-estatepro-
moters and entrepreneurs,5z by chemicaland plasticscompanies,zo by
automobileimporters,rz by'Islamic' banksand investmentcompanies'
and 45 by food companies,"accordingto GillesKepel.Forty percentof
the magazine'sads came from iust three companiescontrolled by Mus-
lim Brotherhoodmemberswho'd madefortunesin SaudiArabia'rn
lnterviewed in an Egyptian weekly, the Muslim Brotherhood'sTel-
massaniwas forced to admit that "most of the commanding leversof
the policy of economicopening(infitah)are now in the handsof former
Muslim Brethrenwho were in exile and havenow returnedto Egypt."17
ln t974, the Muslim Brotherhoodformally issueda declaration
commanding its membersto support Sadat'spro-lMF infitah- Suchan
action was true to form for political Islam. Throughout their history,
Islamistshave always been militantly pro-capitalist,opposing class-
struggle politics on principle. Rarely did they rally support for the
poor, the disenfranchised,or the downtrodden. In Egypt, espccially,
the Islamistsdid not make common causewith aggrievedworkers or
farmerswho failed to benefitfrom Sadat'seconomicpoliciesor whose
livelihoods were thrown into turmoil by the infitah; instead, they
engagedin strikebreaking,enthusiasticallyopposingtrade unions and
intellectualsallied to the left.
The rise of so-calledIslamic banks was central to the Islamization
of Egypt's economy. Organized on the questionableprinciple that
ordinary commercial banks do not operateaccordingto Islamic law,
especiallybecausethat law supposedlydoes not allow interest to be
charged on loans, Islamic banks often disparagedtheir non-Islamic
t: 64 D e v t t - 's Galrn
transformaticlns.
so ratherthan beingphasedout, the cooperatioll
with \x/esternbanks-in the form of joint vL'nrurcs,
rlrurigement
agreements' tech'icalcooperation and cclrresp<lndenrbar-rkrrrg-
was steppedup, leadingt. increased converllence ancl f'si''
between cclnventionaland Islamicfinance."2
The idea that the Koran somehow provides guidance that might be
used to outlaw socialism and to insist upon unfettered private enter-
prise is unfounded, since its strictures are far from explicit and cer-
tainly cannot be applied to modern economic systems. Yet that didn't
The Rise of Economic lslam ' r 75
.:: end cer- an Egyptian banker, a Saudi prince, and a cluster of Kuwaiti royals.
hard to
roward the violent lslamic-rightfringe, but in practiceit was
tell thcnraparr.Somelslamicbankingcircleswere run by non-activist '
pious Muslims who simply spiedan opportunity to make somemoney'
tc)
Many more were activists,who saw lslamic banking as a means
their
advance thc cause of militant, political Islam, and who used
either
banks ro supporr the Brotherhoodand its allies.And still others
founded Islamic banks, or utilized existing ()nes,as inn<lcent-looking
fronts for terrorism, arlns trade, and other skullduggery'Unfortu-
was
natelyfor the CIA, and for Citibank, knowing which was which
by
all but impossible-and often, all three worked togethercheek
jowl: the pious,the political,and the perpetrators'
M:rny of the leadinglslamistactivistsof the last four decadeswere
involved with Islamic banking both in theory and practicc' often
underthe wing of PrinceMOhamn]edal-Faisal.Many wereconnected
was
to the Brotherhood.Sayyid Qutb, the extremist from Egypt who
hangcdis 1c166,wroteSocialJusticein Islam, purporting to be a blue-
print for how fundamentalistMuslims ought to look at ecclnomicthe-
ory. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian scholar of lslamic law' who
his reli-
sertledin the vahhabi Gulf sheikhdom()f Qatar, parlayed
gious credentialsintO seatson the board of severalIslamic banks.
Mohammed al-Ghazali,anorherIrgyptianMuslim Brotherhoodleader
who found a haven in the Gulf, wrote tracts on Islamic econtlmics,
including Islam and EconctmicQuesti<tns'
In Egypt, the man who got it all startedwas Ahmed al-Naiiar'a
Mit
German-trainedEgyptian banker who, in t963, created the
the
Ghamr Bank, describedas "the first Islamic bank in tlgypt and
world."23 Mit Ghamr was begun with German banking assistance
the
and, through Najiar's family, with the support of forces within
public
Egyptian intelligenceservice'It was done covertly' Neither the
an
nor the Egyptian governmentwere told that it was intendedto be
lslamic bank.2aAt the time, in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was
Nasser'snemesis,and Najjar took stepsto distancehimself, at least
publicly, from the violent underground movement' But Najiar was
certainlyconnected.The foreword to a book that he wrote describing
his experienceas the pioneerof Islamic banking was written by Jamal
al-Banna,the brother of Hassanal-Banna,the Muslim Brotherhood's
The Riseof Economic Islam . r7q
founder. "The main distinction between Dr. Najjar and fotherl econo-
mists. . . is that he doesnot considerlslamiceconomicsas a scienceor
a study,but as a causefor awakeningthe Muslims, and a method for
their renaissance.Therefore, he considers'Islamic banks' only as a
basefor his mission."25Najjar himselfwrote that the reasonhe started
the first Islamic bank was to "savethe Islamicidentity which was start-
ing to fade away in our society. . . in preparation to shift to Marx-
ism." He bitterly attacked Nasser and bemoaned the fact that
Egyptianswere "ashamedof Islam and proud of socialismor national-
ism." Yet in public, saysNajjar, "I could not declaremy true goals."26
The Muslim Brotherhood was deeply involved in Najjar's work,
l: . \ \ 'ef e and many of its membersinvestedin his early ventures.2T
By t967,it
a . , )f re n was clear that the Muslim Brotherhoodhad essentially
taken over Mit
:. :-.;atcd Ghamr, and the bank was closed. Egypt's experiment with Islamic
: ) \\'as banking in the t96os was "liquidated," says Monzer Kahf, when
: -. i.lr.te- "Islamic revivalistsand former Muslim Brotherhood members infil-
:-: J t he - trated Iit] as clients,depositors,and probably employees."28
At its
' . i. . \\'ho peak,Mit Ghamr had nine branchesand z5o,ooo depositors.Najjar,
::. reli- in his memoirs, blamesNasserfor the undoing of his bank. Unde-
:.1nks. terred, he went to Sudan, where he was welcomed by the Muslim
:. :.tcler Brotherhood there. "The Society [of the Muslim Brothersl in the
:. nrics, Sudan was a harmoniousIslamic and democraticcivilian one," he
wrote, specificallyciting as his interlocutor therc'HassanTurabi, thc
i,,-trq a leaderof the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan,who would riseto power
:.^.: \ lit in the late r97os.zeWhen the Sudanesegovernmentwas overthrown
by Jaafar Numeiri, who pledgedloyalty to Nasser,Najjar fled.
"r.J the
: . . i. 1Il C e Naijar traveled to Germany,Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emi-
: : - : lt the rates, and Malaysia, spreading the gospel of Islamic banking. He
: :ublic would turn up over the next three decadesvirtually everywherean
: i.c itn Islamic bank openedits doors. "He was a promoter of the idea of
.i rvas Islamicbanking to anyonewho would listento him," saysAbdelkader
,,.: ieilst Thomas, the founder of the American Journal of Islamic binance,
'Vfhen
- ,: r \ \ 'as who worked with Citibank on Islamic finance in Bahrain. the
.;: r [. ing Saudi-backedOrganization of the Islamic Conference created the
' '. i .t rnal IslamicDevelopmentBank (IDB) in Jeddahin r97 5, Najjar was there.
:: : - ()od's The IDB was the granddaddyof Islamic banks, generouslysupported
r80 . D e v t l 's GauE
leir dr ; - -
by Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kuwait, and the UAh,. lt was quickly fol- -r,,,.i _
.
lowed by the Dubai lslamic Bank (r975), the Kuwait FinanceHouse
I Llt N,
l
Bank
Ggzz), the Islamic Bank of Sudan (tgzz), the Jordan Islamic
l
for Financeand Investment(rg78), and the Bahrain Islamic Bank
\L| '. -
1.,-.-
(tst8).
l\r.:
Najjar recruitedhis most important acolyteswhen he convinced -:
I ----
PrinceMohammedal-Faisaland SalehKamel to get into Islamicbank-
1\ t . l r
-
ing. "lt was the sameguy," saysThomas. "lt was his mectingsthey
attendedin the I qzos.Their ideasare similarbecausethe samepcrson
..:
inspired them. They started trt the sametime, and many of the same
peopleworked with them."l0Accordingto Naiiar,he first encountered
Prince Mohamrned at a meeting9f the Islamic Devclopment Bank in
the early 1c17os.1l
Mohammed al-Faisal'slslamic banking ernpire started with the
creari<rnof the FaisalIslamicBank of F)gypt(I-IBL,)in t,)76.Of all the
Islamic banks, FIBE was the most formal and carefullystructured,
establishinga sharia board made up of carrefullyscreenedFlgyptian
clergy.PrinceMohar-r-rmed als11founded thc lnternational Associetion
crf Islamic Banks, creared the Handboctk of Islamic Banking, and set
up the global network called the "Faisal Group." That group
included all or part of the Jordan lslamic Bank, the FaisalIslamic
Bank of Sudan ftgz8),and F-aisalFinance Housein Turkey (r985)' In
rg8r, ar an Islamicsummir meetingin Taif, in SaudiArabia, Prince
Mohammed put togerherrhe House of IslamicF'unds(in Arabic, Dar
al-Maal al-Islami,or DMI), a huge holding company that servedas
rhe nervecenterof his empire.DMI, basedin the Bahamasand with
in ten
its operationscenterin Geneva,at one point had subsidiaries
countries, including Bahrain, Pakistan, Turkey, Denmark, Luxem-
bourg, Guinea,Senegal,and Niger.sz
SalehKamel, meanwhile,was settingup his own empire,the Al-
BarakaGroup. Kamel, a Saudibillignairerelatedto the royal family
.,sponsorsan annual seminar at which scoresof eco-
by marriage,
nomists and bankers meet with sharia scholars."33At Al Azhar, the
thousand-year-oldCairo centerof Islamic learning,he establishedthe
Saleh Kamel center for Islamic Economic studies. The managing
director of Al-Baraka Invesrmentand Developmentcompany was a
Islam . r 8r
TheRiseof Economic
,lim
The formalsystenraticcontirctbcnvecnbankersanc'lshariirsch<ll-
arsc:urc'duringthe alurosrc()ncLlrrcnt
preparrltionfor the esta[r
lishmetrt
of lslarnicbanksin Egyptrrnd.jorclan
in fhc scconclhalf
< l fth e l 9 7 o s .
\Wh e n th e new speci es()f i nterneti onrrlIsl al ni c Investrncut
F u n d s e m c reecl ,though ntrtnagccll ty W estern bankers, br< l kcrs,
a n d h o u s c so f fi nance,they hacl to sct sl rari rrschol arson b< l arcl ,
t()o , i n o rd e r t< l g:ri n l cccptancc:rncil egi ti rnr.rcy.
Thc mr.urvsernr-
l l a rs , me e ri n e s,confercnces,ancl svrtrp< tsitlarat ensucclsi nce the
rn i c l -r9 7 o si n the four c()rnersof thc w orl cl have furthcr enharrcecl
th i s rte w i l l i a nce betw eenIsl anri cbarrkers rrndshrrri aschol arsancl
clcveIopcd nru tu:rII y rerv,rlcli n g rvork i n g rclationsl.ri ps.
F ro rn th e poi nt of vi eu,of the ul erna,rhi s ncw rrl l i ancebri ngs
th e rn b a l c kt() thc frtrefront < l f the pol i ti cal sccneat i r ti me w hcn
th e y n c c d e dthi s boost vcry rnuch.... Thi s al l i i rnccrrl sogi ves the
ulenra a new source <lf inc<lnreancl a r.vinclt)wro r'rnew lifestyle
th a t i n c l u c l c srri r tri rvel , s()meti mcsi l r pri vrrtr j crs, rtrryi ng i n fi vc-
s t:rr h o te l s , b e i r.rgunder the focus of rncdi a attenti on, provi cl i ng
th e i r o p i n i o n s to peopl e of hi gh soci al ancl ccorrorni crank, w h< l
c o tre ru n rri ng for l i steni rrg,bei ng cor.nrni ssi onecl to uncl ertrrke
p a i d -fo r fi q h r escarch.... They i n f:rct bccrrmecel ebri ti esi n thei r
re s p e c ti v cc < t nntri es,
and evenoutsi cl ethei r borders.
T h e a l l i a rrcecrcates rrn atnrosphercof fresh pol i ti cal rap-
p rr> c h e n re nbty the Isl ami c nrovemenrand thc governmentsi n thc
M u s l i m, :rn c lespeci al l ythe A rab, countri es..j .'
By ra p p ro c h e me nt, K ahf me:l ns the Isl arni zati on of soci al and pol i ti -
c a l s o c i e ty i n th e Isl ami c w orl d. K ahf adds that the shari a schol ars
who were picked for thc advisory boards irnd other posts were carc-
fu l l y s e l e c te d . T hose w ho w ere too radi cal , and w ho w oul dn' t be
'Western
accepted by moderate government officials and bankers,
were avoided; at the same time, the "government-cheering ulema"
The Riseof Economic Islam . r 83
the
Jordanian monarchy, threw its weight into the battle against
PalestineLiberation Organization in support of the king' So, the
Kuwaiti rulers must have reasoned,the Islamic right might also pro-
vide important leverageagainstthe Arab and Palestiniannationalists
in thc Clulfsheikhdom.
At the time virtually no Kuwaiti women wore veils.In mosques,
mostly the elderly prayed.In Kuwaiti universities,men end women
attendedclassestogether.Most Kuwaitis believedthat religion was
important in private life and in cultural activities,but not in politics.
I'oliticalIslam in Kuwait had only a tenuousfoothold, althoughthe
small Muslim Brothcrhood was efficientlyorganizedthrough the
SocialReform Society,which had beenformcd in t96z'
But beginningin the mid-r 97os,the Al Sabahand Islamistsjoined
hancls.As the politicalpressurcmountedfrom nationalists,Pl,C)sup-
portcrs, and restiveKuwaitis excludedfrom power by the royal fam-
ily, thc Al Sabahclampeddown, eliminatingthe noisylegislature. The
clissolution of the parliamentby the ruler was applaudedby the Mus-
lim Brotherhoodand the SocialReform Society,whosechairmanwas
br<tughtinto the governmcntas minister 9f religiousendowments.
That ministcr,in turn, encouragedand helpedcreatean intercst-frec
bankinginstitution,the Kuwait FinanceHouse (KFH) in t977' Based
on discreditedtheoriesthat the Kgran prohibits intereston loans' a
thesisthat modern Islamic scholarsridicule, Islamistsin Kuwait-
backcclby thc Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt-had beenlobbying for
the establishmentof such a bank since the early tg7os. Almost
clvernight,KFH grew into Kuwait's second largest bank, under the
patronageof the Al Sabah.
::i the KFH had another effect,too. It bypassedKuwait's merchant elite, the
> ,. the private traders who resentedthe Al Sabah'sdominance of the mini-
i , pfO- nation. Many in the merchant classhad gravitated toward the Arab
:r lists nationalistsin opposition to the Al Sabah.But they were barred from
involvementin KFH; instead,the Kuwaiti governmentmobilized the
! q Lles, desert-based Bedouinsagainst the merchants.The tribal Bedouins
',,.()nlen were the force that King Husseinusedagainstthe Pl,O, and they pro-
:1 \\IAS vided the core of the most rcactionaryforcesin SaudiArabia.
I irnc s. A leadingKuwaiti professor,ShafeeqN. Ghabra,calledthe rising
: : h t he influenceof the Bedouinin Kuwait "desertization":
-:r rhe
The n-rarriage between Bedouinconservative valuesand thc
Islamicl movementmilturecl....Tlrc lnaioritvof thc relatively
deprivcdBedouintribes havcmovedfronrthesidclincs to thc forc-
front in dem:rndingsocietalrecognitiot.t
and equalitl,,the basisfor
whichis foundin Islarn.Several populist[slirmists
infltrcntial have
riscnfrom their ranks.... This pr()cessof "desertization," as the
BahrainithinkerMuharnmadAnsarilabclsit, is amot.tg thc most
destructivcprocesscs in the Middle East.It undermines nrodern
societyby bringing into urbansocietyfhe ultraconservativc valucs
of the dcsertarrclnrixingthenrwith Islalnicpopulisrn.aa
,ll-
backed by the Kr-rwaitFinanceHouse.
-
--.1.. \
The deeppocketsof KFH bankrolledthe growth of the Islamistsin
- -l
,.i,r
, ,: 1.
-., 1 r
, ,) l
.:::.l
:t -
:.l r-
-. - l
: . :l- -
,r, -l \
-'.
-- t r
:1C
T.
!i
-:-
8
," .1i \
'_iit
Isnnn L's TRAINE o Zr,l't'
I i(
especiallyin the Gaza Strip.In the wake of the t967 war, and Israel's
occupation <tf Gaza and the West Bank, the Islamistsflourishedwith
support from both lsrael and Jordan. Officially, the Brotherhood in
the occupied territories fell under the supervision of the Muslim
Brotherhoodof Jordan, and Hamas was a wholly owned subsidiary
of the organization.
The roots of Hamas go back to the r9jos. Beginning with the
activities of the pro-Nazi (and pro-British) mufti of Jerusalem,Haj
Amin al-Husscini,Palestinianactivismhas all along had a minoriry
Islamist component. The mr"rftimet Hassan al-Banna'scmissaricsir-r
r935. A forerunner of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,the
Makarem Societyof Jerusalem,was set up in r943.2 Many Palestin-
ian nationalistswho wcluld [Jo on to become leadersof the sccular,
non-lslamist movenlent for a Palestinianstate were attracted to the
Brotherhoodar the time, as branchesbeganto proliferatein Amman,
in the Syrian citics of Alcppo, Hama, and l)arnascus,ancl in Gaza,
Jerusalem,Ramallah, Haifa, and elsewhcrc.Thc Muslim Brothcr-
hood'sfirst officein Jerusalemwas openedin r 94 5 by SaidRamadan,
and by 1947 therewere twcnty-fiveMuslim Brotherhood branchesin
Palestinewith as many as 25,ooo mcmbcrs.sIn Octobcr r946, and
againin L947,theMuslim Br:otherhoodheld a regionalconventionin
Haifa, with delegatesfrom l-ebar-ron
and Transjordan,calling for the
"spreadof Muslirn BrotherhoodchaptersthroughoutPalestine."a
In the early days,the movementwas bifurcated.In Gaza,the Mus-
lim lJrotherhoodwas affiliated with the organization'sheadquarters
branch in Cairo. On the \fest Bank, the area of Palestinethat came
under .fordanian administration after 1948, the Brotherhood was
attachedto the Jordanian branch. In r95o, the West Bank ancl.for-
danian branchesof the Muslim Brotherhood united to form the Mus-
lim Brotherhood of Jordan. It was a docile, conservativegroup that
developed increasinglyclose ties to the monarchy, and which was
scorned by nationalists.sThe Hashemites,in turn, encouragedthe
activities of the Brotherhood, seeingit as a force to counterbalance
communist, leftist, and, later, Nasseristand Baathistsentiments.The
founder and organizationalleader of the Brotherhood in Jordan was
Abu Qurah. a wealthy merchanrwith no interesrin upsetringany
Israel'sIslamists ' r c)3
: I >r:rel's apple carts. Qurah had close ties to Syrian businessmenin Amman
::J wi th and to Banna and Ramadan in Egypt. King Abdullah "granted the
:- ,Lrdin Brotherhood legal status as a welfare organization,hoping to secure
I. Iuslim its support against the secular opposition."6 The king regarded the
- :. idiary Brotherswith somesuspicion,but he hoped that by coopting them he
could enhancehis legitimacy as an Islamic leader.His father, T. E.
",..:n the l.awrence'sSharif Hussein of Mecca, maintained a well-publicized
.:::1.Haj but spurious claim to be a direct descer-rdantof the Prophet
.-':rority Mohammed, and althoughthe aura was dimming, Abdullah and his
: .r .il CS l l l grandson,the future King Hussein,would do what they could to keep
:t : - .. . t he it alive.
