SEVEN YEARS AFTER we declined to go after ’Imad Mughniyah with maximum lethal force, the man who had launched him so successfully on his blood-drenched career would be awarded the Nobel Prize for peace.
What a lot of people forget about Yasir Arafat, especially since the 1993 Oslo agreement and the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize that he shared with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, is that he started out life as an Islamic fundamentalist. Even after he became chairman of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization, he never cut his ties with either Sunni or Shi’a fundamentalists. They were a reliable source of political strength for him.
Arafat was born Muhammad ’Abd-al-Rauf Arafat al-Qudwa in 1929. The Qudwas were a branch of the prominent Huysayni clan, famous for its religious scholars. One member of the clan, Mufti of Jerusalem, had supported Adolf Hitler during World War II. Arafat grew up in Egypt, studied civil engineering at the University of Cairo, and for a time headed the Palestinian Students’ Union there. After graduation, he served in the Egyptian army as a second lieutenant. It was then that he joined the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Later, he was arrested twice for his Brotherhood activities. Eventually forced to leave Egypt, Arafat moved to Kuwait, a country more tolerant of extreme religious views. There he founded Fatah in the late fifties, mainly drawing on members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinians living in the Gulf.
Even after Arafat rose to prominence with Fatah’s first attack on Israel on January 1, 1965, Arab leaders remained suspicious of his fundamentalist ties. When Egyptian president Abdul Nasser received Arafat in Egypt for the first time, he insisted that his guest submit to a body search, apparently convinced Arafat was more interested in assassinating him than in liberating Palestine.
Arafat’s interest in Islam remained dormant until 1977, when an Islamic current started to sweep across the Middle East. Always alert to shifting winds, Arafat ordered Abu Jihad, his principal deputy, to harness the Fatah believers into a single organization to be called the Committee of 77. Operational control was given to a convert to Islam, Munir Shafiq Asal. Asal’s first task, in turn, was to recruit and indoctrinate young believers, both Palestinians and Lebanese, through an already existing organization called the Student Cells. The most capable members of the Student Cells were inducted into one of Fatah’s intelligence organizations. That is how ’Imad Mughniyah, Ali Dib, and Salah first became associated.
Eventually, Arafat flew a little too close to the Islamic flame. Not only had he started recruiting young Palestinian and Lebanese believers into Fatah’s ranks, he also began providing important support to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. After the Hama insurrection in 1982, when the Syrian army sifted through the rubble, it came across American military communications equipment. Syrian president Hafiz Al-Asad at first suspected the CIA, but then he realized the equipment had come from Fatah, which had been training and supplying the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood with the purpose of bringing down Asad. Asad considered going after Arafat right away, then decided to wait and take his revenge at a time of his choosing. Asad understood that revenge is a dish best served cold.
It came on May 17, 1983. Syria encouraged two minor Fatah members, Sa’id Muragha (Abu Musa) and Nimr Salih (Abu Salih), to break away from Fatah and form their own organization. Five weeks later, on June 24, Asad formally expelled Arafat from Syria. Arafat was forced to set up in Tripoli, Lebanon, but in less than five months Abu Musa and Abu Salih, backed by Syrian forces, attacked Arafat all over Lebanon. It was all over on December 20, 1983, when, under a steady Syrian bombardment, five Greek-chartered ships evacuated Arafat and four thousand followers from Tripoli’s port. The French navy provided an armed escort to protect them from the Israeli air force attack. Arafat ended up in Tunis, isolated and out of the mainstream of Palestinian politics. The lesson he learned was that while Islam is a potent force, it’s not always a good idea to show your hand. Arafat would never again get caught in the Hama trap.
ANOTHER THING that has gotten glossed over in the wake of Arafat’s successes in Oslo and Stockholm is that, in a large sense, the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution was suckled on the Palestinian teat. In 1972 Ayatollah Khomeini and Arafat signed an accord in Najaf, Iraq, to train Islamic fighters at Fatah camps in southern Lebanon. Almost every leader of the Iranian revolution passed through these camps, from Khomeini’s son Ahmad Khomeini to Mustafa Chamran, the first commander of the Iranian Pasdaran. When the Shah fled Iran on January 16, 1979, and Khomeini returned to Iran two weeks later, it wasn’t in the least surprising that the first telephone call Khomeini received in his new office was from Yasir Arafat.
Almost nine months later, on October 19, 1979—two weeks before Iranians seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran—Arafat flew there to congratulate Khomeini in person. Their discussions were more than ceremonial. On November 18, 1979, Arafat issued orders to all Fatah cadres to provide “any assistance” requested to “protect” the Iranian revolution. Although at the time the U.S. was in the dark about “any assistance,” we weren’t for long.
In February 1980, a Lebanese Sunni, Anis Naqqash, attempted to assassinate former Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris, where the former Iranian prime minister was living as a political refugee. Naqqash fumbled the operation, killing an old lady and a policeman instead; he was arrested and given a life sentence. At first his participation made no sense at all. Why would a Lebanese Sunni attempt to kill an ex–Iranian prime minister? Then it became evident that Arafat had loaned Naqqash to Iran to assassinate Bakhtiar. After all, Arafat already had a functioning terrorist network in Paris. It would be years before Iran could put together one of its own.
Beyond the Bakhtiar attempt, it soon became clear Arafat had put his entire worldwide terrorist network at Iran’s disposal. And when he was forced out of Beirut in 1982, he handed it over lock, stock, and barrel to the Iranians for safekeeping. Many of the cadres went to the Pasdaran. That’s how Mughniyah and most of his underlings and associates found their way to the Iranians. In one of those reversals of fortune that affect even terrorist organizations, ’Ali Dib, who had been Mughniyah’s boss in Force 17, started working for Mughniyah.
It would take years to understand the exact relationship between Mughniyah and Arafat. A key piece of the puzzle would fall into place with the hijacking of Kuwait Airlines Flight 422 on April 5, 1988. We first heard about the operation when Mughniyah told Arafat he intended to conduct a “spectacular” operation to free the seventeen prisoners in Kuwait on February 23. Although Arafat did not know what the operation was, he agreed to help, and on March 14, ’Ali Dib wrote to Arafat suggesting that he should start preparing himself for negotiations with Kuwait. Four days after Flight 422 was seized as it left Bangkok, Dib contacted Arafat again, this time to tell Kuwait that unless it released the prisoners, hostages would start dying. Arafat was furious when Mughniyah went ahead and killed two hostages, but he continued to relay demands to Kuwait and then to Algeria, where the plane was eventually taken.
For someone who isn’t a student of terrorism or the Middle East, this may sound like inside baseball, but terrorist organizations operate like the most complicated interlocking directorate ever created by a white-shoes New York lawyer. And at the end of the day, whether you’re tracing ’Imad Mughniyah or seeking to unravel the Iranian revolution, a lot of the trails converge at the feet of Yasir Arafat. There may even be a trail to Osama bin Laden, but what you never look for, you are almost certain never to find.
I think of that when I see Arafat standing in the Rose Garden at the White House or when I hear that a CIA director has met privately with him at some desert tent, and I wonder sometimes if Arafat’s example doesn’t make Osama bin Laden consider that he, too, might become a statesman in time. This book isn’t about Israel, but I should point out that many of its statesmen started out their political lives conducting what we would now define as terrorist operations against Britain. In the pursuit of realpolitik, apparently, there is always hope.