The Devil's Game

The Devil’s Game:
Robert Dreyfuss
Introduction:
The US, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly, funded and encouraged right-wing Islamist activism.
This little known policy conducted over six decades is partly to blame for the emergence of Islamist terrorism. Only after 9/11 did Washington begin to discover its strategic miscalculation.
The US spent six decades cultivating, manipulating, double crossing and cynically using/misusing them as cold war allies. Imams, mullahs ayatollahs thunder against the US and freedom of thought, secular and nationalist ideas, the left, women’s rights, some are terrorists, but most want to turn the calendar back to the 7th century.
During the cold war the enemy (deemed so by the west) was not merely the USSR. It was nationalism, humanism, secularism, and socialism, which were feared by Muslim fundamentalists too. The US found it politic to find common cause with the Islamic right.
The US spent years constructing a barrier against the USSR (felt) that Muslims between Greece and China, ‘the arc of Islam’ …might reinforce the barrier…restive Muslims inside the USSR might be (its) undoing.
The US played, not with Islam the religion, but with Islamism. Islamism is a more recent…political creed,… a militant philosophy…would appear heretical to most Muslims of earlier ages. It is in fact a perversion of the religious faith. The US supported, organized and funded it. It is variously represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, Ayatollahs, Saudi Wahabis, Hamas, Hezbollah, Jihadis and Osama.
The US found political Islam a convenient partner during each stage of empire building from its early entry in the mid-East to its emergence as an army of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the 1950s, besides the USSR, the enemies were Nasser of Egypt and Mossadegh of Iran. The US and Britain used Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser, and funded an ayatollah during the US sponsored coup in Iran in 1953.
During the 1960s, despite the effort of the imperialists, Arab socialism and left wing nationalism grew. The US forged an alliance with Saudi Arabia and… with Wahabism, and joined hands with the former in pursuit of an Islamic bloc…Saudis founded the Islamic Center of Geneva (1961), the Muslim world League (1962), the Organization of the Islamic congress (1969).

With the death pf Nasser in 1970, Islamists became an important support of the regimes tied to the USA. The US allied itself with Anwar Sadat who used it to build an anti-Nasser political base, with General Zia of Pakistan who used it consolidate his hold on power and with Hasan Turabi of Sudan who was rising to power with the help of the Brotherhood. US saw it as an offensive tool to use against the USSR.
The US/allies did not learn any lessons from the 1979 Iran revolution. They spent billions in Afghan jihad. The US looked on as Jordan and Israel aided terrorists in Syria, and Israel helped found HAMAS.
CIA and neo-cons made secret deals with Iran in 1980s.
With the cold war over in 1990s some strategists argued that political Islam was the new threat replacing communism. Washington was confused. In Algeria, in stead of supporting democracy, they favored the army crackdown. In Egypt the Islamists posed a grave threat to Mubarak, yet the US covertly supported the Islamists. In Afghanistan, after the USSR had been driven out, the US supported the Taliban.
Post 9/11 Bush signed on to the, “clash of civilization,” and launched a global war on ‘terror’ and targeted Al-Qaida, it had helped create. Yet in secular Iraq, it back Islamic right in Iraqi Shias who were supported by Iran.
Until 1941, the mid-East was a wonderful, fearsome fantasyland of harems and sheikhs and the holy land and the ‘Turks’.
Post WW I, the British and the French forced the disintegration of the Ottoman empire and the bid-East started impinging on YS consciousness.
In 1945 FDR went east in search of oil, and had a fateful encounter with the king of Saudi Arabia, Ibne Saud. Thus started a long lasting relationship.
In 1947 Princeton University created the first Near East Center in the US. Partly sponsored by the government, centers for Middle Eastern affairs began springing up in the country.
The American attachment to a romanticized fantasy of Arab life and disdain for their ‘heathenism’ proved a deadly combination. It believed that their religious fanaticism would make them natural enemies of atheistic communism. But it never dawned on the US that the Islamists were qualitatively different from the comprador clerical establishment.
For those who knew little about the religion and culture of the mid-East, and the ranks included presidents, secretaries of state, CIA directors, in search of tactical allies, Islam seemed a better bet than secularism.
By the 1950s Middle East studies were set up in many universities. But as the cold war unfolded, the ‘Arabist’ scholars in state and CIA were attacked by the cold warriors and their Zionist allies, so the US could not avail of the little knowledge of the region, it had access to.
The emergence of Christian right in the US can be dated to late 1970s with the formation of Timothy LaHaye’s California alliance of churches and with Jerry Falwell creation of Moral majority, and the role of the two in the council on National Policy, the Christian coalition, Pat Robertson’s broadcast empire and James Dobson’s focus on Family. Till then the Christian right had been a politically inchoate mass.
The history of obscurantism, anti-rationalism, and Koran literalism competing with enlightened, progressive thought goes back 13 centuries. But it took the creation of pan-Islamic movement by Jamal al-Afghani in the late 1880s, and the resurgence offered by the founding of Muslim Brotherhood by Hassan al-Banna in 1928 and Maududi’s Jamat e Islami in 1940 that the Islamic right came into its own.
Like the Christian right getting funds from the Texas and Midwest oil barons, the Muslim right found support from the oil satrapies of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and established political alliances with US right wing strategists.. they converged further in Reagan years. Militant Christian right and fervent Zionists were so blinded by their hate of secular nationalism, that they happily cheered Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan.
Christian right, and Islamic fanatics, in fact all religious zealots share an absolute certainty about their beliefs, unity of religion and politics, intolerance for difference of opinion, condemnation of apostates, unbelievers and freethinkers and promote blind faith in their followers.
A war on terrorism is precisely the wrong way to deal with political Islam.
There are two challenges, the first the threat to the security of America by Al-Qaida and related groups. The second is the broader aspect of the growth of Islamic right in all Muslim countries and among the Muslim populations all over the world, especially in India, the USA, Britain, France, Germany and Northern European countries.
Bush deliberately exaggerated the Al-Qaida threat. It does not offer an existential threat. It does large number of followers or assets in the Western countries to pose a substantial danger. It did not have any links with Saddam or any other rulers in the Muslim world.
It was an intelligence and law enforcement. War in Afghanistan did not destroy Al-Qaida, (in fact it weakened the government and left the general populace at the mercy of marauders of all kinds. They support the resurgent Taliban). War in Iraq was akin to FDR attacking Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor.
The Afghan and Iraq wars were tailor made the Bush policy of empire building and pre-emptive war, and it allowed the administration to construct a huge political-military enterprise from East Africa to Pakistan.
Unless the Islamic right is stopped, Al-Qaida, HAMAS, Hezbollah and other extremist groups will continue to grow. The groups draw financial, theological and legions of recruits from the fundamentalist groups.
The US must remove grievances that push angry Muslims to such organizations as the Muslim Brotherhood. US must join the UNO, EU and Russia to help settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, by a two state solution, by withdrawal of Israelis from illegally held lands to pre-1967 borders. That would pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Islamic right.
The US must abandon its imperial pretensions, withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, dismantle its bases in mid-East and sharply cut its training mission, visibility of its navy and arms sales.
The US must refrain from imposing its preferences on the region. Its call for democracy is taken as (and is) a pretext for greater US involvement in the region. The countries have to find a political system they can live with (the US must stop propping up satrapies in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states).
The US must give up its tendency to make bellicose threats to nations such as Iran and Sudan.
The true emancipation of the mid-East will only come from secular and liberal forces, which will offer education, freedom of expression (and religion) and modernization.
Fundamentalism of whatever variety-Islamism, Christian evangelists or Jewish fanatical settlers, is always a reactionary force.

Chap 1: Imperial Pan-Islam:
In 1885, a Persian-Afghan activist Jamal Uddine al-Afghani met intelligence and foreign policy officials in London to ask if Britain would be interested in organizing a pan-Islamic alliance of Egypt, turkey, Persia and Afghanistan against the Czarist Russia.
The British had seized control of Egypt in 1881. the Ottoman empire was shaky. The British masters at getting tribes, ethnic and religious groups at each other’s throats, were intrigued and they had the advantage over Russia and France of having millions of Muslim subjects already.
The British supported Afghani from 1870 to 1890s (2).
A biblical genealogy of the Islamic right would be :Afghani (1838-1897), Mohammad Abduh (1849-1905), Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) founded the Lighthouse magazine, Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949) who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 and Said Ramadan, his son in law who had his headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and Abul ala Maududi who founded the Jamaat e Islami in 1940. Another to be included in the series could be the Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden.