: - . . . csf
in - The Brotherhood,like the Islamicright everywhere,was strongly
- : , Lt lll r, anti-communist,arguing"that in the twentiethcenturyEgypt and the
: :,) the restof the Islamicworld were threatenedby the onslaughtof comntu-
l. : nrrt n , nist and nationirlist ideologieswhich dcnied the supremacy of
ll ( r; 1 Zi l , shdria."7The Muslim Brotherhoodwas a loyal force in support of
: : 'rher- King Husscin,and bitterly opposcclto pan-Arabism.Its socialbarse in
:--tt .t rl il ll
, .fordirnwas rooted in the wealthy,East Bank landowning familicsivhtr
:,:rcs in saw socialisrnand land reform as existentialthreats.When Jordan's
' -: '. Jl l c i left-leaningprime ministerSuleimanill-Nabulsi,who was influcnccd
: : :. r )l l l ll by Nasscr,challcngedthc monarchyin a showdownin r.)\7 that can-te
::'rthe closeto topplingit, thc Brotherhoodsidedwith the king and savedhis
.:. throne."Frorn this point t)n," wrt)teBoulby,"thire existedan unn'rit-
-: \ il. I 5 _ ten understarndingof coeristcrtcebetweenKing Husseinand the Broth-
r[crs
: --.:. crhood."8Yusafal-Azm,a lcaderof the Brothersin.fordan, said:"Wc
- : - : . .l l l l e agreedwith thc king bccauscNasscr was irrational in his irttacks
. : $'as againsthim, lancllto protectourselves,becauscif Nasser'sfollowers
::-,: Jor- had risen to power in .fordan,thc Muslim Brotherhoodwould have
.-.: \ l t t s - been liquic'lated,as thcy werc in llgypt."'r The Brotherhood'ssupport
-.:' f ltirt for the king came at a critical moment. Nasscr and his allieswere
. - :t \\:i]s ascenclanf,the king of Iraq (a fellow Hashemitc)was overthrown,and
::J the U.S. policy had shifteddecisivclyagainstF.gypt.In r95tl, U.S.troops
':,:lrnce wcre sentto l.ebanonand the Britisharmy to .fordanand Kuwait, t<r
:.:.. The halt the nationalistupsurge,and the Brotherhoodioined in. While
:.::r \\'as communist, Baathist, and Nasseristparties were suppressedby the
.:': .rny king, the Muslim Brotherhoodwas encouragedto run candidatesin
r94 D r - : v l r - 's Gnl,rn
"I thought they were playing with fire," saysDavid Long' a formcr
Middle L,astexpert at the State Department'sBureau of h-rtelligence
and Research."I didn't realizethey'd end up creatinga monster.But I
don't think you ought to messaround with potentialfanatics."zz
Meanwhile, in Syria,lsrael and Jordan were doing just that.
TencE T: D A MA S C U S
::-.fi and scenes.King Hussein was on the CIA payroll, and Israel'sand Jor-
dan's intelligenceserviceshad a relationshipthat, while it couldn't be
characterizedas warm, was at leastprofessionallycorrect. "There is a
long tradition of complex covert relations between the Hashemites
and the Zionists, over many years," according to Philip Wilcox' an
Israeland Jordan also had a
experiencedU.S. foreign serviceofficer.Z3
common enemy:Syria.
The Syrianruler,Hafez Assad,was vulnerableon Islamicgrounds.
He was. of course.a secularleaderand a Baathist.But Assadwas also
a memberof a religiousminority in Syria,the Alawites,a quasi-Shiite
secf that was viewed with disdain by the ultra-orthodox Muslim
Brotherhoodand which was considcredun-lslamicby \Tahhabicler-
ics. Perhapsmore than in other Arab countries,thc Mr-rslimBrother-
with kaleidoscopically
hood irr Syriawas highly factionalized, shifting
power centers both in Syrian Sunni strongholdssuch as Alcppo,
. :ir Hclrns,and Hama ilnd among Muslinr Brotherhoodleadersin exile in
:;] L
Ciernrany,Switzerland,and London.
.t l'.
Muslim Brotherhoodwas also an early offshoot of
The Syriar-r
l: i.
Hassan al-Bantra'smovement in Egypt. Thc Br:otherhoodin Syria
J:- . I
. :,\ drew its membersfronr thc ranksof Syrianstudentsreturningfrom Al
. :n Azhar in Clairc in thc nrid-t93os,and it formcd hranchcsin Syria's
nrajor cities under the namc Shabab Muhammed (Young Men of
Mr-rhammed). Alcppo, in northern Syria,scrved,ls thc he,ldcluarters
Brotherhoodbeginr-ring
of the Muslir-r-r in r9j5.r4 [n r944, its head-
: )rnle r qlrartersmovedto Damasclts,and it was led by MustafaSibai,a grad-
. r{ence uate of Al Azhar and fricnd of Hassanal-Banna.In the r9-tos' as
:, B LrtI Nasser cracked down on the movement' a significantnumber of
IJrotherhoodnremberstook refuge in Syria. Ilut rrs Syria moved intcl
the nationalistcamp, first joining Nasseras part of the United Arirb
Republicand thcn underthe Baathin the r96os,the Muslim Brother-
h<rodfound Syrialesshospitable . ln t964, the Brothersleclanti-Baath
"Islam or Baath." ln t967, during and
riots in Syria,under the slogar-r
after Syria'sdefeatin the war with Isr:rel,the Brotherhood'smost mil-
: : r'eCh itant faction declareda iihad againstthe Syrian government.Their
:..:r,-ithe animosityonly intensifiedafter r973, when Assadproclaimeda new
L o o 'D r , v l t - 's Gaur
ing in Israel and Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood launchedan all-out Il-. -
i (,1
Haddad providedthe
Actually,the trainingthat the Israeli-backcd
_ -\t)
Brotherhood was avirilablein at least two other placesat that exact
:.:ac moment: northern .fordan, and the Maronite Christian enclavein
- :()- a fascist-likemilitia run by the pro-
Lebanon,where the Phalangists,
- -. ll-t .
Nazi Gemayelclan and supportedby Israel,ran Brotherhoodcamps
I
: -fLl
..'.,] for war in Syria.
The campsin Jordanopcratednlorc or lessopcnly.In r 98 r, Syria's
ll, r ll
foreign minister denounccdKing Husscin: "The king's policy has
: J..t- driven him to transform Jordan into a base for the gang of murder
:- .t
and crime,the Muslim Brotherhood'in order to exert pressureon and
confuseSyria."28 Two weekslater,Assaddclivcreda lengthyspeechin
:()f
which he bitterly criticized.|ordanfor supportingthe Muslim Broth-
I ' rt erhood insurrectionin Svria:
iro
--L
.11-
Problemscreafedby the Muslim Brotherhoodlhave begunlto
. If _
emergeincreasingly in Syria.Of course,the Muslim Brotherhood
historicallink in thechainof reactionary-imperialist
is an essential
: : tV relationsin the region.. . . It was naturalfor theJordanianregime
:. , rn and the Muslim Brothersto exchangesupport'. . . It was natural
Loz . Dgvtt-'s Gaur:
But Scelye adds:"I don't think it bothercdus too mdch theltthey werc
--l( )f C
r'
', \LOn
ceusingproblclnsfor Assa.l."
Actually, King Hussein was involved. Four years later, Jordan
-,: ; l rl .
. .. I I adrnrttedits role in support of the Muslirrr [Jrotherhtlodand apolo-
gizcdto Syria."lt turns out that somewho did havea connectionwith
: .:c. 1 t .
:
the bloody eventsin Syria were presentin our quArters"'wrote the
-,1
rhc.
,::l t r'cl HnvA ANo H,A.NaRs
::irs,
-L )SS, In different ways, lsraeli and Jordarriansupport for the Muslirn
Brotherhoodcameto a headin the r98os.
In Syria,the final showdown betweenAssad'sgovernmentand the
Brotherhoodtook placcin Hanra,a Syriancity of zoo,ooowhich had
always beena strongholdof Sunni fundamentalism.It began,recalls
former U.S. ambassadorSeelye,with a rumor. "The eventsin Hama
started with a false rcport that Assad had been overthrown," Seelye
says.Excitedby the news,the Muslillt Brothcrhoodwent on a murder
sprec in the citp slaughterir-rghundreds of soldiers ar-rdSyrian offi-
cials."The Islamistskilled all of the Baathistofficialsin the city," says
Seelye.alFor Assad,it was an intolerableprtlvocation.He assernbled
his arn-ryspeciirlforces, uncler the command of his brother, Rifaat
t-
Assad,a notoriously heavy-handeclenforcer.Thousandsttf troctps-
: : '. r re rz,ooo, accordingto Amnesty Internatitlnal,with rhe lJrotherhood
'.'.irrr claimingthere were upwardsof 5o,ooo42-enteredHlttrl, ruthlcssly
, ,n'f supprcssingthc insurrcctionand leavingnrany dead. Again, figures
-
' '. us . vary. An early report in Time said that I,ooo were killed. Most
. .r trl: observerscstirnatedthat 5,ooo pcople died. lsraeli sources,and the
] : ]I CS Muslim Brotherhood,both chargedthat the deathtoll passedzo,ooo.
Over tirnc, the legendof Hama grew.It was usedby Syria'scriticsttr
\ " ltt -
r' portray Assadas a ruthless,Stalin-likekiller, a depictionthat Assad
::: c r t t did little to discouragebecauseit intimidatedMuslim Brotherhood
:tf . ' troublemakers. ReportedTime,wceksafter the crisis,"There were no
: reci signslastweek that the trouble in Hama was spreadingclsewherc."ar
"That," says Seelye,"was the encl of the Islarnicntovr:mentin
:..:lccl Syria."aa
: .. C d But in Israel'soccupiedterritories,the Brotherhoodwas still gaining
206'l )E vl t.'s Gaup.
1.:-rster Ariel During most of thc r98os, the Muslim Brothcrhooclin (laza :rncl
, .,-l-'orParty the'West Bank did not support resistance to thc Israclioccuprltion.
'::-.itions on a Most of its energywent into fighting the Pl-O, especi:rllyits morc lefr-
n principle wing factions,on universitycampllses.Yassin'sfclllowersusedcluLrs,
. rr[''licalrea- chains,and even guns in violent clasheswith pro-P[.O Palestinian
---:int names nationalists.The IslamicUniversityin Ciirzawas the siteof nunrerous
battles,with PLO supportersseckingto secularizethe universityancl
--: t -L l n r" says the Muslim Brotherhood trying to prcserveits [slirrnistcharacter.In
::rse Intelli- one clash akrne, on .fune 4, rc)83,Iltore than 2oo studentswere
..-rd.Israel's injured. Similar confrontationsoccurred at Birzcit Univcrsity and
;.:.'. \{uslim Najah Universityin the West Bank.a"Fatah,the nrain componentof
i1 ,rsirdwho the PLO, tried to co-optthe Muslim Brotherhoocl,
seekingto arrangea
. -.:rlre were workablecompromise.The Muslirn Brothcrhoocl, howcvcqdcnrandcd
: .:Lc i t. But nothing lessthan the completeIslamizationof the P[,O, includingthc
:: r rists,and eliminationof the P[-C)'sleft wing. "The Muslirn Brothcrhoodlcaclcr-
r'-'rhenome- ship urged Fatah to purge its ranks of Marxist elements,to be alvitre
. :nd they and to cooperatccloselywith the Islemic
of the futility of secularism,
- The,vwere Efroups."'50
In r983, there occurreda curious and still unexplirinedinciclent
r :*enCyand which has led some of Ahmed Yassit't's critics to sllspectthat he hacl
i.:.rr-lisecret secretties to the Shin Bet. Itarly in the year, Yassinwris arrestcd by
::. rhe Mos- Israeliauthoritiesafter he "ordercd mcmbersof lthe IslamicCenterl
.:-riar Sadat to secretly gather firearms, which werc then clistribr-rtecl
arlons
.i on tor so selectedoperatives."5lSomeof the weaponswere stored in Yassin's
,:.,tqs,"that own house,and he was jailed. At the time, Palcstinianresistance
to
r:,lel.a7And lsrael was far more subdued than during the two ttprisings,or
2oB . D svtt-'s GA N IE
" - i: : : \\ ' ef e CO I f I - data for an analysisof the phenomenonin the mid- to late r 98os. "For
.-:'. \\'ould have us, at the beginning,the PalestinianIslamicmovementwas way below
,t.,,-)Sentenced tO the radar," saysLang. "\7e tried to write an NIE [National Intelligence
:,,: Compound- Estimatelat the end of the r98os, sincenothing had beenwritten. But
' :. \\'ere being the friendsof Israelin the Reaganadministrationstoppedus."'54
: ::: Palestinian Even after the Palestinian uprising began in t987, the PLO
accusedHamas and Ahmed Yassinof acting "with the direct support
. .,> rhe intifada of reactionaryArab regimes. . . in collusion with the Israeli occupa-
:.,--.rng Hamas. tion." YasserArafat, the chairman of the PLO and presidentof the
: -: :r'rvice gave PalestinianAuthority, told an Italian newspaper:"Hamas is a crea-
.. .,.nval to the ture of Israel,which, at the time of Prime Minister Shamir,gavethem
.,-:.
- aounterter- money and more than 7oo institutions,among them schools,universi-
::-.illem at the Arafat told the paper that former Israeli prime
ties, and mosques."s-t
-- .-
.,
pfiant
!rrr!Lt
h"t
uqr
T
r minister Yitzhak Rabin admitted Israeli support for Hamas to him, in
.: L-.S.officials the presenceof Egyptian presidentHusni Mubarak. Arafat said that
:,-.:-..rsin the late Rabin describedit as a "fatal error."
r: ::-f Strains.... The establishmentof Hamas roughly coincided with the starr of
. . - ^,,rroht m ioh t the first intifada (ry82-gl). It was the first major, coordinatedPales-
:.:,:-.,riics
and the tinian uprising in the occupiedterritories,and virtually all Palestinian
factions supported it, including Hamas and the PLO. The uprising,
:-,* lrom some which included both violent and nonviolent tactics, had several
,.: of Hamas. important effects.It once again brought the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict
:: )i.]torganiza- to world attention,and it propelledmoderateIsraelis,suchas Yitzhak
: :,r SaudiAra- Rabin, Shimon Peres,and Ehud Barak, toward negotiationswith the
: Rrvadh,and PLO. The inauguration of the peace talks in Oslo, Norwag which
:r :-.()f money in beganthe so-calledOslo process,raisedthe first realistichope for an
'.. horvever,as Israeli-PLOsettlementsincets 62.
,:...tnd as the Hamas, which had previously used violence only against other
::: lunctioning Palestiniangroups, took up arms against Israel during the intifada,
^,.-rlvthere are leading to an Israeli crackdown. Many Hamas leaderswere arrested,
: H.rmasr"says including Yassin, in t989. Despite the support of Hamas for the
intifada, however,the PLO and Hamas were engagedin a constant
,:-: ,ut the emer- tug-of-war. \Thenever the PLO and the Israeli Labor Party moved
* :L' anti-Israel toward an accord, Hamas would unleasha violent wave of attacksto
...:-nce Agency, disrupt the talks. "Undermining the peace processhas always been
: ::.1n collecting the real target of Hamas and has played into the political ambitions of
2ro D rvrr' s Gaur
,::r nego- Israeli Likud-inspired terrorist murdered Prime Minister Rabin. The
-.. peace, death of Rabin left a vacuum in Israelipolitics,and the continuing sui-
- :ushed cide attacks by Hamas panicked the Israeli electorate,leading to the
electionof Netanyahu'sLikud in ry96. The tough-talkingNetanyahu
:::q itself launched an unsparingcampaign of repressionaimed at all Palestin-
ian groups, and in 1997 he ordered a botched attempt to kill a top
Hamas official in Jordan. But Yassinproved to be a survivor. In the
il- . , rf e
aftermath of that debacle,Israel and Jordan reachedan accord that
.: -: : h g
freed SheikhAhmed Yassinfrom prison, where he'd languishedsince
. l: : C d
*-. 0r his r989 arrest.SuddenlyYassinwas back in action in Gaza,thunder-
-1
ing againstOslo and building opposition to the PLO.
- ' :tlr
The pattern repeateditself in zooo. Netanyahu fell in t999, and
was replacedby Barak, who reengagedthe PLO in negotiationsand,
:. .uch as with PresidentClinton's help, camecloseto reachinga comprehensive
: , : ilng a deal. Once again, however,the Israeli right provoked the Islamists.In
." -,.lu and September2ooo, Sharon made a heavy-handed,provocative visit to
: - - kind s an Islamic holy site, the Haram al-Sharif/TempleMount, an action
:: . : . F rOm calculatedto provoke the Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalists,and
.' . ,ppo si - it did. The result was the second intifada (zooo-zoo4). Suicide
I t r')\'O C?- attacks in Israel murdered scoresof Jews, and stampededsecurity-
minded Israeli voters into Sharon'scamp. Sharon was overwhelm-
: ::'.evears ingly elected prime ministeq dooming any chance of a PlO-israel
_-
- . ann\
deal. Longtime observersof Israeli politics werb stunned that Israel
: s'hich would be led by a man who conductedterrorist attacksagainstPales-
: -.::rl.,erof tiniansin the 195os,as headof the infamousUnit ror, and who bore
: ::ned to responsibilityfor the massacreof hundreds of Palestinianrefugeesin
.:-:Jersof the Sabra and Shatila camps near Beirut by Israel'sPhalangistallies,
:: . . . p e i l ce during the r98z Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Called "the Bulldozer,"
::: I s r a e l i General Sharon launched an all-out effort to destroy both the PLO
:.: Oslo. and the PalestinianAuthority. Arafat was caught betweenHamas and
,: .lein, a Sharon:the Islamistswould carry out an atrocity, and Sharon would
'. :qtle in hold Arafat responsible,retaliatingagainstthe PLO.
:'.:J wor- Both Sharonand the Bush administrationrefusedto talk to Arafat,
:: :. lt t aCk marginalizingthe PLO leaderand creatingfurther room for Hamas to
:. -\ rvave grow. The result was predictable.Polls show that in t996, only r5
.: not he r percentof Palestiniansbackedthe Islamists;by zooo, it was still only
zrz . Drvrr's Gerar
- , - - ,-l h. t
: .: lnue s
r- -.r ll. t
:aport-
r=. does
: ,:aein
:: : .
\
i. -.
lL -:.
9 fiL--
rn-
T( \:
s:-1
HELL' S AYATOLLAH
revolution, leading many U.S. policy makers to believe that the abandoninE
shah was not seriously threatened.In these reports, Iran's Islamic donaries. .:
movement was usually ignored or relegatedto a footnote. The CIlt's successor:
aid to Iran's Islamistsin r95J was ancienthistorg and in the decades who had .::
that followed the shah marginalizedthe ayatollahs,exiling some- sandsof i-.
including Khomeini-and buying off others. The State Department Khomeir-r.:
and the CIA complacentlyignoredIslam in Iran, which suitedthe shah though .r:'
iust fine: the shah vigorouslyopposedU.S. contactswith lran's clergy, How ccl'.l-
evenwith the more docile,pro-regimeayatollahson the shah'spayroll. pled if ir '.''=
But after the Carter administration got its national securityteam Amer:.:
in place in 1977, the United States began pressing the Iranian United >:':
monarch for reforms and establisheda pattern of intensive,sub rosa The U.:. ::
consultationswith lranian opposition groups, including key religious not Ire: :
leaders.This had the effectof weakeningthe shah'sresolve,confusing Khome::-,-
his regime, and bugying the religious right. The U.S. goal in making offici,ri :
t1
thesecontactswas not revolution, but what many hoped would be a repunL:
'.
more stable,pro-U.S.constitutionalmonarchy.Part of what was driv- $-as tn-. -'-*
ing this effort were persistentrumors-apparently backed by solid suit-u.',:':
U.S. intelligencereports-that the shah had cancer.(He did, and he Ghot'n:.'-
died in exile in r98o.) Those who pursued this policy apparently \clL'--- -
beiieved that the shah was strong enough to weather a transition Qo tt-t-: -:..
\ ( --,.
peacefully,and that it would result in more power for Iran's intellec- -\ l a -: -'
would be driven increasinglyby the religious right, above all by the -i! ! \ -
*
_
others urging that the United Statessupport a bloody military putsch ,-:: :-
againstthe revolution. During those crucial four months the United
Stateshad no policy at all, and in any caseit was too late to change
the course of events.The shah fled, his government collapsed,and
the Islamic Republic of Iran was born. Those who had argued for
Hell's Ayatollah zr7
The errors that the United Statescommitted during and after the ,:.:
revolution in Iran were almost Shakespeareanin their tragic scope.An
enormouspart of the blame falls on the U.S. intelligencesystem.The
fall of the shah was the most significantfailure of U.S. intelligence
betweenPearl Harbor and the attacksof Septemberrr' zoor. As the
United Stateseagerlylent support to the Afghan jihadists and reached
out to supposedlymoderatemullahs in Teheran,almost no one in the
intelligencecommuniry was looking ar the big picture. To the Ameri-
can public, the dark-eyed, scowling visage of Ayatollah Khomeini
symbolized the emergenceof a threatening new force on the world
scene. But for U.S. diplomats and intelligenceofficers, right-wing
political Islam continued to be profoundly misunderstood.Even as
Islamism's power made itself felt-in the violence in Mecca, civil war
in Syria, Sadat'sassassination-the United Statesfailed to grasp its
implications.Even after Iran, Islamism was not seenas a worldwide
movement linked by fraternal bonds and secretsocieties,but as a frag-
mented, country-by-country ideological movement. The narve argued
that Iran was a unique case,a conservativedictatorshipthat had fallen
to a peculiar form of Shiite militancy that would have no resonance
among the Sunni Muslim majority. Others, naive in a different and
more dangerous way, were seizedwith the notion that Iranian-style
Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood could be mobilized in
Afghanistan and Central Asia as a tool for dismantling the Soviet
Union. Despite the pronounced anti-American feeling at the heart of
Islamism, key officials-from Jimmy Carter's national security adviser,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, to Ronald Reagan'sCIA director, Bill Casey-
would aggressivelypursue the idea that political Islam was just
another Dawn on whatBrzezinski called "the Grand Chessboard."
