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Sean Stone

Senior Thesis

April 2002

Backlash: American Involvement in the Near East Since World War II

In 1918, the “last Islamic Empire”, that of the Ottomans, crumbled with its German and
Austro-Hungarian allies of the First World War in what was to become a “traumatic experience
for the world Muslim community” (1). Most importantly, as disunified as the Muslim world had
been before the fall of the Ottomans, it found itself even more drastically estranged from the
alien West, which had “promised them independence but then imposed imperial mandates” (2).
Following the Second World War and the disheveled state of Europe, America entered the
Middle East in full effect, to “shoulder political and economic responsibility” for the region’s
security, to “fuel economic recovery in [industrialized] Western Europe”, and at the same time to
“provide the United States with an alternative source of [oil] suppl[ies]” so as to conserve its
own reserves for the future (3). Moreover, economic profits served as a great stimulus, since
“U.S. companies…had the lion’s share of the huge Arabian Peninsula market” (4). Another
factor spurring American ubiquity in the region was “initially and principally to contain the
Soviets” (5). To this day that assumption remains unsubstantiated, for even George Kennan
conceded that the Soviet’s primary goal “‘was to prevent the region from becoming a safe asset
for...encircling the Soviet Union’”, and “[a]fter all, the Arab and Moslem cultures have never
been hospitable to communist ideas” (6). And so while the West calculated the containment of
communism, “every day [the Arabs] were reminded that they were hosts to more than 800,000
Palestinian refugees” (7). Accordingly, an alternate history of the Near East will never be
known, while the dismal reality of the region exists for its discontented inhabitants, who now
revert on a more substantial basis back to their Islamic roots; this “[r]esurgence is mainstream
not extremist, pervasive not isolated” (8). While no one can accept the full weight of
responsibility for the course of history, America’s divisive policies in the Near East since World
War II have conjured increased Arab disunity and a subsequent resurgence of fundamentalist
Islam -- including extremist terrorism to ease their sense of powerlessness.
It would be impossible to discuss the Middle East without mentioning the most persistent
conflict of the last fifty years, that over the existence of Israel. Even in 1919 America was aware
of the “potential problems brewing in Palestine” (9). Yet with the resolution of World War II,
and the public outcry against the atrocities committed against the Jews, President Harry Truman
supported the “Zionist agenda” (9). Naturally other concerns embroiled the U.S. in Israel such
as the Jewish “emigration out of Eastern Europe during 1948” that led to the “possibilities for
infiltration of Soviet agents” into Israel (11). Not only did Truman recognize the Jewish state of
Israel but he also began the trend in 1949 of massive amounts of economic aid with an Export-
Import Bank loan just prior to Israel’s first national elections, while offering the displaced
Palestinians minimal reciprocity. Indeed, “U.S. aid has allowed Israel’s leaders to avoid paying
the political and economic costs of clinging to the occupied territories” taken by military
conquest (10). At the same time, when both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. recognized Israeli existence
in 1948, “the form and shape of the new state was still not determined”, since the UN was
haggling over a partition plan for Palestine when the Jewish Agency, the pioneering Jewish
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organization, “announced that a provisional government was being formed in the Jewish portion
of Palestine” (12). It did not take long, though, for that portion to expand outward and absorb
over half the Palestinian allotment.
From the time of the UN’s recommendation for the partition of Palestine in late-1947,
Israel found itself at war with the surrounding Arab countries, and the Palestinians’ cause was
virtually disregarded, since “Israel and Jordan were acting in accord with a secret agreement to
partition Palestine in 1947-8”, with “half of the proposed Palestinian state incorporated within
Israel and the remainder taken over by Jordan [] and Egypt”, that being the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, respectively (13). One of the major sticking points in the violence ever since has been the
issue of accepting UN Resolution 242, which established Israel’s permanent borders, and the
dispute over whether the Israelis can deal with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), or
if it can simply maintain its dialogues with established nations like Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in
peace talks. Even in 1953 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion “considered [UNR 242] as
null and void” (14). In turn, the PLO resisted accepting the resolution on the grounds that it
“refer[red] to them solely in the context of a refugee problem” (15). Meanwhile, Israel has
regarded this stance as an opposition to its very existence as a state, and accordingly, Israel
“branded the [PLO] as a terrorist organization” for its continual warfare against Israelis (14).
