As they launch their search-and-destroy mission against the terrorist network of the militant millionaire Osama bin Laden, those waging the campaign for the U.S. might do well to remember Hussein Musawi.
Almost no one does, but more than a decade ago, Musawi was the bin Laden of his day, having claimed responsibility for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and a U.S. Marine barracks in Beruit that together killed 304 people. The U.S. responded by lobbing shells into Beruit and dispatching fighter jets to bomb the Bekaa Valley, a terrorist haven in Lebanon. Musawi’s reputation was elevated to that of mastermind terrorist.
Musawi, however, eluded capture, and the campaign against him fizzled, though the American response had an unexpected result.
“The shelling was indiscriminate, and it created new recruits for the movement,” said Martin Kramer, a terrorism expert with Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies in Tel Aviv. “Musawi was prominent then, in 1983 and 1984, just as bin Laden is today, but you don’t hear anything about him now.”
The potential pitfalls of waging war, if not by decree then by cruise missile, against an individual terrorist are many. Last week’s cruise missile attacks against suspected bin Laden strongholds, assaults launched by the U.S. in retaliation for car-bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, show that hitting the target with brute force is one thing, taking out a leader is another.
A presidential executive order prohibits the assassination of foreign nationals, and Samuel “Sandy” Berger, the president’s national security adviser, said nothing in that policy would change. “I don’t think that would be a wise thing to do,” Berger said. “I don’t believe it would be a necessary thing to do.”
Reprisals for the cruise missile sorties are expected, and some potential disasters have been foiled. For instance, U.S. officials say that bin Laden’s loyalists were arrested before they could bomb the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, Albania, in July. Elsewhere, American Embassies have been closed or better secured to thwart attacks.
The U.S. spent $6.7 billion on counterterrorism last year, according to the General Accounting Office, and it does have some powerful tools with which it can continue the campaign it has started against bin Laden. They include:
– Financial forfeiture. Seizing or freezing bin Laden’s substantial personal wealth, if it can be found, might be the quickest way of restricting his activities. President Clinton has signed an executive order asking the Treasury Department to block all financial transactions by bin Laden and an array of terrorist groups associated with him.
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– More military strikes. Though recent history suggests that the White House and Pentagon favor cruise missiles for low-risk, high-impact strikes against targets such as bin Laden, the Army’s Delta Force and Navy Seals are capable of covert assaults.
– Intelligence and covert operations. These can range from slipping people into places such as Afghanistan simply to observe operations to kidnapping suspected terrorists. Intelligence satellites have been used widely to track activity in bin Laden’s camps, and the U.S. eavesdrops on his electronic communications. At the same time, foreign intelligence services, such as Israel’s Mossad, have been helpful in tracking rogue terrorist groups.
– Economic sanctions. Afghanistan, bin Laden’s home for now, is ruled by the Taliban movement, which is cash-starved and craving recognition. Pakistan, likewise, can be a point where the U.S. could apply diplomatic pressure to keep bin Laden and the movement of his network in check. The U.S. has blocked more than $3 billion in assets from countries involved in supporting terrorists since 1950.
– Legal remedies. The U.S. has had perhaps the most success in stopping terrorists when it manages to apprehend and try them in American courts. This has happened on a number of occasions and includes the convictions of those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
As destructive as the more than 70 cruise missiles dispatched to Afghanistan and Sudan might have been, the notion that they will silence bin Laden is almost an absurd one, terrorism experts say. Americans need only to recall the 1986 U.S. bombing attack on Libya, which was in response to the terrorist bombing of a German disco that killed two Americans.
“The conventional wisdom is that after we bombed Libya, they withdrew from terrorism,” said Oliver “Buck” Revell, a former deputy director of the FBI. “That is absolutely, totally false.”
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in fact, staged a number of attacks on American and European targets, including, Revell says, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 that killed 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground, the bombing of a USO station in Naples, Italy, that killed a female sailor, and the bombing of a French UTA flight over Africa.
Indeed, the great danger in striking back against a terrorist is that violence begets violence, especially for the U.S., which uses military force with great fanfare but then sometimes lacks the political will for sustained campaigns against terrorism.
“We need to treat this as a campaign, not as a shot in the blue, a lightning bolt out of the sky,” said Frank Cilluffo, a senior analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. “What has always plagued the anti-terrorism community over the years is that we overreact after an event occurs. It bottles up the headlines, money is not a problem, we get all kinds of legislation, and then three months later it’s not an issue at all.”
The nature of the assault might be what makes a real difference in slowing, if not stopping, a terrorist. Bombs are not always the best way to make that happen.
In that regard, seizing and successfully freezing his financial assets might be just as effective as cruise missiles against bin Laden. Scion of a wealthy Saudi construction magnate, bin Laden is worth an estimated $200 million to $300 million, according to U.S. officials. News reports state that $50 million of that is in a Sudanese bank. He also operates a bank, construction company, import-export business and agricultural operations in Sudan.
