A President and a Terror Boss

President Jimmy Carter knew he would anger Israeli leaders and the Bush Administration when he agreed to meet Khalid Meshal, a senior Hamas leader the Israelis once tried to assassinate.
The moment Pres. Carter announced he planned to meet Meshal in Syria while on a trip to Israel and Arab countries, denunciations came swift and fast from Washington and Tel Aviv, including public condemnation from Sec. of State, Condoleezza Rice. Pres. Carter’s response was that his mission was designed to encourage Hamas to join with Fatah in a dialogue with Israel to find a peaceful solution to the Palestinian question. He stressed that to play a meaningful role he could not set preconditions by refusing to meet men like Meshal. In Arab nations, there was no criticism of his trip, or his decision to talk to the Hamas chief. In Europe, there was praise for his willingness to talk to all sides in the Palestinian dispute.
Meshal is the point man for Hamas throughout the Arab world and has even conducted secret talks with Israel about prisoner swaps and in particular the fate of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized by Hezbollah in Lebanon in June 2006. Israel recently turned down a prison swap for the corporal even after Meshal assured the Israelis he was still alive. So, how did Meshal, who is probably still an Israeli target, become important enough to meet a former US president?
In the mid-1990s, he was a shadowy, central figure in the Hamas terror underground until Israeli assassination squads learned his identity and zeroed in on him. In an effort to escape certain death in the narrow confines of the Palestinian territories, he moved to the Jordanian capital, Amman, with his wife and seven children. Once there, he operated out of the Hamas political offices with the knowledge and consent of the Jordanian government. Before long, the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad got a tip about his new location and his daily routine from its Mossad bureau chief in Jordan. Mossad director, Danny Yatom quickly informed Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu whose advice was: “Go and knock him down. Knock him down. Tell your people to do that.” Yatom responded that killing Meshal in Jordan would jeopardize an accord the previous Israeli P.M., Yitzhak Rabin had made with the Jordanians but Netanyahu was unimpressed by Yatom’s reasoning. “I want action and I want it now,” Netanyahu told him.
Within weeks, an eight-man Mossad assassination team was assembled in Jordan with orders to assassinate Meshal. Two of the team, using the names Barry Beads and John Kendall, were chosen as the hit-men while their colleagues were tasked for a back-up role in case it all went wrong. Each member of the team, including Beads and Kendall, carried bona fide Canadian passports, a ploy often used by Mossad’s overseas agents. In some cases, Mossad agents have also used Australian and EU passports. The Mossad plan was to kill Meshal by means of a deadly chemical weapon in front of the Hamas office in downtown Amman.
On the morning of September 26, 1997, Beads and Kendall watched Meshal and his children get into his chauffeur-driven car outside the family home for his journey to work. His routine was for the chauffeur to drop him off outside his office and then take the children to school. On this morning, Kendall and Beads, driving a Toyota rental car, followed Meshal from his home but the chauffeur spotted them and became suspicious. Meshal phoned the local police who checked the plate of the Toyota and reported there was no need to worry because it was rented to a Canadian tourist. Convinced he was safe, Meshal proceeded to his office. When he finally stepped from his car, Beads approached to shake hand in order to distract his attention while Kendall prepared to spray a deadly chemical into his ear lobe. At first, Kendall missed with the spray but tried again, this time successfully. Locals seeing Meshal being attacked ran to his aid and the two hit-men made a hasty retreat. They sprinted to their car and tried to drive off but found their exit blocked by several vehicles. The Mossad back-up team arrived but realizing they were outnumbered fled the scene. In the meantime, Kendall and Beads were close to being lynched by Hamas supporters but local police arrived on the scene and arrested them. Nearby, Meshal collapsed on the pavement and was rushed to hospital where he was placed on life support to stabilize his heart and lungs. Tissue tests confirmed he had been sprayed with a chemical weapon for which his doctors had no antidote.