Yet the Palestinians find themselves with little other voice than the PLO, already acknowledged
as their spokesman by UN vote in 1974.
America had been mostly uncommunicative with the PLO since its formation, but it took
an even tougher stance in the 1970s with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s “literally clos[ing]
the door on American contact with the font of Palestinian nationalism” because of the PLO’s
involvement in the civil war in Jordan (wherein “CIA [had] beg[u]n making secret annual
payments to King Hussein…in the millions of dollars per year” since 1957) prior to its expulsion
in 1970, and on account of its subversive attacks against Israel staged from Jordan, up to that
point, and from Lebanon thereafter (16) (17). This “rejectionist ‘Greater Israel’ position”,
leaving intact Israel’s acquisitions following the 1967 war, basically became U.S. policy ever
since (18). However, the Kissinger’s legacy “left the Arabs with great bitterness and a sense of
betrayal” (16). To this day in 2002, as Israel encroaches deeper and deeper into Palestinian
territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, “[n]othing has so inflamed the Arabs as the images
of American-built jet fighters…firing on Palestinians”, generating the “rage of the streets, and
the corresponding spread of anti-Americanism” (19).
America at the United Nations has proved no more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause,
vetoing majority votes in 1979 and 1981 on assistance to Palestinian people, condemnation of
Israeli policy regarding the living conditions of Palestinian people, the rights of the Palestinian
people, and Israeli violations of human rights in occupied territories. Furthermore, Israel
expanded its assault on the Palestinians with an invasion of Lebanon in 1978 to defend its
northern border. The Lebanese civil war between numerous factions of Christians and Muslims
is a complicated history in itself, yet Israel’s recurring interest lay in destroying the PLO’s base
of operation in the South. When a cease-fire was initiated by American diplomat Philip Habib in
1981, and since PLO “military forces [were] observing [the] cease-fire”, this appeared to be “‘a
veritable catastrophe in the eyes of the Israeli government’…undercutting the routine Israeli
explanation that it was impossible to negotiate with terrorists” (22). Therefore Israel had to wait
for a reason to eject the PLO from Lebanon. They found their explanation in the attempted
assassination of their ambassador to London by the Abu Nidal faction that had split from the
PLO. “Israeli intelligence, the CIA…knew that this stated reason was bogus”, but the Israelis
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used this pretext to occupy Southern Lebanon in 1982, while backing the Christian Phalangist
militia leader Bashir Gemayel (23). The U.S. “stood alone in vetoing a UN Security Council
resolution calling for simultaneous withdrawal of Israeli and Palestinian armed forces from
Beirut” partly because that plan would “‘attempt to preserve the P.L.O. as a viable political
force’” (24). Essentially dismissing the PLO’s right to exist, the U.S. further displayed its
loyalty to Israel through aid increases after the war, despite the results in Lebanon being a string
of atrocities committed by all sides (25). By the end of the war, according to journalist Thomas
Friedman, in the Arab world “‘not only did respect for many Arab leaders die…but so too much
of America’s respect in the Middle East’…because of the perception that ‘America cannot be
trusted’” (26).
Of course, continuing Soviet support for the PLO made America’s stance on Israel more
unproblematic throughout the Cold War, yet in the modern era America’s unfettering aid to
Israel has become more of a liability without the same justification; fortunately for Israel,
according to Fortune Magazine’s 1997 list of the most powerful interest groups in Washington,
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee ranks second (28). Now, without the communist
threat, “the Jewish state could serve as a deterrent to radical Arab regimes and help to shore up
shaky moderate ones”; in a way, what it has been doing all along (29).
