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A Changed World Demands a Different Kind of CIA Officer

March 10, 2007 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in The Valley News.]

What most Americans don’t ever consider is that the job of CIA case officers who work overseas in human espionage operations is to break the laws of the countries where they serve. During the Cold War, when we met a Soviet citizen in Moscow who was one of our agents, we were breaking Soviet law by that simple act. There is no other nonmilitary organization in the U.S. government whose job it is to break other countries’ laws.

Judging by recent news reports, the intelligence community’s emphasis on counterterrorism operations has led to a very different, more serious sort of law-breaking by CIA officers. Among the questions raised by those stories is: How important is this type of activity to our struggle with fundamentalist Muslim terrorism?

CIA officers have been accused of participating in “renditions” — the act of kidnapping people suspected of being involved with fundamentalist Muslim terrorism and removing them to a place where civil rights guarantees are not as stringent as they are in most Western democracies. In other words, torture is likely to be part of the interrogation process in the countries to which they are shipped.  Both Germany and Italy have issued arrest warrants for CIA officers allegedly involved in kidnappings carried out in their countries as part of renditions.

Add to that reports about the so-called “CIA Gulag” — a string of CIA facilities alleged to exist in countries around the world where it is legal or at least tolerated to extract information from terrorism suspects using techniques that would be illegal in America.

Then there is the allegation that “civilian officials” at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were involved in the abuse and humiliation of prisoners. Although not clearly stated or confirmed, it was intimated that these were also CIA officers. There have also been reports of CIA officers at the military detention facility for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For many CIA veterans of the Cold War, these activities represent a major, disturbing departure from the old norm.  For most Americans who were drawn to the CIA in those years, altruism was a major factor. The Communists were intent on taking over the world, and we were the ones on the front lines, responsible for holding back the Red Menace. Most CIA officers of that period would have been appalled at the thought of rendering, torturing or facilitating the torture of anyone.

You could be a highly effective CIA officer and never raise a finger against anyone. If the KGB caught you in a clandestine relationship with an agent who was a Soviet citizen, you never had to fear for your life, you simply got expelled from the country.  In the intelligence wars, there were tacit agreements that, however heated our rivalries with the Soviets and their allies became, there would be no rough stuff.

That changed after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when Palestinian terrorism became an important intelligence target. If Black September, an early Palestinian terrorist group, caught you in a clandestine relationship with a member of their organization, you stood a very good chance of being gunned down along with your agent. No habeas corpus there! In fact, in Beirut in those years, when an officer had such a clandestine meeting, he normally was accompanied by armed colleagues who were there to protect him against just such a tragedy. It had become a different, unsettling world for the old Cold Warriors. Most regarded that sort of violence as not just undesirable but downright terrifying.

So now we live in a different, far more violent world. If there are any rules of behavior at all, they are undefined and likely to remain so. CIA officers who can function in that world share little in common with their Cold War predecessors.

What kind of CIA officers do you need for this new environment? Certainly not the old Cold Warriors with their rules and their high level of moral and ethical comfort in what they were doing. In this world, if your turn your other cheek, you are likely to get your head removed. We need officers who are comfortable in this new, more violent world, who can walk around the world’s slums without their hearts in their mouths and without it being immediately clear they are Americans.   Perhaps where many CIA cold warriors were liberal arts majors, the new breed might better come from the Military academies or from the Special Forces.  That certainly would prepare them better for today’s world.

However, the tools that will make contemporary CIA officers most effective in this new world do not include a willingness to engage in or facilitate brutality. The most useful skills are language fluency and an ability to blend seamlessly into the local environment. Most, but not all, Americans, aren’t much good at that.

Renditions, torture, Guantanamo, gulags — those things are not in the best interest of America. They produce little critical, actionable intelligence while severely damaging our image around the world. However, if one can make the distinction, we need the kind of officers in the CIA who can deal effectively and decisively with the difficult world in which those abhorrent activities prevail. That takes a different kind of American, and it does not include most old Cold Warriors.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in the Middle East, East and West Europe and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in CIA |

Attack on Iran Would Serve To Unify Our Enemies

February 1, 2007 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in The Herald of Randolph.]

Iranians know that around 550 BC, they ruled a great empire that ranged from the Central Mediterranean to the Indus River and that their civilization dates back to 4000 BC.  That history of power and preeminence is very much a part of who they are today.  They have a sense of their own history and place in the world.  With all their oil, they are not a ragtag country.

There has long existed a strong rivalry between Persians and Arabs with each seeking to be the preeminent power in the Persian/Arab Gulf. Iraq has brought those ancient rivalries more out in the open, with the Arabs generally supporting the Sunnis and the Persians supporting the Shia, and with both seeking dominance in the Gulf.