Hell's Ayatollah zr9
: !. r he
: i r zed. Tgp RETURN OF THE AYAToLLAH
: it ter-
-:; n t ed On February 2, 1979, just a day after Ayatollah Khomeini made his
: :e in triumphant return to lran, George Lambrakis, a senior U.S. embassy
::d by officer in Teheran, dispatched a long missive to \Tashington. In it, he
mused about the implications of the takeover of Iran by Khomeini
"i nrza-
and his ilk. And he wasn't too worried. His assessmentis worth quot-
ing at length, because it shows how profoundly the United States
underestimated the Khomeini movement only days before the ayatol-
lah took control of Iran:
Our best assessment to date is that the Shia Islamic movement is far
better organized, enlightened, and able to resist communism than
its detractors would lead us to believe. It is rooted in the Iranian
people more than any 'Western ideology, including communrsm.
However, its governing procedures are not clear, and probably
have not totally been worked out. It is possiblethat the processof
governing might produce accommodations with anti-clerical, intel-
lectual strains which exist in the opposition to produce something
more closely approaching'Westernizeddemocratic processesthan
might at first be apparent. . . .
The Islamic establishmentis neither as weak nor as ignorant
as the shah'sgovernment and some 'Westernobservers.wouldpor-
tray it. It has a far better grip on the emotions of the people and on
the money of the bazaar than any other group. In many ways it
supports a reformist/traditionalist view of Iran which is far more
attractive to most Iranians at this time than the models of commu-
nism representedby the SovietUnion or mainland China.
On the other hand, it is not guaranteedto operate in a parlia-
mentary democratic fashion as we understand it in the lVest. . . . A
good deal of authority is likely to be exercisedby an Islamic Coun-
cil. Though the make-up of such a council is still not clear, under
the movement's program, political leaders rather than mullahs
would appear destined to play the preponderant role in making
'We
and executing government policy. . . . suspectthat the Moslem
establishmentwould probably not be able to avoid making some
tust accommodations with Westernized ideas of government held bv
ma n y i n th e o p p o s i ti o n movement.I
z2-o . D r , v r r 's Geltp
would emergein the chaosthat followedthe fall of the shah.Thomas r 93O S.t ( ) : :
Ahern, the CllA stationchief in lran in r979, arrivedmonths after the mit, thc -
got back,thcrc was a seniorpcrsonirr thc Near ItastDivisionlamcnt- and sc. : : ' .
\_J:-
mademistakes,and in doing so helpedKhomeini succeed.
Firstwerethe Kissinger-led realists,who guidedU.S.policy toward
Irarr in thc first half of the decade.For them, Khomeini was nearly
invisible.They'd spentthe r97os building Iran into a regionalpower,
the policemanof the Gulf, and America'sbulwark againstthe USSR
and Arab nationalism. Their allies included the CIA, from Richard
Helms, the CIA director appointedas ambassadorto han in r973
rvho as a boy had gone to school with the shah in Switzerlandin the
Hell's Ayatollah ' Lz3
Third were the hard-right advocates.f cold war supremacyand didn't st:.
Americanmight. Toda6 they would be calredthe "neoconservatives." of{icial ri :
During the carter adrninistrirtion,the right was mostly in
and it graduallyc'alescedaround candidateRonald Reagan 'pp.sition,
in the Thc:.
late r97os. cl.sely alliedwith Israel-which, i'rurn, was joineclwith ettl t'-'-'
Iran in an axis againstthe Arabs-the ne,c.r.rservatives tt'tttl :i
wcre''t fazcd
N .t:: :
by Khomeini. Though they supportedthe shah,they didn't hcsitateto
t( ) '- - l
developcl'se, though covcrt, connecti'ns with thc I(h'rnei'i rcginrc
r r l '' ':
after r 1179.ln r98o, Rcagan'steam engagedin sccrettalks on irrms
and hostages with Teheran'sayatollahsin a calculatecleff,rt to urder- l
LIL!'
mine carter, in what hasc'me t. be known as the "oct.lrer Surprise" l-f -:-
-:
placed great ernphasison human rights, ancl many admi'ristration l l ' . : --' . '
-: ::l l .l C Y 3nd didn't start with Kennedy, according to a former high-ranking CIA
" . : : . \ .1 ti ve s. " official who was involved in the discussions:
'- r losi ti o n ,
l.: .',- . 1I1i n th e There rvas a big debate,in the U.S. governmentand in the
embassy:Shouldwe support the shah,or a nationalistgovern-
- 1. 'ln e d wi th
' ' : : cll't fa ze d ment? This had been going on sinceabout r95ti, when the
itself.The questionwas:Do we want
NatiorralFront reconstituted
_ " . t i\ lta te to shahor support Thcrewas talk
the nationalists?
to supplant the
:- - :l l .)l f C$lI T le about somethinglike a British-stylemonarchv, with real power
ll l' t)ll ?I I T I S restingin an electedgovernment. In the end,Kennedymadethe
: :: to Llnc ler- decisionto supportthe shah,but on conditionthat therewouldbe
^. : \ urp ri se " real reforms,and that the shahwould acceptIthe reformistlAli
:- : rt r'l l i g e n c e Arniniasprimeminister.'-
:- - : t c ()co n ser -
- - :: . 1sci l n d a l , llill noted:"Kennccly'sdoubtsabout the shahwere so
In his l'rook,.)amcs
-- ,. jr o n r b o th strongthat he evcl.tconsidercdforcing his abdicationin f:rvorof rule by
rcgencyuntil his youngson cameof age."7In principle,Kennedy's con-
cern about the shah wasn't misplaced,but the problcrn in the early
cxistedoutsidc9f the
I 96os,irsin thc late r 97os,was that no nrlternative
clcrgyto rcplacethc shah.Thc National Front had lost nearly:rll of its
: r.. .hrth and slrpportin the ycarssinceMossadegh,and increasinglyit was cgnfined
,:...r1\ in thc t9 salonsin Tehcran,with alliesamong intellectualsin WcsternF-uropc.
j- : : . : - \ inilLrgu- lrressedby the Ur-ritedStates,the shah made halfheartcclefforts at
-. llt e i l rl i e r refgrm. in what he calleclthe Whitc Revolution.Scnsing$196d,the
- " - i. . lt, wh i ch clergy had bcgun ro srir, and in the outlying districtsthe rcligious
:c Ke n n cd y right-which had closctics to the wealthy landedfamilies-beganto
r . r n.1re p l a c - mobilizc thc population againstland rcform. Violent inciclentstook
' . '. place in many provincesand the prin-rernovcrswerc the mullahs,
: rit e Ho u se
lcd by RuhollahKhorneini.Not yet an ayatollah,hc came
irrcrcasingly
--:: l lr i strll ti()r1
r^ \ f owe r. t<rpr<rminence after making a demagogicspeechin t963 denouncing
: : -. . 'Kcn n e d y thc shah.T9 creatc his political organization,Khomeini establishecl
:rc Kcn n e d y the Coalition of IslamicSocieties,led by twenty-onewealthy hazaari
i)cpr trtn tcn t , rnerchantsfrom three maior Teheranmosques.Many of the partici-
i:. . Lls si n g th c pants in Khomeini'scoalition would later becomethe leadersof the
: : rJlist, rro re regimein t97.1and serveas top officials9f the lslamic Republican
: ) ur t h e sh a h Party,includingMohan-rmed HosseiniBeheshti.s
226 . D s v r l 's Geur,
The shah had nothing but disdain for the clergy.In a January 1963
speech,he sputteredwith rage at the Khomeini-led mullahs:
--
:hr' L-xtensive and had started encouragingthe opp6sition." In his memoirs, the
..:. ,rrdersfrom shah put it this way: "The Americanswanted me out. . . . I was never
--: \()on beCame told about the split in the Carter administration [norl about the hopes
- ,.i.'d that they some u.s. officialsput in the viability of an 'Islamic Republic'as a
It
: r:clla that had hulwark againstcommunism."
The key player in bridging the divide betweenthe secularNational
,.:. u'ho headed Front and the clergywas Mehdi Bazargan,the founder of the Liberation
i:::ul revolution Movement, a religious,pro-clerical party.Destinedto becomethe first
'.::rcini: prime minister of Iran after the revolution, Bazargan had a long
2.28 . D E v r r . 's GenrE
history of working with the mullahs, but he also maintained a long- mark. A \:-
running dialogue with U.S. State Department and CIA officers. In even thcr, :
_ . . . . i l . _ \. -.
c 1rt
fact, Bazarganhimself was a quasi-mullah. "Bazargan," says an ex- UeSr
: ::llned a long- mark. A State Department analysis written in May t-972 suggeststhat
, \ officers. In even then some diplomats saw Khomeini as embodying "liberal val-
i :. . S a Y San eX- u e s ," a l b e i t w i th di mi ni shi ng appeal :
,.:,:.1)'anayatol-
: . r - l l lrban. " ' 16 T h e Sh a h o f Ir an mai ntai ns:r posture of publ i c pi ety and champi -
: : nor only dis- o n s Is l a mi c c al l ses even though l rani ans . . . are not greatl y
::::.rJllv its reli- a ttra c te db y p a n-l sl ami csenti ments.The Irani an cl ergy no l cl nger
'" Brzargan and have major political influence.. . . They have been, for the past
:. : rld me, 'You decade,fighting a rear-guard and losing action against the grow-
i n g ti d e o f :r s ecul arstafe.... A yatol l ah K hornei ni , arrestedand
: . .irrer.'This is
exiled to lracl in tL)6qirs a result of his anti-g()vernmentactivities,
i rs p i re sto l e a d Irani i rn Musl i ms, br-rthi s cl osecoopcrati onw i th the
! ,i cvda, lran's Go v e rn m e n t of Ir:rc1i n anti -S hah propaganda and :rcti vi tv harve
-::;crmined the ru l e d o u t a n y chance< l f rec< l nci l i ati onw i th rhe prescntshah and
, : iron liberals, re d u c e dh i s a ppealto many Iri l ni att Mtrsl i rnsw ho mi ght otherw l sc
.: ;lergv. "The s h i rres o m e o f hi s basi cal l yl i beral val ues.rs
,.. :n ]ran after
:-.i : g . l n and t he Charles Naas, who served irs the State l)epartment's dircctgr of Irar-t
,," : : t ! i i sS C nt and a ffa i rs fro m r L )74to r97tl , and thcn servcclersdeputy chi ef tl f n' ri ssi orl
,: : h e time: th e i r-rT e h e ra n d u ri n g the rev< tl uti on,says that throughout the peri ocl l ead-
:'.\rnericansl i n g L rpt< ' tt9 7 c ;, L I.S . governmcnt anal ysi s of l ran w as poor, espcci al l y
::,. \\'orstpossi- w h e n i t c a me to s o-cal l eclN ati onal l ntcl l i gerrceE sti mates (N l F.s), pre-
: - 1 : : n l e nt reC allS p a rc d b y th c C l l As N ati onal Intel l i gence C ounci l . " In cl oi t-tgN IF.s at
',,. ,rds. ".fcssica the tin"re,tl-regcr-reralview was that thc rcligious right clidn't represent a
i: . r . t l Se cu r it y th re a t to th e re g i me," N aas strys." Therc w as practi cal l y no reporti ng
. : , r h. a rg u i n g o n th c Is l a mi c g ro ups i n the country, so w e w ere caught rel ati vcl y fl at-
:: : ! le n tOn str a- fo o te d ." In th e August r977 N ati onal Intel l i gence l l sti mate on Iran,
:: ( ) Lta re ta l k - " l ra n i n rh e r9 8 os," thc C l l A concl uded that " thc shah w i l l be an
"
: I: . rn. b e ca u s e e l c ri v ep a rti c i p i rnt i n Iri l ni an l i fe w el l i nto thc r98os" and that " therc
w i l l b e n o ra d i cal change i n Irani an pol i ti cal behavror i n the nci l r
fu tu re ." A y e a r l ater, i n A ugust 1c178,a second (i IA report concl r" rded
th a t l ra n s e e m c dto be headed for a smooth transi ti on of pow er i f and
when the shah left the sccne.The CIA went on to say: "lran is not in rr
:. r n . O V ef S e V- re v o l l rti o n a ry o r even a ' pre-revol uti onary' si tuati on." t' ) B y t....78,
:> ( )l l t come. President Carter, who rvas watching lran disintegrate on televisiorr,
',,.ildlv off the cornplained in writing to the national security bureaucracy, saying that
z3o'D E vtI-'s C l ,qN aE
'an Iranian religiousleader."' says Precht. "To have iclcntifiedhinr sevcr '1. -
like that to yoLrrrc4ders back in Wasl-rington
told rnethat thcrc wastt't wel'c . l: - :
a greatawareness of who he was." 1l1gl. : ' . ,:
.
Although thousandsof Amcricans, including hundrcclsof U.S. itirzrrl:.
in lran, few if any of
officialsand a major CllA station were Lrirsed i i - ._
11:91-1,
l :' : :
them hacl any farniliarity with Iran's subcultures,religious under- l l rg.
Statesrelieclon the shah and his inner circlc for infortnationabout t hcr . ': :
'Washington
lran's intcrnal politics.Partly that was because trustcd sell.li'::
: --
the shah implicitly and believedthat his intelligence
and securitysys- lll.ll',
tern were infallible, and partly it was becausethe shah strongly \\'i]\:.1'-
objectedto any efforts by the United Statesto contact the clergy and t hc r : . ':
-f\t',
thc opposition.Walter Cutler, a veteranU.S. diplomat who servedin ' .-
Tabriz, Iran's secondlargestcitS in the r96os, saysthat even then it l l l ()l -. ' :
tion and the religious elements.The huge CIA station in Iran was tltr '-"
Hell's Ayatctllah ' zJ 1
"and put people on the calendaras ro when rhey decided enoughto nl;\
that the
shah'sregimecould not endure." that he had c':
A critical,but previolrslyunexaminedaspectof U.S.decision knew enougi.
mak-
ing on Iran in the r 97os is related t. the shah'sfatal illness. doo-doo.It r'':
lt is
important becauseif it were known that the shahwas fatally Among t::'
srrickcn,
it would drasticallyaffectall calcurations
abour Iran'sfurure:wererhc finisheds'cr. i
shah to die in oflice, with no clear mode of transferringpower; sans,who ;'-::
a v..ry
real dangerwould crist that Iran c.uld prungeinr. chaos. vive. The L '
The shah's
illnesswas diagnoseclas early as r96c1.accordirrgto H'veyda, the threrrt :
wh.se
brother was Iran'sprime minister."rt was'nly in the rr-rid-r97os more in lLlll: '
th.t
I heardthat he had cancer,"he says,though it was a cl.sery Washingtt':-.
guardecl
secret.But he insists:"The United Statesmust have kn'wn, somcof s:l :
because
secretslikc that cannot be kept, espccialrybecausethe shah gor stand th.r: -::
sec-
ond and third opinions,and he was consultingwith Anrerican close fricr-:-
physi_
cians, 16s."26carter. administratio' policy makers and i'telligence going clt'r":
officialsprovide c'.flicting resrinronyab.ur how rnuch didn't fitl- :
the united
Statesknew ab.ut the shah'scancer,and whe' it lcarned pareclfor ::.
alr.ut it.
Harold saunders,thc Middle lrastchief at thc StateDep:rrrmenr, Arn['r " -.-
says
that the Unitcd statesdid nor know that the shah was sick mer of r"-'
untir after
he'd left Iran. But charles c).gan, the ex-crIA official, said Missitttt:
that the "
Iran crisisin fact began"when thc shah'silrncssbecarne fall, citrn- :
apparenr,nor
to us bur to the French,very early in'72. Anc'lI think thar shahtt, i'.
wc finally
becameaware of the gravity of it in '76.-zt According
fo oogan, the sh.rh'' ':,
RichardHelms, who was U.S.ambassadorto Teheran,suspected lution." - .:.
that
the shahhad cancerand told washingto. s.. "r think ir in thc \\ .:-:
was'7y that
Helms wrore something to that effect back to washingrrn, lr an. ildi. : - :
bur ir
seemedto escapepe'ple's attentio'," sayscogan. "The French som e ( r l : : - :
were
aware of this as far back 2.s tc)7L,because.ne ,f the d'ctors lahs . r r . " .
that was
treating the shah was in some way affiliateclwith the French on tl-r.-'.::
i'telri-
genceservice."28 Another senior cIA official with enormousexperl- m adc : :
ence in Iran says flatly: "we knew the shah was iil. we " r esI ir '. - :t'
had reporrs "
from-well, from a very good source.,'2e By the late r97os,it wasn,t Pakr st r : - . : "
hard for u.s. intelligenceto pur rwo and two rogerher, ernlllcl--: 'i
and to con-
clude that the shah was nearingthe end of the road. David m em ol: '. >
Long, who
worked in the state Department'sintelligencebureau,says neit he: r . .
that lt was
Hell's Ayatollab 213
ported Ayatollah Khomeini. ln 1967, Yazdi settledin Houston, Texas, ti tt.ta :. ::- :
Early in 1978, Cottam's name beganto show up in secretor confi- did ,,:::-.
dential StateDepartmentand CIA dispatchesfrom Iran. In May, John Shlh: --'.:
Stempelfrom the U.S. embassyin Iran met with a leaderof the pro- l ' . ] l -l > .
remain in the hands of the clergy for the nexf quarter-century:the enough t ' '
komitehs, or Islamic committees the pasdardn, the guard; vanous that vu'cc'
bodiesof Islamic"experts" and jurists;the Islamiccourts;the revolu- incr easc :
tionary council. Hundreds,perhapsthousandsof officialsfrom thc lookins : '
shah'sera were summarilyerecuted,and countless<ttherswere ntur- t r at ioll , ':
D,,, r\
deredby Khomeini'sfollowers. lrLtr
dem t t t r ', :
t o C. ur ': :
AprnR f' H 11 R rrvoLU I' roN t ions r r : : :
llll t () L : -r
dor to the IslamicRepublicin the middle of rr)7r)."1 was to go our llo c \::
thereand try to cstablishsome sorr of rapport with thc ncw reginrc, lllcll: ::--
you want, and I will break their assignment,"'meaningthat Vancc rrt,_ '_ :
would reassignto Iran anyone Cutler wanted. What Cutler didn't t ! . -' -' _
know, of course,is that many of the people assignedto his team \s -'-
would be taken hostage in November and hcld for fifteen monrhs il ll -:-
-
Satan," saysCutler.The fact that the Iranian revolution was basedon ::- : -
Islam, not left-wing nationalism, was something that encouraged l: i i-
i ,,- ., -
--
Embassyofficialsdid talk to a limited number of mostly more moder- Tr,
wils a ncw experienccfor rne, suddenly being invcllvedin the intel- the lr.l:.
l i g e n c es i d c o f d i p l ornacy.as U.S. rr:.