Israel’s future with America remained uncertain through the 1950s as Egypt’s Gamal
Abdul Nasser, who had such a “close relationship with the CIA” that they purportedly “assisted
in the coup” that brought him to power in 1952, became the icon of pan-Arabism for the
disunited Arab world (30). Yet it remains questionable to what extent Nasser was actually anti-
Zionist. In his early days in power, Nasser “let it be known…that he would be prepared to make
peace with Israel”, while Israel seemed more in the position of the jealous third-party “vying for
the favors of an inattentive suitor”, the United States (30). In fact, 1954 saw the opening of
“discrete contacts between Nasser and [Israeli Prime Minister Moshe] Sharett” (31). Tragically,
hard-liners in Sharett’s government, particularly those like Moshe Dayan and Pinchas Lavon
who kept close relations with Ben Gurion managed to arrange the conspiratorial Lavon affair
involving amateurish Israeli saboteurs in Egypt who, when uncovered, startled Nasser into the
“discontinuation of all contacts wit the Israelis” (32). The betrayal propelled the hawkish Ben
Gurion back into power as the Defense Secretary and Egypt to arm the fedayeen (Palestinian
guerrillas) in Sinai and Gaza for incursions into Israel that concluded with the Israeli raid on
Gaza. This violation of Egyptian territory “[u]ltimately…brought about the break between
Nasser and Washington” that the Israelis “had hoped to achieve”, and thus Nasser, whom the
U.S. was no longer prepared to arm, drifted farther toward nonalignment and finally found an
arms supplier in the Soviets (33). Puzzlingly, CIA Director Allen Dulles was aware that
“Israel’s policies toward Egypt seemed to be directed at blocking any U.S.-Egyptian agreement
on arms”, and America, perhaps in accordance, failed to respond to its pleas for American
weapons (34). This tactic employed by the Israelis was no longer original by the time they
assaulted Syria in early 1956 to push Syria toward the Soviet camp; Israel later justified “its
requests for Western arms as anticommunist rather than anti-Arab”, a logic that would work
against any number of Arab states such as Egypt, Syria, and Iraq (35).
Within a year of the Gaza raids came the Suez crisis wherein the British, French, and
Israelis invaded Egypt and attempted to retake the recently nationalized canal; America’s
reaction to the crisis, on the other hand, remains a bit inexplicable. While the U.S. “had aerial
reconnaissance that clearly showed who was preparing to attack whom”, America chose to
remain aloof from the plotters before seizing its opportunity to incorporate the Middle East as its
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sphere of influence with the Eisenhower Doctrine and to belatedly “plot to overthrow Nasser…
although the details are rather sketchy” (36)(37). Since Nasser’s pan-Arabic ambitions
threatened so many regimes that “leaders of most of the Arab states stood by and watched” the
invasion, it is also of no surprise that the CIA was dealing with these leaders in attempts to get
rid of Nasser (38) (37). The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s main anti-Nasser and Islamist group,
as well as its branches and affiliations around the Muslim world “received encouragement and
sometimes money [from America], when they became engaged against local or Soviet
Communists” (39). In hindsight this plan may have proved dangerous, considering the power
and influence exerted by the Brotherhood as an Islamist force in countries such as Egypt, Jordan,
and Syria, for it acts as a supranational social service.
At the time of the Suez Crisis, Israel appeared no more favorably to the Arabs for having
cooperated with the British and French in invading Egypt, since this merely showed Israel as
“the handmaiden of imperialism”, waiting for the British and French navies to crush the
Egyptian Air Force before storming across the border (38). Yet Israel proved invaluable in
effectively ridding the threat of Nasserism to the Arab states with a decisive victory in the Six
Day War of 1967. With the foreknowledge and cooperation of the U.S., who saw the
opportunity to “[e]mbarass the Soviets in the Middle East” by destroying their client state’s
armies and to discredit Nasser as well as giving the Israelis more chips to bargain with the Arabs,
Israel took the offensive in seizing the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights from the United Arab
Republic of Syria and Egypt (40); though claims are often made that Egypt pre-empted the 1967
war, even Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin “echoed the military consensus when he stated, ‘I do
not believe that Nasser wanted war’”, but rather, Israel took advantage of its American-supplied
military arsenal to annex the West Bank from Jordan and Golan Heights from Syria (41). The
breaking point for the semi-secular Egypt under Nasser came as a result of the defeat, which
“created an environment conducive to the acceptance of the [Muslim] Brotherhood view that the
traditional Islamic beliefs had been neglected or suppressed” (42). There thus ensued a revival
of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, particularly under Nasser’s successor Anwar Al-
Sadat, climaxing with the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Although the short war ended in a draw, “a
sizeable resupply effort [by the U.S.]…allowed Israel to regain the initiative”, but the Arab
world still regarded the war as “the self-perceived restoration of ‘Arab honor’” (43) (44).