Terrorism analysts say that his newfound influence among terrorist groups–he claims to be the head of a consortium of organizations that calls itself the Islamic Front–stems from his generosity and the groups’ insatiable need for operating funds.
“You take away bin Laden’s money and he’s like a 90-year-old man without Viagra,” said Raphael Perl, a specialist in international terrorism policy for the Congressional Research Service. “Ideology is great, but you got to eat.”
That is especially true today, Perl says, as fewer nations are willing or able to support terrorism overtly.
“You used to be able to get your safe haven, your equipment, bombs, explosives, identity documents, your bribes, your salaries, your pensions for martyrs out of the state,” he said. “Now, it comes out of private pockets, so the option of going after assets is a very attractive one.”
The greatest difficulty in this war is that the enemy is one man or small group of men, rather than a nation with a standing army to target. Faced with that situation, the objective shifts from trying to eliminate the enemy to hindering him.
“The question is whether you can keep the terrorists sufficiently busy trying to protect themselves or evade capture or harm so much so that they don’t have the time or leisure to plan an elaborate attack like the one in Nairobi,” Kramer said.
“If you drive them into the mountains, away from the bases, disrupt their lines of command, create a feeling among them of being penetrated by agents so they have to go through periodic purges, then this kind of thing neutralizes them.”
A regimen of small- and large-scale missile and airborne bombing attacks, as well as less elaborate covert sniping, can achieve that result, Kramer and others say. In the case of bin Laden, the grudging or willing aid of other nations may be just as important. Diplomatic pressure applied to the Taliban, for instance, might work to keep bin Laden stuck between Khost, site of one of his mountain redoubts, and Jalalabad, another center of activity. The U.S. and other states also could press Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to force bin Laden to leave, making him vulnerable to capture.
Whether the Taliban would be willing to cooperate is doubtful. “Once they quell the ethnic infighting within the organization and between some of the mujahedeen rebel leaders, they will be a force to be reckoned with,” said Sean Hill, research analyst at the Office of International Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “They will have their own land, their own country, their own resources.
“The only thing we can hope for is that they probably are not going to be able to survive on their own. They are going to have to start trade negotiations. They are going to have to establish their own economy, and they are going to need some help.”
Pakistan also will play an important role in the anti-terrorist campaign. As the gateway to Afghanistan, it has been a transit point for many of the bin Laden’s followers.
Allied with the U.S. during Afghanistan’s war with the Soviet Union, Pakistan is a vexing partner, one which has returned fugitives at the asking but which also recently tested nuclear weapons despite U.S. warnings. The Clinton administration slapped economic sanctions on Pakistan after those tests, and the removal of those sanctions might be a bargaining chip that Pakistan can use in helping arrest bin Laden.
“The real problem is the connection in Pakistan,” Kramer said. “Pakistan is a transit zone for all sort of activities. There are a number of Islamic groups in Pakistan that are great admirers and sympathizers (of bin Laden’s).”
Even with all the tools at its disposal, the U.S. has a mixed record of finding and punishing terrorists. Some suspects are wanted but unreachable. The FBI’s most-wanted list includes the two Libyans linked to bombing of Pan Am 103. They are still protected in Libya.
Others terrorists, whose names were once among the most feared in the world, long eluded capture and are now effectively retired or jailed. Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan-born terrorist, was linked to some of the most spectacular attacks of the 1970s and early 1980s. Palestinian extremist Abu Nidal carried out terrorist attacks in 20 countries.
Today, Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, sits in a French jail under a life sentence after his 1994 arrest for killing two French counterintelligence agents investigating attacks on El Al Israel Airline planes at Paris’ Orly Airport. Abu Nidal, in poor health and without government supporters, has been living in sheltered obscurity in Tripoli, Libya, and hasn’t attacked Western targets since the late 1980s.
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“Abu Nidal is irrelevant now, just like Carlos the Jackal,” said Vincent Cannistraro, the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism efforts in the late 1980s.
A Palestinian renegade whose real name is Sabri al-Banna, Abu Nidal’s organization has been blamed for scores of atrocities, including the Dec. 27, 1985, attacks on Rome and Vienna airports in which 20 people were killed, including five Americans, and the Sept. 6, 1986, attack on an Istanbul synagogue in which 22 Jewish worshipers were massacred.
Then there is Mohammed Abbas. A radical Palestinian leader who goes by the nom de guerre of Abul Abbas, he was convicted of masterminding the October 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro. Four of his guerrillas killed an elderly, wheelchair-bound American, Leon Klinghoffer. Abbas was freed by the Italian government and remains free, though in 1996 he apologized for his role in the hijacking.
An apology is not something that anyone expects soon from Osama bin Laden.
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