Western preoccupation with Iran’s atomic program has resulted so far only in the imposition of minimal sanctions on Iran, but the US-led push to impose further, more stringent sanctions has already resulted in a reaction inside the country.  Fearing such sanctions, Iranians have been buying up foodstuffs and other staples.  This has resulted in a sharp increase in prices which, in turn, has spread to other segments of the economy. Western reporters today describe widespread discontent among the general population.  This has been picked up by students who form today’s Iranian intelligentsia, and that has led to rumblings of discontent with President Ahmadinejad among Iranian lawmakers.

During the last election, Ahmadinejad promised to use oil revenues to end poverty and alleviate unemployment. Instead, Iran is suffering from unemployment and inflation, both estimated at between 10 and 30 percent.  This has brought him under criticism from all quarters.  Even conservative lawmakers are complaining that his nuclear policy and stridently anti-american foreign policy should be put aside in favor of fixing the economy.

At the same time, a bellicose US administration is beefing up US forces in Iraq, moving additional warships into the Gulf, quietly backing anti-Shiite groups in Lebanon, moving Patriot missiles to the region and trumpeting the capture of Iranian agents in the Kurdish area. This aggressiveness has prompted somber press speculation that the president is planning a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.   Many of our retired military officers and military pundits say that such an attack could not wipe out the Iranian nuclear facilities, and that it would only delay the production of a weapon by a few years.  Nevertheless, the Air Force apparently has a final plan for just such an attack.  Given this president’s demonstrated proclivity for secrecy and precipitous action, as well as his disinclination to accept expert opinion, it is difficult not to worry that there is some substance in all these concerns.

So, we have a perfect storm brewing.   Ahmadinejad and the Iranian conservatives needing an American attack to solidify their slipping control over their people and Bush and his aggressive conservatives looking for a fight, perhaps for more or less the same reasons.  An unprovoked Iranian attack on one of our ships in the Gulf could easily set it off.  That would only benefit Iran.

It is clear that if this president orders an attack on Iran for whatever reasons, there will be extremely serious consequences for us, for our former friends and for the few friends we have left in the world.  Remember, virtually every drop of oil coming out of the Gulf, or about 25% of daily world oil production, goes through the narrow, Iranian-controllable Straits of Hormuz.

It is equally clear that there is ferment in Iran and that it represents a real threat to the future of Ahmadinejad, his followers and the Revolutionary Guards that support him.  If we can simply let that discontent ferment and perhaps even exacerbate and accelerate it, concern about Iran’s nuclear weapon and its difficult government may diminish.  If they do not drop their nuclear plans, we are told that it will be another 5 years before they have a bomb.  We have enough time to try everything but the military option.  It is worth taking that chance.

If we attack Iran, it will put an end to the ferment in that country.  All Iranians will unite behind the government. America will lose whatever shred of credibility it may still have in the Middle East, as well as whatever minimal ability we might still have to influence events there in our favor.  If we attack while we are still in Iraq, there is no telling what will happen there.  In short, an American air strike against Iran will have unpredictable consequences and bankrupt us politically, not only in that neighborhood, but also just about everywhere in the world.  A hands-off policy may maintain the conditions needed to bring down the regime.  That should be a no-brainer.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served, inter alia, in Lebanon and Iran and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.  He lives in Williston.

Posted in Iran |

A Way Out of the Mess: Divide and Exit

January 27, 2007 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in The Valley News.]

Supporters of President Bush’s proposal for a “surge” in troops to be deployed to Iraq are guilty of one really shoddy tactic in the current debate. Having themselves been unable to find an alternative other than a continuation of the old policy, which is precisely what the “surge” is, they now challenge all those who disagree with the policy to find an acceptable alternative — on their behalf.

If they were really serious about “winning” in Iraq, they would use a force of hundreds of thousands of men, as was recommended before the war by our military leadership. According to many military experts, anything much short of that had then and has now little chance of pacifying the country. But that was never a rational approach to Iraq. Perhaps if it had been properly considered at the onset, it might have stopped the invasion before it started. Troop levels fall in the same category as the lack of adequate and appropriate arms for our troops — armored Humvees and body armor, for example. In short, we went to war with what we had, to use the formulation of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and it was simply inadequate for the long haul.

So they blame the current policy impasse on the Democrats’ inability to come up with a viable new plan, when the entire mess clearly results from their own invasion.

Not that the Democrats are covering themselves in glory. Those Democrat legislators who fell for the Bush rationalization for the Iraq invasion and voted to enable it are, quite frankly, morally and politically compromised on this issue. Except for those few who have repudiated their own votes, they have lost their standing and credibility. And most aren’t contributing to the policy debate much anyway; they’re just carping incessantly and unconstructively against the president’s policy.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has repudiated the only way out of this mess — a plan that curiously is not being actively pushed by the Democrats. Iraq is not a country and never has been, unless that status was imposed on its inhabitants by force of arms — a la Saddam Hussein. Its logical and natural condition, even more so after Saddam’s departure, is to be divided into three pieces — Kurdish, Shia and Sunni.