Sadat’s initial successes faded drastically following the U.S. brokered Egyptian-Israeli Peace
Accords that “left the Arab world bitterly divided and the United States savagely condemned”,
while Egypt finally found a plentiful supply of weaponry of over $1 billion in annual military aid
from the US (45). Yet the increasing Islamization in Egypt, “spurred in part by Sadat’s
enthusiastic cooperation with the Americans and his coddling of the otherwise proscribed
Muslim Brotherhood”, has strengthened supranational groups in their attempts to “end [Egypt’s]
dependence on the non-Muslim West” (46) (47). Egypt’s tenuous political situation continues
to this day, as terrorist activity occurs sporadically and political dissent persists, as the present
government of President Mubarak “squash[es] dissent and strangl[es] civil society, “the Muslim
Brotherhood and organizations like it at least tr[y] to give people a sense of meaning and purpose
in a changing world” (48).
Beginning in the early 1950s and ending at the brink of the 1980s, one of America and
Israel’s most consistent allies in the region was the Iranian ruler Reza Shah Pahlavi. The modern
history of Iran dates back largely to August 1953 when Operation Ajax, undertaken by the US
and Britain, destabilized Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, one of the first democratically
elected leaders in the region, and reasserted the power of the monarchy under Shah Reza Pahlavi.
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Even before Mossadeq took office in 1951, Parliament had nationalized the British owned
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Unfortunately, Mossadeq found himself at the head of a
deteriorating economy, damaged by the AIOC’s boycott of Iranian oil on the international
market, and a target for American policymakers who “had great difficulty…distinguishing
nationalist movements from communist movements”, although a State Department report in
1953 reported that “Mussadeq himself was neither a communist nor a communist sympathizer”,
and indeed, the Soviet Union again stayed out of the region by choosing not to intervene with the
coup (49) (50). With the newly-elected Prime Minister Churchill in Britain and President
Eisenhower in the United States in 1953, Mossadeq was a marked man, especially once Britain
promised the US a 40% interest in Iranian oil. Though many protesters were hired, the “coup
could not have succeeded without substantial Iranian participation” brought on by Mossadeq’s
deteriorating command of government factions, but “the Iranians would not or could not have
acted without American/British direction”; therefore, the operation “alienated important
generations of Iranians from America” and “damaged the image of the United States in the eyes
of the nationalists” in the region (50).
Of course, the United States benefited from its alliance with the Shah in numerous ways,
one being low oil prices, except during the 1973 oil crisis, but Iran still chose not to join the
embargo. Essentially, though, the American interest in Iran “centered on U.S. commitments to
the state of Israel… [and] concern about Soviet expansionism” (51). For these reasons, the
“Mossad-SAVAK [Iranian secret police] connection was especially close”, its purpose being to
“‘develop[] [] pro-Israeli and anti-Arab policy on the part of Iranian officials’” (52). While
Mossad “helped to train SAVAK”, Iran became Israel’s largest oil supplier by the time of the
Shah’s overthrow in 1979 (53). Iran, part of the periphery states surrounding the Arab Gulf,
also bordered the Soviet Union and “‘was absolutely critical for two decades in enabling the U.S.
to detect and properly evaluate Soviet ICBM testing and capacities’”, but all the while,
America’s “preoccup[ation] with gathering information” prevented it from assessing the
deteriorating situation in the host country itself (54).
Although Iran was using its huge oil profits for modernization and a military build-up,
the 1950s “came to be known…as a decade of decadence” wherein the bureaucracy was soaking
up the aid, which “was seen as benefiting the rich” and “wasted in the construction of a police
state” without assisting the people (55). In fact, by 1976 Amnesty International noted “‘no
country in the world [as having] a worse record in human rights than Iran’”, brought on by
SAVAK’s widespread torture and execution of so-called communists, or dissidents (56). By
1977 “thousands of young Iranians continued their movement to Islam as a force of liberation”,
ironic though that may seem, and turned to religious leaders like the Ayatollah Khomeini (57).