Musli::
Wh i l e th e U n i tc c l S t ates prsseclon i ntel l i gence to d-remr.rl l ahs,i ncl ud- Sot ll, : . :
i rrg B e h c s h ti , i t g racl urrl l y bccanc cl c:rr that the' B azargi rns, Y azdi s, lncli.r:-.t
a n d Gh o tb z i rd e h s h acl vi rtual l y no pow cr, and thi rt the S hi i tc cl ergy 'lll'C ( l
- : : - . r intel- the Iranian revolution had run its course. By that, he meant strong
U.S. military ties to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,and Turkey, four
Muslim countries inside the arc, flanking U.S. support in Oman,
,,.hs.
includ-
Somalia,and Kenya, and U.S. basesin severalcountriesand in the
- ,:r:. Yarzdis, Indian Ocean."By late r978:'wrote Brzezinski,"I beganto pressthe
.:rriteclergy
'arc of crisis' thesis, [arguingl for a new 'security framework' to
,: ,n u'ith the
reassertU.S.power and influencein the region."-s1
'.:r.lthe rnili-
Brzezinskisaw the lossof the shahas "catastrophic,"accordingto
i:c rnilitary
Cottirm.At first Brzezinskiwanted an IranianPinochet,a military dic-
.rrc rrullahs
tator who would suppressthe Islamic revolution at an)i cost, but
: l o f llf l e?C h
when that becameimpossibleBrzezinskiopted for a "de facto alliance
with the forces of Islarnicresurgenceand with the regime of the
Islamic l{epublic of lran," wrote Cottam. "Stability was not even
' . '- n t()st su r -
implicitly lrisobjective.His primary concernwas to form an cffcctive
-. 'r c r-ra ti o nal
allianccin the regiot-the describedas an 'arc of crisis.'By
.1nti-Soviet
:- : -rrv co u p in
thc summer 9f r.17c1l\rz.ezinskiwas convinccd of the sincerityof
-- ; hr rn g cclhis Khon-rcini's
fierceanti-cornmunism. "'tz
. - - -. l r r' f rrrm
"t A few months lirtcr, il.r pursuit of tl-ratdream, Brzezinskirnet in
: --, of conflict
Algierswith Prime Mir-ristcrBirzargan,F'oreignMinister Yirzdi,and
-- -:, )lr cntircly
l)efenseMinistcr Mustirfa(]hamran.The timing, however,could not
: -..rrlbccnonc
havc been worsc. Weeks earlier. the Clartcr administration had
'.: . ,,rccltrying
allowcd thc dying shah,strickenwith citncer,to comc to Ncw York
'. - , .,. the situa-
for rncdicalcare.If was a rnovethat inflamedKhonreini'smost radical
followcrs,and Khomeini scizedon it to move againstthe Bazargan-
- rl n p()r- Yazdi faction in thc lranian governmcnt,just three days aftcr the
:: " i sccrc- cncolrnterin Algiers.What seemedat thc time tcl
Brzczinski-Bazargan
...r ior ::r be a spontancouslyassembledrnob of studentsinvadedthe grounds
: r c V ery of LJ.S.embassyin Teheran,irnd one of the most significantdiplo-
.: : r Irltr-t."
rnaticcriscsin U.S.historywas l:runched.With its dipkrmatscaprive,
.. : . l qrlit ' t S t
therc w:rs no possibilityfor dialoguebetweenthe Unitcd Statesand
. i: . lllld
--
lran. The lranian govcrnmcntmaintainedthe polite fiction that the
: :.. l t rvas
hostagctakerswere simply militant "studentsr"but there is no doubt
that the entirc action was carefully orchestratedby Khomeini and
.. for an all- his inner circle as a means of consolidatingthe political power of
. r'\ lr.l before the unofficial,parallelgovernmentthat had beengrowing in strength
L4z . I ) r . : v t t - 's GauP
alongsidethe official one. Vladimir Kuzichkin, the KGB station chief even m or -
in Teheran who defectedto the West a few years later, had direct St at es,t h-
from our sourceswho it was who sanctionedand then carried out the t hat t u't ' :
in par t L; : .
seizure of the etnbassy,"wrote Kuzichkin. "The seizurewas sanc-
I r an's st . '. :
tioned at the very summit of the Iranian leadership,and was carried
bilit v or : :
out by a trained team that consistedexclusivelyof membersof the
Guards."i'
(.orps of Revoluti()nery of f . Ft , r : :
.:.::ion chief even more alarming. Despitethe shah'sopen alliancewith the United
:- :rd direct States,the SovietUnion had grown comfortable dealingwith Iran on
''\\'e knew terms that, more often than not, were marked by the kind of respect
:: ::d out the that two neighboring powers give each other. In economic relations,
: ' . \'.1S S anC- in particular, the USSR and Iran got along well. More important,
,'.,l\ Cafried Iran's stability meant that Moscow did not have to worry about insta-
:. : : r s o f th e bility or irredentismon its flank in southwestAsia. Now, all betswere
off. For the first time since the r9zos, the Soviet Union started to
: , ir ho w to worry about Islam. And the United Stateswas planning to make sure
1 .. . bo o ks, it had somethingto worry about.
: :: : ho sta g e
l: :: ! -r t ha n a
:: - .: '.ch i e f o f
: : i. I o rd a n
: r : ur i ."
i :o t he
: \ 1.1\' t )e
. . .rrter
' . . iJ
,: ::c.
:t. : . : 1 ()n,too.
. :: t r t ] )resi-
: _). : 1 ( )lt s,
not
-.:r Tcheran
: :.rlkswith
^.,l
f
Ulri. i.r -^l
lr!4
: '.',.1sready.
._t::I a states-
:= - . : ] pL rts i n
: n q t on, lt
.. For the
. perhaps
th a t co ttl :::
of inflr.rcr-
inspir ecl Z
10
adviser . . i: -
I slam - r r t - . :
war ir t . \ : :
l l -tc L I
e r al hu: : : :
JIH A D l : THE "ARC OF ISLAM"
wit h Lr t : : -
Unt il . \ - r
t ht r t P, '. :
Af gh. r r - ': -
i-lccltttt. -.
pt t lr cr :
:.
Sltu,-lr : ,
Alt hr , . . - '
br r t . t . t - : .- .
TsE nEVo LUTIo N I N Iran collapsedthe more importanfof the two
I slr r r l- . : ': '
pillars holding up the American edificein the PersianGulf-thc other
: -: .
Cfr li'.
being Saudi Arabia-and sent Pentagonplannersand Central Intelli-
th r L ,..- - i
gence Agency analysts scramblir-rgto calculate its impact on other
l'.- . --
U.S. allies,on the region, and on the overall American presencein the
()f i :--: -' -
Middle East.From SaudiArabia to Morocco, Americanexpertsfranti-
cally scannedthe horizon to determineif, or when, the Khomeini phe-
$ i ::-. -, ,-
nomenon might replicateitself in other Middle Eastmonarchies.
But along with the threat from Khomeinism,someU.S.policy mak-
ersalsosaw opp()rtuni ty.
The emergenceof hard-coreIslamic fundamentalismas a govern-
ing force in Iran worried all of lran's neighbors-including its biggest,
the SovietUnion. The Khomeini regime was a volatile, unpredictable
new factor in the region, and some analystsbelievedthat the Islamic
resurgenceled by the Iranian ayatollah could inspire sympathies
insidethe SovietUnion's Muslim republics.That idea gavenew impe-
tus to long-held ideasabout using the Islamic right to undermine the
Soviet Union in its own empire, deep in Central Asia. At the same
time, plans were under way to useMuslim Brotherhood-linked orga-
nizationsin neighboringAfghanistanto underminethe Sovietstakein
libad I: Tbe " Arc of Islam" ' 24 j
threatenedto capturc Egypt and Algeria. The foundation for Al the RaPidDc:
was laid in theseycars. establishmcn:
Qaedaanclits terroristundergrouncl .l
Some of this, perhapsmost of it, was ignored by or invisiblettr lust weeKS - r - '
U.S. intelligenceand policy makers,who were starry-cyecl abor"rtthc when, in Jr lll'- -
prospectof dealinga body blow to thc SovictUnitx'rin Afghar-ristrn. be called "t l'''
Not only that, hut thc more radicalarnongLJ.S.officialssirw Cjentral claims ttl ri-.';
Asia ils the soft Muslim "urrderbelly"of the SovietUnion, and pic- Delano Ro. ''t '
tured thc disintegrationof thc USSR beginningin its ClentralAsiirn positicln [.'. ''':
what until the rgtlos had beerrrmercly a rtc()c()nscrvxtivcpipc clrcaln: Soviet Ur lr '
"'-
of the PcrsianGulf anclirs oil
the military occr-r1-rittion Thcre is ir
ficlds. I r t r 9[ 3o.t l'.
oil-rich (lcntral Asia. It wirs rr conflict thrt brougl-rtthc Unitcd Statcs Soviet L r-' -"
into ir part of thc worlcl which, until thc Igfios, lrry ot-ttsiclc thc U.S. r clucr r t t . t t : : -
Statescooperatccl
It continucdinto the r 99os,whcn thc LJnitccl with t her e er l': t :
the risc of thc militar-rtTaliben movernent.It lasted on into the int cr t lr i. : ''":
j- l
China, or both, in a strugglefor control of the oil and gas resources l ' . i Z-l t : '
'.r.irion for Al the Rapid Deployment Forceand the U.S. Central Command, and the
: -lf S. establishmentof new basessurroundingthe region.The processbegan
,- rnvisibleto just weeks after the Soviet Union moved troops into Afghanistan,
.'. icl about the when, in January r98o, PresidentCarter proclaimedwhat hascome to
' \fehanistan. be called "the Carter Doctrine," a forceful restatementof earlierU.S.
. srru'(lentral claims to the Persian Gulf that had been enunciated by Franklin
' :.n. anc-lpic- DelanoRoosevelt(rc+l) and Dwight D. Eisenhower(ry57). "Let our
! clttr:tl Asian position be absolutclyclear," said Carter. "An attempt by any outside
forceto gain control of the PersianGulf regionwill be regardedas an
assaulton the vital interestsof the United States."Aimed mostly at the
: r p l Pe cl rc ir m : SovietUnion, Carter'sannouncementwas, for thc most part, bravado.
- , . 1.. fh g rs 1* ' , In r9[io, thc UniteclStatesdid not havceventoken forcesin the Gulf to
: - "": :tt L J.S .t nili- repcl :rn attack by the USSR,and it lacked the ability to airlift and
. - . : i cr p rrr t s of sealiftthe U.S. military to the Gulf in an emergency.
Of course,the
- l. n i recl S t at es SovietUnion had no intentionof invadingor occupyingthe Gulf. lts
: . :.1 c tl -rcLJ . S . relucterntmove into Afghanistanin rc)7c)was taken as arlast-ditch
- '- - r.rn j i h e dr s t s dcfensiveactiorl against a carefully calcr"rlated
threat from Afghan
- . rr l tccl Ar r r y . lslarnistprovocatcursbackcd by the United Statesand Pakistan.If
..rrrrteclwitlt there existcdany threat to U.S. intercstsin the (lulf, it was entirely
: . - . - rn i n to t he internal,but even in this arcna U.S. cirplcitieswcrc suspect.Sliould
' : . : .r rra ss iv e lran or Iraq go to war againstthc Arab Gulf statesor shoulcla n-rili-
-
" : :n tl 'l l l A s ian tary coup in SaudiArabia unseatthe royal farnily,Anrerica'sability to
. ' . -..1 lc l.-asran cl reacteffcctivelywirs far from certain.
- : : . l rtrrv b as es l-rxrg l'reforcthe crisis in Afghanistan,there had been talk in the
. , '. ', n cckl a c c
of United St.rtesabout a U.S. invasictt'tof SaudiArabia and the occupa-
- r . co n fl i c t s of tion of its oil ficlds.This beganin the mid-r97os, aftcr the Arab oil
.- r i' l 'I{u ssia or ernbargoand fourfold increasein the priceof oil imposedby the Orga-
: - . -.1\ T CSO T t T C C S nization of Petrolcum FlxportingC<;untricsin r 973-74. Stratcgic
:' : r' h rrncl. Frtr, thinking about a U.S.military tnoveinto the Gulf originatedwith Sec-
-- retaryof StateHcnry Kissinger. In r975, an articleheadlined"Seizing
- . '- .i() a sse r . nblc
- '-:,tI cstate. Arab Oil" appearedin Harper's.The author,who usedthe pseudonyrl
-
: -. : l o n a n C lt hC Miles lgnotus,was identi{iedby the magazineas "a !flashington-based
: - . . : t rrv i l l l o wed professorand defenseconsultantwith intimatelinks to high-levelU.S.
-, : L. S. rl i l i tar y policy makers." Reputedly,the author was Edward Luttwak, a neo-
:-. I : rcu ,mi l i tar y conservativemilitary analystat the JohnsHopkins Schoolof Advanced
- . : r t i arca ti < ln( ) f InternationalStudies(though Luttwak deniesbeing its author). At
z4ll . I ) n v r l _ 's Clanar
:ert V. Tucker, Until Afghanisran's war, U.S. military planners knew that the
::ee'sCommen- united states didn't have the capability to rapidly dispatch tens or
::e of the Saudi hundreds of thousandsof U.s. forces ro rhe Gulf in the r97os, and
, .f:rmesAkins, America's naval presencethere was only a token force, despite the
:i. the Harper's bravado about occupying Arab oil fields. Along with announcing
':lic and politi- the carter Doctrine, Presidentcarter took stepsthat beganto give the
::rnging in Tex- United statesthe ability ro inrervenedirectly into the persian Gulf, if
',r'hotook note only in rudimentary form. carter ordered the creation of the Rapid
:hirt it had to Deployment Force (RDF), an "over-the-horizon" military unit capa-
\iru don't have ble of rushing at leastseveralthousandu.S. troops to the Gulf in a cri-
. :he sametime, sis. Under PresidentRonald Reagan,the RDF would be expanded,
transforming itself into the central command, a brand-newu.s. mil-
" rnd it eventu-
itary structurewith authority for the PersianGulf and the surround-
'ursionthat any- ing region, from East Africa to central Asia and Afghanistan.k was
;rirninal, or an the central command, or centcom, that fought the first persianciulf
J,that the back- war, the 2oor war in Afghanistan,and the zoo3 Iraq war.
{:nry Kissinger. But in r979, a massiveU.S. military presencein the Middlc lrast,
r<nowledged his the Gulf, and central Asia was jusr a gleam in the eye .f Zbigniew
,,'rvith IJusiness Brzezinski. For the national security adviser, the solution to the
r.:ro the Saudis, seething"arc of crisis" was the "arc of lslam."
r,r\sivepolitictrl
: io make thenr
:i they did not EysrNc Moscow's IsLAMrc ..UNDERBF_LLy',
l:ritude toward
:tory told by a The ideaof mobilizingIslam againstthe USSRhad a long hist'ry dur-
-rn Gulf in the ing the cold war. F.r the most part, it was viewed skepticaily by
:: to intimidate mainstreamu.s. strategisrs,especiallyduring the r9_5osand r96os.
:() was heading $Torkingagainsrthe notion that SovietMuslims might be induced or
. have tcl tcach cncouragedto revolt against rule by Moscow was the fact that the
:. "Pick one of Soviets seemed ro have succeededin pacifying its central Asian
',crnmentthere, republics,colonizing Russiansettlersthere, forcibly relocatingMus-
:;r.rl:"The idea lim ethnic populations,and suppressingMuslim religiousmovemenrs.
ii got out to the In addition, it was a remote region, limiting united Statesaccessto
:r'glon,not One the population. But in the r97os severalfacrorscombined to provide
. .\nd Kissinger strongerargumentsto those who, for many years,had sought to play
the Islam card againstMoscow. ln t97o, a censustaken in the Soviet
z5o . D p v r r - 's Ge,up
. :rrral Asia was From time to time, hard-line Cold \Tarriors would call for an inren-
::.: other Soviet sification of the U.S. propaganda and even subversionaimed at the
-:. Ln Iran cata- Central Asian republics.For example,in r958, Charles'W'.Hosrler,a
:-.l politics, in former u.s. intelligence officer, wrore in the Middle East Journal that
-: lrcs. And sud- "the soviets actively fear combined anti-Sovietaction by the Turkish
:::lble to a rag- peoples" in Asia, that NATO-linked Turkey could inspire rheseMus-
t.: emergedas a lims to "political independencefrom the Soviets,"and that "the rWest
must interest itself more in thesepeoplesand their aspirations." He
i U.S. officials called for an expansionof u.s. radio broadcastsin central Asian lan-
.::;r administra- guagesand an expansionof U.S. governmentfunding for "researchin
..:.::onal
centerof the CentralAsian and Caucasianpeoples,areas,and languages."4
i,i!1on,an inter- In the 196os,Brzezinskihimselfjoined the ranks of thosecalling
. ,t Brzezinski's for strongerU.S. support for Central Asian Muslims. GeneSosin,for-
'i:ir-nent,Penta- mer director of program planning for RFE/RI,, noted:
,i:: PaulHenze,
:=i ri-ith a close- Zbigntew Brzezinskiwas a consistentsupporterof Radio I.ree
i iong believed Europeand Radio Liberty.But he did not alwaysagreewirh some
: ,rl the USSR. of our policies. This became evidentin earlyr966, whenour CIA
:r rhe creation sponsorsaskedhim to join [inl a confidenrial analysisof borh
radios.. . . ProfessorsBrzezinski
and [MIT's Williaml Griffithcrit-
:r-parallel to
icizedRadio Liberty'snationalitypolicy,which they felt was roo
Sovietbloc
passive.They arguedfor adoptinga more militant line in rhc non-
Russianbroadcasts, which would stimula(eanti-Russian antas()-
:'.rrls56start in nism.5
:'.; Radio Free
': \ationalism As a scion of a P.lish elite family, Brzezinskiwas a militant a'ti-
.:. it'tto Central communist who saw the Soviet Union as a powerful but fragile
ii.rzakh, Tajik, mosaic of seethingethnic and religious minoriries. Ar the NSC, he
:.l.Asusdeskin assembleda team of aidesand consultantswho wanted to exacerbate
-,,,
r're limited tct conflicts insidethe SovietUnion in order ro hastenits fall. According
,r rnix of news to Robert Gates, a senior CIA official who later becamethe CIA,s
n e, in cl u d i ng director,the StateDepartment was cauriousabout getting inv'lved in
- : hc r re l i g i o ns , supportingdissidentminorities in SovietCentral Asia. "Brzezinski,on
: i s . in ke e p i ng the other hand, was deeply interested in exploiting rhe Soviets'
t: , t; dca sts co n - nationalitiesproblemr" wrote Gates,in his memoirs. "He wanted tr,r
:r: tt on th a t was pursuecovert action."6
The core of the Brzezinski-Henze
N\WG were acolyresof Alexandre
z1z . l ) E v r r - 's (le,ral
. : :-a .l l I
SiuccIw<rrldlfar III sorne.rdersh:rvebecomem()rcand rn're
of
' - : it . rt a n infr-rsecl
with with thc result that irny nati'nalist
'ati":rlisrn,
m()vemert-cvenprogressivc-which is boundto emergewill be
' . t t lc fh c
srronglyi'fluenced by the traditi.naristconservative icrea.f
. - .. t r . l th a t
Sufisnr.
Tharsuchrl movemcntwill cnrerge is bey''cl cloubt.ll
. -, . l r h a t l
. .:: ; . rlSL r t i Ilennigsen,and in hrs circle, urged rl srrorger U.S. effort to
. t'.1I'tl]
'thers
encouragepolitical Islan-rin thc Sovietrepublicsro revolt, even
though,
: r :: lf l l cl O US
as Bcnnigsenwrotc, the most likely would be ..pr'bably, a
:: : j\C l l r it 'rtcomc
conservafivc Islamicrardicalism comparablcto thrrtof the present_day
: . ;rrrcked 'lslamic Rev'luti.'' in lr:lrr."l2 Bennigsen's rather cavirlierattitucle
:.:irngs <tf t.ward the emergence radical-rslamist
' -- : .! l , 1 l len- 'f llovernmentsrn central Asia
prcciselyparalleledBrzczinski'sbeliefthat the unitccl States
ought to
*: :{ l ' O Und fosterthe sprcad.f Islamisrnin Afghanistanwithout worrying
ab'ut
:: ,,rclsled the conseclr-renccs.
:::.rl Asia: "In the t97os1Bennigscnand I taught rr seminar.n
Sovietnation-
': ,tllr' ality affairs," says Jererny Azrael, auth.r of Emergent Nationality
: rhe I'roblems in the u.t,sR ( rc)77).The university of chicago program
) ,\ I e t proclr"rced a cohorr of expcrts on soviet central Asia and Islam,
- - .trtr. mostly followers of Bennigsen'scontroversial the'ries, ano
some,
::l . t n includingPaul Goble,becamenoted crA analysts.n the topic.