If you look carefully at the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and its approach to today’s miserable realities in Iraq, it’s clear it is interested first and foremost in pursuing sectarian goals and not in any greater Iraqi good. It has consistently blocked or resisted U.S. attempts to shut down the Mahdi army, the militia operating under the control of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It has not made any attempt to redress Sunni concerns about the Iraqi constitution. It is interested primarily in having the Iraq army take on only Sunni insurgents. The Shia government wants an Iraq on its terms.

Since the invasion, the Sunnis, although they appear recently to have realized their error, have simply not participated in the national government in any meaningful way. They have done much to keep the sectarian pot boiling through their alliance with al-Qaida and through suicide bombings and other acts of violence.

The Kurds in the north are content to run their own virtual nation. They seem far more interested in assuring that when Iraq falls apart, they will maintain their independence and get northern oil and the cities that go with it.

And that’s the blueprint. No one in Iraq seems to want to lay down arms and negotiate to become a real country. When the vast majority of the citizens of Iraq put their own ethnic and religious interests first, partition is the logical answer to their problem. It really doesn’t matter what we want to happen. What matters is only what they want, and, at best, that would appear to be some sort of confederation, the primary glue for which would be the sharing of the national wealth — oil.

On the positive side, al-Qaida would not survive in a divided Iraq. Only America’s presence keeps the secular Sunnis and fundamentalist al-Qaida on the same page. Once the Americans have departed, the Sunnis will be done with al-Qaida.

However, the three-state solution does have its own built-in problems. Partly because of their concerns about Shia Iran’s incipient domination of the region, the Sunnis in the neighborhood (Saudis, Kuwaitis, Jordanians, etc.) do not want to see an Iraq dominated by Shias. Because the Turks preside over a large, unhappy minority of Kurds in their own country, they are extremely nervous about the creation of a Kurdish state on their southern flank. Because the Iranians seek increased power in the region, they are likely to support the Shias in Iraq to advance their regional goals.

These are potential, not actual, problems. None of those neighbors wants the kind of civil or regional war that supporters of Bush policy constantly and apocalyptically predict. None of them can afford it. Each neighbor has its own reasons to want to stop the problem before it begins. The only way they can get there is through negotiations. Such talks will not take place without American leadership. As long as we reject such talks, there will be no peace.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in the Middle East, East and West Europe and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in Iraq |

Course Ahead Should Be to Closest Exit

December 29, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in The Valley News.]

The Iraq Study Group’s report has made it quite clear that we are unlikely to find a way out of the Iraq quagmire that will satisfy the architects of our invasion. Even though researched and written by bipartisan subgroups, the conclusions and recommendations of the ISG paper have been attacked robustly, mostly by the far right and the Neocons, who clearly see some benefit in not changing course in Iraq — perhaps because they conceived, approved, promoted, sold and implemented it.

President Bush told us that he would carefully consider all the report’s recommendations, while acknowledging for the first time that we need to change course. Yet it would appear that he is still married to the amorphous concept of “winning.” In that context, he has said that the Iraqi security forces need to “stand up” and that the Iraqis need to accept responsibility for their own welfare. That is quite true, but in today’s Iraq, it probably represents a catalyst to more civil war rather than a path toward the kind of democratic state that might alter the region.

It is an unfortunate fact, one highlighted by the ISG report, that there is no silver bullet for Iraq. In fact, there is no viable option available to Bush other than getting out of Iraq with the goal of minimizing the damage inflicted on us and on our interests. Every other option has a string of disadvantages sufficient to warrant its rejection. The president is talking about a surge in troop levels while the Pentagon initially said that wouldn’t work. He talks of “standing up” the Iraqi army and police to provide security, but those organizations are riven with secular and ethnic divisions, making them unusable in resolving the ongoing civil war. The Jordanians, who have been training Iraqi police and troops, have been afraid to provide them with live ammunition for target practice, fearing they would shoot each other!

Bush finds himself in an untenable position. As a result of the Republican losses in the November elections, he now admits he needs to change our policy. Yet, if he chooses any new policy that leads anywhere other than to total victory, he will be conceding that the old policies were wrong and unworkable. Taken to its logical conclusion, he would be admitting that we never should have invaded Iraq in the first place and he is constitutionally incapable of doing that.