On hearing details of the attack, Jordan’s experienced counter- intelligence chief, Samih Batihi suspected Israeli involvement. He went to the police station where Beads and Kendall were being held and within hours got them to admit they were Mossad agents on an assassination mission. Before the day was over, Jordan’s King Hussein, who was in a furious mood, phoned Israeli PM., Benyamin Netanyahu and told him copies of the confessions of Beads and Kendall were on their way to US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. The King warned that, if Mossad did not provide an antidote to the chemical weapon used on Meshal, Kendall and Beads would be subjected to a public trial, which would seriously damage Israel’s reputation and anger Jordan’s ally, the United States. However, if an antidote was made available the two hit-men would be freed. Within an hour of that call an Israeli military plane landed in Amman with the antidote. A day after Meshal was injected with it he slowly began to recover. The captured Mossad agents, minus their Canadian passports, were handed over to the Canadian embassy in Amman and then secretly driven across the Allenby Bridge into Israel.
Meshal later moved with his family to the Syrian capital, Damascus where he has continued to represent Hamas in talks with Arab nations. He has also had private meetings with European diplomats but the offer to meet former US President, Jimmy Carter was considered a coup. Carter was responsible for bringing Egypt and Israel to the negotiating table in September 1978 when Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat and Israeli President, Menachem Begin signed the first peace deal between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This time, Carter has no clout to force anyone to the negotiating table but some Arab nations are happy to see him making an effort at a time when US policy in the Middle East is stagnating.

IS RUSSIA'S MID-EAST POLICY ONLY ECONOMIC?

With the US bogged down in a costly war in Iraq, Russia has been busy rekindling old friendships in the Islamic world and establishing important economic links with some of America’s allies in the Middle East, including Israel and Saudi Arabia.
In January 2008, confirmation that a Russian company was awarded close to $1 billion for constructing a railway across Saudi Arabia did not grab the headlines yet it was further evidence of how Moscow had successfully wooed the Saudis. Behind the scenes, there was even talk of bigger deals involving the Saudis and major Russian arms exporters. Under Vladimir Putin’s presidency, Russia has cleverly restructured its outreach to the Islamic world and the Middle East in particular. Putin and his senior advisers in Moscow decided years ago that Russia had to move away from the old Cold War stance of shaping a foreign policy around political gains and a few Mid-east nations like Egypt and Syria. Instead, it had instead to build strong economic ties to former Cold war allies in the region like Syria and Egypt, and form energy ties with Israel and some of America’s foremost Arab supporters.
When Putin visited Saudi Arabia for the first time in 2007 he articulated what had already become a new Russian real politik based on economic strategy. He pointed out that Russia and Saudi Arabia were the world’s largest energy producers that that made them partners rather than rivals. He stressed that it was easy for the two countries to find what he called “common ground” and he pointed to the fact that as far back as 2004 economic cooperation had become the cornerstone of their relationship. In that year, the giant Russian oil company, LUKoil, won a 40-year contract to develop a massive gas field in the Rub el-Hali desert. He told Saudi leaders LUKoil’s investment plan amounted to $2billion but it was possible to forge cooperation on many other fronts, including nuclear energy.
Putin’s visit encouraged Saudi companies to invest in Russia and that led to a proposal for a Saudi-Russian bank. For close observers of the Middle East the Russian strategy of establishing economic links was at the heart of a policy that was aimed at not just competing with US economic dominance in the region but overtaking it at a time when America’s image across the Islamic world was at an all time low. Suddenly Russia was seen as having no political agenda in relation to Islam and that perception was helped by Russia’s determined efforts to avoid conflict with most Muslim nations. Putin’s advisers constantly stressed that Russia was respectful of Islamic traditions. On issues like Iraq Russia appealed to religious leaders on both sides to end the killing so as not to be accused of taking sides.
Meanwhile, Russia’s arms exporters and its nuclear energy companies continued to seek new clients. Recently, Moscow, much to the anger of US companies, not only agreed to sell Egypt new air defense systems but to help it build nuclear power plants. And if the big US and British oil giants thought they had managed to keep Russian competitors out of Iraq they were sadly mistaken because LUKoil, as well as a major Russian engineering, may soon sign contracts with the Iraqi government to drill for oil and re-build a pipeline from Iraq into Syria.
Russia’s most startling economic realignment from its Cold War period has been its growing economic relationship with Israel and while that has been happening Moscow has been careful to call for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue without siding only with the Palestinians as it did in the past. Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership which officially ends next month, Russian trade with Israel has doubled, amounting to over $3 billion, and much of that has been due to the fact that major deals have been done in the fields of medicine, engineering, energy, aviation and weapons.