Between 1875 and 1925, the British built the Islamic right. Afghhani had laid the intellectual foundation with British help, and the support of the leading British orientalist, E. G. Browne. Abduh founded the Salafiyya movement with the help of the British proconsul in Egypt, Lord Cromer. Afghani and Abduh can best be understood in the context of the century long British efforts to create a pro-British pan-Islamic movement.
In the Arab peninsula the British helped Wahhabi ultra-fundamentalists led by Ibne Saud. They simultaneously encouraged the Hashemites of Mecca who claimed descendence from the prophet of Islam. When they were overpowered by the forces of Saud, the British offered them the consolation prize of the kingdom of Jordan and Iraq.
From 1920s on the new Saudi state merged its Wahhabism with Salafiyya, which eventually organized into the Muslim Brotherhood.
Afghani started it all. He collaborated with competing imperial powers. His biographers have painted him as an anti-imperialist, liberal reformer and enlightenment rationalist. No doubt , he had elements of all this in his character, but he was a pragmatist and offered his services to all imperial powers in turn-the British, the French and the Russians. But his followers, especially Abduh became increasingly anglophile.
Afghani was born in Iran, he adopted Afghani as his name to find acceptability among the Sunnis. He is rightly credited with developing the theoretical foundation of pan-Islamism, he was nevertheless, a heterodox thinker, a Freemason, a mystic, and according to Elie Kedourie, a British orientalist, he believed in the “social utility of religion”. He was a closet atheist. He wrote, “Religion imposes its faith and its creed on man, while philosophy liberates him from then wholly or in part.. But reason does not please, and its teachings are understood only by a few choice spirits (7).
But H.A.R. Gibbs, author of the classic Modern trends in Islam (1947) wrote that Afghani believed in a state governed by “sound Koranic orthodoxy, mixed with a modernistic outlook (8), while Wilfred Cantwell Smith called Afghani “the complete Muslim of his time” (9). He added that Afghani was “the first Muslim revivalist to use the concepts ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ as connoting antagonistic historical phenomenon (11) making him the true originator of the term, ‘clash of civilization’, to be popularized much later by Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington.
Afghani: his public life began when he left Afghanistan in 1969. He first went to India where he was welcomed by the British as an Islamic scholar. They sent him on a government owned ship to Egypt. He went on to Turkey, but was expelled because of his unorthodox views. He returned to Egypt where he was patronized by the Prime minister Riad Pasha who was an enemy of the nascent nationalist movement in Egypt and gave him a job at Al-Azhar.
As nationalism gained strength in Egypt, he was expelled from the country and embarked on a journey which took him to India, Britain, Paris ( 3years), Russia (4 years), Munich and Iran. In the last country, the shah made him war minister and then prime minister. But the two fell out and Afghani, taking refuge in a mosque, began agitating against the shah. He was arrested and deported to turkey. His followers assassinated the shah in 1896.
In late 1870s Afghani met the man who would become his chief disciple, Mohammad Abduh. Abduh, like his mentor, was attracted to Sufi brotherhoods, who held a transcendent view of spiritual life.. Sufis favored an introspective approach to “oneness” with god and the movement gave rise to many brotherhoods, called ‘tariqa’ some of which were tightly bound secret societies, while others were hierarchical mass movements spread over many countries.
Between 1871 and 1879, the two worked closely together. They organized through out the region, attracted some mystical Christians as well and founded the young Egypt secret society. In 1878, Riad Pasha appointed Abduh as a history teacher at the newly launched Dar ul Uloom. When the star of Riad Pasha started falling, Afghani and Abdul left Egypt. The famous hero colonel/war minister Ahmad Arabi was leading a nationalist movement which was crushed by the British. Abduh opposed military resistance to the British. (16).
The opposition of Afghani and Abduh to Egyptian nationalism, foreshadowed the Muslim Brotherhood’s opposition to Gamal Nasser in the 1950s, the resistance of HAMAS in Palestine to the nationalism of PLO, and countless other instances in which Islamists opposed nationalist movement during the cold war years.
Afghani endorsed Abduh as his successor (16). Abduh was temporarily exiled from Egypt, only to return in triumph, with full support of Britain’s imperial officers.
Afghani went to Arabia, then on to India, and later to Paris where, he was joined by Abduh. In the mid 1880s, they built up the network, which survived them. In 1884, they started publishing a weekly called The Indissoluble Bond, which ran for only 18 issues. Afghani also organized a pan-Islamic society in Mecca, with the goal of creating a single caliphate for the entire Muslim world.
Immediately after, the French halted the publication of the weekly, and Afghani and Abduh went to London to discuss the crisis in the Sudan (the Mahdi-Shaikh Mohammad Ahmad- army, the 1885 defeat of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum), and proposed a pan-Islamic alliance with Britain. Britain did not accept his offer.
Afghani went to Russia and Abduh to Tunis. The latter traveled incognito to several other north African countries (22). Their message:
“the message of Islam…unites Muslims of all countries…obliterates all traces of race or nationality…The supreme authority over all should be the Koran (23).
In 1880s, (for the common man, especially westerners) it was a new and revolutionary concept-not for centuries had the Muslims be so challenged, to restore Islamic rule “over all lands that had once been Muslim”. This would be taken up by T. E .Lawrence and his British intelligence colleagues during WW I, to mobilize Muslims to undermine the Ottoman caliphate and Russia.
Abduh had returned to Egypt in 1888, and by late 1880s, had cast his lot openly with Lord Cromer., who had returned to Cairo after the British troops had crushed the nationalist revolt, and ruled the country till 1907. With Cromer’s backing Abduh was appointed chair of a committee to reorganize Al-Azhar, and became the editor of Egypt’s Official Journal, and appointed to Egypt’s legislative council (25). In 1899, he was appointed mufti of Egypt (26), which gave him significant patronage power.
Afghani, in the meanwhile, had spent a few years in Russia. He apparently tried to sell the idea of an Indian revolt to Russia (28), which the latter did not buy, and he went back to London.
London in the late 19th century was like a gigantic melting pot of religious activism. Many British intellectuals and imperialists were seized with desire to find a ‘holy grail; of unified theory of religious belief. Religious syncretism won followers among the elite, with the idea of floating a new cult.
One of Afghani’s main contacts in London was a Cambridge professor, arguably the godfather of 20th century Orientalism, Edward Granville Browne, especially in Persian and religious studies. Browne was a teacher and a friend to the British intelligence operatives, Harry ST. john Bridger Philby and T. E. Lawrence.
Browne’s Persian teacher was Mirza Mohammad Baqir who had elaborated his own religious system, which he called “Islamo-Christianity” (29). Browne delved into Baha’is creed which also promoted syncretic faith based in Persia, and had outposts in Haifa and other places. Baha’is were openly anglophile (Abdul Baha was knighted by the British, after WW I).
Afghani came under the influence of Malkan Khan, the Persian ambassador to London, and believed in a universalist “religion of humanity”, and formed the “Arab Masonic society” (30).
Afghani spent most of his final years in Iran, as war minister and Prime minister. The shah did not like his appeal to mullahs, and had him arrested, while in a mosque and sent to the Turkish border (31).
Lord Cromer wrote the ultimate epitaph for Afghani and his acolytes, “They were too tainted with heterodoxy to carry far along with conservative Muslims…”.
The British would, in the mean time, turn to Saudi Arabian Wahhabism.
Abdullah Philby:
From 1899 to end of WW I, the British would embark on one of the boldest imperial gambits, make a play for the loyalty of Muslims by appealing to its conservative masses and autocrats.. The ottoman empire was in its death throes. Navy, railroad, and internal combustion engines of autos created an insatiable demand for oil.
The British had to deal with the French, Russians, Germans and the Turks. The last, though tottering, had an ace in the Caliphate which, on paper at least, could claim the allegiance of orthodox Muslims in all the countries.
London already controlled Indian Muslims and Egypt and were dominant in Afghanistan and Persia. They needed a force to challenge Turkey.
The first step was an alliance with the future king of Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabi movement.



Wahhabism:
In the middle of 18th century, an itinerant preacher, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, born in 1703, began crisscrossing the Fertile Crescent. He preached the Islamic version of fire and brimstone.