Interestingly, it was the Shah’s policies, mainly his White Revolution, which splintered the
Islamic mullah’s support for his regime. As part of the Shah’s secularist modernization, he
implemented land reforms in the 1960s whose “real motive…was to push the peasants off the
land to provide cheap labour for the factories” while “enrich[ing] the nobility and absentee
landowners” (58). The mullahs took a stand against the reforms in a June 1963 uprising because
it interfered with the Islamic tradition of endowment from which they profited, and as a result of
the revolt and harsh crackdown, Khomeini’s exile from Iran led to his emergence as a “sacred
returning messiah” fourteen years later (59). During those turbulent years in Iran, as the land
reforms caused mass migration into the cities, the poorly equipped cities forced many to find
solace in Islam and residency in a mosque (58).
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So by the time Khomeini, who “managed to strike a chord with many Muslims” beyond
Iran, returned to the disheveled state in 1979 as the figurehead of the revolution, American-
Iranian relations were already pre-ordained to be cantankerous (60); the “imperialism” displayed
in 1953 had yet to wear off, having created “severe disillusionment” with America amongst
nationalists, only proliferated by the Shah’s suppressive regime (61). Furthermore, America
was left to feel the backlash of having been “involved all over [] Iran….[it] founded the Iranian
airline and many other organizations like that”, and worse, it brought many young Army officers
to train in America with Special Forces and are now “totally familiar with [America’s] system”
(62). Now branded a terrorist state, and responsible for giving “Islamic fundamentalism [] a
tremendous boost, Khomeini’s Iran heavily supported one of the most notorious terrorist groups
in the world, the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah (63). Hezbollah became “advance guards for a
campaign of terror and kidnapping aimed at eradicating 150 years of American cultural influence
in the region”, though their actions correlated to the horror of that civil war in general (64).
America refused to yield its loss in Iran too quickly, though, for the year after
Khomeini’s rise to power, Iraq, perhaps encouraged by Washington but certainly “supported by
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, they being concerned that Iran’s anti-monarchist sentiments might
spread to their own realms”, invaded Iran in what was expected to precipitate a quick
counterrevolution in Iran that eventually ended after eight years of devastating warfare (65). So
while up to “a million people died, many more were wounded, and millions were made
refugees”, America’s policy “lay in victory for neither Iran nor Iraq” (66) (67). The methods of
achieving this end began with assistance to Iraq, including the removal of the country from the
list of nations supporting international terrorism, and “a $400 million credit guarantee for U.S.
exports to Iraq” (68). Alarmingly, among the weapons sent to Iraq, according to a US Senate
Committee report in 1994, were biological materials used to make anthrax, botulinum toxin, and
other highly toxic weapons (69). Meanwhile, Israel was making “explicit reference, on
occasion, to the fact that they were selling arms to Iran, but with U.S. permission”, for “Israel
had seen Iran as an indispensable counterweight to Iraq” and its potential threat to Israel as an
emergent Arabic nation (70); recall the Israeli destruction of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.
The US gradually tended toward Israel’s strategy, for by the mid-80s certain National Security
Council personnel with “the cooperation of the CIA” and “the formal approval of President
Reagan” in his Presidential Finding of January 17, 1986 embroiled America in arms sales to Iran
in anticipation of the release of Hizbollah-held American hostages in Lebanon (71). When the
story finally broke toward the end of the war, it revealed America as two-faced and double-
dealing, violating its own neutrality and ban on weapons sales to Iran in accordance with
Operation Staunch, but America had succeeded in extending its presence into one of the most
valuable countries in the world, Saudi Arabia.
According to a State Department account of Saudi Arabia in 1945, it is “one of the
greatest material prizes in world history” (72). And when the industrialized nations’ demanded
cheap oil after World War II, Saudi Arabia obliged, finally resolving their “chronic economic
problems” (73). Until that time, Saudi Arabia had been an unproductive desert, but the advent
of the oil boom “made Saudi Arabia vastly wealthy, a few Arabs prospered and the others lost
out”, particularly the unskilled Arab laborers, often “Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, and
Egyptians, all proud products of ancient cultures” (74). So as the “new class of rich,
superficially Western gulf Arabs…travel the globe in luxury”, they are simultaneously “despised
by the rest of the Arab world” (75). Their earthly pleasures and indulgences only fuel the
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internal disorder of the Saudi’s “largely unresolved identity crisis”, generally pertaining to their
commitment to Islam and the West (76).