On a visit to Israel in 2005, Putin was quick to point out that there was everything in place for the two nations to construct a major partnership. At that time, he was aware that Russian-born Jews, who had been allowed to leave Russia after the end of Communism, made up 20 to 25% of the Israeli population. Many of those Jews still had links to Russia and held joint Russian-Israeli passports. What Putin did not mention was that some of Israel’s richest men were of Russian origin and had used their Israeli passports to flee Russia to avoid corruption charges.
Irrespective of outstanding warrants for some billionaires, Putin accepted, as did his Israeli hosts, that the two countries had much to gain, especially in terms of energy. By then, it was clear Israel’s dependence on Russian oil and gas had grown annually. Israel appealed successfully to Moscow to persuade Turkey, which received Russian oil and gas supplies to consider a joint venture with Israel to build a two, or four-tier pipeline that could also carry water and electricity from Turkey to Israel. In 2007, an agreement in principle was reached with Turkey for the construction of an undersea pipeline from Turkey into the port of Eilat in the Gulf of Aquba. The US was happy about that proposed arrangement, believing the involvement of Turkey created a buffer between Israel and Russian energy giants whereby it would not easy for Moscow to shut off oil or gas to Israel in the event of a political crisis. Nevertheless, Israel’s ties to Russia are bound to remain strong given the annual trade between the two.
Washington has had to watch while Russia under Putin has used its considerable oil wealth and energy resources to establish an economic foothold in the Middle East at a time when the White House has been preoccupied with a costly and seemingly endless Iraq conflict. And, even when it comes to Russia’s relationship with another energy giant, Iran, Washington has been powerless. It could be said Moscow has thumbed its nose at Washington when President Bush has called for tougher sanctions against the Iranians. All the signs are that Russia, like China, has taken advantage of a weakened America by using vast wealth to create new partnerships across the globe. It could be argued that many of those partnerships are aimed at generating wealth but, on the other hand, historically a successful economic strategy is essential to a strong foreign policy.

PHILIPPINES VITAL TO U.S. STRATEGIC INTERESTS

When the US agreed to close its military bases in the Philippines two decades ago few strategists would have predicted that by 2008 the Philippines would once again represent a vital element in the West’s strategic positioning in South East Asia.
Until July 1946, the Philippines was an American colony indebted to G.I.’s for expelling the Japanese from its soil in World War. It is comprised of more than 7,000 islands and has a population of close to 89 million, much of it English speaking. The majority religion is Roman Catholicism though Islam is on the rise. Most Filipinos look westward because of deep cultural links with the US and with Spain that ruled the Philippines for 300 years. During the Cold War, the US had a substantial US military presence in the Philippines in the form of Clarke Air Base and the Subic Naval Station, but that came to an end in 1991 because of growing public disenchantment about foreign troops on Filipino soil. The country’s Senate voted by an overwhelming majority to refuse to ratify a treaty that allowed the US to operate bases on its territory, drawing stiff criticism from Washington.
For US military planners, and Filipino generals who opposed the Senate decision, it was a severe body blow because the Philippine islands were ideally positioned to monitor a potential threat from China. They were also within reach of the world’s two largest Muslim populations, Malaysia and Indonesia though that seemed less of an issue in the years before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. However, post 9/11 the presence of Islamic terrorists on islands such as Mindanao offered a glimmer of hope for the re-opening of links between the Pentagon and the government of the Philippines. The Bush White House was told by military planners that if the US could help the Philippine government with its growing terrorist threat that would go a long way to forging a new partnership with wider strategic objectives. Within the hierarchy of the Filipino military there was also a yearning for a closer link with the US and a growing debate about how that could be achieved. Those discussions thousands of miles apart took place during what turned out to be an opportune time. In the Pentagon, there was an acceptance that the era of massive bases of the type that had once led to anti-US sentiment was over and a new arrangement was possible. Previously, opposition to a US military presence had also arisen because soldiers, who committed crimes such as rape, could not be prosecuted under local laws, a situation that pertains today in Iraq. Fortunately, by 2002, Pentagon thinking was that the US would benefit strategically and politically from small bases that could be expanded in the event of an emergency. In tandem with that beliefe was an awareness that the time had come for America and its allies to transform their militaries into more mobile forces that could be moved across the globe at short notice and reach out from forward operating platforms.