Azrael
:.54 . Dr.vrr_,s (i nvE
strategist,and futurc
tl { ': --'
U'S. :rrnbassirdor t. Afghrrnistan-wrote a paper in whrch he suggested
u ::.'
thc prrblcms thirt Khrmeini's regimehad createdfor
the uSSR. ,.Thc Ill-L
t_
"
:
_
Asia, which might rcach roo million by the year 'f I)rrt.1.' 1'
zooo_where
despitc.fficial a*empts at assirniration, Isramicconsciousress ttl { t-:.. =
forns a kind of cclunterculture a'cr rnaybe susceptibre i ' c c :' .
to Muslim -
agitatio'rif the Sclviets
c,ntinue t. makewar on their ethnicand :; )'-
religiouscounterpartsacrossthe border.. . . Hostility
to the sclvr-
etsmay incre:rse generally in Muslimcounfries andgroups.ls
the rnid-
CIA station chief in Turkey in
: -r-I was on careerincludeda stint as r98os
views' He earnedrenown in the
\...tronalities rgTos,heldradical and offbeat
for the discreditednotion that the
','.-rra at first as one of the leading advocates
were behind the attemptedassassina-
in Cen-
:...:rs ussR and Bulganan intelligence
as t958'
by a Turkish fascist'r{'Asearly
: -..rtionwith tion of Pope John Paul II refer-
SovietUnion's "shamil problem"'
: :.nsvisiting Henzewrotean artlcle on the
Muslim resistanceleader who opposed
,.:r()nin Iran ring to a nineteenth-century
Henze' like Bennigsen) was inspiredby
Russianexpanslonin Asia' Llnion
eventuallythe collapseof the Sovict
-: i i t l l e of the Shamil and believedthat
ln his r95tl article'Henzewrote:
,-.::.ichalleng- could beginin CentralAsia'
:: :ht-rulesof for SovictCommunists' howevcr'ttl
- :hc United It will be extremelvdifficult
"anti-colonial"policyfor several
continuetheir activepro-Arab
: : . t t l pl rti C u - of provokingunrcstamongtheir
yearswithou' "'n"tni thc risk
Shenrildclrate
,- : ( )r a n a n ti - own Caltcastan ancl(lt'ltt"l Asian peoples'The
intelligentsir
inclirred
narionalisric:rlly
: :: lon. Afte r showsthat ar.rnt.lr, p.,rua, LJniotlts
al'n()n!! thescpe<lples'''' The Soviet
Zalmay l-rasagilindevelopecl the clay
of its <lwtl'though
:.. r n c l fu tu rc nttt immunefrorn Algeriansituatiotrs
which are still in an irrcipient stagcmigl.rtreachsuch
r ::. \Llggestcd when issues
ProPorti()nsis stil l fer off 'l-
, i :5R. "Th e
' ,. : rrt e . "Th c
ltlnger scemcd so far off to Benttigscrr'
: Irrrq and By the latc r 97os, it no
:. \ ri. - t ."Ia He
Brzezinski,andHenze.TheyjtlinedftlrceswithRichardPipes,lltlothcr
Central
who hacl becrrwritirrg about
advocateof the lslarnic card' l9''os'
to the Sovict Union sincethe
Asiar-rMuslims and the threat
': * llleS t l C including",*.,-oo,.analysispublisheclir-rtheMiddleLast.|ournaltrt and
of Sovict Central Asia: Trcrrds
\ '. r c t s as r 95 5 cntitled: "Muslims
areaof ClentralAsia' includ-
:: t . c l l t f al Prospects." In it, Ptpeswrote: "Thc entirc
always
which RussianCentral Asia has
: : - rv h c r e ing ChinescTu'kt't'n with the direc-
well tend to movc with time in
beenclosely.n'-t'-tttttd'may
. . ' t t S n eS S
-
: \ l r rs linr
tionofindependentstatehclod.[tisntltincclnceivablethatthisvasttcr-
l1fld i" a new Turkic' Muslim state
ritory may some day bc enconrpa::t-tl
:: : -:llC
that Soviet
: '. 1 S ovi- East'" ls Pipes'who oncewrote
orientedtoward the Middlc
..."plud. into genocidalfury" againstMoscow,leals<l
Muslims would
Central Asia'
nationalitiesproblem in Soviet
wrote extensivelyon the
PipesassLlmed
pte'ident ReaganreplaceclCartcr in rgtlr'
: \ 1ng G ro u p ' and when
Working Group'
: : : . : lZ e.Wh OSe chairmanshipof the Nationalities
(i A ME
LS 6'D P vtr,'s
in Asia
might underminethe USSR
ln r97.1,the theorY that Islam Arabia offi-
States'Pakistan' and Saudi
becamepracticc' The Unitecl in
the
launchecl t'lu*l't jihad that thrcatenedthe governrnerrt
cially ancl
Union into invading Afghanistan'
Kabul, provoked the Soviet tied
The Afghan war' for Brz-ezinski'
spawned the ten-yearcivil war' of Islam" in
was his idea of an "arc
two conceptstogether'The first
Fawaz Gerges'
argainstthe USSR' As
southwest Asia, as ' bu"it'
Islam' wrote:
author rtfAmerica and Political
arr
said Brzez'irrski'dictared
Containing Sovret Cornmunisn.r' to the
split Israrnicopposition
avoidanceor nnyrni,a-thut,r-,ight "It now
c<l.rfrontation:
rr-rilitary
Soviets,.rpttiutty n fj'S'-ttnni-
to forge an anti-sovietIslamic
seemedto me 'io"-tt-'O"ttant hopedto
r96os'the UnitedStates
coalition."As ln the r95osand tn'
their athtist
uselslam ugui""-'uaiii, "tul"'forces^and lllt' the
officialsnow recognized
SovietUnion' Carter administration
w.ith Islamic resurgenceand
new possibilitiesfor cooperation
and materialresourcesagarnst
hoped to harnessits icleoiogical
in U'S' officials' nrinds
Communtstexpansionisrn'Uppermost was
and r96os' when Islam
were the lessonsof the r95os secular'
weapon in the fight against
employedas an icleological
pan-Arabnationalism'20
JibadI: The " Arc Of Islam' /57
- - : ( c n tr? I nowhere, when they began receiving official cIA support. l,ong
.- . : t l wi th before rg7g, the Islamic right had emergedas a potent force inside
L l . i. r mi sts Afghanistan,where,from the rg5os on, it did battlewith progressive,
:, . ': Ci l n b e left, and secularforcesin Kabul. America'sconnectionto the Muslim
..: : r r 1n Asi a Ilrotherhood-linked Islamic fundamentalistsin Afghanistanbeganat
I . : rcch n ya , leastas early as rhe rg,5os,and u.S. support for the Islamic right's
politicalmovementin the country beganas far back as rc)73'
Although the CIA did not have a great presencei1 Afghanistanin
\i7ar,it did dispatcha team therc thrgugh
the early decadesof the Cold
thc officcsof the Asia Foundation,a CllA fr6nt 11rganiz:rtign. l)uring
the r95osand r 96os,the Asia Foundati<trt provicledsignificantsupport
..i" rn Asia to Kabul Llniversityand had severalmodest proiccts thirt dcalt with
offi-
.:.:.rbrir Afghanistan'sorganizcd Muslirn community. According to Johrr and
,: -:l l l l e n t in RgseBirnnigan,longtimeAsia Foundationofficialswho wgrkcclfor the
.:. -l , l l l . ilnC l foundatiorrir-rbgth Pakistanand Afghanistanin the t96os, the 6rg.rni-
;. :.ki, tied zatign helpeclthe Islamic ResearchInstitute in l.ahore, Pakistrrn,to
: i.lrrnr" in pu$ish the Urdu Encyclopediaof Islam. "'We were also involveclwith
, , ., - ,' LrCf $e Sr through the departmentsof Islamic the<llog5"
the maj6r ur.rivcrsities,
the Brlnrlil]rlrls
end Afgherristen.
.johrr[hrrniBrlnsrys. In hoth Prkistlrr
wgrked with student groups to combat pro-Sovietstudent org.tniza-
tigns."Thc studcntswcre targetnumberone," he says.In Afgh.rnisten,
I . ::.1 il l l
: . :at ll ilr.
for U.s. policy until well into the following decade."when I was there
in tg57, Afghanistanwas alreadya Sovietclient state," saysa former
258 . I ) r v r l 's GauE
senior CIA official. "They wanted me to find out everything I could dentsand ::
about the Sovietpresencein Afghanistan,becausePresidentL,isenhower by manr.,':
wanted a study of the importanceof the country to U.S. strategyand its ies of thc t
'W'roteRo'.:
relevancein Washington." But the study proved only that Afghanistan
was not vcry important. "We concluded that there wasn't any rele-
vance,"he says."Even if the Sovietstook it over,therewas no greatrisk The "::
yeilr , :
to the United States."2lStill,in the r96os, the Asia Foundationmain-
d e n t.;.
tained a presencein Afghanistan, with two or three permanent U.S.
" tr l .:
staffersand perhapsa dozenor more U.S.advisersand consultants.22
Po l r l :- :
During the r96os, the Islamist movement in Afghanistan under- m u a :'-
went a slow but steady politicization. Although Afghanistan society figh:.::
had alwaysbecna conservative, traditional one in which Islam playeda A lrl- :
centralrole, the versionof Islam that prevailedin the country,at least n i sl ..::
Led
:- :.: I could dents and threateningviolenceagainsttheir political opponents.
by many of the samemen who would , tn :l979,becomethe beneficiar-
: l:.e nhower
.:.iv and its ies of the cIAs largesse,they also began open political agitation.
--.:Ehanistan Wrote Roy:
:': :ny rele-
:. qreatrisk The "professors"greatlyinfluencedtheir pupilsand in r965' the
::::()nmaln- yearof the foundationof the communistparty, the Islamiststu-
dentsdemonstrated openlyby distributinga leafletentitled. . . the
:.-t.:entu.s.
"tract of the holy war." The period from :.965to t'972was one of
-. :.rnts.22 political turmoil on the campusat Kabul' ' ' ' They were verv
::.1;.1Llnder-
much opposedto communism,and a great number of violent
.:-,:l SOCiety fightsbrokeout on Kabul campusbetweenthem and the Maoists'
- ..- ^1..,-,.t a.
:--:
I' rdlLu Althoughat the beginningthey wereoutnumberedby the commu-
nists,the Islamists'influencesteadilyincreased and they gaineda
: ::-.. .lt least
-- .: l.lI l maiorityin the studentelections of t97o'24
WdS 2
; ': t l t ttside
dispatch
::-. Brother- As early as June r97o, a confidential State Department
religious
:: . 'z . lt io n o f from the u.S. embassy in Kabul identified Afghanistan's
Mujadiddis' as a
i-- \tghan leadership,in particular the clerical family of the
.:. ,: Z r -da n d strong ,.tiu" force. It concluded that agitation by the mullahs
"nd
.,setback the leftist cause)at leastin thc countryside" and that "rcli-
: :iJnlzers
vividly demtln-
'.,..11'rethey gious conservatism,for the first time in many years'
government must
:r ,\ enlent. strated that it remains a force with which .the
.,The mullahs are reliably reported to have agrcedto con-
J :\ pert o n contend."
embassy'spolitical
l, :: l anrsta n tinue the good fight in the provinces," wrote the
efforts to keep the
:. i.tme to officer. "Here, in Kabul, there have been some
He added,with some
.-i : : I osq u e , flame of religiousfervor burning in the bazaat..,
not be known for
' -t )\'ement irony given future developments:"It will probably
militancy has'"25
,: : r ' ligio u s sometime how much stayingpower the clerical
movement in the early
.: J ir.rture Among the leadersof the Afghan Islamist
was affiliatcd
rnd th e r97os were Abd.,l Rasul Sayyaf,whose organiz-ation
Burhanuddin Rab-
with the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia;
-: .
: Ir called
led maior components
bani; and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, all of whom
to Roy' "The movement
:: .,\cre fol- of the jihad forces in the r98os' According
Youth' and a more secret
.-): -1t ]Ira
. q, functioned on an open level, the Muslim
leaderof "the professors,"
:. - . r ls r stu - level,centeredupon the 'professors."'The
260 . D e v t t . 's Gaus
i l fotl l l !t : ':
\x/hatwent alrn'sr it r r r lct t . : : .
unnrticeclin trrc excltement.f alresccl
pilk-
i s ta n i i n v o l v e n rc -nw t a s fhc fact that D aoLrdw i l s Af gh. inr . :
IrLrrri l l ld,r1y1l
l 1r
rn a r.ri fe s ta ti c .f l n " i n tcrnati oni rl " l sl arn.
A fgha' nati ol ral s w h' C C l l tf rl L. : .' '
w e rc ri n g l e a d e rsi ' th e i nsurge' cy, i n addi ti .n
to bei ng pers()rs rcbclc,': :-
allegecllysubverted by pakrstani ai'rs, werc
rcp.rtedry rncnrrrers JS l l l l -1 1 . ' . -:
.f ' ' ' th e Mu s l i m B r' therhrrd, and i t w as
the l l r' rherho.d as
part ()f a larger group that was said to have Brtirircr..-.
entereclan agreement
rv i th P a k i s ta n ' sc h i e f o f i ntel l i gence,C i eneral refcrr..-:
l ai l ani .tl
l ) Li : -
t unf ol. l. , - . -
Inside Afghanistan' however, the vacillating
Daoud began to tilt .1i,-l1'.t-r':
right, under pressure from the United
states, the shah of lran, and paki- l. 1. e. t ' ,
s ta n . Be tw e e n r9 7 S a n d r97g, D aoud sw i tched
si cl es,breakrng deci _ ( rIrrr,. .' . : -
sively with his left-wing supporrers and
embracing the army and !LC.1i, -
Afghanistan's conservative establishment.
In r976, Daoud met with l.lLlllvl : -
the shah and Prime Minister Bhufto,
and in response he began ro
install right-wing officers and other pro-wesrern
leaders in key posrs.
By r978, Afghan government death squads
started assassinatingleftist
JihadI: The"Arcof Islam" ' L63
::---..: --
- :ushed field manual for Morocco, there were eight pageson Islam and poli-
..tv that tics, he says."I'd tell my caseofficers:Know it cold. And when they
: :.: Sadat were talking to an Islamist,I told them to say: 'I don't understandthis
or that.'And then listen."3The conclusionreachedin Morocco, as for
'-: .:.I . -i irom other states,w21sthat there was nothing to worry about.
At the CIA, Martha Kesslerwas one of the few analystswho con-
- :'.i -\\'lng
' :'.q tlp to sistendypaid attentionto political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the ficld, shesays,many CIA operativesmissedit, becausethe most
--.:r israel 'World
,. - l : , l r g tl Of were organizingunder the radar. "rWehad a
militant Islan-rists
:: :'l . Z. 1 tiO ll. War il-era systcmof just plopping our officialsdown in capital cities,
: :-;.1 $'ith irnd the Islamistmovementwasn't happeningin those cities,it was
--- l:. llc - lllld happerringout in thc country and in small towns." In her opinion, it
was taking on a decidedlyanti-Americancharacter.She wrote an
.,:,,,Lrldbe rrnalysisat the time wirrning that when governmentssuch as Egypt,
Sudan,and Pakistanbeginto play ball with Islamists,it would have
- : i L l n d e r-
-' :: lr rl ffcct profound conseqllenccs. "I said that whcn governmentsin the region
: - : l. le rn i sts stirrteclrnaking efforts to co-opt the Islamists,it would change the
:- - ': rti n u e cl characterof tlroselaovernrncnts," shcsays."l was of thc schoolthat it
. -. rllr'.i l n cl woulcl be largely anti-Westernin tone."a Necdlcssto say, Kessler's
:'- . r\ . "WC policy makersfrom the Afghanjihad.
analysisdiclnot dissuacle
: - . - . lsl rl n t," The samc view prevailedarnong U.S. governmentcounterterror-
"After thc Sadatassassination,
ism professior-rals. I was in the coun-
:. : : liLrrry Of terterrorisnr centcr," srlys Robcrt llacr, a former CIA operative. "l
:: , , \ 'i d e a n cilmeilcrosssomedocumcnts,sontctrial transcriptsfor lthc assassins
of Saclatl,and I started:rskirrg,Who arc thesepeople?What's their
-. \ r nc lth c
,: : l ica te n e d irgcncla?What's thc connection?I startedkroking for clocumentsolr
I l: Il l t e f I lill the MLrslirnBrothcrhood." ISut,he says,"It just wasn't in our con-
sciotrsncss "'
to go rtiter thcscpe<lple.
: . :: . \\'e f C f lO t
- : : r he CIAs
So the jihaclin Afghanistanerpandedinto a full-scalewar. And the
274 . D n . v r r 's Gavr,
'Sfar,
Reagan team, preoccupiedwith the Cold struck a deal with zealotsbc-:-
Iran's ayatollahsin r98o, winked as Israel armed Iran from r98o to U.S. carg, i
1987, gave Khomeini's regime secret intelligenceabout the Iranian suppliest, ::
left, and finally, in the Iran-contra affat, actually sold U.S. arms to "Fqv
-D.
nr'r'-r' -' - __
,,
eventu.rii'.
F,-.--.-.
-5.' f '
Tns Anae ATcHANS - \ num b; : :
dent r o : : : - :
The war in Afghanistan was fought, for the most part' by the rh.rt the.. ,'.=
mujahideenof the fractiouscoalition backedby Pakistanand made up L- nit c. l >: . , : =
mostly of guerrillasassociatedwith one of four fundamentalistorgani- r r d of . , : : . . :
zations. "In Afghanistan," says a former CIA official who ran the IllOSf r tl li :1
I
covert operation, "there were about 3oo,ooo fighters, all of whom, --at,- -- -
fighting from other parts of the world, especiallyfrom Egypt, Jordan, l L:" 1:-: : -
-,.\^ _
Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf. These would be the raw material for
Osama bin Laden and the fledglingAl Qaeda organizationthat grew
out of the jihad. The so-calledArab Afghans included bin Laden him-
self, Ayman al-Zawahiri of Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda'ssecond-
in-command,and tens of thousandsof jihadistsfrom the Arab states,
Indonesia,the Philippines,Chechnya,and other far-flung corners of
the Muslim world.
They were the guerrillaswho, after the war was over, went home
to Algeria, to Egypt, to Lebanon,to SaudiArabia, and to Central Asia
to continue the jihad,. Many, of course, learned terrorism skills-
sabotage,car bombs-at the hands of the United States
assassination,
and its allies.
In January r98o, Brzezinskivisited Egypt to mobilize Arab sup-
port for the jihad.'Within weeks of his visit, SadatauthorizedEgypt's
full participation, giving permission for the U.S. Air Force to use
Egypt as a base,supplying stockpilesof Egyptian arms to the rebels,
and recruiting, training, and arming Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
activistsfor battle. "Sadat and his governmentbecame,for a time, vir-
tual recruiting sergeantsand quartermastersto the secret army of
lihad ll: Into Central Asia . 27 \
::al with zealotsbeing musteredto fight the Sovietsin south and central Asia."7
'. i 9 80 to U.S. cargo planes took off from Qena and Aswan in Egypt, ferrying
: :' lranian suppliesto the jihad basesin Pakistan,and, accordingto John Cooley,
). ,rrmsto "Egypt's military inventories were being scoured for Soviet-supplied
arms to sendto the jihad. An old arms factory near Helwan, Egypt, was
eventuallyconvertedto supply the samekind of weapons.,'8
Egypt-and other Arab counlliss-supplied more rhan weapons.
A number of counrriesin the Muslim world decidedit would be pru-
dent to send Islamist militants to rhe Afghan war, perhaps thinking
,:: . bv th e that they were killing two birds with one stone:they were pleasingthe
: : : r. rd e u p United States,which was looking for recruirs,and they were geting
:. .: : C )r$ a n i - rid of somerroublemakers. sadat,like other leaders,perhapsfelt that
most of them would be killed during thc jihad. "Muslim governmenrs
. : *'h o m, emptiedtheir prisonsand sentthesebad boys over there," saysa CIA
*. .. : . . "r'Th e official who spentseveralyearsas sration chief in pakistan during rhe
'l ,,.lt to the jihad.'Nrt only were thcy packagedand shippedto Afghanisran,bur
., ^_..- r , , ..1 .- they receivedexperttraining from U.s. SpecialForces.
ll,ru4rrr "By rhc end of
: -,:.nirl for r9flo," wrote Cooley,"U.S. military trainerswerc sent to Egypt tcr
: ::rrt grcw impart the skills of the U.S. SpecialForcesto rhoseEgyptianswh<r
- .:Jcnhim- would, in turn, passon thc training to th.: Iigyptianvolunrcersflying
i ,t . s r ' COnd- to the aid of the mujahidecnin Afghanisran. "l0
-l - : lr rf
'tfeq
The British, for whom Afghanistan was thc playground for the
a - 'rrlerstlf Great Game of the nineteenthcentury and who had long-standing
colonialtics to Pakistan,had an cxtensivehistory of dealingwith thc
'.,.;rtthome tribes and religirus leadersrf thc Pakistan-Afghanisran area. Gus
-: :,rrll Asia Avrak.trs, a cIA official closely involved with the jihad f'r years,
.. ::, rkills- reported that the British "have guys who have Iived over there for
: ::d States twenty yearsas journalistsor authors or tobaccogrowers, Iandl when
the Soviets invaded, MI6 activated these old networks." Added
. .\rlb sup- Avrakotos:
::rJ F-gvpt's
:- c to use The Brits were able to buy things that we couldn't, becauscit
::rc rebels, infringedon murder,assassinationand indiscriminatebombings.
t: ,rherhood They could issuegunswith silencers.\Wecouldn'tdo that because
: ,t ilme, vlr- a silencerimmediatelyimpliedassassination-andheavenforbid
:: : Jfmf Of car bombs!No way I could evensuggestit, but I could sayto the
276 . Dr , v t r 's GerlE
: , : '. ,..ts re a l l y Afghan mujahideen were also rrained inside the united Srates,
: t : : iop l e ."l beginningin r98o under Brzezinski'soversight,ar various u.S. facili-
,.-r: elways
ties on the East coast, by Green Beretsand u.s. Navy SEALs. ,,The
deadly secrerswhich rrainers of the Afghan holy warriors passedon
numbered over sixry. They included the use of sophisticatedfuses,
- - . . . rn d th e lik e
timers and explosives, automatic weapons with armor-piercing
:-: '. ' b re ca m eA l
ammunition, remote-controldevicesfor triggering mines and bombs
1 . ,'- : : . i to Org a niz e
(laterusedin the volunteers'home countriesand againstthe Israelis)
. . . - lr rc'cti o n,t he
Iand] strategicsabotage,demolition,and arson."l8
. - lr ) rlloUnt Car
The Afghan war unfolded in severalphases.It started slowly, and
' : -,
- it ic'S,u su ally over the first five yearsthc u.S. objectivewas not to win the war) nor
, - : : Sre ve C oll.
t' defearthe SovietUnirn and force its withdrawal, but simply to
:- : : : th c q u alm s
bleedthe ussR, embarrassir, and win prrpaganda points. In r9g4,
'. : . ol d i crs w ho
hrwever,pr.dded by Rcp. charlie wilson and with casey,senthusi-
asticsupp'rt, clA funding of the war-and saudi Arabia'smatching
' , :. : scd a t Kabul
grants-rose rapidly.Fundingfor the jihad in r984 totaled$z5o mil-
: - - rf ..tse b o m b
li'n, "as much as all thc previousyears combined."leAnd it con-
- - . r ro L rg hb us i-
tinued tcr skyrocket:$47o rnillion in r986, $6jo rnillion in r9g7.