The new policy in Iraq will not be new, but rather a desperate attempt to vindicate the old, unworkable policy. We are gambling our resources, our troops and our military establishment to justify a failed policy. However much Bush wishes to avoid the process of admitting he is clinging to a failed policy, he has to realize that he is working in the aftermath of the November elections, which were essentially a referendum that rejected his Iraq policy and lost his party control of both the House and the Senate. One suspects that the postponement of his announcement of a “new plan” until January is the result of his inability to find a viable course of action.

So he hopes to find an answer, but wishing won’t make it so, not even for a president. The situation in Iraq is intractable. It almost certainly will play out according to some mysterious and unpredictable indigenous process over which he has no control. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the United States will benefit in any way at its conclusion. Not only is our simple presence in Iraq causing immeasurable harm there, it is doing us great damage in our struggle with terrorism and in our relationships throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world. We are losing friends and gaining enemies.

Our departure will cause major problems in Iraq and perhaps in the Middle East, but those will be national and regional problems best addressed by Iraq and its neighbors. Sadly, our presence there is the primary impediment to a real solution.

To continue this adventure — and continue accepting our mounting human, political and financial losses — is the height of folly.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in the Middle East, East and West Europe and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in Iraq |

Iraqi Civil Strife Shouldn’t Have Surprised Policy-Makers.

November 18, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently ordered the removal of U.S.-erected barriers around Sadr City. Those barriers were erected for the stated purpose of helping us find a missing U.S. soldier believed to have been held by his captors in Sadr City. Sadr City is a Shiite slum in Baghdad and the home base of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has often been at odds with U.S. goals and policies and who commands a potent militia known as the Mahdi Army.

This event is a clear example of the factionalism that has always plagued Iraq and has been made worse by our invasion. It is one of the most intransigent problems facing us in Iraq, one that could easily have been foreseen, and one that should have alerted architects of current Iraq policy about the folly of invasion.

Al-Sadr is one of the prime minister’s main political backers, having put his considerable weight behind al-Maliki during the selection process prior to the December 2005 elections. Both are Shiites and, in the absence of contrary evidence, it must be assumed that they have similar political goals, or at least that al-Maliki regards the backing of al-Sadr’s militia as critical to his continued political viability
.
The Mahdi Army was formalized by al-Sadr in June 2003 and has grown into a force approaching 10,000 fighters. Its current activities include political intimidation, coercive influence on local government, infiltration of the police and army, and factional vigilante activities designed to terrorize Sunnis and their supporters.

Iraq is irrevocably divided among its factions. That is the elephant in the room — one well known to students of Iraq, yet one that administration policy makers seem somehow to have missed or ignored. Having never really been a country, but rather an agglomeration of factions whose “statehood” was convenient for the British as a counterbalance to the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, Iraq is no more viable today than it was then. It has never existed without repressive central governance.

Iraq has not changed much in the last 100 years, leaving the same mix of hostile factions that have always been there. Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Baathists, sectarians and nonsectarians ebb and flow in shifting coalitions formed around whatever issue is at hand. In the absence of controlling central authority, violence has been promoted by religious extremists who believe Islam should rule, by old Baathists who seek a return to power, and by Iraqi nationalists who are fighting against what they view as a foreign occupation. The only thing that unites them at any given moment is the presence of American troops.

We now want to exit Iraq gracefully. The Bush plan is to “stand up” the police and army to the point where we can “stand down.” Because Iraq is so divided, we appear to believe that we must “unite” the security organs. The Army and police will be made up of Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis roughly in proportion to the total population: 60 percent Shiite, 20 percent Kurd and 15 percent Sunni.

In our own democratic way, we are insisting that all Iraqi factions be included in the new organs of national security. Do we believe that these new police and soldiers are going to drop their sectarian and ethnic loyalties when they join up? Fat chance! With our insistence on parity, we are ensuring that Iraqi strife will be built into the new security system, virtually guaranteeing that it will be impotent. What Shiite soldier will sign onto an operation to disarm the Mahdi Army? What Sunni soldier will agree to suppress insurgents in Fallujah? What Kurdish policeman will do anything to harm those who share his ethnicity in the northern part of the country? And yet the alternative — creating all-Shiite, all-Kurdish and all-Sunni units — won’t work because those segregated forces would be seen as the enemy when dispatched to a region where they weren’t among their own people.

And that’s the dilemma. When we invaded Iraq, the neoconservatives and their allies within the Bush administration who promoted the invasion either did not understand those realities or summarily dismissed them. In either case, since there was a healthy body of academic and governmental expertise that did have a better grasp of the situation, the administration’s promoters of the invasion are truly guilty of getting us into a mess that was predictable and could easily have been avoided.

The United States has permitted a small group of highly motivated, inexperienced ideologues with scant input from world realities to undertake a critical foreign policy gambit based almost entirely on ideology and wishful thinking. We are paying a steep price for this blunder, and it will dog us for decades to come.