Even before the Shah was deposed in Iran were there “mutterings against the excessive
presence of Americans in the oil industry, military, and the National Guard”, but after his
downfall Saudi Arabia became an even more integral ally for the US as the world’s leading oil
producer and for “its leadership role in the Arab world” (77) (78). At the same time, “[a]lthough
Saudi Arabia wanted a close relationship with the United States, it stopped short of a formal
alliance or the stationing of American military forces and equipment” (78). The Saudis were
more interested in the “security of the kingdom”, with such a wealthy monarchy sitting in a nest
of disgruntled and potentially revolutionary Arabs, so a “joint American-Saudi military strategy”
was applicable, just as oil profits, especially in the early 1970s, allowed the “Saudis to purchase
huge quantities of American military equipment” (79) (80). However, by midway through the
Iran-Iraq war a leaked US report “indicat[ed] that Saudi Arabia had agreed to allow the United
States to use bases in its territory in a crisis”, which ultimately came about in Operation Desert
Storm (81).
The origins of the Gulf War remain a bit of an enigma to this day, for “[s]ome of the
principal actors in the Middle East believe that the crisis of 1990-91 was the result of collusion
between the United States and Kuwait”, a viewpoint largely derived from their inability to
“understand Kuwait’s defiant attitude toward Iraq” (82). Though Iraq had emerged as the
defender of the Arab regimes during the war with the dangerously anti-monarchical Iran,
President Saddam Hussein still owed billions of dollars in debts to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Yet Kuwait continued to sell their oil below OPEC’s quotas, frustrating the economically
strapped Iraq, as well as drilling in the Iraqi-claimed Rumaila oil fields straddling their ill-
defined border. While there is evidence for America’s culpability in the events leading to war,
U.S. opportunism is more indicative as it went about taking apart a military arsenal it had
contributed to for a man who was threatening America with rhetoric against its continuing
military presence in the Mideast at the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq War (83). Furthermore,
Hussein’s lust for a nuclear arsenal directly jeopardized Israel who “did not want to lose its
regional nuclear monopoly” (84). So America capitalized on Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait to
intervene militarily on behalf of Saudi Arabia, “though the circumstantial evidence strongly
suggests that Saddam had no such immediate or even distant intention”, since Iraq did not need
to pass through Kuwait to reach S.A. and could have more effectively utilized the interlude of six
months before America’s arrival to siege Riyadh (85). More pressing was Saddam’s
“sequestration of Kuwait [that] would put him…in a position to challenge the U.S. and Western
position” in the whole region, notably the Saudi oil fields which “Israel had been of great service
in defending [] by its actions against threats, principally from Gamal Abdel Nasser” (86). Thus
“the very fact of Desert Storm effectively commits the United States to Kuwait’s and Saudi
Arabia’s defense”, further illustrating their “dependency on the United States” (87).
The vulnerable situation Saudi Arabia finds itself in as “a lackey to Western imperialism”
has left the government with little choice but to try to appease all parties (88). Its support for the
Afghan guerrillas is well known as well as its aid packages to Pakistan and other Muslim states
like Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and “it is widely believed that Riyadh has been the
major financial backer of the Muslim Brotherhood in various countries” (89). So while the
Saudis “‘must continue to rely on direct and indirect American aid and military support’”, they
“deflect[] attention…by funding religious schools (madrassas) and centers that spread a rigid,
puritanical brand of Islam” (90) (63). The tensions that are building in Saudi Arabia between
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fundamentalism and globalism, rich and poor seem inevitably wound to explode, perhaps in the
way that they did in Iran. Part of the break is evidenced by the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and
his terrorist network Al-Qaeda; he largely broke from the Saudi monarchy when they resorted to
the Americans rather than allow him to use his Afghan war veterans to protect the kingdom
against Iraq, and then the extended presence of the American military and their super bases on
holy ground further enraged the zealous bin Laden (91). Yet uncertainty still remains as to what
extent bin Laden has completely broken from his former friends in the monarchy; after the
terrorist attacks against American personnel in Riyadh and Khobar in 1995 and ‘96, some
American officials suspected “that people very high in the Saudi kingdom might be shielding the
role of bin Laden”, especially after the FBI was refused interviews with the suspects (92). So
long as Saudi militants fill spots in terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, the security of the Saudi
monarchy may be in the balance, even if it tries to play both sides.