- : : irc te rro r is t s
The United statcsalso worked hard to bring orher counrriesint, the
: : -. rvcr sto p. " l4
wirr, includingchina. Accordingto charles Frecman,who servedas
r . .,c deviccs to
u.S. ambassad'r to chin:r, "From r98r to r9g4, there was about
,' ,: - : rt r. ci g a ret t e
$6oo million from Beijingin arms f'r Afghanisran,"sirysFreeman.2,
- . ; lc b o mbs t o
- Not'r-rly did c]aseyexpandthe Fundingfor the war, but hc grew more
- . - . , i' o fC l S."Y eS .
ambitious in his g.rrls. Now seekingvict.ry, hc s.ught to provide
' . . r: : : . l ccn b o m bs
nrorcsophisticatecl
w.:aponryro thc mujahidcen,includingthc Stinger
ground-ro-airrnissilcs that allegedlyhad a dccisivcimpacton the mil-
': , . : . t ttf sL ric ide
itary dimer-rsion
of the conflict.2l
As the jihacl cxpanded i' both goals and scope, more and more
Arabs and foreignerswere drawn in. various Arab governments,
. - . ir n . Al g e - 'ther
including Egypt anclSar"rdiArabia, inrernarionalorgirnizationsticd to
: '. : : i lv d i ffe r-
- : - , : hc rr o w n
the Islan-ricright-such as the Muslim Br.therhoocl, the Muslim
: - :'.rrIl] eS df ld
\forld Leagne,the InrernationalIslamic Relief organization, and the
:-. , : : liha d i sts, Tablighi .farnaar,a Pakisran-based
Islamic missionary organization-
: : . , , 'r ks. n e ve r ran campaignsro recruit jihadis. It was osama bin Laden'sdream
corne trlre: Muslim fundamentalistgroups mobilizing worldwide tcr
to a
According to Scheuer,bin Laden and Azzamwerewell connected
Muslim
host of other Islamic-rightcharities,including IIRO and the
'srorld jihad, the
League.According to cIA officialsinvolved with the
in recruiting
cIA did not directly engagewith Azzam and bin Laden
effort. Robert
Arab volunteers,although the cIA did not opposethe
ways
Gates,then the CIA director,revealedthat "the CIA examined
noth-
ro increasetheir participation." Although no action was taken,
ing was done to discouragethe "Arab Afghans," either'28
jihad was his-
As the CIA beganto figure out long after the Afghan
only source
tory, the joint U.S.-Saudifunding for the war was not the
refersto
of cash for the muiahideen,as the $6oo million that Scheuer
Broth-
indicates.Privateand semi-privatedonationsfrom the Muslim
of it was
erhood and its apparatus poured into the iihad, and none
ISI provided
subject to even the minimal oversight that Pakistan's
According to
over the distribution of the U.S. and Saudi largesse.
jihad pennedby
Afghanistan:The Bear Trdp, ariveting accountof the
a parallel
a former Pakistaniintelligenceofficeq Mohammad Yousaf'
with
war supply systemdevelopedoutsideofficial channels'complete
and a significantpart of it was funded
freelancersand wheeler-dealers,
that saved
with private Arab donations. "It was largely Arab money
individuals
the system,"wrote Yousaf."By this I mean cashfrom rich
government
or private organizationsin the Arab world, not Saudi
gettingto
funds.'s7ithoutrheseexrra millions the flow of arms actually
is it all
the Muiahideenwould have beencut to a trickle. The problem
went to the four Fundamentalistparties'not the Moderates'"2e
Rasul
In particular,Yousaf wrote, a lot of the cash went to Abdul
and one
S"yy"i, the chief.Muslim Brotherhood activistin Afghanistan
society
of the lslamist"professors"who helpedto organizethe secret
along with
that emergedin the tg6osand early r97os' It was Sayyaf'
whose
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar-the fanatical muiahideen leader
in the
Islamic Party was the largestand fiercestof the organizations
jihad-who were closestto Osama bin Laden'
lion's share
Sayyaf,Hekmatyar' and other fundamentalistsgot the &
to the
of the Arab money becausea large part of it was transferred
Group
mujahideenthrough the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic
Jihad II: Into Central Asia . z8 t
to a
- :-.nl-cted of Pakistan,the Islamist political party that was createdby Abul-Ala
Muslim
,"---:i'r.- Mawdudi.3oThe Islamic Group (Jamaat-eIslami), founded rn r94o,
: :rc jihad,the had spent much of the r95os and r96os battling Pakistan'sleft and
-:' rl recruiting secularists.In the r97os, the Islamic Group becamemore powerful as
- - ,-:rrr[. Robert it absorbedsurplus petrodollars funneledits way by the Gulf Arabs,
: , ,:rtiltedways and it helped push Pakistan to the right in the r97os, under Prime
,' ,. :.rketr,noth- Minister Zulfi.qarAli Bhutto and GeneralZia ul-Haq. "The Muslim
Brotherhood was spreadingits money around," says SeligHarrison,
rvashis-
.',.r,.1 an expert on south Asia and the co-author of Out of Afghanistan.
: rrtlt'Source According to Harrison, the head of the Islamic Group was relatedto
., -: .lcl rcterstrl Zia, and he worked closelywith them and helpedthem, and many of
- - '.1,r'limBroth- the key playersin the ISI and the military were membersof the Islamic
.' :rc of it was Group. Through the Muslim World l-eagueand other Muslim Broth-
-
:" I\l providcd erhood elementsin the Gulf, money had startedto flow to the coffers
i - rccorclingt<l of the mujahideen even before the Soviet invasion of Afghanisran,
rJ pennedby says Harrison. "It was all done through Pakistan,with the help of
: . ..rf. rr parirllel Rabitat Ithe Leaguel,and theJamaat-eIslamiwas gettingrich, too."rr
,. -,,nrplctewith At the time, virtually no one sensedthe importance of bin Laden
' ' r: \\'ils fundecl and Az.zam,and the non-Afghan jihad volunteersseemedlike a minor
' r f \ th rrt sa v ec l part in the mobilization of several hundred thousand Afghan
- -
'Warjihad
- rr
i n cl i vi d uals mujahideen.The CIA was so fixated on its Cold that it never
.:--,.: goVernlTlent stopped to consider the consequencesof .empowering a worldwide
: - . -. . rll v g etti ng t o Islamistarmed force.And, in the meantime,Bill Caseywas busy open-
: : : ()blcm i s i t all inpla secondfront, pushinghard to expand the Afghanistanwar into
l r9
': -.:. I C\ . - Central Asia-with resourcesthatZbigniew Brzezinskiand Alexandre
-: :,-\bdul R asul Bennigsenc<luldneverhave dreamedof just a few yearsearlier.
:-. ' :: 11 \tl l lal n d one
I '', . t 'Cfe t so c iet y
: . . rf . a l o n g wit h Acnoss rHe Al.u RrvER
: ' .elrcler whclse
:: : - t z rtti o n s i n t he In carrying the Afghan lihad into the SovietUnion itself, Caseyexhib-
ited both a messianic,religiouslyinspiredversion of anti-communism
:hc lion'ssharc and a high-stakes,high-risk approach to foreign policy. S(ithin the
:rsfcrredto thc Reaganadministration,there were at leasttwo competing schoolsof
lslirmicGrouP thought: The first, hewing to the traditional rules of U.S. diplomacy,
z8z . D r , v t r 's Gaue
-: - : ,be chal- adviseron the Middle East,Robert Ames, who was the CIAs leading
-: :--; S eC O ndt regionalexpert.In a speech,CaseycreditedAmes with having empha-
i::: ., PolicYof sized to him the importance of efforts by the Soviet Union and its
:- : -l:ope,and allies in the Muslim world to extirpate organizedreligion, becauseof
' :- :l \\'AS not the threat that it supposedlyposedto communist or nationalist party
ierve d a s control. The communists wanted to "uproot and ultimately change
- : ,. . iP Ii t was the traditional elementsof society," said Casey,citing Ames. "This
:- , . : hose wh o meant undermining the influence of religion and taking the young
. . ri ior him away from their parentsfor educationby the state." For that reason,
the world's two great religionshad to cooperate."Becausethe Soviets
-rl.l take a saw all religious faith as an obstacle,they suppressedchurchesand
I - -: l'> "a rc o f mosquesalike." Caseywas convincedthat "militant Islam and mili-
.: - - r. rt tl C a Sey tant Clhristianityshouldcooperatein a common cause."lt5
- I t he e ffo r t . Insidethe CIA, Caseyoften infuriatedprofessionalcolleaguesby
. '. , ..:.1resource his nonchalant view of the growing power of political lslam. "l
-- : : - : . -o rth 0 d ox worked with Casey," says Richard Krueger,a formcr CIA operative
, - \ r a b i a 's oil who spent the last severalyears of the shah'sreign working right
: : 'i'. crv h e l Pf ul inside the shah'sown office. "After the revolution, I sponsoredwith
t .: \ \ \ ' i e t Un i on Caseyand the headsof all the intelligcnceagenciesa futurist cxercise
(- asked at Camp Perry to analyze the lslan-ricmovcmcnt." According to
- . .15cv
:-', : ric e o f oil. KruegeqJohn McMahon, Casey'sdeputy,clashedwith Caseyovcr the
. :: : he Pri ce of issue."I can remembermajor, major unpleasantriesbctweenCasey
- . - , . ild i Ara bia and McMahon over the long-termimplicationsof the Islamicrcvolu-
- tion, with McMahon taking an almost alarmist position and Casey
- 1) \\'S,fa l l i ng
: : r :. . 1[d So v iet taking a couldn't-carc-less position," recallsKrueger."Caseywrrnted
: : li S o vi e ts . I t to just McMahon jumped in. He
wave it off, and uncharacteristically
how Islamicfundamentalism
was agitated,talking abor.rt was going to
: : 'l th c Po wer spreadto Indonesia,the Philippincs.He believedthe movementwas a
: . . *: t o wa rd t he through all sorts of religiousand social
natural to internationalize,
" , : ': ligi o u s man' connections,and that it wouldn't appearto be state-sponsored." But
::. \ il\'S Me y er . Crsey ditl not egree.ln
, , . irm a n d t he Casey'sviews on religion and politics dovetailedwith President
Reagan'sown rock-ribbed faith, and together the two men had n<r
-.. i :-f -Stra te g} 'of
::: \ ovi e t i m pe- trouble seeingthe Afghan iihad as a religiouswar in which Chris-
inte l l i g enc e tianity and lslam were alliesagainstthe atheisticSovietUnion. Fawaz
-: : f
28 4 . D r v r r 's Gevr.
.rlPpofilng action plans that had originally been developedduring the Carter
administration, but which had been rejectedbecauseof the very real
danger that the USSR would counterattack in unpredictableways,
: - : : lg co n -
including either a direct strike at Pakistan or an effort to foment a
: ' ,: third
. nu b l i c rebellion in Pakistan'sunstableprovince of Baluchistan.
: - - - r. l n g e s The ISI's Yousaf provides the most detailedaccount of the jihad's
:,:,rqan's move across Afghanistan'snorthern border. "The people on both
- - - : , . . r.ri sta n sideswere Uzbeks,Tajiks, and Turkomans," he wrote. "They shared
- - ,: : 0 f th e a common ethnic identity and, despitethe communist clampdown on
:' . -: : i d e n t religious activities,they also shared the same faith, Islam."42Casey
_ .--iLq> -
declared, according to Yousaf: "This is the soft underbelly of the
- ,- , .. r .rt h e
Soviet Union." During a visit to ISI's headquarters,Casey "was the
first personseriouslyto advocateoperationsagainstthe Sovietsinside
: .:.:11Islam their own territory. . . . He u'as convincedthat stirring up trouble in
:.. ..ise\- dealt this region would be certain to give the Russianbear a bellyache."At
-: - ::li' StofyOf first, the effort was restricted to smuggling propaganda into the
- .. .io\\.n that USSR'sMuslim republics,seekingto stir up Islamic fervor.During the
. :,rld Casey r98os thor,rsands of Korans were printed in Central Asian languages
': .^-rs.'about and covertly moved acrossthe Afghan border. Some of the Korans
:. , .'-rPons,for were printed in Saudi Arabia, others by the CIA itself, using Muslim
r: :.:'keeper of connectionsin ntresternEuroPe.
- - :','ter of the Saudi Arabia, especially,was interestedin Central Asia becauseit
:. :,,rmer CIA saw lran, and the new Khonteiniregimetirere.as a competitortrying
. , ,rld teli the to spread its version of Shiite fundamentalism into Central Asia,
, r.::hans were againstSaudiArabia's ultra-orthodox'Wahhabibrand of Sunni Islam.
-, ,l i ri, - t h in o A former CIA operationsofficer who worked closelywith SaudiAra-
bia says that Saudi intelligenceofficers told him about their idea of
':.: .rilianceto "colonizingthe'Stans":
_
.^ . . ^^ -t ^
- -r,f'45drru4r
' : :, , the Soviet Theywantedto getin thereand steala marchon the Iranians,and
undercutthe Russians, and make surethat SunniIslamprevailed
: :t: \\'orld are,
over Shialslam.The Saudiswere readyto go. They said,"\(/e've
: ,rrsof inter- got to get in there,into the 'stans,we'vegot to work together,use
',,,
: rih Caseyat Islam to break the grip of communismin the 'stans,in Kazakh-
.. :lrrce within stan,Uzbekistan, all throughthere."It wasopenseason.Different
:.: - r.1p Out of Saudiprincesand clericswould go up thereor sendstuff up there,
Koransand othermaterial.a3
- l: -\\' OI ] CO Ve f t
; -86 . D rvrl ' s Gerrr
Beginning in 1984, however, it was more than just Korans and c ' Frr' .' .' -
major escalationof the war which, over the next three years,culmi- Ln'', '
T-
nated in numerouscross-borderraids and sabotagemissionsnorth of 1_ --
- -.
the Amu," wrote Mohammad Yousaf. "During this period we were pri i ' ' : :
. :,rns and getting frightened." But, he asserted,"the CIA, and others, gave us
:r train a every encouragementunofficially to take the war into the Soviet
.:s. culmi- IJnion."48
- . north of In the end, the Casey-lSloffensiveinto the SovietUnion failed to
: \\'e were provoke a Muslim uprising. The Brzezinski-Bennigsen theory of a
- l Pto25 restive Muslim population chafing to revolt against its Soviet over-
'. :he most lords, and loyal to an undergroundnetwork of Sufi Islamists,proved
: :re Soviet flawed, at best. Yet there is no question that the Casey-ISIactions
.::r .rnd its aided the growth of a significant network of right-wing Islamist
::;ral was extremistswho, to this day, still plaguethe governmentsof the former
: , - .--
t I-L^a^l1KS
,^ t Sovietrepublics,now led by regimesof varying authoritarian,but not
. :hat did Islamist, character.In particular, the Islamic Movement of Uzbek-
, :.ts in the istan, the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb ut-Tahrir), the powerful
: .: \\'antlng Islamist $oups in Chechnya and Dagestan, and the shadowy Al
'..,:nted to Qaeda presencein Central Asia all gained momentum in the r98os,
.-- in nner- thanks to the spilloverof the Afghan jihad.
No END ro JrHao
The Afghan jihad did not end when the Soviet Union withdrew its
forces. The United States had no exit strategy and no plan for
Afghanistanin the wake of the war. Most policy makers in \Tashing-
ton believedthat the weak pro-Sovietgovernmentin Kabul that was
left in place would collapsein short ordeq but it lingered on. The
mujahideen, who fractured into factions after the war and fought
.:.-..ninglatent amongst themselves,continued to fight. And Pakistan, which saw
-:.J havepro- Afghanistan as its partner in a coalition against India, heavily sup-
::rerhingthat ported the Islamistsin the shatteredcountry.
: - :ll of this None of this seemedto bother top U.S. officials at the time. "'We
::::.Jn public. knew we were involved with Islamic fundamentalists,"said Caspar
\Weinberger,who served as PresidentReagan'ssecretaryof defense.
.. ;:. and from
a.-.:i]lngtongof "\7e knew they were not very nice people, and they were not all
::. "Br-r985, it people attached to democracy.But we had this terrible problem of
::::." moUfned making choices.. . . Rememberwhat Churchill said, 'If Hitler invaded
::.::trationwas Hell. I would at least make a favorable referenceto the Devil in the
288 . Dnvrr.'s Gaur,
toward Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the "arc of Islam" in the and Pak:.
r 9 8os. and u'c
There is no question that the U.S. support for the mujahideen, works. -\1
most of which went to the hard-core Islamists,was a catastrophic rvith -\1,:-
miscalculation.It devastatedAfghanistanitself, led to the collapseof hood. r::
its government,and gave rise to a landscapedominated by warlords, rhe oth.:
-= .
both Islamists and otherwise. lt created a worldwide network of ' -,,i .1",
IllLtlLlrllu-
l- .,-
staunchestproponentsof the global war on terrorism directedagainst \lltrl. - _:
Islamist groups, assertthat it was correct policy. "I think it was the
right thing do to," saysDaniel Pipes,the prolific campaigneragainst
political Islam and son of Richard Pipes, who coordinated the
NationalitiesSTorkingGroup in the early yearsof the Reaganadmin-
istration. During those years, Daniel Pipes was a State Department
and National SecurityCouncil official. "\Wesupported Stalin against
Hitler," he says,echoing \Teinberger'srheory of dealing with devils.
"These are real-world choices." The most militant among the
mujahideenwere the best fighters, according to Pipes. "If anything,
the radical Islarnistswere seenas more vehementlyanti-Soviet."50It is
a view echoedby numerousU.S. veteransof the Afghan war, includ-
ing many CIA officials and policy makers. "The people we did sup-
port were the nastier,more fanatic rypesof mujahideen,"said Stephen
P. Cohen, who was a top StateDepartment official in the r9Bos. "If
you want to win the Cold rVar and defeatthe Sovietsin Afghanistan,
you can't usethe SalvationArmy."-it
Needlessto say, the "fanatic types" did not fade away after the
Soviet Union decided to withdraw from Afghanisran, although the
people sponsoringthem changeddramatically: Bill Casey died, and
both General Zra and the head of ISI were killed in an unexnlained
Iihad II: Into Central Asia . z8s
- : L-.S.policy plane crash.But the Islamic right was entrenchedin both Afghanistan
- .- -rr.r-t"
in the and Pakistan.The Islamic Group of Pakistanwas rich and powerful,
and well connectedwith the Muslim Brotherhood'sworldwide net-
- -, ::rujahideen, works. Most of the top ISI officials were now confirmed Islamists
:- with Muslim Brotherhood links. The Islamic Group and the Brother-
-.rrastrophic
. :, .ollapseof hood, in turn, maintained strong ties to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and
r: - ..i' u'irrlords, the other militant Islamists in Afghanistan, and ro the burgeoning
i - - : t -t\\ro rk of mujahideen network from dozens of countries who came and went
: f r e s, l i n k ed freely though the madrassasystem.The Sovietwithdrawal was cele-
' . io o n -to -be brated as a tremendousvictory at the CIA and the Pentagon,and for
-:
- -. . -: : : rc'cln a tion the most part they turned away from Afghanistan, assuming that
- .: : ( )rma ti o ns . the pro-Soviet regime that still ruled in Kabul, led by President
- .: .t cltcourage Najibullah, would quickly fall. The CIA drew an analogy with how
quickly the government of South Vietnam fell after the U.S. with-
- --. s a re t he drawal there, and they assumedthat Najibullah would collapse in
- -',-: i cl a g a i ns t short order. Still, an odd sort of morning-after queasinessdeveloped
: - . . i r wa s t he in U.S.governmentcircles.
're r r o a i n cf At the StateDepartment,and evenat the CIA, there was somedis-
: : . : rn i ttcd t he quiet over the prospectof Hekmatyar and other fundamentaliststak-
: . :. , i. 1I1a d min- ing over in Afghanistan. Soviet officials were among rhose warning
I)rn r rf menf \Washingtonof the dangersinherent in the Islamist movement.Soviet
:* .: -ili n a g a ins t Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadzetried to feel our Secretaryof
- ' , . r'i thd e v ils . StateGeorgeShultz about the possibiliryof a U.S.-Sovietgenrleman's
-
|-- rrn n n c t th e agreementon the terms of a soviet pullout, and he "asked for Ameri-
'' J I . . - ' t h irrrrrrfr
.taa v
-- t can cooperationin limiting the spreadof 'Islamic fundamentalism.'"
: \ t ,ie t.'r-5It0 iS However, other than Shultz, the adminisrration was unsympathetic
- -,_.,.\'.lrtinclud- and "no high-level Reagan administration officials ever gave much
I : '.\'c did sup- thought to the issue.They neverconsideredpressingPakistaniintelli-
- . . . rrd Ste p hen genceto begin shifting support away from the Muslim Brotherhood-
- : : -. r9 8 o s. " I f connectedfactions." Moscow was exceedinglyworried about Islamic
r \ rqha n i stan, fundamentalismtaking root along its southernfrontier, however,and
even Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of the KGB, sat down with CIA
,'.',,r\'after the Director Gatesto explain why Sovietleaderswere "fearful about the
. .:irhoughthe rise to power in Afghanistanof another fundamentalistgovernment,a
.r;r' died, and Sunni complementto ShiiteIran."-52To no avail.
r : Lrnerplained By default, the United States allowed Pakistan and the ISI to
z9o . Drvrr's Gaue
j's net- According to Yousaf, who had a bird's-eyeview of the end of the
,--::rl.assa- war from his post at ISI, as the dust cleared in Afghanistan some
::: States Americansdid becomealarmed at the prospectof Hekmatyar and his
:. ,- .roking fellow fundamentaliststaking power. "The Americansbeganto look
' - -11 lcrc at an Afghanistanwithout the Red Army," he wrote. "'What they saw
- r ,l rrrino alarmed them." But, he said, Gen. Akhtar Abdel Rahman Khan, the
.. =. I rvo n - ISI architect of the jihad, managed to counter the ineffectual U.S.