Haviland Smith retired as a CIA station chief in 1980. He served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in Iraq |

An Achievement That Would Restore Bush’s Reputation

September 12, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in The Valley News.]

Given President Bush’s total lack of viable options in Iraq, it seems likely that history will judge him harshly for his foreign policy of pre-emptive unilateralism. This failure, combined with the continuing instability in Afghanistan and a world that regards his policies with scorn, must be deeply troubling for a president who reportedly is concerned about his “legacy.”

However, there remains one move that Bush could make that has the potential for counterbalancing the disaster in Iraq, not to mention his administration’s other failures. Bush could pull out all the stops in facilitating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. If he is prepared to really use American power and influence, he could make it work. Of course, he would have to overcome two major problems: the vow of some Palestinians and Arabs to push the Israelis into the sea, and the current Israeli government’s clear desire to keep and perhaps even ultimately increase settlements on the West Bank.

American and Israeli national interests have a great deal in common, starting with the continued viability of the state of Israel. However, they are not always identical. Our interests regarding the West Bank settlements definitely don’t converge. We cannot support Israel’s plans to defy virtually the rest of the world by clinging to its settlements in the West Bank.

Over the years, a majority of Israelis have indicated they have no desire to keep or expand those settlements, preferring to trade them for peace. Polls of Israelis consistently show that a solid majority would not take part in any protest activity against evacuating the settlements if it brought the country peace. Even among those who describe themselves as right-wingers, healthy majorities have voiced this opinion.

This notion that the two states of Palestine and Israel can live peacefully side by side has been out there since 1967. It has from time to time been an attainable goal. The problem is that during those 39 years, no U.S. president has been prepared to spend the U.S. and international political capital required to tell both sides what they would have to do to reach such a peace.

The critical issue here is whether or not America has been so damaged by its foreign policy of pre-emptive unilateralism that it no longer has the standing and influence required to broker a Middle East peace. The big issue is the settlements.  Without an end to those settlements, there will be no peace.

Only America has the influence with Israel that might persuade it to trade the settlements for peace. Despite broad support for this policy in Israel, any U.S. president who pursues this course of action invites the wrath of the Israel lobby and other Americans who unquestioningly and unstintingly support Israeli settlement policy. Only a lame duck president could undertake this task with any hope of success.

Things in the Middle East have gotten so bad that something positive might be accomplished. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently made a peace overture toward the Palestinians, declaring a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and promising to release frozen funds to the Palestinian Authority, free Palestinian prisoners and ease checkpoints if Palestinians choose the path of peace. About the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has had meetings with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. Things seem to be stirring out there.

he Israelis are smarting from a defeat suffered at the hands of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which Israelis regard as nothing more than a terrorist group. The Olmert government might be persuaded that in the 60 years of Israel’s existence, military force has never brought peace or security. For their part, the Palestinians are desperate. It’s all well and good that Hezbollah beat up on the Israelis in Lebanon, but life is miserable in Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians are bombed, shelled and daily humiliated by Israel. The situation is now so bad that, according to current polls, two thirds to three quarters of Palestinians and Israelis would like to have negotiations.

Add to this mix a U.S. president who is desperate to salvage his reputation. If Bush were to become involved in an attempt to solve the Israel-Palestine problem, the prospects for this much delayed, desperately needed peace might be a bit brighter. If he could muster and use the necessary, and probably still available political capital, he might solve this decades-old dilemma. That would be an accomplishment for which he — or anyone on this planet — could be proud, the kind of success that could earn him a Nobel Prize and which could completely overshadow his failures in Iraq. Considering that longstanding grievances against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands are a major motive in radical Muslim terrorism, it might even bring a diminution of many of our problems with that plague.

Haviland Smith retired as a CIA station chief in 1980. He served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in Israel/Palestine |

In new terrorism fight, Britain shows the way

August 18, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Baltimore Sun.]

Enormous pressure has been placed on al-Qaida since the fall of 2001. Our Afghan invasion cost it heavily, but more important, through our relationships with cooperative foreign intelligence services, we have been able to put al-Qaida under relentless pressure. Many of its top people have been killed or captured. Its communications and finances have been identified, monitored and disrupted, and its target countries have greatly increased their terrorist countermeasures. All of these things have weakened the terrorists and strengthened us and our friends.

This has resulted in a basic change in al-Qaida’s structure. Instead of the cohesive, centralized organization that dispatched a team of highly trained and effective terrorists to the United States to perpetrate the horrors of Sept. 11, it has become far less centrally controlled. The Sept. 11 plot, based, trained and funded from overseas, was a counterterrorism nightmare. Catching a homogeneous, dedicated group like that is extremely difficult. The new, homegrown terrorists are a different matter. Confronting them will require a new approach, and the U.S. might do well to look to the British model for answers.