The fall of the Shah of Iran not only let loose a vacuum of Western influence in the
region to be filled by Saudi Arabia, it cost America heavily to witness the closure of its military
bases guarding the Soviet Union’s southern border. Therefore, as the Iranian regime was
crumbling in 1978 and ’79, CIA operatives were “involved in intelligence and reconnaissance
missions” in northern Afghanistan, indicating to the cognizant Kremlin chiefs America’s
“‘intentions [] to replace Iran with Pakistan, and if possible, even Afghanistan, as anti-Soviet
bases’” (93). Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski divulged to a French
magazine “that the first covert CIA aid to the Afghan resistance fighters was actually authorized
fully six months before the Soviet invasion”, confirmed by a Presidential Finding issued in July
1979 (94). At the onset, the main purpose of the revolt centered around retaining a “‘feudal
system and stopp[ing] Kabul government’s left-wing reforms which [are] considered anti-
Islamic’”, but since President Noor Taraki had established relations with its northern giant
neighbor, the regime was branded as communist (95).
Once the Soviet countercoup against Hafizullah Amin took place in December 1979,
America’s clandestine funding could be rationalized and found contributors in an assortment of
countries, including China, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt that amounted to over US $10 billion
(96) (97); a self-reliant method of subsistance for the guerrillas, “encouraged by those in the CIA
and elsewhere”, was a massive local production of heroin (96). As for America’s aid, it initially
“gave Pakistan full control of training and allocation of the cash resources” after having taught
select Pakistani ISI officers and Afghan guerrilla fighters at Special Forces facilities in the U.S.
(96). Through this relationship, “the CIA-ISI arms pipeline supported the more radical Islamic
parties” that did not have the support of the more traditional Muslim mullahs (98). Meanwhile,
“[t]ens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new
madrassas” established in Pakistan with American and Saudi dollars (99); in fact, CIA Director
William Casey implemented CIA assistance to the ISI “to recruit radical Muslims from around
the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin” (100). Not surprisingly,
these schools would have helped propagate the previously acquired U.S. military manual entitled
the Black Book, contain[ing] details of terrorist operations, translated into Arabic (101). So
when the Afghan volunteers returned home to “participate[] in clandestine and violent campaigns
aimed at overthrowing governments” in countries as distant as Bosnia, the Philippines, Algeria,
and as close as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, they “tended to keep the same pattern” of organizational
structure that they had learned from Afghanistan (102) (103).
As the Soviets withdrew in 1989 and civil war persisted in the country, it soon appeared
as though the Arab Afghan fighters were becoming a liability, particularly with the death of
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Pakistani President Zia Al-Haq in a 1988 enigmatic plane crash, for after his death “it became
much more difficult for the ISI to exercise the same control over the Afghan groups” (104).
Simultaneously America appeared more and more as a traitor to their Arab mercenary friends;
first there was an embarrassing incident for the Mujahideen fighters at Jalalabad following the
Soviet withdrawal where the “ISI pushed [them] to a major attack” against government forces
that ultimately left the rebels “so decimated” that the Pakistani’s could institute a friendly
government in the Taliban (106). Indeed, Pakistan had served as a conduit for many of the
young Taliban leaders who had grown up in Pakistan where their “daily life [in] the refugee
camps had been dominated by the madrassa” (107). To the embittered Arabs like bin Laden, the
Jalalabad effort had been a “U.S. conspiracy implemented through the Pakistanis” (106); there is
no evidence for this claim, but it is true that both America and Pakistan were distancing
themselves from the budding civil conflict that persisted in Afghanistan. Then, once the
Mujahideen seized Kabul, America “pushed the Afghan and Pakistani intelligence services to
carry out mass arrest of Arabs” in a successful attempt to eliminate their presence in the country
(108). Following this crackdown, America pretty much left the quarreling Mujahideen to be
sorted out by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, “constitut[ing] a major betrayal” which was only
compounded by “Washington’s refusal to…help broker a settlement between the warlords”
(109). Pakistan, now intent on the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir, channeled war veterans
and “the [continuing] American aid it had received for the Afghanistan jihad” (110). Bin
Laden’s introduction to the Taliban once they came to power in 1996 factored into Pakistan’s
plan in an attempt “to retain the Khost training camps [in Afghanistan] for Kashmiri militants”
by turning the camps into Bin Laden’s training grounds (111).