His most important convert was the founder of the Saudi dynasty, Mohammad ibn Saud. To reinforce their message they slaughtered anyone who disagreed with them and demolished their cities, mosques and shrines. Abdul Wahhab was called al-shaikh, and his descendents have since been called Shaikh too (34). The alliance evolved into the Saudi state in 1920s. Hamid Algar, the author of Wahhabism: A Critical Essay says that “ his works are simplistic…mostly reprinted collections of the Prophet’s sayings…no “elucidation or commentary”, even custodians of Wahhabism are “embarrassed by the slightness of the opus”.
Wahhab hurled polemical thunderbolts at moderate Muslims, accusing them of heresy and worse. With Al Saud, they assembled an army of followers and were notorious for “preferring slaughter to booty” (38) in their conquests. In the 1700s the alliance began a “campaign of killing and plunder all across Arabia” (39). In 1802, they raided Karbala, killing most of the population, destroying the dome over Imam Hussein’s grave and looting “weapons, carpets, gold and silver…” (40). Domes in Mecca would be destroyed too in early 19th century (41). (John Esposito wrote “Saudi aid agencies have been responsible for destruction of ..historic mosques, libraries, Quran schools” in the in Bosnia and Kosovo” (42).
England’s ties to the Al Saud began in mid-19th century, when a British colonel made contact with them in 1865, in Riyadh, their future capital and “…British subsidies started to flow into the coffers of the Saudi family…as WW I grew closer” reports Algar (43).
In 1899, lord Curzon the then viceroy in India, carved out the protectorate of Kuwait (44). “the Amir of Kuwait, dispatched Ibn Saud, then just twenty years old, to try to retake Riyadh from the pro-Ottoman Rashids (45). Riyadh fell to Ibn Saud in 1902. and they established the Ikhwan Muslim Brotherhood (46). Ibn Saud also collected fighters from Bedoin tribes. By 1912, the Ikhwan had 11,000 members and Saud had Nejd in the center and Al-Hasa in east under his control.
Between 1899 and WW I rumors of oil in the mid-East had become reality and oil “concessions” one sided were imposed by force of arms.
William Shakespeare, the British political agent in Kuwait became the first of the British liaisons with Saud and forged the first formal treaty in 1915.
As the Ottoman empire wobbled, the British sent two teams to back two opposing Arab players.
The first team was led by Philby. A product of Cambridge university, Philby, though an atheist, exhibited a strong appreciation of religion’s influence on politics (49). He joined the Indian civil Service, and would later undergo a sham conversion and take the name Abdullah, and succeed Shakespear as the British liaison to Ibn Saud.
Philby’s team and the India office of Britain backed the al Saud. T.E. Lawrence at the Arab bureau, a branch of British intelligence favored the Sharif of Mecca.
In both cases, the British sought to mobilize Islam. The British took the lead in using Islamic loyalties as a force against the Turks. It was a policy backed by Lord Curzon, the foreign secretary, Robert Cecil, the latter’s cousin, Arthur Balfour, who at Rothschild’s backing and behest, would promise Palestine to Jews, Mark Sykes, the duplicitous chief of the foreign office Middle East section, David George Hogarth, the head of the Arab bureau, and by Churchill, Arnold Toynbee, among other British imperialists. Lawrence was to say “If the Sultan of Turkey were to disappear…caliphate would by common consent fall to…the Sharif of Mecca, whose activities seem beneficial to us…the breakup of the Islamic block. If properly handled…Arab states would remain… a tissue of jealous principalities incapable of cohesion…”.
Behind the scenes, the British would forge an alliance between the Hashemites and Zionists. Uniting all the peninsular states would be a Mecca based and British controlled Arab caliphate.
Beginning in January 1917, Ibn Saud was put on a 5,000 pounds monthly retainer (50).
Philby maintained his connection to the Al Saud. But “to men like Hogarth, with their experience of Islam in India, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and the Hijaz, …Ibn Saud’s Ikhwan was a menace and Wahhabism a fanatical creed unsuited to most of the Islamic world (54).
In the 1920s conquest of Arabia, Al Saud left 400,000 dead and wounded, carried out 40,000 public executions… and ordered 350,000 amputations (55).
When the dust had settled on WW I, Britain reigned supreme in the region, the Ikhwan numbered 50,000 by 1920s (62). In 1924 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, peremptorily abolished the caliphate. Hussein the Sharif of Mecca proclaimed himself proclaimed himself caliph, but the British, having chosen to ride with Ibn Saud and the upcoming Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, had abandoned him, and no body listened.
A formal treaty between Ibn Saud and Britain, recognizing the full ‘independence’ of the kingdom was signed on May 20, 1927. Bernard Lewis wrote “A Muslim mission from India… demanded that the king hand over control of the holy places to a committee of representatives to be appointed by all Muslim countries. Ibn Saud did not respond to this demand and sent (packed) the mission back to India…(64)”
They clashed, and by 1929, the king had dismantled the Ikhwan.
The king created a religious police and in early thirties, he also created a Society for the Propagation of Virtue and the suppression of Evil. It was composed of illiterate Bedoin (65), and still exists.
For England and later for the US, Saudi Arabia would serve as an anchor for imperial ambitions.

Chap 2 England’s Brothers:
From the late 1920s to the failed invasion of Suez in 1956, Britain, among other groups, made deals the Islamist movements in Egypt and Palestine. In 1928, Hassan al-Banna formed Muslim Brotherhood, with which Haji Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, was associated.
Muslim Brotherhood was established from the Suez canal co, and over the next decades, the British and King Farouq would use it against the communists and nationalists and Gamal Nasser. In Palestine Haji Amin, an open supporter of Nazis, and fierce opponent of Zionist, rose to prominence with the help of the British administrators of the mandate. The two tied Wahhabism with pan-Islam of Jamal Afghani.
The British and the king used Banna’s group, especially its underground paramilitary arm. It grew to several hundred thousand members in Egypt with branches in Syria, Palestine and Jordan.
With the end of WW I, a string of British vassal-kings ruled in the successor states of the Ottoman Empire in mid-East. The Islamic right provided a vital counterweight to England’s chief nemesis, the secular nationalist and leftists.
Anti-Nationalists: The Muslim Brotherhood was a direct outgrowth of pan-Islamism of Afghani and Abduh. Rashid Rida of Syria, who had arrived in Egypt in 1897, provided the link. In 1898, he founded a weekly, The Lighthouse (1). He, unlike Afghani and Abduh, advocated the establishment of an above ground Islamic society, with headquarters in Mecca, and branches in every Muslim country. (2)
Rashid was only able to found the Society for Propaganda and Guidance. He could not done so without the consent of lord Cromer, the absolute ruler of Egypt at the time. The weekly consistently attacked the secular Egyptian nationalist movement and also welcomed Saudi-Wahhabi state, “A new star of hope Has appeared with the rise of Wahhabi dynasty of Ibn Saud in Arabia…”(3). Nationalists in Egypt and turkey were deemed “atheist and infidels” by Rashid (4).
The society of Propaganda… was founded with money from wealthy Arabs and from India, and enrolled scholars from Indonesia to East Africa. In opposition to the new Nationalist party, they helped establish the Peoples party, which openly supported the British occupation of Egypt. It won plaudits from Cromer (5).
Hassan al-Banna was Rashid Rida’s chief acolyte.
The 21st century War on ‘Terrorism,’ is a war against the offspring of Banna. They show up in Afghanistan, in Gaza, as ministers in Jordanian government, as academics in Saudi universities, the banks in Gulf, and post post-Saddam Iraqi government.
To help Banna get the Brotherhood off the ground, the Suez Canal co financed the building of a mosque in Ismailia (6). In 1928, it was a small town, which housed the company’s offices and a major British base built during the WW I, and pro-British in its leanings.
The program of early Muslim Brotherhood was simple. Muslims should return to the life of the Prophet’s and his immediate successor’s time, rejecting modern scholarly interpretations of Islamic law. The Koran is our constitution (11). But elaboration of the concept of an Islamic state would have to wait for Sayyid Qutb, Maududi and Khomeini. Islam for Banna was, “ a Salafiyya message, a Sunni way, a sufi truth, a political organization, an athletic group, a cultural-educational union, an economic company, and a social idea.” (13).
In 1932 Banna moved to Cairo, establishing the Muslim Brotherhood HQ there. It would serve as the anchor of the Egyptian right, allied to the palace and to the conservative army officers. In 1933, Banna called the first national conference in Cairo, and soon afterwards, youth associations, athletic clubs tied to the paramilitary units started sprouting. The units were called Rovers at the time. They were unusual for Egypt in that they were disciplined, and were devoted to Banna.