In some ways, al-Qaida has franchised its activities to independent groups overseas, like a terrorist version of McDonald’s. The pressure we have put on its command structure has made that necessary. Although it might not tell any individual franchise what to do and when to do it, it is certainly supportive of their terrorist plans.

What is different about these new groups is that they are mostly homegrown. That means that their members are often second- or even third-generation citizens of their adopted countries. Depending on where they live, but particularly in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, they are politically, socially and economically isolated. Their hopelessness in the face of such isolation pushes them into ghettos. The most disaffected of them will tend to be the most susceptible to fundamentalist Muslim blandishments and thus more likely to become jihadis.

As beginning jihadis, they will not be as well-schooled as the original al-Qaida jihadis who trained for extended periods in the Afghan camps. More important, they will not have the same level of security consciousness as their better-trained colleagues. In short, they are far more likely to be second-rate jihadis who run sloppy operations using poor tradecraft and thus be more vulnerable to the security services arrayed against them.

Early reports from Britain indicate that MI-5’s first tip about the cell came from a member of the High Wycombe Muslim community who did not share the liquid bombers’ fundamentalist fervor and reported them as “suspicious” to the authorities. MI-5 is said to have then initiated technical operations against cell members and infiltrated or recruited an agent inside the cell.

As new organizations mature, they tend to change. This can be true of an Internet startup or of a terrorist organization. Once the excitement of the revolutionary moment has passed, human nature takes over. This may come quickly or take decades, as it did in the Soviet Union. Petty jealousies play increasingly important roles and management can become arbitrary. Members of the group can become disaffected and vulnerable to recruitment by hostile elements.

In human terms, there is no reason that this dynamic should not surface in fundamentalist Muslim terrorist groups. It may already have. There is also no reason why Muslims without animus toward the West should not continue to inform Western security services of unusual behavior in their communities. If this can happen in Britain, where large numbers of Muslims feel isolated and hopeless, it should be even more the case in America, where our history of acceptance of immigrants should minimize Muslim fundamentalism and encourage those who would help us with this struggle.

MI-5 has done a terrific job on this case. America’s problem is that the FBI, though an excellent law enforcement organization, is absolutely clueless on counterterrorism.

It is a shame that when we had the opportunity to do it right during the intelligence reorganization process after Sept. 11, we didn’t have the sense to follow the British model and establish a domestic intelligence service like MI-5. With proper legislative and judicial oversight, such a service is hardly a threat to civil liberties, and has the personnel, structure and operational philosophy to make major strides against the terrorism that preoccupies us all.

Haviland Smith retired as a CIA station chief in 1980. He served in Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.

Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun

Posted in intelligence, terrorism |

Bush Administration Ignores Reality

July 29, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

Watching the Bush Administration purposefully avoid doing anything concrete about the Middle East gives any observer a very clear picture of what their policy is, at least for the moment.  The United States is going to do nothing, because this is consistent with our policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Bush administration believes that democracy, which in America is viewed as just about the best existing system of governance and the one most consistent with our beliefs, is a commodity that can be exported like wheat or Coca Cola.  And, of course, if they are right about this, the successful imposition of democracy on the Middle East would solve many of our problems there.  Unfortunately, there are over a billion Muslims who do not share that belief.  They hold their certainties just as tenaciously as we hold ours.  Their belief system is focused on the Koran, an authoritarian scripture which makes our Bible look like an invitation to misbehavior.

Last year’s elections in Palestine and the growing political power of Hizballah in Lebanon demonstrate clearly that there are a lot of Arabs/Muslims who aren’t really interested in our democracy except insofar as it provides them with the mechanism to gain power themselves through free elections.  Trying to understand why there are souls in the world who are disinterested in democracy is a futile endeavor.   Suffice it to say that they have always existed and are growing in numbers, in some ways thanks to our policies in the Middle East, including our war in Iraq and our disinclination to become involved in Lebanon.

They see our invasion of Iraq as an arrogant American attempt to force democracy on them.  They see our uninvolved posture in Lebanon as yet another American effort to support Israeli tactics in their struggles with Hizballah.  Arabs in particular and Muslims in general see American policy in the Middle East as anti-Arab/Palestinian and Pro-Israel.  One may see this as an unfair characterization, but it doesn’t really matter, because fair or not, true or not, that is their position and like it or not, that is the position we have to deal with.

The Bush Administration has chosen to ignore these realities.  They have said they will not deal with Syria, Iran, Hamas or Hizballah – who are causing all this trouble.   If they remain uninvolved, if there is no resolution of the one major issue that underlies this matter, there will be no peace for the Middle East, and as we already know from 9/11, Madrid and London, for the rest of the world.