From the ashes of the Afghani war arise names like Al-Qaeda, and many other enchanted
veterans, “carrying out assassinations in Cairo, bombings in Bombay, bloody uprisings in the
mountains of Kashmir, and guerrilla warfare in the Philippines” (112). Yet another unsettling
operation may have indeed been largely carried out by this group of Afghani Arabs, the direct
assault on American military in Somali in 1993. While bin Laden was living in Sudan in this
period, a strange alliance may have formed between Iran, Iraq, and Sudan to repel American
infiltration into the Muslim world through Somalia in what they perceived to be an attempt to
“set[] up a pro-American government in Mogadishu”, “control[] the new oil gid in Sudan,
Somalia, Eritrea, and Yemen”, and inevitably “advanc[e] [] into Southern Sudan” (113).
Allegedly, the major ambush on U.S. Special Forces in October that drove America out of
Somalia “was conducted by a hard-core Islamist force…led by Arab ‘Afghans’ and the Iraqis”
(114). One development from this temporary alliance is a possible Osama-Saddam connection
following an “agreement to train a new network of Saudi Islamist intelligence operatives and
terrorists from among bin Laden’s supporters still inside Saudi Arabia” (115).
From the previous evidence it may appear as though the United States was wholly
responsible for all of the Arab world’s problems. Yet Arab disunity, having existed since the
Ottoman era, has largely been exacerbated by the foreign West in general, and amongst
themselves to another extent. Doomed from the start by the West’s realization of borders which
“encompass groups possessing few of the commonalities demanded of nationhood”, the West’s
demand for oil created wide scale migration “from the poorer Arab countries to those made rich
by oil” (116) (117). Adding to this displacement was the “urbanization of the migrants…a
‘ruralization’ of the cities” that were cluttering rapidly with diverse ethnicities only connected by
“a universal community of Islam” (118). Yet the growth of political Islam as a viable force
continues on the strength of its “appeal to women” and the lower middle-class educated youth,
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many of whom grew up in rural areas before being urbanized (119). Of course, one cannot yet
tell where to draw the line between fundamentalism’s political and social dissent and its more
directed extremist activities. Either way, America finds itself in a vulnerable position no matter
how it now acts in regards to the region; Desert Storm offered a prime example of that, for the
Arabs found themselves divided over siding with Iraq or Saudi Arabia, whom “many Arabs
attacked…not as much for what it had done but for what it is” (120). Saddam Hussein seized
the opportunity “in confronting the rich and privileged Gulf monarchies…[giving] the Arabs a
new hero”, by manipulatively “identify[ying] his previously secular regime with the cause that
would have the broadest appeal: Islam” (121) (122). Meanwhile Saddam explained that “the
occupation of Kuwait had to be solved in connection with other Mideast occupations” such as
Syria in Lebanon and Israel in Palestine, and soon enough “[p]ro-Saddam demonstrations began
to sweep through the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem” (123). Overall, America seems to
have set itself up as a target merely by trying to intervene too heavy-handedly in Arab affairs.
That is not meant to diminish America’s faults in “pitt[ing] communities against one another”,
particularly by “arming both Jews and Arabs to the teeth”, even to the extent of nuclear weapons
in the case of Israel (124) (125). Certainly America was not alone in the arms trade, but it has
been a major player, and the question remains how long it will be before an Arab state accesses
nuclear technology that “could actually lend stability to the relationships among the Middle
Eastern states” by balancing the playing-field with Israel (126). America truly finds itself in a
quagmire in the modern Near East, trapped by its past deeds and its present commitments.
Perhaps “the United States must stand back” a bit from a region brewing the wrath of reactionary
Islamists, or rather, maybe America should recall the strength of common man and attempt to
amend some of its apparently flawed dealings with leaders of unpopular regimes Regardless of
how flawed the past may be, the future remains to be seen, even if its course has already been
considerably influenced.