Pentagon planners found a clever way to build those platforms so they would not attract public opposition of the kind the US military previously experienced in the Philippines and at various times in Japan. The planners began by devising joint training exercises, using the Philippines as a testing ground for their strategy, since that country was suddenly looming large in the minds of generals who were watching a fast expanding Chinese military and the rise of Islamic terrorism. America’s ally, Australia also pointed to the importance of the Philippines in terms of keeping a constant eye on militant Islam given that over 300 million Muslims lived in South East Asia within easy reach of the Philippines.
In November 2002, the US and Philippine governments agreed that a changed environment post 9/11, allied to an increasingly belligerent Chinese navy in the South China Sea, required closer relations. They signed an MLA – Mutual Logistics Support Agreement, which in effect allowed the US to use Philippine territory as a “platform for military operations in the region.” In return, the US agreed to spend a considerable amount of money creating what the Pentagon called Cooperative Security Locations, meaning areas for joint training exercises. For Pentagon planners, those would represent forward operating bases for highly mobile military units supported from the sea and air. By its very nature, the agreement cleverly produced an alternative arrangement to the types of huge bases that had been the focus of too much critical attention in the 1970s and 80s. In military parlance, the new centers became known as forward or advanced operating bases.
Since 2002, tens of millions of US dollars have been devoted to building “joint centers” on remote islands where Special Forces Teams from both countries carry out training exercises. Money has also been used to create deep harbors for US warships and runways for huge transport planes, all of which has been carried out under the heading of Cooperative Security Locations. The sudden return of the US military to the Philippines was depicted by the White House as a necessary step in the war on terror. In particular, it was pointed out that the Al Qaeda leader Ramzi Yousef, who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had met the leaders of the terror group, Abu Sayyaf on Mindanao and had discussed plans for assassinating the Pope when he visited Manila. According to the Pentagon, in 2002 Abu Sayyaf took orders from Osama Bin Laden and had as many as 1,000 fighters operating throughout the Philippines with support from local Muslims. By 2008, several Abu Sayyaf leaders had been hunted down and killed and the number of fighters in its ranks was said tobe 300 or fewer. The group never posed the threat the Pentagon and White House proclaimed it would but its presence enabled the US to transform its relationship with the Philippines and to wrap that country into the West's strategic plans for South East Asia. Today, military strategists in Washington and in other western capitals are happy that the Philippines are once again a forward operating platform. Without the Philippines, the only alternative would be Australia, which is much too far away to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or a Chinese military take-over of islands in the South China Sea that Japan claims sovereignty over. In the Philippines, there has been little criticism of the renewed role of the US military though neighboring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have taken a different view. They have steadfastly refused to allow US troops to be stationed on their soil, a policy also adopted by Singapore and Thailandm both of which are not openly hostile to the United States. None of that matters while the US and its allies have the Philippines in play in what could crucially be the vital cog in western strategy in South East Asia in the next decade.

SERIOUS THREATS FROM CYBERSPACE

Since 2003, Chinese military hackers have been causing havoc in the computer networks of some of our most secure military and nuclear centers but it is now believed terrorists can also see the value in launching cyber attacks against America.
The Chinese threat from cyberspace has developed at an alarming rate and for the Chinese military and intelligence services it has proved the most cost effective way of stealing our nuclear, industrial and defense secrets. In the past five years Chinese hackers, under the guidance of the Peoples Liberation Army cyber warfare branch have penetrated systems at the Pentagon and more importantly at Sandia Laboratories, the heart of America’s nuclear research and design facilities. They have also been detected inside computers at jet propulsion centers and within our space program.
When it was first discovered they were travelling through secure U.S. networks, carefully selecting classified data, the FBI gave them the title “Titan Rain.” More recently that name has been scrapped and they have been accorded another name that remains classified. Unlike regular hackers, they work with speed and precision that indicates they are highly trained to search for specific types of information, while leaving little trace of their presence. It has taken considerable time and effort by computer experts within the US military, navy and intelligence community to track their movements. It appears they use service providers in places like Hong Kong, South Korea and Eastern Europe in order to hide their identity and their true place of origin. Nevertheless, U.S. trackers all agree that the information they have been stealing finds its way to computer centers run by the PLA in mainland China. The sheer scale of their activities indicates that the Chinese military has not only developed an advanced cyber capability but it shaping it into a weaponized form. Someday, it may be used to mount attacks against the banking systems of this country or other major parts of our infrastructure, which are increasingly being driven by technology and ultimately rely on the Internet.