The Brotherhood’s chief rival was the nationalist Wafd party, so named after the Wafd (delegation ) led by Saad Zaghlul to the post war conferences where the victors decided the fate of the whole mid-East. The party had left, center and right wings.
Banna indulged in a complex game, keeping in with the royal palace, the British overlords, with the PM and the CinC. According to Mitchell, the Brotherhood was…conceived as an instrument against the Wafd and communists (17). Big landowners and capitalists viewed it as an ally (18).
The Brotherhood’s Secret Apparatus:
Established in 1942, (19), till smashed by Nasser in 1954, it would assassinate judges, police and other officials, burn Egyptian Jewish businesses, attack labor union and communists, and operated in open alliance with the king. In 1944, it began infiltrating the communist movement. (20).
The Brotherhood played at two levels, its leadership, including Banna himself, would collaborate with the establishment, while its covert arm would indulge in espionage and murders. It received money and sustenance from the Saudi rulers. The British embassy and later the US diplomats had regular contacts with the Brotherhood.
After WW II, the tottering regime of Farouk lashed out against the leftists, and the government started funding the Brotherhood openly (21).They also organized right wing trade unions, and undermined strikes (24).
Anwar Sadaat, was a key member of the Brotherhood in 19740s. He was the liaison between Nasser’s Free Officers and the Brotherhood (26) and warmly praise Banna (27).
During the 1940s, the British, the Nazis and the soviets had penetrated the Brotherhood (29-30).
The British and the US, looking for post Farouq alternatives had the option of Wafd-communist or the Free Officers-Brotherhood and opted for the latter
The Arab-Jewish war potentiated he Brotherhood immensely. The defeat of Arab armies by Jewish paramilitary units changed the Arab psyche. Brotherhood’s own paramilitary units, as the Afghan Jihad was to do in 1980s, created hordes of battle hardened Islamist veterans. It also bolstered the ties between it and Haji Amin al-Husseini.
The creation of Israel also spurred Arab nationalists like Nasser, who regarded Israel as colonial implant, aided and abetted by minion of US-British imperialism, the kings in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The Brotherhood, countered that the only way to the former glory of Islam was by reverting to fundamentalism.
In the multi-dimensional struggle, nationalist, the left, communists, secular intellectuals, wealth merchants, the tribal leaders, the feudal landowners, the monarchies, with their armies were involved. The Islamists maintained ties with ties with traditional elite, the royals, the army and the merchants.
The Brotherhood grew fast in 1940s. Said Ramadan, Banna’s son in law organized the effort in Jordan and Palestine. With the ostensible plan to fight the Zionists, they collected arms. Amin al-Husseni, who had mesmerized generations of British spooks, promoted it in Palestine(33). He was arrested for his role in ant-Jewish riots, but in 0920s, the British high commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuels, himself a Jew gave him a dramatic special pardon (34). Sir Ronald Storrs, the governor of Jerusalem rigged his election as the mufti of Jerusalem in 1921 (dismissed in 1937) (35).
A year later Herbert Samuel established the Supreme Muslim council, in charge of rich religious endowments and named Husseini the president of the body(36).The two posts gave him enormous political power.
In 1931, Husseini convened an Islamic conference in Jerusalem, and traveled to India and Muslim countries. He veered into political alliance with the Nazis, but of the 60 Arabs arrested in Palestine in 1936 for an anti-British rebellion, he was the only one to go free (37). He fled, and finally landed in Berlin (38) and oversaw Nazi propaganda broadcasts to mid-East, and organized all Muslim SS units, made up mainly of Bosnians.
After WW II, he left Germany via Switzerland to France, where the Allies did not arrest him, nor did the Brtish ask for his extradition (39). In 1946, he arrived back in triumph to Egypt, and was welcomed as a guest of the king (40-41).
In Cairo, the British intelligence had established the Arab news agency, which hired the mufti(43).
In September 1947, the mufti returned to Palestine, and proclaimed himself the ‘President of the Republic’ (46).
After the 1948 defeat of the Arabs fatally undermined Farouq’s regime, the accord between the government and the Brotherhood broke down, and the Brotherhood was outlawed in December 1948.
In January 1949 the Egyptian security officers assassinated Banna. That led to factional fighting
. his successor was intimate with the royal household and his election was engineered by landowners. The factions kept up their links with various segments of the establishment.
Thanks to Said Ramadan, the Brotherhood expanded its influence world wide, money pored in from Saudis, and the cold war gave it a new life in the global crusade against communism. Its elite insider politics combined with underground militancy, gave birth to ‘political’ Islam.
Post WW II, the vast area from Greece to India, would become a vast arena of the cold war. The cold war strategists built NATO, CENTO. The RDF confused the Soviet threat with mid-Eastern nationalism and reached out to the Islamic right.

Chap 3 Islam and the cold War:
Sheikh Mohammad Sorour (Sabhan), a Sudanese former slave and then deputy finance minister of Saudi Arabia handled most of the financial matters with the Brotherhood.(1). Banna visited Saudi Arabia frequently. Hermann Elits, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia found him very friendly.
According to Elits, US political officers in Egypt in the 1940s discussed the movement with Banna on a routine basis. The movement with about 1.5 million members, was at the time, the only credible challenge to the establishment (20). US representatives were attracted by its anti-communist stance.
The debate in Washington was whether Islam was bulwark against communism, or was it a backward force with inherent anti-western outlook, and susceptible to the class warfare politics of the left. Could the USA mould Islamic institutions into the backbone of a new civil society to should it ally itself with secular modernizers.
Few Americans had experience or knowledge to answer these questions. From 1947 to 1950s CIA had to depend on British intelligence (3).
The British were very jealous and possessive of their Mid-East turf. The US connection with the region was spurred by oil and the cold war.
In 1933 US oil companies signed a concession in Saudi Arabia, which would grow into Aramco, facilitated by no other than the British agent, Harry St John Bridger (Abdullah) Philby (4,5,6,7,8,9). FDR declared in 1943, that Saudi Arabia would henceforth be under the US defense umbrella. FDR had multiple aims-oil, Russia and the rivalry with the British (13).
In 1944, the US sent its first military mission to Saudi Arabia, and in 145 they signed an agreement to establish a major US Air Force base at Dhahran. In 1949 an accord to survey the entire Arabian peninsula was signed to also create a 43,000 man US equipped army and air force. In 1951 an other accord allowed for a permanent US military mission. In 1945, FDR met the Saudi king on board a ship in Suez Canal marked the consummation of Saudi-American relationship (15).
Eisenhower doctrine of 1957, and the 1980 Carter doctrine reaffirmed FDR
‘s 1943 proclamation to defend Saudi Arabia.
The British created the Baghdad pact with Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan (18). After the 1958 Iraq revolution, Baghdad pact lost its HQ. It was replaced by CENTO, with the US, the UK, turkey, Iran and Pakistan, the last was also in SEATO.
The alliances were based on military and economic supremacy of the West. With the evolution of the cold war ‘political Islam’ joined the ranks. Saudi Arabia served as the counterweight to Arab nationalism and the Brotherhood spread its tentacles across the Muslim world. Said Ramadan was the most important emissary.
To counter Arab nationalism, and less importantly communism, Saudi Arabia promoted the brotherhood.
In late summer 1953, Eisenhower met Said Ramadan in the White house (19), who until his death in 1995, would be the Brotherhoods chief international organizer.
Based on the secret evaluation by the US ambassador in Cairo, Ramadan was viewed as a potential ally, rather than a threat. Ramadan’s allies, Pakistan’s Jamaat e Islami, and similar organizations were opposed to Marxism, socialism, trade unions, the Baath party and secularists.
Ramadan’s first Brotherhood office in Jerusalem which he opened on October 26, 1945, would by 1980s grow into Islamic Resistance movement (HAMAS).
Ramadan also participated in the first 1949 and the later 1951 meeting World Muslim Congress meetings in Karachi (24). Pakistan gave Ramadan a slot on its Radio station (26). He worked closely with Maududi’s group. He also worked closely with the country’s ruling party, the Muslim league which financed his travels. He helped Maududi organize the student wing of the party, Islami Jamiat e Talba IJT), on Mussolini’s squadristi lines (27). The ITJ armed cadre clashed with left students (28).