The vast majority of Arabs in particular and Muslims in general, want to see a viable, independent Palestinian state living next to and at peace with Israel.  Only a tiny minority seeks to “throw Israel into the sea” and if the Palestinians were ever to get their own state, that hostile minority would quickly be subdued by the majority.  That is the only hope that exists for peace.

This approach does not abandon Israel.  Quite the contrary, it would have to be preceded by iron-cast guarantees of Israeli security.

The problem today lies in Arab desires to destroy Israel and Israeli settlement policy on Palestine’s West Bank.  This is a problem that Americans do not want to hear or discuss.  Significant groups in Israel and the United States support not only Israeli settlement policy, but would like to see Israel expand into the old Biblical lands of Samaria and Judea.  The numbers of Israelis supporting the settlement policy wax and wane with the level of Palestinian threat to their country.  Right now, with Hizballah rocketing Northern Israel, the support is at its maximum.  The wild card in the equation is America’s Evangelical Christian Right which believes that the second coming of Christ will not take place until Samaria and Judea have been reoccupied by Israel.

As long as radical dreamers on both sides can indulge their destructive fantasies – Arabs pushing Israelis into the sea and Israelis occupying Samaria and Judea – there will be war, hate and destruction.

These are extraordinarily difficult issues.   We all wish they would go away.  But they won’t.  As long as there is no peace in Israel/Palestine, there will be no peace in Iraq, the Middle East or the world.  Fair or not, America is viewed universally as the only country that has any hope of addressing this problem, and our current behavior in that area is daily diminishing our credibility and prospects as a peacemaker.  This may be our last best chance to help.  To try and fail would be far better than to sit back, do nothing and watch it burn.

Haviland Smith retired as a CIA Station Chief in 1980.  He served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.  He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in foreign policy, Iraq |

Coping With the Disadvantage of Military Superiority

July 22, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

“Asymmetrical war” and “disproportionate response” are terms that entered our consciousness in a big way after 9/11. The reasons are obvious. Terrorism brings an asymmetry that is characterized by a relatively small group of terrorists attacking a far larger group or nation. “Disproportionate response” is and has been the logical response to an asymmetrical attack when the aggrieved nation decides it must undertake military action against the people who attacked it.

The biggest problem with this imbalance is that such disproportionate response is indiscriminate and, even though it may well slow or inhibit the activities of the terrorists in the short run, it is far from clear that the long-term effect will be anything other than negative. The indiscriminate killing of civilians is often seen as collective punishment and has a way of bringing more material and emotional support to the terrorists and new terrorists to their cause.

Witness the American response to the terrorists attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa during the Clinton administration — cruise missiles fired into Sudan with little to no effect and really bad publicity. The 9/11 attack brought our invasion of Afghanistan, a military action that is still going on. Consider Russia’s response to Chechen attacks on its homeland — the invasion of and continuing state of war in Chechnya over the past 15 years.
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Similar examples exist in the treatment by France of its North African colonies’ “terrorist problems” — massive retaliation, collective punishment and “collateral damage.” The post-World War II colonial world yields many more examples — in Palestine, Africa and East Asia — where colonial powers were trying to put down home-grown national liberation movements, most of which would now be called “terrorists movements.”

In a non-terrorist context, one can look at the recent history of American military activities in 20th-century Vietnam and 21st-century Iraq. In those two cases, relatively weaker forces fighting in highly unconventional and asymmetrical ways managed to thwart the efforts and goals of the most powerful military establishment in the world, and brought more recruits to their side in the process.

The saddest and perhaps most hopeless example of this asymmetry is today’s struggle between Israel and Palestine which has now been going on without resolution for almost 60 years. In that case, minuscule numbers of aggrieved and angry Palestinians have created a living hell for Israel. Imagine living under the constant threat of random and unpredictable incoming rockets and suicide bombers. At least in World War II London, there were air raid sirens.

How does government protect its people under those conditions? Short of acknowledging and peacefully settling the differences between the two sides, there is no way but asymmetrical response. You simply focus the full force of your military might on the assumed positions of the enemy and turn it loose. When the enemy does not wear uniforms, has no barracks or bases and lives and works in and around the rest of the civilian population, whether in Gaza or Lebanon, there is bound to be a lot of collateral damage, likely to be seen as collective punishment.

In the short run, there is little question that a forceful response will bring relief for the Israeli people who truly deserve to live in peace, rather than as random targets of Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, roadside bombs and suicide bombers. The rocketing will slow and maybe even stop for a while. But what are the long-term effects of that sort of asymmetrical response?

Policies that create hopeless and powerless populations are not good, whether in Gaza or Lebanon. Those are the people who end up strapped into suicide vests or firing rockets. This is a lesson that everyone knows. We know it from Iraq, where we are busily creating the next generation of al-Qaida fighters. Europe’s former colonial powers know it from their struggles with their own independence-seeking colonies.

