May 24, 2006

AMERICA MUST LEARN TO PLAY THE "GREAT GAME" IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Anyone who has ever read Rudyard Kipling’s wonderful novel Kim remained entranced from cover to cover learning the “Great Game.” It is a phrase describing the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Empire in the nineteenth century for control of Central Asia. It was “Great” because the empires involved were great, and the prizes were great. It was a “Game”—the Russians called it the “Tournament of Shadows”—because the contest was fought mostly between intelligence agents and their secret political manipulations. It was a game the British—perfidious Albion—learned to play with great skill, a game of diplomatic ruthlessness, secrecy, and the tool of “complete deniability”: ‘The government knows nothing of this matter.’

If we want to win the war against international fundamentalist Muslim terror, we must learn to play the “Great Game” better than we do now. We must give up being the white hatted cowboy who waits for his enemy to draw first, forget the Boy Scout oath, the Marquis of Queensbury rules, and the sentimentalism of twentieth century diplomacy with its ghosts of friends and allies that no longer exist.

Efraim Halevy has been a Mossad officer since 1961, its deputy director for many years, and its head man from 1998 to 2002. So he knows a thing or two about the Middle East. He was born in London in 1934 and grew up there during World War II, so even though he has lived in Israel since 1948 he still has a pleasant slightly British accent.

We heard him speak at a meeting of the National Association of Scholars a few Sundays back while he was on tour in this country flogging his new memoir “Man in the Shadows.” He spoke quietly, calmly and wisely about his understanding of the Middle East and of the profession of Intelligence—but not deeply of these matters. He reminded me of George Smiley as portrayed by Alec Guinness in the TV dramatizations of Le Carre’s novels. He has an owlish look and radiates a certain quiet charm and extra-dry wit.

So I should not have been surprised, when I opened his memoir, that there were no guns—the Berettas the Mossad used—no tricky little bombs set off by cell phones, no gripping action of any sort. “Man in the Shadows” is indeed an apt title. He remains in the shadows through most of it. He is a man who does not like to call attention to himself. He gives away no secrets to the reader, as though we, his readers, were the enemy and he was being interrogated. Although there are many interesting events and people in the book, there is not enough detail to make the events vivid and gripping.

He is most generous when he talks about his own part in creating Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan and his relationships with King Hussein and his son Prince Hassan. He is also generous but quiet in his scornful attitude toward Shimon Peres. The latter was a political prima donna to the nth degree. Nothing could stop him from putting his foot in his mouth and his finger in everybody else’s pie.

One of Halevy’s most astonishing ideas appears in the last chapter. He makes the point that not all terror organizations are alike. The Al Qaeda brand of terror is in a category by itself. Al Qaeda and its satellites all over the world are not only devoid of territorial ambition, their creed is also detached from territorial interest. They do not wish to conquer this or that country. In fact, according to Halevy, Israel is far down on their list of political aspirations. The destruction of the United States and its way of life, as well as the annihilation of the moderate “infidel” Arab regimes, take precedence over the complete restoration of Palestine to the Palestinians.

Whereas Hamas, Halevy points out, remains a terror organization with a very limited set of aims—the re-acquisition of Palestine and the destruction of the State of Israel. Just as Israel has had business with Hamas in the past—their leaders have had dialogs with Israelis, Israeli journalists have interviewed them—Halevy believes that a time may come when they may have to accept a working relationship with the outside world and Israel.

About Hizbollah Halevy is not as hopeful, but points out that its aims are not as diabolical and universal as those of Al Qaeda. It is Shiite and oriented only toward regional territorial interests, even though unlike Hamas, it has attacked its enemies outside of Palestine.

Now here is Halevy’s astonishing idea. An example of thinking outside the box from a man who has been fighting Israel’s enemies since 1961 as an intelligence officer and as head of Mossad for several years:

“….the Hizbollah will have to renounce much more than Hamas if it wishes its dreams of respectablitiy to come true….There can be no doubt that if conditions were created to enable two such groups to join the United States, the European Union, and Israel to engage Al Qaeda within the Muslim world, they could play a singular role in confronting the threat from within. These views might seem, at present , entirely in the realm of fantasy, but the events of the last few years have stretched the limits of imagination as never before.

“I do not think these are ideal options and the two examples just mentioned are by no means any near-perfect potential partners. Yet there is never an ideal situation and no partners are ever perfect matches….

“Hamas and possibly the Hizbollah are only two examples of the type of partner that the free world may be constrained to seek if it wishes to win the war against terror, international Muslim fundamentalist terror. In order to reach the desired goal, the free world will have to seek similar alliances in other regions. There will be hard bargains to drive, but in the final analysis, was it not a hard bargain to enlist the Taliban and bin Laden in a supreme effort to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan and to hand them a resounding defeat that contributed to the demise of the Soviet Empire? Is the game of nations not one where each side chooses between tough alternatives, only to find itself exchanging sides when the ally of yesterday is the sworn enemy of today? We will be obliged to sup with the devil, but we must beware at all times that he does not poison our chalice.”

It was only fifteen years ago that Saddam Hussein was confronting “…the Shiite revolutionary hurricane emanating from Iran. Hussein was then the savior of the moderate Arab world and the vital interests of the United States in the region….Fifteen years ago, Washington was celebrating its victory over the Soviet Union and the ultimate demise of the Soviet Empire with the Taliban and bin Ladenas miniheroes of a fifty-year-old Cold War won at last. And now—quo vadis?”