Ramadan also worked with other Arab fundamentalists to create the Islamic liberation party which would metastasize to Germany and Muslim central Asia. By 1990s, it had allied itself to Islamic movement of Uzbekistan and Al-Qaida. In Jordan he helped organize the brotherhood, led by a wealthy merchant with close ties to the king, who granted it the status of welfare organization (30).
The US government had organized the 1953 Colloquium on Islamic culture at Princeton University, and had sent Philip K. Hitti, arguably the foremost orientalist to Arab capitals, New Delhi to scour scholars and activists, funding had been obtained from airlines and ARAMCO, and Saudi Arabia, other orientalist like T. Cuyler Young and Bayly Winder of Princeton, Wilfred Cantwell Smith of McGill, Richard Nelson Frye of Harvard, Carleton Coon of U Penn, and Dr Bayard Dodge ; former president of the American university of Beirut, directed the conference. So the presence of Ramadan in the Oval office had been carefully planned (31).
Jefferson Caffery, a state department officer, ending a stellar career in foreign service, had written a classified cable from Cairo that Ramadan be invited to the conference. It is clear from his missive that he and most likely the CIA were willing to overlook the violence tied to the Brotherhood, and were targeting Ramadan as an ally or an agent.
Islam Against communism:
Was Islam itself a bulwark against an atheistic ideology and was the Brotherhood a useful ally in the cold war? In one sense the answer was no. Communism and nationalism both found a lot of support among the Muslim masses. Iraq had big communist party, membership among the Shia was in the millions. Nasser’s message of Arab nationalism had found vast audiences. They were opposed to western imperialism and its control of the Arabs.
But US policy makers felt that political Islam could be mobilized to the anti-communist crusade. In the mid-East Islam had many forms-traditionalist, ‘State Islam’, and the ‘New Right’. Some analysts felt that intellectual operatives like Banna, Ramadan and Maududi were made to order. US propaganda, stressing America’s own religious values, in contrast to soviet atheism, could attract Muslim masses into the American camp. Bernard Lewis, the inventor of phrase “clash of civilizations” thought so. He wrote an essay in 1953, “ Communism and Islam” in which he opined that Muslims seemed intent on creating a string of authoritarian governments. “If the Muslims had to choose between communism and parliamentary government, it will a great disadvantage for the west. He obviously felt that authoritarian governments would serve the purpose of the west much better.
At the colloquium, a Pakistani scholar, Mazharuddin Siddiqi made it clear that communism could be resisted only by a faith-base opposition. “Communist atheism has a power of inspiration which pure rationalism does not have. It is faith… science, a social gospel…a metaphysical system. It is the only real substitute for religious faith…It is the socio-economic significance of Islam…a barrier against communism (27).
Kenneth Cragg, editor of The Muslim World, “May it not be that by virtue of …the need to give…answer to communism…Islam and Christianity, …have fruitful relationship with each other”?
Even as early as 1945, when the British and American started thinking about alliances as defense against the USSR, Islam was factored in. the British inspired Arab league was not quite representative as it did not include Iran and turkey (and Indian Muslims) (40).
One was the “Red Pig” program in the 1950s. under which the US was offered as a pious nation, and the USSR ass persecutor of religion.(41). A poster told the story of “the Greedy Red Pig, and how he came to a bad end…”.
The CIA came with the “Muslim Billy Graham” project, and selected a wild eyed Iraqi holy man to send on a tour of Arab countries. Later on King Faisal’s advisers took it up, with Faisal himself as the holy man (42).
The CIA unearthed some tracts like “Muhammad never existed” and “ the harmful effect of fasting during Ramadan” and attributed them to the Soviet embassy in Cairo.
The CIA also experimented with using Egypt as a center for reaching out to Islamic activists, wit Anwar Sadat, who had been close to the Brotherhood since WW II, as the vehicle for the effort.
The US started exploring with Saudi Arabia, the possibility of creating an Islamic bloc. In 1951, William A Eddy, the US consul general in Dhahran, “the king affirmed that both Christianity and Islam are threatened by communism…”(45).
In a 1952 unsigned diplomatic report, “conversations with prince Saud”, Aramco was paying for a print shop and broadcasting station in Riyadh for propagation of religious tracts (47).
David long, a foreign service officer, While we and the Israelis were demonizing Nasser…Faisal was opposing him…worried that Muslim youth would turn to socialism…” (48).
Many American diplomats took the sensible view that US ought to concentrate on facilitating the region’s transition away from religious fundamentalism to modern, western ideas of organizing society, which might not necessarily benefit the soviet union. But their voices were less and less influential. Nasser’s non-alignment, and Mossadegh’s nationalism, began to look more and more like a communist Trojan horse to the likes of Dulles brothers.

Chap 4 The war against Nasser and Mossadegh:
Britain and the USA went into action, were able to overthrow Mossadegh, but failed in Nasser’s case, and in both cases used the Islamic right. Perhaps the greatest tragedies of US policy in the mid-East were the failure to embrace Nasser and Mossadegh. It created a deep resentment and anger which persists to this day.
The folly was compounded by to support Saudis and the network of Islamists sponsored by them. The decision led, indirectly, to the rise of Khomeini, and Osama bin Laden.
Nasser:
The French writer, Andre Malroux, “He will enter history as representative of Egypt, the same as Napoleon of France” (1). 5 million turned out to mourn his death. Tens of millions grieved for him privately (3).
Nasser symbolized Arab revolution, independence, and self-determination. He took over when the entire Arab world was locked in a political ice age. In quick succession, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan were rocked by rebellions and Syria joined Egypt.
In 1969 Libya’s king was overthrown and Sudan’s right wing regime swept away by pro-Nasser officers.
From Guatemala to Indonesia, the CIA were busy trying to overthrow leaders not because they were communist, but because they tried to be independent.
Nasser inspired Arabs in Saudi Arabia with republican ideals, and that threatened the heart of US interests-the oil fields. Between 1954 and 1970, Nasser’s secular, modernizing vision competed with the tribal/feudal monarchies subservient to the US.
Nasser’s Free Officers were initially supported by the CIA “Kim Roosevelt...met the officers in 1952, 4 months before the coup…” (8). The British were seething with rage that the Nasser’s rise would threaten the Suez Canal…(9). He was an existential threat to the kleptocracies whose legitimacy was nil.
State’s John Foster and CIA’s Allen Dulles lined up with the British whose PM Anthony Eden was violently anti-Nasser, to organize a coup against him as early as 1953. Besides the army, the only group which could challenge, Nasser was the Brotherhood. Mohammad Naguib, the titular head of the Free Officers, was a long time Brotherhood fellow traveler, but Nasser was the one who made all the decisions (10). Nasser, at first, decided to co-opt the group.
Nasser wanted a secular society, the Brotherhood an Islamic one, but more importantly, Nasser wanted land reforms to which the Brotherhood was bitterly opposed. The British and the Americans maintained an ongoing relationship with the Brotherhood.
Nasser’s confrontation with the group came about the same time as the British obsession led by unreconstructed imperialists in the UK led by Churchill and Eden rose to apoplectic heights. Eden ranted, “…I want him murdered…” (14).
In January 1954, Brotherhood goons attacked nationalist students at Cairo University. Nasser banned it, “the revolution will never allow reactionary corruption to recur in the name of religion.” (15).
Robert Baer, CIA covert operations specialist, “The White House looked on the Brothers as silent ally…the Dulles brothers approved Saudi funding of Egypt’s Brothers against Nasser…”(17). The Brothers were cooperating with a violent Islamists group from Iran-Devotees of Islam, whose founders included an ayatollah who had worked with the CIA against Mossadegh. (18). That shows that Islamic fundamentalism, even in 1950s was truly international.
Nasser marginalized Naguib, and in the process neutralized the Brothers.
During mid 1950s the British hatched innumerable plots to assassinate Nasser, as the US were to do to Castro later.
Many former Nazis had taken refuge in Egypt. By early 1950s, the CIA and MI6 were fast recruiting former Nazis for the cold war. Nasser used one them (Franz Buensch, who had written “Sexual habits of Jews”), to ferret out Brotherhood plotters.
In 1954 the British had signed an agreement with Egypt over the Suez canal and British military base rights. But in 1956, Britain, France and Israel conspired to seize control of the Canal, and enlisted the Brother’s support and had secret parleys with the group in Geneva (23).
The 1956 invasion of the Suez Canal by Israel, Britain and France was aborted by a threat from the USSR and intervention of Eisenhower, but the goodwill was destroyed by the subversion of the Dulles brothers.