In the past two years, our allies have been targeted too. The British Foreign Office email system came under attack as did parts of the defense structure. Germany and France have also been the subject of periodic probing attempts by the Chinese to test the security of their networks. All of this has forced the United States and its NATO partners to seriously re-think the nature of modern warfare and to accept that future attacks from cyber space could create as much economic damage as a major terrorist event. For example, if cyber attacks were to shut down the U.S. banking system or airline computers the damage to the U.S. economy would be enormous. There is also a real threat that Chinese military hackers could disable America’s defense networks in a time of war.
There was a stark reminder of the threat from hackers when Estonia, a small East European country that was once part of the Soviet empire, was crippled by internet attacks in April 2007. The attacks began after ethnic Russians, and their supporters within Russia, were angered by the removal of a Soviet-era military monument in the center of the Estonian capital, Tallin. For Estonians the statue was a constant reminder of a once brutal Soviet rule but for ethnic Russians and hardliners in Moscow it was “blasphemy” to remove it. The episode sparked rioting followed by cyber stacks that shut down major Estonian government websites, as well as banks and broadcast outlets. Estonia appealed to NATO for assistance and got it but not before it had become evident the attacks were well coordinated. There were claims the masterminds were Russian military hackers but that was never proven. What did emerge was that most of the attacks were carried out by groups of young Ethnic Russians in Estonia and hackers in Russia. For the U.S. and NATO, it was a wake-up call and a sober reminder that if highly motivated groups could carry out successful attacks against Estonia, which had highly developed computers systems, what could a more determined enemy like China or Al Qaeda do. Following the Estonia attacks, NATO’s Computer Incident Response Capability Coordination Center was put on high alert and told to be ready to fend off the next attack against a friend or ally on the European continent.
On March 6, 2008, NATO cyber boss, Suleyman Anil, told hi-tech experts in London that cyber tools have become dangerous weapons we can no longer ignore. He admitted he was especially worried that rogue states and terrorists would see a high value in developing cyber skills because they were cheap to acquire and just as devastating as conventional weapons.
“Cyber war can become a very effective global problem because it is low risk, low-cost, highly effective and easily globally deployable. It is an ideal weapon that nobody can ignore,” he warned.
He further stressed the need for the West to strengthen its cyber defenses because they were highly vulnerable. His comments were not lost on the UN which is due to introduce a doctrine citing that a cyber attack again a member state will be judged an attack again all UN states. Such a move is not expected to change the dynamics of the emerging cyber threat to the US and NATO or to prevent the Chinese continuing to penetrate U.S. defense networks. Last year, there were attacks from Chinese military hackers on the Pentagon’s computers and also on defense computers in Germany, India and Australia.
The threat of cyber attacks of a more crippling nature on the U.S. economy has forced US defense analysts to think of cyber war in the same ways they think of other forms of warfare. As a consequence, there is an emerging doctrine in Washington, which will soon be applied by America’s allies, that a major cyber assault should be accorded the same response as a major conventional attack. In other words, a devastating cyber attack launched from China in the future could see America’s cyber warriors swing into action. Alternatively, America’s military could launch a conventional strike against China’s military or economic infrastructure, exchanging a cyber bomb for a conventional bomb.
On the horizon there is new cyber threat that concerns the U.S. and its European allies. Intelligence experts in Washington and London have been aware for some time that Al. Qaeda has been developing a cyber capability to go hand in hand with major terrorist attacks. The real fear is that an Al Qaeda suicide attack on the subway systems in New York or London could be launched in tandem with a cyber attack on computer networks dealing with emergency response, thus causing untold chaos in the midst of carnage. For Al Qaeda, cyber weapons are cheap to acquire and difficult to detect. An advantage for the terrorists is that some of the most advanced computer hackers in the world are from India and Pakistan, countries with large Muslim populations.