.' - ', f o cu s efforts to strengthenpotential Afghan non-fundamentalistgroups,
.: : '; 1t yo u including the forcesallied to the exiled king,Zahir Shah,and to other,
__-
....|-.
ttn
!r{l
lessIslamistpartiesand individuals. "General Akhtar understood[the
-
- -
I r].em
lL]\rrr'
" Americans'] aims and methods and opposed their every move."
i t:,:.at the Akhtar also opposedwhat Yousafcalls "the Americans'bright idea of
:::: -rr-iistan bringing back the long-exiled Zahir Shah to head a government of
. :. nlOfe. "
"55
nationalreconciliation.
"
Even had the United Stateswanted to exert itself to minimize the
power of the fundamentalistsafter the war, and to enhancethe strength
:
:T
. '- l of the moderates,centrists,and secularists,it would havebeendifficult-
: -.rlll
: - -i ,-I for the simple reason that most of them were dead. At the same time
: . ) !.111
that the largely Islamist mujahideen were battling the USSR,they were
\tl u
- also killing potential postwar Afghan opponenti by the thousands,in a
: -.,.
cre
little-known secondfront of the jihad directed against non-communist
'-
Afghanis. "In Afghanistan, we made a deliberatechoice," says Cheryl
- -1 : \ \ -e
: :
Benard,a RAND Corporation expert on political Islam, who is married
' \i)
Americancirclesby giving MI6 and the CIA everythinghe knew about Persianshad ;'-
the Tudeh and its members. "He provided the British with a list of keep track o: :
severalhundred Soviet agentsoperating in Iran," wrote James Bill. clergy.But F..::
Almost immediately,MI6 and the CIA handed Kuzichkin's informa- PrincessAsh:,::
tion to the Iranian intellisenceservice: her memoir. ::,
what the nr - .::
Kuzichkin'sinformationwas sharedwith the Iranian authorities,
who arrestedover r,ooo Tudehparty members,many of whom
had already been under surveillance.Those arrestedincluded
Nureddin Kianuri [the Tudehleader,who admittedlthat he had
maintainedcontactwith Sovietagentssincer945. This dramatic
destructionof the Tudehparty in r983 completedthe dismantling
of the Iranianleft.6e
-,::-\\'about Persianshad called 'the eyesand ears of the king.'"71 Its lob was to
::r a list of keep track of political currents in the country, including among the
l,rnes Bill. clergy. But Fardoust joined the pro-Khomeini opposition, secretly.
:-'. rrrforma- PrincessAshraf, the shrewd and ruthlesssisterof the shah,recalledin
her memoirs that Fardoust failed, deliberately,to inform the shah of
what the mullahs were doing:
i --t lfl t l e S r
had approved the plan-wanted to know if the plan would work. I slanr i. :
"Casey called me in and asked,Did I think this mission had a chance a na L\ '>: : .
of success?I told him, 'Not much.' And there wasn't really a chance Sovr c: - .
of success."Asked if Caseyultimately believedthat Iranian moderates lahs. I : . :
would respond in a positive way to the U.S. gambit, the official says: . '- . '- -
!.11i
,,I also added that this is roughly like inviting Qaddafi over
NSDD.
for a cozy lunch," said'weinberger.8lAccording to Teicher,vice Pres-
ident Bush and CIA Director Casey"strongly supportedit.''82
By the end of the Reagan administration, the Iran-contra initia-
tive had come to light, and it was being investigatedby journalists,a
specialprosecutor,and congressionalcommittees.The olive branch to
the Iranians had failed. Only a single hostage had been released
during the initiative, and not necessarilybecauseof it. No Iranian
"moderates" spoke up, and those who cooperatedwith the Reagan
administration and Israel in secfet, such as Ali Akbar Hashemi-
Rafsanjani,a future Iranian president,coveredtheir tracks by appear-
ing to becomeevenmore bellicose.
The Afghan jihad ended-or appearedto end-with the withdrawal
of Soviet forces. But the legacy of that conflict, including well-trained
terrorist operativesand a worldwide Islamist machine,would continue
to plaguethe United Statesand the'West.In the r99os, Afghanistanfell
to the \Tahhabi Taliban movement; Algeria was engulfedin a civil war Tnr C,:
against the Islamic right; and Islamist terrorists wreaked havoc in lVar III. :
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon; and Osama bin Laden put AI Statesi. :
unsuccess-
Qaeda together.Through it all, the United Statesstruggled' Islanric:-
full,v, to adopt a coherent policy toward political Islam. The conse- ism the :-,
quencesof its failure to do so, and its continued benign view of the the Sor':c
Islamicright, would becomepainfully obviouson SeptemberII' zool. ism?An; .
changer',.
The;.*
a valuab..
seded, c,: :
Sovietrr,,=
Islamic r.:_
secular \\ =
comprisri:
Syria, Lr: ,
Iran-conl:"
Since_r=
the Mush;:.
first Iraq r'.'
* r:Jafi over
-..:.\'ice Pres-
. :
'l
12
-- :.:ia initia-
--:nalists, a
.: lranch to
::,:l released
: \o Iranian C L ASH OF CIVI LIZATIONS?
:: ::e Reagan
:.: Hashemi-
-,..:tV appear-
:.-.'..i'irhdrawal
.: '"'.ell-trained
t ,,J continue
',::lJnistanfell
: .: a civil war TnB coro \7en endedin t99t. But, if the cold war was world
:^-J havoc in war III, doesthat mean, as someconservativesargue,that the united
-,..Jen put Al states is now engagedin world \Var IV, this time against Islam? Is
:,: J . U nS UC Ce SS- Islamic fundamentalismthe "new communism" ? Is the war on terror-
::. The conse- ism the twenty-first-centuryequivalentof the global struggleagainst
i:. r'iew of the the soviet union? How serious,really,is the threat of Islamisrrerror-
. -- !r r
Y
L)
'
AN
-vvL.
T
ism?And how-if at all-did America'srelarionshipto polirical Islam
changewith the end of the Cold \far?
The central theme of this book is that the Islamic right was seenas
a valuable U.s. ally during the cold war. rwas that alliance super-
seded, or rendered superfluous,by the disappearanceof the u.S.-
's7ith
soviet rivalry? the elimination of its communisr enemy,did the
Islamic right direct its wrath insteadroward the Great saransof the
'west?
secular Is the united states now facing a worldwide enem),,
comprisinga hydra-headedmonster tied to a network of srates-Iran,
syria, Libya, sudan, and saudi Arabia-that Michael Ledeen. the
Iran-contra veteran,calls the "terror masters"?
Sinceseptemberrr,2oor, the notion that the United Statesand
the Muslim world are on a collision coursehas gainedcredence.If the
6rst Iraq war in t99r marked the start of the short-lived New world
304 D r v t t . 's (ierrt
: : :> ro Ariel the Islamic banks, there is indeed a rhrear ro rhe Middle East. It is,
however,a threat that cannot be dealt with by military means.Indeed,
. :rnment'S it will get worse in preciseproporrion to the intrusivenessof the U.S.
-..:-
.:tration'S political, military, and economicpresencein the region. Only by rap-
'-::. did the idly withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, by reducing America's
: r. lnd the overweeningpresencein Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and by reversing
j ---:.trman
of U.S. support for Israel'saggressiveopposition to Palestiniannational-
::.: -\Iuslim ism can the United Statesundercut the anger,frustration, and resent-
- ,:s1\-tothe ment that fuelslslamism.
::: r:llstration ReducingAmerica'sfootprint in the Middle Eastis the polar oppo-
,'.:: ill 1968, site of the Bush administration'spolicy, however.Cynically perhaps,
:. -:,lIn Iran'S the administration has wielded the idea of a broad struggle againsr
:.. :rself.The terrorism to pursue a policy aimed at redrawing the entire map of the
iS
::.1r1Ches, Middle East.The radical, or "idealist" neoconservatives, from admin-
: irnk Iraq istration officials to armchair strategistsat think tanks such as the
: .:.:tment.In American EnterpriseInstitute, the Hudson Instirute, and the project
i--:r.u-ith the for a New American Century, announcedthat the wars in Afghanistan
, :::c'd States and Iraq were just the first two salvosin a sweepingplan to seizecon-
: '.'.'hrchtwo trol of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf srates.Even the more
: :-.c Islamic mainstream Bush administration officials, while eschewingsome of
,.'. .. . played the neoconservatives' visions,support the idea of a greaterU.S. mili-
:::e Islamic tary presencein the region from North Africa to Indonesia.
:r \vatollah Astute critics of the Bush administrarion's military-based anti-
terrorism policies and imperial pretensionshave argued that it is a
: :,1:gets, but strategyguaranteedto backfire,and one that seemsdesignedto create
. .:'. :o reduce more terroriststhan it kills. Anger againstthe occupationof Iraq and
.- i:had, and Afghanistan is likely to draw new jihadists inro battle in those rwo
:.r::ll.rtionof countries,and the conflict could spreadinto both Pakistanand Saudi
:- r::rasin the Arabia, where conservative,Islam-orientedgovernmentscould fall to
-:-.!)f to U.S. far more radical dissident groups associatedwith bin Laden, the
::-rSives,and mujahideen,the Taliban, and a \Tahhabi extremistunderground.
: :,r Indone- A secondprong of the Bush adminisrrarion'sMiddle East policy is
: , rhe Pales- likely to prove equally counterproductive,namely,its vauntedcall for
.:-,r's Islamic democraticreform.
,:. ^: bi clerics The administration'ssupport for democracy in the region is, on
: I cague,and the surfaceat least,a stunningabout-face.For years,especiallyduring
3o8 . D pvtr' s Gaur,
rhetoric about a clash of civilizations, the Bush administration has Cr eet - '. , -
not been averseto seekingallies among the Islamic right. In Iraq, the t oppl. J\ r
D . . 1 . , --.
Bush administration after the war found itself in a partnership with r 4Nl:,_t -
of Saudi Arabia and the creationof a Shiitestate in Saudi Arabia's had s.-:.:
easternprovince, where Shiitescomprisea majority. In Gaza and the thre.rrr-:--
West Bank, Ariel Sharoncontinued to toy with using Hamas, Islamic Bush :: :
Jihad, and Hezbollah to undercut the PLO, and in zoo5 Hamas tem J tr ::
:: c r and
Algeria
:i ;ontra -
: : . r rOri Sm The t99z-99 crisis in Algeria triggered the first government-wide
:: he U . S. - review of u.S. policy roward political Islam sincethe Iranian revolu-
'-: I region tion. And, during rhe seven-yearcivil war in Algeria, u.s. policy was
--.:.overed pulled this way and that by contradictory views-amid chargesin
{. :f an a n d Parisand elsewherein Europe that $Tashingtonwas cozying up to the
, :o extra- Algerian Islamistsin order to advanceits own oil, gas, and industrial
' : O o d, th e interestsin North Africa, at Europe'sexpense.
-: ; h as Al The conundrum for the united Statesin Argeria was having to
i, t me d a n - choose between an Islamist insurgencythat had gained an electoral
advantageand an entrenched,military-dominated but secularregime
that then suspendeddemocracyin order to block the Islamists'vic-
tory. The issue was not whether the united states should inrervene
directly-neither side in Algeria wanred that, and it was impractical
in any case.But'vTashingtonhad to choosebetweenaffirming its sup-
: ilare-ups port for Algeria's experiment in democracS thus aligning it with a
::llr', once radical Islamist movemenr,or siding with the Algerian army. Though
r:: able to rJTashingtonlooked for a middle ground, in the
end, correctly, it toler-
=; Afghan ated the army's suppressionof the Islamists.It was not an entirely
:::q bomb- hnppy ourcome. Yet had the united states condemnedthe Algerian
:: struggle. regime and thrown its diplomatic support ro the Islamic right, the
: :o emerge consequences-in Algeria, and across the region-could have been
ifter Mus- catastrophic.
r. the long The usual version of the Algerian crisis srarts in r9g9, with the
a. as veter- establishmentof the Islamic Salvation Front, known by its French
, in Algeria, abbreviation,FIS. In June r99o, the FIS won a resoundingvictory in
:.ported in local elections.Then, in December r99r, FIS stunnedthe ruling party,
s of Islamic the National Liberation Front (FLN), winning rrg parliamenrary
::'rrow gov- seatsto the FLN's r6. But before the secondround of the vote, and
'' :nd other before the FIS took power, the army intervened to annul the vote,
s a base."l arresting ro,ooo FIS membersand supporters.Denied its victory, the
lnsurgency FIS unleasheda campaign of terrorism. The presidentof Algeria was
r: restedthe assassinated,ministrieswere bombed, and hundreds of security offi-
cials and policemen were killed by FIS gunmen. civil war began.
. D n v r l 's Gelrr
3r 4
:' ...*cri- For the Bush adminisrration, preoccupied with the New \forld
- _I -i n t ' q
- r' "
order, it was a puzzle. Bush and secretary of StateJames Baker were
- ' .:r' fel- uneasyabout the prospectof Islamismin Algeria,and they sidedsemi-
',:hthe officially with the Algerian army, adopting a position that a Senate
,.:','..lrk" report called "somethingof a wink and a nod."6 Baker,explaininghis
-..-ireof position later, said: "\7hen I was at the StateDepartment, we pursued a
- ..-:.rinst policy of excluding the radical fundamentalistsin Algeria even as we
: :'-anto recognizedthat this was somewhatat odds with our support of democ-
: - -L- ---
,iLflll! racy."7But many other U.S. officials, including CIA officers who had
:: : f e-Al contactwith the FIS,did nor agreewith the Bush-Bakerpolicy.
:.- -t. took According to Robert Pelletreau,a former u.S. ambassadorand sen-
ior official at the state Department, there was serious disagreement
r ,rsands about the Bush-Bakerpolicy of blocking the Islamistsin Algeria. "In
::-.:chine. the immediateaftermathof the military's decisionto block the election
:,,- rl gov- result, we were very critical," says Pelletreau.,,Twenty-four hours
:-.. forc- later,we reversedourselves,and took a much more nuancedview"8
-:.:.i often The Bush administration,uncerrain about how to deal with the
:.\iEeria's Islamist challengein Algiers, undertook a policy review. But it was a
: :(r "ban hodgepodge,an effort to forge a consensusabout how to deal with a
:. mOnth phenomenonlittle understoodevenby expertsand about which politi-
,: - t o rl r, ln cians, top administration officials, and members of congress were
: ,'f Alge- utterly ignorant. Battle lines had nor yet hardened,but at leasttwo cur-
: ;ffOf : rents had already started to emerge. one was an accommodationist
1r 6 D nvrl ' s Geun
point of vieq whose adherentsargued that the United Stateshad noth- i . ---
lii- g_
ing to fear from the Islamic right and that U.S. diplomats and CIA offi- j
--- -
United Stateswas not just Al Qaeda, and not even right-wing political I-
l_- --
Islam, but the very nature of the Muslim faith, the Koran, and Islamic bu:.:
civilization as it had evolved over thirteen centuries.Throughout the th c
-
r99os, thesetwo schoolswould gain momentum and confront each Isir:r
other. Two leading academicswould come to represenrthe two sides:
for the accommodationists,John Esposito of Georgetown University;
and for the clash of civilizations,Bernard Lewis of PrincetonUniversity. for :
In t992, a decisionwas taken to haveEdward Djerejian,then assis- forc.
tant secretary of state for Near East affairs, spearheadthe effort to ture.
invent a policy toward Islam, and he was chosento delivera speechin
Junet992, at Meridian House in'STashington. "The StateDepartment -\,--
came to me and said, '\X/eneed an Islam policy,"' saysDavid Mack, n,
says Mack. "'Well, we prerty much managed to head it off. 'We had
a big, in-house conference,with people from [Near East affairs],
[the Bureau of Intelligenceand Research],human rights, and a lot
of outside experts on Islam. And I drafted a speechfor Djerejian.
\7e brought it to Jim Baker, who said, 'Okay, fine, if you want to
do this."'e
Schifter,the assistantsecretaryof statefor human rights, saysthat
he adheresto JeanneKirkpatrick's distinction between "authorirar-
ian" and "totalitarian" regimes.In the Algerian crisis,he saysthat he
supportedthe view that the United Staresought to back the Algerian
army's suppressionof the Islamists.But for Schifter,and for many
Clash of Ciuilizations! . z L7
)f the saysMack.11
. -: : .rtrcal In the end, Djerejian'sspeechlaid down some rmporrant markers,
. , - : , : l: m i C but it also avoided crucial quesrions.Djerejian rejectedout of hand
' - : - . L1 rth e the clash-of-civilizationsidea. "The u.s. government does not view
- '- : t : e a ch Islam as the new 'ism' confronting the \7est or threatening world
-: : . ', r:i d e S: peace,"he said. "The Cold $Varis not beingreplacedwith a new com_
petition between Islam and the west. The crusades have been over
- ::t" for a long time. Americans recognizeIslam as a historic civilizing
:-t
-rsi ty. force among the many that have influenced and enriched our cul-
-1\\l)-
:: . -: : d a IOt and enhancedcivil rights in the region, but said, in an obvious refer-
: . )rer e i i a n . enceto the crisis in Algeria: "\7e are suspectof thosewho would use
', the democraticprocessto come to power, only to destroy that very
-: \\'ant to
processin order to rerain power and political dominance.,'And he
:.: : . > a l| S that said that the United Stateswas opposedto those who engagein vio-
-..- lence,repression,or "religious and political confrontation."l2
--:horitar-
: .....s that he In other forums, Djerejian spoke favorably, but vaguely, about
- - - . \ l- o "i . - "moderate Islamists," although he failed to definewhat he meant by
1 : l( lr ma n y "moderate."l3 \fhile Djerejian condemnedterrorism and noted that
_lr 8 D rvrr' s Gaur
i : l: i fo r
EgvPt
on the heelsof the Algerian explosion,a dire Islamistthreat to Egypt
emerged in the rggos, creating another dilemma for the clinton
'was
administration. Egypt, the original home of the Muslim Brother-
hood, about to fall to an Islamist revolution?And if so, what should
U.S. policy be? The Bush administration'st99z review,and the task
force that Djerejian creared,did not provide much guidance.unlike
Algeria, which after all was on the periphery of the Middle East,
Egypt was its very hearr-and PresidentMubarak a staunchally.
In the r99os, Egyptian Islamistswaged an assaulton the Egyptian
. D n v r r 's GevB
3z o
people were killed by armed militants, including military and police Anc::..
officers,governmentofficials,and leading Egyptian writers and intel- dip- :: :
lectuals.Despite heavy repressionafter the death of Sadat in r98r, thr :r-
and periodic crackdowns in the r9Sos, the Brotherhood had made
steadygains,especiallyin civil society.The organizationwon control Ar nr.: .
of many of Egypt'sprofessionalassociations-doctors, lawyers,engi- Bror:
-::
neers,and, of course, student groups, its traditional stronghold. In co l t.]:r '.::
r99j, the Sunday Times of London reported that the CIA issued a rr
f , :
James'Woolseywas the CIA director at the time. "'Wewere very wor- r9E:. .:
ried, and as I rememberwe offered Egypt whatever assistancewe could llzcu
-;--i --
.--:
that cooperation was far lessthan it ought to have been, for several Cenre:.:
reasons.First, within the U.S. government, there was a persistent
belief that the Muslim Brotherhood was a potentially useful partner Or
in efforts to bring democracyto Egypt, and throughout the r99os that ha',
belief undercut U.S. assistanceto Egypt's security and intelligence St : : .
agencies.Second, the Mubarak regime's often very heavy-handed dc: :
\\r;
repressionof its opponents,including arrestsof all manner of dissi-
dr-r::-
dentsand the use of torture againstprisoners,made the United States
[() _.:
skittish about helping Cairo. Both'Woolsey and'Walker say that the
fin.::-
United Stateshad strong reservationsabout the harshnessof Egyptian
"l
:-r-.rdreds of with their hands tied," says'walker."\7e had to stop the program.,,2a
-. .:rd police And third, there was sharp disagreementamong u.s. intelligenceand
.:.:nd intel- diplomatic officials about the narure of the Brotherhood itself: rfas
:.1 : l n rg8r, the organization cooperating with the radical, openly terrorist sub-
: r.rd made groups like Al Gamaa or Islamic Jihad, whose leaders included
',,.,t control Ayman al-zawahiri, osama bin Laden's future chief aide? or was the
: ,..-. engi- Brotherhood a moderate,even establishmentgroup whose rhetorical
-rs, In
- ..qhold. commitment to democracycould be relied upon?