Iran and CIA:
At first the US tentatively supported Mossadegh, but the conditions were that Iran (and other third world countries) had to allow military bases, join alliances, and open their economies to free-market policies. They paid the same cleric led, right wing Islamists in 1953 to support the Shah, who were to topple him in 1979. Mossadegh pushed through the nationalization of the Anglo-Persian oil company. The CIA and Mi6 worked closely with the clergy (led by Ayatollah Abolqassem Kashani, the mentor of Khomeini) in the 1953 coup that followed, and the US 40% of the new oil consortium, while the British share was reduced.
General Reza, who had taken control of Iran in 1920s, wanted to declare Iran a republic on the Turkish model, but the Ulema vetoed it. Reza abandoned the idea, and proclaimed himself the king. Kashani had been one of the kingmakers.
In the 1930s, Reza now the Shah, brought the sharia courts under state control, nationalized some of the religious endowments, instituted a Western form of dress, outlawed the veil, took control of marriage and divorce laws, and battled the Mullahs over women’s rights. In 1939, he banned the practice of self- mutilating flagellation (matam with chains and knives) (29). Kashani fomented terrorist violence, and helped found the Devotees of Islam under a radical mullah, Navab Safavi. They assassinated a minister of the court and the PM, just as the latter was renegotiating the rights to oil resources with Britain (30). Most Iranians suspected ties between Britain and the clergy.
The US initially supported Mossadegh, but when he rejected a US plan to allow US oil companies into Iran it went over to the British side (36). The CIA’s covert operations team was working with Kashani (37).
With the clergy on board, the CIA and MI6 found it easy to stage riots (42). They used Kenneth Love of NY times and Don Schwind of AP as agents to circulate their propaganda (44). They paid thugs ($50.000.00) to pose as ‘Tudeh’ (communist party) followers to attack the clergy (45). After the restoration of the Shah, they tried to bottle up the Islamic right, but failed.
Khomeini’s writings, as early as WW II, reflected his distaste for the “dark dictatorship” of the Shah (47), who was deposed by the British in 1941.
During the 1953 coup, Khomeini was involved with the Devotees of Islam. He spent the next ten years in Qom, trying to unite the political and religious elements of Shia Iran.
The US had, in the meanwhile, forgotten all about Islam in Iran.

Chap 5 The King of All Islam:
“The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there must be something we are missing.” Gamal Abdel Nasser. 1957.
After Eisenhower had forced Israel/Britain/France out of Suez in 1956. US had a good opportunity to improve its relations with Arab nationalists. In stead, he opted for Saudi Arabia. He expanded the relationship from just the premise on oil, to an alliance with the country’s Wahhabi Islam. He declared, “the existing vacuum in mid-East must be filled by the US, before it is filled by Russia”. He felt that Islam could be wielded as sword against the USSR and nationalists.
CIA’s Allen Dulles secretly encouraged Saudi Arabia to rebuild the Brotherhood (1).
True that the USSR was trying to make inroads in the mid-East, but neither Iraqi nor the Egyptian government was pro-communist, so the Soviet danger was very exaggerated.
Further US diplomats did not think much of king Saud. James Akins, veteran US diplomat “Saud was weal, stupid and corrupt…surrounded by Levantine courtiers” (5). It was less than a sound foundation to build a mid-East empire.
The effort to build up King Saud as the leader of Islam was…joint strategy with Britain (8).
Bernard Lewis explains how “Naqshbandi Sufis living in Caucasus region might be used as a fifth column inside the Soviet empire” (13-from NSC Staff papers at the Eisenhower library).
Saud’s advisers plotted to subvert the Syrian government (14).. In 1956-57 CIA joined in v(15). The US was enlisting the Brotherhood in the cold war.
One consequence of the efforts to build up Saudi Arabia as a bulwark against communism, was the rise of bin Laden family. Ike had authorized half a million dollars to study to study the construction of a railroad to Mecca. The king gave the contract to bin Laden patriarch Shaikh Muhammad. The family never looked back.
After 1954, Saudi Arabia became a chief base of the Brotherhood operations.
John Voll, a Georgetown University professor, “the Saudis weren’t terribly happy with…the Brotherhood, but …were scared to death of Nasser, …the Brotherhood was the only game in town.” In foreign policy Saudis used it, but internally, the royal family did not tolerate it. (19). The Brothers operated in the country in an underground fashion, going into business, banks, corporations, mass media, academia and other institutions.
Saudi Arabia did not have much of a system of higher education. The country created The Islamic University of Madina in 1961 with Maulana Maududi as one of the trustees, and King Abdul Aziz University in 1967 (22). Maududi and the Brotherhood and Wahhabis convinced the king that Al-Azhar was too close to Nasser, so the Islamic University was lavishly funded.
The vice-president of the university was Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baaz, who in 1966, had insisted that the sun revolved around the earth, and the earth itself was flat. Any one who disagreed was guilty of “falsehood towards God, the Quran, and the prophet (23). The king’s (Faisal now) anger on these views not withstanding, in 1974, he was appointed president of the Directorate of Religious Research…Legal Rulings…Propaganda, and Guidance (24).
The university was controlled by Grand Mufti Mohammad…Al-Shaikh, chief of the Wahhabi clan. 85% students were foreign, so the Brotherhood could spread its ideology everywhere. The university system expanded enormously from 3,265 students in 1965 to more than 113,000 in 1986.
The relations between the Al Saud, the Al Shaikh and the Brotherhood was, to say the least , a complex one. King Saud, king Fahd and most of the princes were pleasure loving libertines When the Al Shaikh began marrying into the al Saud, it became even more complicated (27). (In fact King Faisal was about the only exception. His mother was from the Al Shaikh family).
The balance between the Al Saud and Al Shaikh became even more complicated, as Saudi princes acted as conduits for funds to Islamic charities, that served, wittingly or unwittingly, as a cover for terrorist groups. The princes often acted independently of the king and the government.
King Saud and especially king Faisal skillfully incorporated the Brotherhood into the country’s foreign policy. In the 1960s, as a part of the grand designs, two organizations, the Muslim world league in 1962, and the Organization of the Islamic conference in 1969 were created.
Charles Freeman, a veteran US foreign service officer and ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “Faisal made a deliberate decision that Islam was the antidote to Nasser”(29).
The Muslim world league was the Who Is Who of the Islamic right-Said Ramadan, Abul-Ala Maududi, Haji Amin al-Husseini, Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Shaikh, Muhammad Sadiq al-Mujaddidi, Abdel Rahman al-Iryani (11).
The league identified beneficiaries, and invited them to Saudi Arabia.
The CIA was only vaguely aware of the Muslim world League, and committed to the cold war regardless of how unsavory were the allies. “We were not looking at long term consequences”, said a CIA officer who had served in the Saudi Arabia.
99% of the funding for the League came from the government of Saudi Arabia. The League interlocked with University system, and with the ministry of pilgrimage which control the enormous annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and the huge funds available for proselytizing. The league worked closely with the World Assembly of Muslim youth, established in 1972 (36).
Said Ramadan established the Islamic Center of Geneva in 1961.
With the Brotherhood’s financier Youssef Nada, he also established the group’s bank, Al Taqwa.
In the meanwhile ayatollah Khomeini was beginning to stir in Iran, and Maududi’s movement was gaining momentum in Pakistan.
On august 30, 1965, Nasser delivered a speech in Moscow Ramadan and the Brotherhood were US agents (40). According to the newspaper Le Temps, it was not only the Egyptian government which believed that Ramadan was working for the US, Switzerland believed it too (41).
Kennedy offered an olive branch to Nasser. And was willing to explore the possibility that nationalism was not necessarily incompatible with US interests (47).
But in September 1961 pro-Nasser forces overthrew the medieval government of Yemen (50). The subsequent proxy war in Yemen between Egypt and Saudi Arabia left 200,000 dead. The Kennedy-Nasser duet faltered and failed.
The British remained apoplectic about Nasser, PM Harold Macmillan wanted to “tear Nasser’s scalp off with his fingernails. They devised a scheme with Mossad to aid anti-Nasser forces in Yemen, supplying them with arms and money, and Yemeni Jews, who could pass off as Arabs, as instructors. Iranian SAVAK and Saudi intelligence were part of the anti-Nasser front. MI6 relied on a covert alliance between Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Jordan (54).
The British urged Kennedy to take a stand against Nasser, and further pressure came from Israelis. Yet more pressure came from oil corporations to save their cash cow, Saudi Arabia (57).