Israel has to know that truth because it has been pursuing the same asymmetrical policies on and off since 1945 and full time since 1967. At some point, the question has to be asked, “What good it has done?” Have 60 years of asymmetrical response made Israeli lives safer or better? Are their future prospects better or different? Has the terrorism that plagues them been destroyed or disappeared? Even if Israel successfully destroys Hamas and Hezbollah, Middle East realities argue that new terrorists will take their place. To get rid of terrorism, they have to get rid of the conditions that feed it.

If disproportionate response fails, as its own history indicates it probably will, Israel’s next logical step may well be to go after the clearly identified sponsors of the terrorism —Iran and Syria. When and if Israel does that, it will have taken a step the country has never taken before, a step with absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily positive consequences, not just for Israel, but for the world.

Haviland Smith retired as a CIA station chief in 1980. He served in Europe, Lebanon and Iran and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in foreign policy |

Al Zarqawi’s Death is No Turning Point

June 10, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

If you are anything other than a jihadist or a supporter of violent Muslim fundamentalism, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has to have come as a welcome surprise. Zarqawi was a violent, virulent man who wanted only to create chaos in the name of his version of Islam. First and foremost, he was a murderer, not only of the unbelievers, but also of his own Muslim people. That is how he will be judged.

Some have tried to turn his death into an important turning point in the “global war on terrorism”. That is absurd. This argument is one of a long list of persistent if unsuccessful attempts to justify the invasion of Iraq as part of that effort.

Al-Zarqawi came to Iraq well after the American invasion. His purpose had nothing to do with Iraq or the Iraqi people; it was based on his desire to create as much trouble as he possibly could for the Americans. His goal was to disrupt American plans to install democracy in Iraq. For a hater of America and everything it represents, Iraq presented an irresistible, target-rich environment.

Al-Zarqawi was not even a part of al-Qaida when he arrived in Iraq. He was simply a talented ex-convict who had found religion and dedicated his life to fighting the evils he perceived in Western culture. In fact, he was not even acknowledged by Osama bin Laden until well after he started his violent insurrectionist activities there.

With the exception of a terrorist operation he ran against his homeland, Jordan, and which he later acknowledged to have been a tactical mistake, Al-Zarqawi was primarily an internal Iraqi phenomenon. As such, Al-Zarqawi’s death will disrupt the insurrection there. However, given our knowledge of al-Qaida’s modus operandi, it will almost certainly trigger an automatic and planned succession. He will be replaced.

It is possible that Al-Zarqawi’s fixation on fomenting civil war between Shiite and Sunni may give way to Iraqi insurgents sharpening their focus on American troops and Iraqi military and security forces — all the elements that might bring stability to Iraq. It is also possible that fewer foreign fighters will be attracted to Iraq and therefore there will be fewer of the suicide bombings they carried out. However, none of that is clear.

What is clear is that Al-Zarqawi’s death will have little if any effect on radical Muslim terrorism against the West and on our “war” against it. Al-Zarqawi was never a player in bin Laden’s organization. He became an “adoptee” after he showed he was prepared to cause problems for the Americans in Iraq, but he was never really a part of the organization. In fact, it is likely that bin Laden and his principal deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are pleased to have a martyr rather than a competitor on their hands.

In some respects, he characterizes the changes that have taken place in al-Qaida since 9/11. Instead of a carefully trained, documented and centrally controlled group of Saudis scheming to annihilate a number of America’s physical icons on 9/11, we have seen the franchising of the terrorism effort. Madrid, London, and now Toronto make it clear that the current incarnation of the terrorist threat is going to be characterized by wannabe Muslim copycats who believe they hate Western civilization. They see the 24 virgins in heaven as a far superior alternative to their lives as minorities in Western countries that never really seem to want to assimilate them.

These will be locally grown and nurtured terrorist groups that probably will have no substantive command contact with the al-Qaida leaders in their Middle East caves, but that wish to please the gods they all believe they are serving. As disturbing as the concept of disenfranchised, dangerous and disillusioned groups in our midst may seem to us, the intelligence-collection problem they present to Western counterterrorism should be far less difficult. Such groups, born, nurtured and matured in the West will be far easier to penetrate and neutralize than those based in and professionally directed from caves on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Al-Zarqawi’s death will probably not have an important, lasting effect on the problems we face in Iraq. It is not he, but the situation in Iraq that brings fighters to the insurrection. Unfortunately, his death represents only a small victory in our war on terrorism and has little potential to make that struggle easier. The changes in the nature of our terrorist enemy that have come as a result of its organizational evolution may prove to make our problems easier to deal with, but that will not be a result of Al-Zarqawi’s demise.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Europe and the Middle East, and was chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in Iraq |

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