--r rssueda For Mubarak, at least, the answer was provided by Algeria. The
::.'-inentalist Egyptian leaderwatched in horror as that country plunged into civil
'i:.:rg to the war, and he vowed not to allow the Islamistsin Egypt to gain enough
strengthro mounr a frontal challengeto his regime.Beginningin the
: :- \'e f\ - WO f - r98os and continuingthrough septemberrr, zoor, Mubarak criti-
,- a: r\'eCOUId cized the united Statesrepeatedlyfor its failure to take acrion against
, ,.. -: .ubstan- the Islamic right in its basesin western Europe and in the united
: ::e intelli- states itself. Those included overt Muslim Brotherhood organiza-
: :,r prevent tional units in London and GermanS Said Ramadan'sIslamic center
*: .issistance in Geneva,New York-New Jerseycellssuch as the one affiliatedwith
'-- "=,'] (ne-
a
blind sheikh omar Abdul Rahman, the ringleaderof the r993 attack
: ::: helpof on the world Trade center, and other U.S.-basedcells,mosques,and
:: :r r 994 tO Islamic centers.Until zoor, no concertedu.S. effort to investigate
thesenetworks was undertaken.
:':: : . i O O P ef - "Neither Europe nor the United Stareswere cooperatlng wlth
.'-- r F ovnt Egypt, not unril 9/tr," says Abdel Moneim Said of the Al Ahram
:. : , : several Center in Cairo:
,:: : rsl s t ent
'We
of the Europeanparliamentin Strasbourg. knew a lot by then:
that the internationalcentersfor this movementwere in London,
New Jersey,Frankfurt,with other centersin Hamburg, Geneva,
Copenhagen. They werenot at all sensitiveto this in Europein the
r9Sosand r99os.25
The two U.S. ambassadorsto Egypt during this period had con-
'$falker,who served
flicting views about the Muslim Brotherhood.
from l994 to 1997, was skeptical of the Muslim Brotherhood and
mostly sympatheticto Mubarak's crackdown. Pelletreau'who served
in Cairo from t99l to 1993, was more apt to seethe Brotherhood in
a favorable light-even il it attracted the attention of Egypt's intel-
ligence service. "Ned [\Talker] and I had different policies," says
Pelletreau."I felt we had to be talking to members of the Muslim
Brotherhood. I did [talk to them]." Pelletreau'scontacts with the
Brotherhood angered Mubarak. "At one point I received a very
strong messagefrom the [Egyptian] government, demanding that I
break off those contacts.I said that I would not. I didn't meet with
them myself, but people from the political sectiondid' \7e developed
people as contactswho were inside the movement. But in Egypt you
have to be very careful, becausethe Egyptianshave a very' very effec-
tive counterintelligencecapability."26
T
Pelletreaurecallsa visit to Washington by Mubarak in which the l>
tr,-.-.-
But Pelletreausays: "I told Mubarak that it was the right policy to g()l-' -.
> --iVS
the Brotherhood,which was a secretsociety,while giving encourage-
i.tIn ment, support, and theological justification to the terrorists. "The
-
Egyptiansclaimed that they discoveredsome links, and I guessyou
could say that the whole line became blurred between the Muslim
- - -1- .L T
I
Brotherhood and the armed groups," sayspelletreau."A lot of inde-
'.,,rrh pendent emirs start popping up here and there, in various parts of
cairo, and some of the clerics develop a group of folrowers. They
l.d
: -. rltl
don't usually engagein acts of violencethemselves,but they can con-
....-
:--l !-
done violence.Say,someonewill come to them and say,'Is it permit-
ted to do such and such?' and they will say, ,yes, according to
Islam.'"
walker, who followed Pelletreau,had a somewhatdifferentview.
"\fe'd realized it was a much bigger problem,', he says. ,,'Wewere
very closeto the Europeansin cooperatingto roll up thesethreats.'we
createdflow charts of how thesegroups inreractedwith eachother. A
lot of the leaderswere in placeslike Italy and London, and we'd coop-
erate by interceptingcommunicationsback into Egypt, and then the
Egyptianswould roll them up." But,'Walker says,Egypt was not sat_
isfiedwith U.S. and Europeancooperation."I can't count the number
of times that Mubarak yelled ar me about how the British were giving
the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamistssafehaven,,,he says.,.In
Egypt, everybody seemedto see it as a problem, but they couldn't
:-'. t o convinceus."28
-- T1
lne Like Pelletreau,'Walker
maintaineda relationshipwith the Muslim
J z4 D pvi t-'s GatvtE
: -::.lic,too,
:'.:r against Neither Algeria's government nor Mubarak thought much of that
.,'-,.abroad, "reality," however, and they acted to crush the Islamist insurgency.
:t:t to coop- Following the t995 assassinationamempt, Mubarak launched an
: :herhood, assaultagainst the Muslim Brotherhood that recalledthe r954 and
,: ' he said. t964-66 crackdowns by Nasser.Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood
::.;r-rledthe leaderswere arrested,their institutionswere dismantled,professional
::. ''i hom? It syndicatesclosed,and show trials held. some U.s. officials predicted
.-. for four- that the repressionwould backfire,but instead,during the secondhalf
:; -ifrOl]Bef.
of the r99os, the Islamic right in Egypt retrearedwith one glaring
exception: a series of spectacular terrorist acts directed against
-., , " , c l gU edO
tourists in Egypt in t997. The Islamic right in Egypt had, once again,
,:.ri. Again been beaten into submission.But it did not go away. Its violence-
::; f et talkS oriented underground scattered,or went into hiding. Its moderate-
-,::.tkesthat seemingideologues,preachers,and politicians sought alliance with
, \r atollah Egypt'sdemocraticopposition,declaringtheir support for electionsto
:." \Iubarak replaceMubarak. Many u.s. governmentofficials, sympatheticori-
i: rlver this entalists,and think tanks-from the Brookings Institution to rhe u.s.
::e United Institute for Peace-insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood was a
promising partner in a reformed Egypt.
-. L'.S.offi-
. D r v r r 's Gerlp
3L6
The Taliban
The third Islamist eruption to confront U.S. policy makers was the
meteoricrise of the Taliban in war-shatteredAfghanistan.
The most incisive account of the founding, growth and victory of
the Taliban is Ahmed Rashid's Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fun-
damentalism in Central Asia. A veteran Pakistani reporter, Rashid
spent years covering Afghanistan and Pakistan's ISI. According to
Rashid, from the start the Taliban had strong support not only from
SaudiArabia, which financedit, and from Pakistan,whose ISI intelli-
gence servicewas the primary force behind the Taliban's conquest of
warlord-dominated Afghanistan, but from the United Statesas well.
"Between r994 and r996,the U.S.A. supportedthe Taliban politically
through its allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, essentiallybecause
'sflashingtonviewed the Taliban as anti-Iranian, anti-Shia, and pro-
'Western,"he wrote. "Between t995 and
ry97 U.S. support was even
more driven becauseof its backing for the Unocal project [for an
energypipelinefrom Turkmenistanthrough Afghanistan]."Many U.S.
diplomats,he wrote, "saw them as messianicdo-gooders-like born-
again Christiansfrom the AmericanBible Belt."33
The U.S. support for the Taliban was strategic.It preciselyechoed --.
! 1-, i .: r
penetrate the Soviet Union. Even in the post-Cold l$far world, the
United Statessought to gain advantagein oil-rich Central Asia, and IllL):_ :
'$Tashingtonjockeyed
throughout the r99os for position' In the rl-11 I .
I .. -
-
American view, its allieswere SaudiArabia and Pakistan,and its com-
petitors were Russia, China, India, and Iran. A ry96 State Depart- Lll.1-- .
-L _ :
.--L-_-
ment memo, written just before the Taliban captured Kabul, warned )LI1C. :.
and that is preciselywhat did happen, as the Ahmed Shah Massoud- of fLi :.:,
TL-.--
led Northern Alliance emergedin the late r99os as the chief opponent r lll :,
Of
Important external forces that shared a stake in Afghan events
. l , lf \ -
,:-i Fun- were disturbed at the implications of a Taliban takeover: Iran
becausethe Taliban were fiercely anti-shiite and treated the Shiite
Rrshid
Hazara population with extreme harshness;and Russia, Uzbek_
::rng to istan, and Tajikistan becausethey feared the Taliban would turn
..,','from
their sightstoward expanding Islamist movementsnorth into cen-
'l :ntelli- tral Asia. India, too, geopolitically sought to deny pakistan strare-
. 1 l e s t of gic dominance in Afghanistan, which a Taliban victory would
represent.washington was initially neutral and hoped, with paki-
-:. rvell.
:ilcally stani urging, that the Taliban had no anti-U.S. agenda, could at
last unify the country so long wracked by civil war; could facili-
r3c ause
tate the passageof Turkmen gas pipelinesthrough Afghanistan to
, -, 1 nro -
the Indian Ocean, skirting Iran; could impose control over rhe
,.-ti even
rampant poppy production, and crack down on the presenceof
:rtr an Muslim guerrillasand training camps in the country sincethe anti_
:-:r U.S. So v i e tj i h a d .3 5
\; Lrorn-
cold'war or nor, the united Sratesexplicitly stated its intenrion to
-. r choe d challenge Russian hegemony in cenrral Asia and Afghanistan. u.s.
i.. r m to policy, said sheila Haslin, an NSC official, was to."promote the inde-
,: r J. t h e pendence of these oil-rich countries, to in essence break Russia's
I' :: : 1.nn d monopoly control over the transporrarion of oil from that region, and
'western
. In t he frankly, to promore energy security through diversity of sup-
: :: s com - ply-"se unocal, the prime backer of plans for a pipeline to guarantee
. I Jrne rf - that diversity, hired numerous former U.S. officials to promote rts
. .'\'arned scheme,from Henry Kissingerto zalmay Khalilzad, the future u.S.
.: :r-Iental- ambassadorin Kabul. Khalilzad, a specialistat the RAND corpora-
:-. . : L d l tt tion, said in t996: "The Taliban does not practice the anti-u.S. style
1 ,. - . so u d - of fundamentalismpraciced by Iran-it is closerro rhe Saudi model.
.:: onen t The group upholds a mix of traditional Pashtunvaluesand an ortho-
)- ,r rt he rn dox interpretationof Islam."37
:. ; f . af te r Besidessaudi Arabia and Pakistan, two orher u.s. ailies ioined
' . . U nite d in the regional straregy for ousting Russia and containing Iran:
Israel and rurkey. In the r99os, Turkey-which was increasingly
)? -"
28 . I ) p v r r 'r G.qvr
But the U.S. effort to find and eliminate bin Laden was laughably
incompetent. A $27 billion U.S. intelligencesystem, with perhaps
roorooo employeesspreadamong a dozenagencies,with a vast array
of satellites,surveillancedevices,spies,agents,and informers, failed
to find him. At the sametime, however,countlessjournalistsfrom the
United Statesand Europe, including televisionreporters from CNN
and Frontline, found him with ease and conducted lengthy inter-
views. N7ould-beterroristswith questionablebona fides,such as John
'Vfalker
Lindh, managed to get close to bin Laden, but the CIA
couldn't replicatethe feat. Cruise missile attacks against allegedbin
Laden hideoutsin Afghanistanfailed miserably,and attackson facili-
ties in Sudan allegedlytied to Al Qaeda efforts to produce weapons
of mass destruction managed to destroy that country's only factory
for producing medicines.A schemeto kidnap bin Laden, meticulously
planned,was aborted.
Then, on Septemberrr, zoor, those who believedin the clash of
civilizations got the opening they needed.Their views, until then con-
sideredodd at best and extremist at worst, won a far wider following.
And the Bush administration, while not endorsingthe idea of a struggle
betweenChristianity and Islam, seizedthe notion of a clash of civiliza-
tions to propel the United Statesinto an unprecedentedexpansionof its
imperial presencein the Middle East.
Until that date, the two men most responsiblefor popularizing the idea
of a clash of civilizations, Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington,
were regardedas curiositiesby mainstreamnational securityand for-
eign policy experts.Their Ivy Leaguecredentialsand accessto presti-
gious publications such as Foreign Affairs, and the edgy radicalism of
their theories,guaranteedthat they would generatecontroversy,and
they did. But few took their ideas seriously,except for a scattered
array of neoconservatives,who, in the r99os, resided on the fringe
themselves.The Lewis-Huntington thesiswas hit by a withering salvo
of counterattacksfrom many journalists,academics,and foreign pol-
icy gurus.
C l a s ho f C i u i l i z a t i o n s ? ' 3jr
,aa'.
civilizations-more specifically, a revolt of the world of Islam
againstthe shatteringimpact of 'Western civilizationwhich, since
the rSth century,has dislocatedand disruptedthe old order . . .
The resultingangerand frustrationare often generalized against
'Western civilizationas a whole.50
. rlPr
Over several decades,Lewis played a critical role as professor,
mentor, and guru to two generationsof Orientalists,academics,U.S.
--- 't-'
and British intelligencespecialists,think tank denizens,and assorted
i. irst
neoconsefvatives, while earningthe scorn of countlessother academic
: ihSt
specialistson Islam who consideredLewis hopelesslybiasedin favor
:..i to
of a Zionist, anti-Muslim point of view A British Jeiv born in t9r6,
a \\'1 S
Lewis spentfive yearsduring World'S7arII as a Middle Eastoperative
.:.r ine
for British intelligence,and then settledat the University of London.5a
... i n ] .
In tc)74 he migrated from London to Princeton,where he developed
ties to people who would later lead the fledgling neoconservative
movement. "l.ewis becamefSenatorHenry] Jackson'sguru' more or
less," said Richard Perle,ssa former top Pentagon official who, as
chairman of the Pentagon'sDefense Policy Board, was the most
prominent advocatefor war with Iraq in zoo3, and who is a longtime
acolyte of Lewis's.Lewis also becamea regular visitor to the Moshe
Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University,where he developedclose links
to Ariel Sharon.
- - lntt- By the r98os, Lewis was hobnobbing with top Department of
. Lervis Defense officials. According to Pat Lang, the former DIA official,
BernardLewis was frequentlycalled down from Princetonto provide
tutorials to Andrew Marshall, director of the Office of Net Assess-
ments, an in-house Pentagon think tank.'56Another of Lewis's stu-
dentswas Harold Rhode, a polyglot Middle East expert who went to
work in the Pentagonand stayedfor more than two decades,serving
as Marshall's deputy.Over the past twenty years'Lewis has servedas
the in-house consultant on Islam and the Middle East to a host of
including Perle,Rhode, and Michael Ledeen.Asked
neoconservatives,
whom he drew on for expertiseduring his tenure as CIA director,
'Woolsey
James says, "\7e had people come in and give seminars.I
remembertalking to BernardLewis."i-
Although Lewis maintained a veneerof academicobjectivity,and
though many scholarsacknowledgedLewis'scredentialsas a primary-
sourcehistorian on the history of the Ottoman Empire, Lewis aban-
doned all pretenseof academicdetachmentin the r99os.In r998, he
officiallyjoined the neoconcamp. signinga letterdemandingregime
changein Iraq from the ad hoc Committee for Peaceand Securityin
the Gulf, co-signedby Perle,Martin Peretzof The New Republic, and
'Wolfowitz,
future Bush administrationofficials,including Paul David
'Wurmser,and Dov Zakheim. He continued to work closely with
neoconservativethink tanks, and in the period after Septemberrr,
zooa) Lewis was ubiquitous, propagating his view that Islam was
unalterablyopposedto the'West.Two weeks after 9lrr, Perleinvited
Lewis and Ahmed Chalabi to speak before the influential Defense
Policy Board. inauguratinga rwo-yeareffort by neoconservativesto
prove a nonexistent link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam
Hussein.Chalabi, a friend of Perle'sand Lewis'ssincethe r9Sos, led
an exile Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress,and
Chalabi was responsiblefor feedingreamsof misleadinginformation
to U.S. intelligenceofficersthat helpedthe Bush administrationexag-
geratethe extent of the threat posedto the United Statesby Iraq.
Lessthan a month after Lewis and Chalabi'sappearance,the Pen-
tagon createda secretrump intelligenceunit led by Wurmser' which
later evolvedinto the Office of SpecialPlans (OSP).It was organized
by Rhode and Douglas Feith, the undersecretaryof defensefor policy'
"Rhode is kind of the Mikhail Suslovof the neocon movement"' says
Clashof Ciuilizations? ll5
- -', L de Lang, referring to the late chief ideologuefor the former SovietCom-
l - . >3ss- munist Party. "He's the theoretician."'58It was Rhode and Feith'sOSP,
-
\ \LU_ under neocon Abram Shulsky,which manufacturedfalse intelligence
' : l -:I tO that blamed Iraq for ties ro Al Qaeda.And it was the oSP which cre-
. :::'.'ing ated talking-points papers for Vice PresidentCheney' Secretaryof
^,:' :J as DefenseDonald Rumsfeld, and other top Bush administration offi-
- stof cials claiming that Iraq had extensivestockpilesof chemicaland bio-
- -.sked logical weapons,long-rangemissiles,unmannedaerialvehicles,and a
well-developednuclear program.seChalabi'sfalsifiedintelligencefed
- :--'-fs. I directly into the OSP,from whenceit endedup in speeches by Cheney,
Rumsfeld, and other top Bush administration officials.On the eve of
the Iraq war, Lewis, who was close to Cheney,had a private dinner
with the vice presidentto discussplans for the war in Iraq,60and' in
Loo3, Lewis dedicated his book The Crisis of Islam "To Harold
Rhode."
the Middle East, despitethe central place that idea occupiesin the
: ::: \\'ith president'srhetoric. Neoconservativeswant to control the Middle
-- ...'.: and East, not reform it, even if that means tearing countries apart and
-- ,.. John replacingthem with rump mini-statesalong ethnic and sectarianlines.
, ..:'.:r-nany The Islamic right, in this context, is just one more tool for dismantling
:: : . : i l i l Ud- existing regimes,if that is what it takes. In "Rethinking the Middle
.. ,. .\rneri- East" in Foreign Affairs, Bernard Lewis forthrightly described a
- .: l-edeen processhe called "Lebanonization":
-: - 'r i nsti-
.-....tn. and [A] possibility,which could even be precipiratedby fundamen-
talism,is what has of late beenfashionableto cail "Lebanonrza-
: l: . \\: f O t e
tion." Most of the statesof the Middle East-Egypr is an obvrous
-'j - -:spof a exception-are of recentand artificialconstructionand are vul-
nerableto sucha process. If the centralpower is sufficientlyweak-
. - clearly
ened,thereis no real civil societyto hold the polity together,no
-: ,-::'of the realsenseof commonidentity.. . . The statethendisintegrates-as
- :rrlethe happenedin Lebanon-into a chaosof squabbling,feuding,fight-
. -:.:st cen- ing sects,tribes,regionsand parties.6a
-- ,,t Ir0e,
: :nq to be That, of course,is indeed one possiblefuture for Iraq in the wake of
." hc said, the U.S. invasion,one foreseenby Chas Freeman."The neoconserva-
:, -:1 1o ut t o tives' intention in Iraq was never to truly build democracythere," he
says. "Their intention was to flatten it, to remove Iraq as a regional
vision
---::'..e threatto Israel."55
. . ::rfted in Not only Iraq is vulnerableto disintegration,but the neoconserva-
: - - --: lIi 1 h Of
U tives have made explicit their intention to collapseSaudi Arabia, too.
*. : : r'hensive .War
In their book, An End to Euil: Hotu to 'Win the on Terror,
;: ', , .S t ra te g y Richard Perle and David Frum, both fellows ar the American Enrer-
, -.:kev and prise Institute, suggestmobilizing Shiite fundamentalistsagainst the
r , .,-:.'s in the Saudistate.Becausethe Shiitesare a powerful force along the shoreof
: : , l s ci o n o f the PersianGulf, where Saudi oil fields are, Perleand Frum nore that
:: : : l aga i n st the Saudis have long feared "that the Shiites might someday seek
:: '-rp of th e independencefor the EasternProvince-and its oil." They add:
\ ,-,r'here,in
-.: ..:nentalist Independence for the EasternProvincewould obviouslybe a cata-
strophicoutcomefor the Saudistate.But it might be a very good
:. ::r.ltion in outcomefor the United States.Certainlyit's an outcometo ponder.
138 D evrr' s Gaun
,g
destructionto distribute.The regimein Baghdad,dictatorial though it
.lr l was, was a secularone whose Baath Party leadershipwas a confirmed
-
.-
_.
T
I enemyof the Islamists-both the Shiitevariety and the Sunni Muslim
34 o . D p v r r 's Gann
icans hope that moderate, secular Muslims are the silent malority in
::e CIA the Middle East, Gerecht says, "'Moderate Muslims' may not be the
:- prag- key to a neq less threatening Middle East'"71 He added:
'-: cleric Most American liberals and conservativeswill strongly resist the
: Sta te s
idea that lslam's clergymen and lay fundamentalists,who usually
--,r COITI-
dislike, if not detest, the United States, Israel, and progressrve
:. e th a t causeslike women's rights, are the key to liberating the Muslim
::: grOUP Middle East from its age-old reflexive hostility to the West. These
: : :f\'-\'eaf men, not the much-admired liberal Muslim secularistswho are
:. : : \ 'io l e n t always praised and sometimesdefendedby the American govern-
ment and press, are the United States' most valuable potential
.:. Kurvait
democratic allies.72
:: . : f pol i ti -
:.:c Party,
Gerecht compares Khomeini favorably to Mubarak: