Middle Eastern Terrorism. Mark Ensalaco

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СКАЧАТЬ that the pilot ignored orders to land, but there is another explanation. The French-speaking pilot apparently did not understand the commands coming over the civilian radio channel. The Israelis feared the worst. No terrorist had deliberately crashed a civilian airliner in a population center or military installation—none did until 9/11. But the Israeli authorities acted to preempt the possibility of a suicide attack on Israel's nuclear weapons installation at Dimona. It was a tragic miscalculation. The pilot of the doomed Libyan airliner had already reversed course when the Israelis fighters opened fire; 106 passengers and crew died when the plane crashed in the desert.²

      That same month, Black September set in motion its third major operation after Munich and Bangkok. Like Bangkok, the mission was an embassy seizure. As Abu Iyad tells it, it was an “ambitious plan.” Coming only two months after the demoralizing failure in Bangkok, Black September needed a bold strike.³ If the plan was ambitious, it was also dangerous. The embassy was in Amman. Jordan remained hostile territory for the Palestinians, especially for Black September. whose name is an allusion to the fratricide of 1970. Jordanian intelligence was alert to the threat of Black September, whose first operation was the assassination of the Jordanian prime minister in Cairo. Jordanian intelligence was collaborating with the Israeli Mossad and the CIA. The collaboration of the intelligence agencies was important, but the brutality of Jordanian intelligence toward suspected enemies of the kingdom gave it a critical advantage. There was something else about the ambitious operation that Iyad later reported was months in planning. Black September planned to take down the U.S. embassy in the Jordanian capital and hold American diplomats hostage until the Jordanians freed imprisoned fedayeen and the Americans freed Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy's assassin. It was the first time the Palestinians deliberately targeted Americans. The Amman operation marked a critical turning point in Middle Eastern terrorism.

      Because of the importance of the mission—and the urgency of success—Iyad selected Abu Daoud to take charge of the mission. Daoud commanded Fatah forces in Jordan during the confrontation with Hussein's troops in September 1970 and planned the Munich Olympics operation with Abu Iyad. Iyad considered him courageous, capable, and a close friend. That Daoud managed to enter Jordan through Iraq and set himself up in a safe house was a remarkable achievement. Actually, fifteen fedayeen operating in two squads infiltrated Amman, one to storm the U.S. embassy, the second to seize the adjacent offices of the Jordanian prime minister if the assault on the Americans failed. In fact, the entire operation failed. Daoud planned the preparation for 14 February. After putting all the elements in place, Daoud left Jordan en route to Syria. He never reached the border. Jordanian intelligence arrested Daoud and a woman posing as his wife as they drove from Amman to Damascus. It was not a chance encounter. At the same time Jordanian intelligence raided the safe houses where the fedayeen were mustering for the operation. Daoud had been betrayed by an agent within the conspiracy. The arrest of a senior figure in Black September—and Fatah—was an intelligence coup. Under interrogation Daoud made damaging statements about Black September, Fatah, and Abu Iyad.⁴ That the Jordanians tortured him is a reasonable certainty; Black September did not condemn him to death for his moral weakness under interrogation. But a Jordanian court did sentence him to death. King Hussein prudently commuted the sentence to life, fearing for his own life if the monarchy killed a Palestinian of Daoud's stature. But that was not the end of the Daoud affair. Inevitably, Black September would act to liberate him. Less than a month after Daoud's capture, Black September set in motion its fourth major operation. It had struck in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, now it would strike North Africa, demonstrating its reach to all points on the compass.

      The planning for what Black September would call Operation Nahr al-Bard began in Beirut in mid-February, even before Daoud's capture in Jordan and the Israeli assault on the Badawi and Nahr al-Bard refugee camps in Lebanon. Abu Iyad was behind it, but another Fatah operative, known only as Abu Jamal—his true identity was never established—coordinated it with the most senior PLO representatives in the Sudan, Fawaz Yassin and his deputy, Rizig Abu Ghassan.⁵ Yassin, who traveled between the Sudan and Libya in the days before and after the operation, was in charge of logistics; Ghassan actually commanded the armed fedayeen who carried it out. Operation Nahr al-Bard was to be a raid on a diplomatic reception at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum, where Black September would seize the CIA's principal operative in the Middle East. The Palestinians, aware of the CIA's collaboration with Jordanian intelligence, accused the agency of complicity in the slaughter in Jordan in September 1970. Whatever the truth about CIA involvement in Jordan, the information about the man identified as the CIA's chief in the Middle East, George Curtis Moore, was false. Moore was a career diplomat, not a professional intelligence officer. He was just completing a tour as the chargé d'affaires of the U.S. mission in the Sudanese capital, and the gathering in Khartoum was a farewell reception hosted by the Saudis.

      On the evening of 1 March, just as the diplomatic reception was breaking up, Abu Ghassan and seven other Palestinians, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades, rushed the front gate and shot their way into the Saudi Arabian embassy. They killed a Sudanese policeman and wounded the U.S. ambassador Cleo Noel, Jr. and Belgian chargé d'affaires Guy Eid. In the panic of the first moments of the assault a number of diplomats managed to escape over the garden wall in the rear of the Saudi compound. The Palestinians seized many others. But their mission was not to take as many dignitaries hostage as possible, but to capture and kill Americans. Moore, Noel, and Eid were bound and beaten. Within hours, word reached Washington that terrorists again held Americans hostage.

      The crisis in Khartoum compelled President Nixon to confront the same moral dilemma that the Munich attack forced on Golda Meir. It was not the first time a U.S. diplomat had been taken hostage and threatened with death. In September 1969, Brazilian terrorists abducted the U.S. ambassador to the country, Charles Elbrick. Nixon, still in his first year in office, encouraged the Brazilians to comply with the terrorists' demands for the release of imprisoned Brazilian terrorists. The Brazilian military government, known for its hard line, accommodated the White House. The Brazilians were more concerned about the prospect of the death of a U.S. diplomat on Brazilian soil than about freeing political prisoners. The U.S. ambassador went free after a few days of captivity; the terrorists and their freed comrades flew to Algeria aboard a military transport. But in 1973 Nixon was adamant in the refusal to make concessions to terrorists. The president drew the lessons from Bangkok, while ignoring those of Munich.

      Golda Meir made the policy of no negotiations an article of faith: if Israelis died in Munich, their death was due to the malevolence of the Palestinians and the incompetence of the West Germans, not the intransigence of the Israelis. In Bangkok, Thai authorities reacted to Black September's seizure of the Israeli embassy with a formidable display of force. Golda Meir's intransigence and Thai armed posturing appeared to break the four terrorists holding the Israeli diplomats. The crisis unfolding in Khartoum resembled the crisis in Bangkok in that respect:the Sudanese also rushed forces to the Saudi embassy. In Bangkok unlike Munich, however, the Egyptian government saw an interest in mediating the crisis. But that apparently made less impression on the White House situation room than did Golda Meir's resolute adherence to the doctrine of no negotiation or the psychological effects of military threats.

      Nixon apparently did not consider all the psychological dynamics of the hostage situation. The Sudanese made a show of force but also intervened to resolve the crisis. Sudanese vice president Mohammed al-Baghir Ahmad personally took charge of negotiations. A general, al-Baghir understood the language of force, but with the Palestinians he preferred the language of mediation. Even after he was certain Nixon would offer him nothing he could offer to Black September, al-Baghir understood the need to convince the Palestinians to keep lines of communication open. In reality he understood the need to wear the Palestinians down and erode their resolve. Then, in an unguarded remark, Nixon destroyed that possibility. Asked by a reporter to comment on the crisis as it was entering its second day, Nixon said: “As far as the United States as a government giving into blackmail demands, we cannot do so and we will not do so…. We will do everything we can to get them released, but we will not pay blackmail.”⁶ Three hours later, the eight Palestinians murdered Moore, Noel, and Eid with bursts of Kalashnikov fire in the basement of the Saudi СКАЧАТЬ