Arab radical posed an existential threat to Saudi Arabia.
LBJ lionized king Faisal. In 1965, the king made frenetic tour of Muslim countries. He joined the shah of Iran in calling for a grand Islamic alliance.
Beginning in early 1960s, Pakistani army officers had taken up posts in Saudi armed forces (64).
1967 war sapped Arab nationalist vitality (66).
In 1969 an unbalanced Australian tried to set fire to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Faisal eagerly seized on the opportunity to summon leaders of the Islamic world to Rabat, Morocco the first Islamic summit). The conference resolved to create the organization of the Islamic conference.
The Arab defeat in 1967 led to a world wide surge of fundamentalism among Muslims, though between 1967 Syria, Libya, Iraq and Sudan fell to left leaning regimes, and Palestinians came close to toppling the king in Jordan. But overall, Islamism prevailed. Anwar Sadat struck up an alliance with Saudi Arabia, brought the Brothers triumphantly back to Cairo, and realigned Egypt with the United States.

Chap 6: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Guided by the Saudi chief of intelligence Kamal Adham, Sadat brought the brotherhood back to Egypt in the 1970s. US policy makers, so eager to bring Egypt over to the US side in the cold war, tacitly encouraged restoration of political Islam in Egypt.
But back in their ancestral home, they worked feverishly to spread their influence through the world, with deadly consequences.
In Nasser’s time Egypt had 20,000 soviet soldiers, technicians and advisers to assist it in the war of attrition against Israel. Sadat established a covert relationship with the USA through Adham, the CIA and Henry Kissinger. In 1971, within a year of getting into power, he ousted the left from the government, and in 1972 expelled the soviet forces. After the 1973 war, he reestablished relations with the USA. In 1977, he flew to occupied Jerusalem. The visit led to the 1980 Camp David agreement, and by 1980, he had Egypt firmly in the US camp, supporting the ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan and US influence in the gulf.
Sadat was initially taken as a stopgap figure (2). He was up against the nationalists and communists. Sadat was able to consolidate his hold on power by using the Islamic right and generous funding by Saudi Arabia.
The transformation on the ground was breathtaking. Michael Dunn, editor of the Middle East journal, “People were wearing beards everywhere…the mosques were overflowing…(3).
After the agreement with Israel, the Islamic right turned against Sadat. And assassinated him in 1981. the US kept on blithely ignoring it.
The Brotherhood blamed Nasser’s lack of piety and suppression of Islam for the disastrous defeat of 1967. “For the first time in years, opposition openly appeared as ‘Muslim Brothers’ and demanded a fight…against the left…” (4).
Adham convinced Faisal, king of Saudi Arabia that Sadat was no Nasser. In the 1960s Saudi intelligence had formed joint business ventures with Jehan, Sadat’s wife (6).
Adham met Sadat soon after Nasser’s death with offers of Saudi funds, and also a secret American assurance for help in recovering captured territory from Israel, if he would break with the USSR (7). By 1971, Adham had become a ubiquitous figure in Cairo. He was working as a secret conduit for Kissinger (9). Unlike other Arab countries, Saudi Arabia had not broken diplomatic relations with USA after the 1967 war. That came in handy for clandestine relations with Egypt.
In may 1971, Sadat arrested the speaker of the national assembly, and several Nasserite ministers and officials under the excuse that their “socialist slogans were…at variance with our religious faith.(11).
The Brotherhood availed of the opportunity to metastasize all over. Many of the old guard who had fled to Saudi Arabia returned as prosperous businessmen, and soon came to be known as the Islamic community (14).Sadat was using Islam “To escape living in Nasser’s shadow…” (15).
Islamist students found the key to success, “discreet collaboration with the regime to break the domination of the campuses (16). Like their comrade elsewhere, they used violence and intimidation and forced the left wing groups in hiding (17).

One of Sadat’s aides Muhammad Ismail was “considered to have acted as the godfather of Islamic Student Associations…”(18).
In the 1970s Islamic community organized government supported summer camps. In 1974 Sadat reorganized rules governing student unions to allow the Islamists to take over. It was a prelude to take over of professional organizations and Al-Azhar would fall to the right as well. In 1973, the Muslim world League, a powerful tool of Saudi Islamization concluded a pact with Al-Azhar to pull it into the Wahabi orbit (19). Islamists introduced bills in the national assembly to prohibit alcohol, and to use Shariah based punishments, and mandatory religious instructions in schools (20).
The influence of Saudi Arabia was pervasive, “many Egyptian journalists were on Saudi payroll”. Egyptian judicial thinking changed …from moderate and enlightened…to narrow interpretation of the law, according to Abdul Moneim Said an astute observer of the time (21).
The 1973 Yom Kippur was turned out to be a military failure, but a great political success, and fought in the Muslim month of fasting (Ramadan) led to heightened Islamic fervor.
Sadat had to deal with the US to arrange a cease fire, and his ties with Saudi Arabia led to the Arab oil embargo, which gave Saudis immense funds to promote their Wahabi agenda. It also burnished Sadat’s Islamic image. He portrayed the mythical victory in the war as a sign of Islam’s power.
To this day it is unknown if some US officials plotted with Sadat, but it is certain that the CIA was aware of Sadat’s plans, and was also aware of Saudi plans to use oil as a weapon (23).
Martha Kessler, one of CIA’s most perceptive analysts regards the war as a turning point, “The… war was fought under the banner of Islam…and the period marks the…disillusionment of the Arab world with European ideas…I mark the rise of political Islam…with the war.” (24).
The Islamic right became increasingly radicalized, especially after Sadat visited Jerusalem. But even as early as 1974 a gang of Islamists sparked a bloody riot at the military’s technical college. Sadat blamed it on Libya, though he was supposed to have been assassinated during the uprising (25).
The official Brotherhood remained docile “many Islamists began to live alone, to go out to desert, (and) to build their movement (29). Many of the radicals were followers of Sayyid Qutb, who had been hanged by Nasser in 1966. He had developed a theory that the Muslims who did not follow his ultra orthodox version of Islam were like the nomads who existed in the ‘jahilya-ignorance’ before the arrival of the prophet.
Sadat and few of the US diplomats in Cairo understood the depth and extent of the Brotherhood’s penetration of the Egyptian society. The CIA fared little better.
The decade of 1970s was a period of transition for the Islamic right. A more virulent strain was developing along side the usual Islamic fundamentalism. It later formed the core of Islamic Jihad led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two in Al-Qaida. In Saudi Arabia it brought forth Osama bin Laden and his acolytes.
A handful of US specialists on Islam argued that the Islamic right was not just anti-communist, but also ant-west, and prone to violence, but at the time it was a minority view. The view continued to be held after Khomeini take over of Iran, seizure of the kaaba mosque, assassination of Sadat, killing of 241 US marines by Hezbollah’s truck bomb.
Part of the reason of the appeal Islamic right held for the West was Islamic economics.
When Sadat came to power, the vested interests of pre-Nasser regime saw an opportunity to reclaim their wealth and connections. Across the Middle East, to Iran, turkey and Pakistan, big landowner families and wealthy merchants had intimate ties with Islamists.
The Brotherhood became firm supporters of Sadat’s plan for free enterprise in Egypt. The IMF had forced brutal changes in third world economies as a condition of loans, the so called conditionalities caused severe economic difficulties as jobs were lost, and subsidiaries were eliminated.
In 1974, the Brotherhood issued a formal declaration to support Sadat’s pro-IMF policies. Islamists, through out their history have been pro-capitalist, and have opposed class struggle, and rarely supported the downtrodden. In Egypt they enthusiastically engaged in strike and union breaking.
The rise of Islamic banks was central to the Islamization of Egyptian society. They branded their competitors irreligious or even ‘Jewish’, warning the clients of conventional banks that they were “destined to go directly to hell” (38).
The creation of Faisal Islamic bank of Egypt in 1976 energized the Brotherhood. The most notorious of the founders of the bank was the blind Islamic scholar Omar Abdul Rahman who was the spiritual adviser to Islamic Jihad, whose members would assassinate Sadat, and who would help CIA recruit holy warriors for Afghanistan, and who would be implicated in the 1993 bombing of the world Trade center.
FIB was given unprecedented state assistance. Al-Sharif, the minister for religious endowments presented the bill in the parliament, vote against it was deemed a “vote against Allah” (44).. Al-Sharif became involved in Islamic Money Management Companies, which offered twice as much return (25%) as a bank would. One of the first was the Al-Sharif Group which “had ties to the Brotherhood”. The IMMC shattered in 1980s, threatening the Islamic banking System.
Arguably the most important of the Brotherhood founders of FIB was Youssef Nada, who had been implicated in the 1954 assassination attempt on Nasser. He also helped found Bank al Taqwa (fear of God) with branches in Switzerland, Italy and the Bahamas. The bank had close relationship with the Pakistani BCCI which was involved drug running, money laundering and financing terrorism. The CIA was one of its main customer to deposit US and Saudi money to finance the Afghan ‘jihad’. It collapsed in 1988 (50).
Saudis used cash to build a pro-American Empire of Islamic financial institutions in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and other Islamic countries. The alliance between Wahabi ideology and Islamic banks catapulted right wing Islamism to world wide influence.

Chap 7: The rise of Economic Islam.
In the 1970s, explosion of economic Islam bolstered political Islam. The banks, openly and covertly funded politicians, army officers, political parties, news media and businesses. The banks depended heavily on the technical assistance of major European and US banks like the Citibank. They seemed ideal to the Western bank, IMF and free-market ideologues, as the Islamic right preferred capitalism and never offered social or economic justice. They opposed state ownership, land reform and welfare programs.
The growth of economic Islam fitted in perfectly with America’s cold war policies. Prince Mohammad al Faisal of Saudi Arabia brought all the banks together in a multi-billion dollar network, organized and controlled by Brotherhood activists, and financed right wing political parties in all Muslim countries.
Saudi Arabia offered aid to poor Muslim countries in exchange for political shift to the right, and the network set up shop in all large Muslim cities and funded the political right.
In Egypt they joined hands with Sadat to fight Arab socialism, and in Kuwait the royal family funded the political right against nationalists and the PLO.
The 1973 OPEC price hike made the countries huge import markets for US military goods. Egypt became a part of US alliance group of Iran, turkey and Israel. US and Britain started building air and naval bases in the Indian ocean, horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia and Mediterranean.
Assured by Oreintalists that Islam’s commitment to capitalism went back to the time of its prophet, big banks plunged in. The theory of Islamic finance with out interest but still with profit was developed with the assistance of such institutions as Citibank, chase, IMF, Price Waterhouse, Harvard and Chicago universities and UCLA (1). Ibrahim Warde, arguably the most accomplished observer of Islamic finance, “The international banking system…instrumental in …creation of Islamic banks…(2).
Warde “Goldman Sachs…creating …commodity based products for Islamic banks (4). Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae did pilot projects for Islamic mortgages. The US Federal Reserve, World Bank, oil companies, and Banque Nationale de Paris, all got involved (5). “…Both liberalism and economic Islam were driven by… opposition to socialism and economic dirigisme (6).
“…Islamic Republics…openly embrace neo-liberalism…in Sudan (7) and Algeria openly backed IMF policies.(8).
“Citibank became the first Western bank to set up an Islamic window(9). Shaukat Aziz served on the board of directors of Ci5i Islamic bank, and related Saudi American bank set up the bank’s Islamic banking in Bahrain. He was chosen by Musharraf as finance minister, and later as PM of Pakistan.
The idea of 7th century Islamic tracts and the 14th century Islamic economic theories sounds outlandish, Western bankers and secular Middle East rulers could not resist the lure of Muslim Brotherhood financiers.
Citing Quranic sources, the Virginia based Islamic Free Market Institute issued a paper called “Islam and the Free Market” that “The Quran explicitly requires a free market of open trade…specifically provides for private property rights…recognizes contract rights as well…Mohammad’s teachings also provided that prices should be determined by supply and demand in the open market place and not by…officials…In his rule…of al-Madinah…chose not to impose any taxes on trade…making an effective free-trade zone…while Europe remained mired in the anti-market feudalism of the dark ages, the Islamic World would become the dominant economic power on earth for almost 500 years (Peter Ferrara and Khalid Saffuri at http:www.islamicinstitute.org/freemrkt.htm (11).
The idea that the Quran…guidance…to outlaw socialism…insist upon unfettered private enterprise is unfounded…its strictures…far from explicit…can not be applied to modern economic systems. That did not stop conservative Western economists…or the Muslim clergy.
Graham fuller whose National Intelligence Estimate led to the ‘Iran contra’ scandal wrote “ no mainstream Islamist organization…with radical social views (12), …Islam has never had problems with the idea that wealth is unevenly distributed (15).
Islamic banking grew astronomically. By 2004, it had 270 banks with assets of $ 260 billion, and deposits of $ 200 billion (16).
Mohammad Bakr al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shia clergyman, and a relative of the more famous Muqtada al-Sadr laid the cornerstone of “economic Islam”. In 1960, he wrote ‘Our Economy’, and in 1973, Nonusurious Banks in Islam (17). In 1950s, he helped found an underground group ‘the Islamic call’ Al Dawa, as an anti-communist force in Baghdad. Later it reportedly received covert support from the SAVAK of Iran to carry out bombings and assassinations of Baath leaders.
The communists and the left were strongest among the disenfranchised Shias of Iraq (18).
For more than a century, London had maintained ties with Shia clergy of Iraq, and from 1852 to 1950, they kept hundreds of them in Najaf and Karbala on the British payroll through a financial mechanism called the Oudh bequest (20). The Al-Dawa, after the overthrow of the Iraqi king in 1958, developed direct ties to the Brothers, they being Sunni, not withstanding.(21). In 1960 a joint Sunni-Shia declaration strongly condemned the Iraqi government and its communist allies (22).
Sayyid Qutb wrote ‘Social justice in Islam’, a blue print for Muslims to look at economic theory. Muhammad al-Ghazali, another Brotherhood leader wrote ‘Islam and Economic questions’. He and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian scholar of Islamic law, found shelter in the Gulf, and seats on the boards of Islamic banks.
Ahmad al-Najjar, a German trained banker created the Mit Ghamr Bank in Egypt in 1963, described as the first Islamic bank in the country and the world (23). He acknowledged the reason to start the bank was to “save the Islamic identity…which was starting to fade away…in preparation to shift to Marxism” (26). By 1967, it had been taken over by the Brothers, and it was closed by Nasser (28). Najjar went to Sudan where he was welcomed by the Brotherhood leader Hassan Turabi, who would rise to power in 1970s (29). When OIC created the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah in 1975, Najjar was there. Similar banks followed in Dubai, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Prince Mohammad al-Faisal started FIBE (Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt in 1976, founded International Association of Islamic banks, created a network called the ‘Faisal Group’, and had a “Handbook of Islamic Banking’ created.
At the OIC meeting in Taif, prince Mohammad set up the House of Islamic funds (Daral Maal Islami), a huge holding company to serve as the nerve center of the financial empire (32).
Saleh Kamel, a Saudi billionaire related to the royal family set up his Al-Baraka Group. At the Al-Azhar, he established a center for Islamic Economic Studies named after himself (34). The people who explained Islamic banking to the Swiss came from Price Waterhouse. Eventually Harvard University would join in with Harvard Islamic finance Information program.
During the cold war no one thought that Islamic banking might boomerang against the West. Timur Quran, the Turkish author of ‘Islam and Mammon’ says Islamic economics has promoted anti-modern…anti-West thought across the Islamic world (35).
Monzer Kahf of Syria, a Ph.D. in economics from the university of Utah, and graduate in Islamic jurisprudence from the University of Damascus ran the financial affairs of Islamic society of North America which has close ties to the Brotherhood from 1975 to 1981 and went on to work for the Islamic development bank in Jeddah. From 1985 to 1999. In a paper presented to the 2002 Harvard Forum on Islamic Finance and banking, he describes, “…International Islamic Investment Funds… though managed by Western bankers…had to get Shariah scholars…from the point of view of Ulema this… brings them back to the forefront of the political scene…”(36).
One or more Islamic banks establish a beachhead in a capital which serves as the economic headquarters of the Brotherhood, and builds a band of zealous followers, and lucrative alliances with politicians.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, the Kuwaiti royal family were more liberal. But in 1970s Kuwaitis joined hands with the Brotherhood and other rightists to do battle with the fast rising nationalist movement. The royal family had kept in power by force of British arms till 1961 against Iraqi irredentism, to protect oil resources, when it achieved independence, and by American arms in 1991. It had sparse population and had to import labor, but the Palestinian component was the rub.
Many progressive Palestinians had emerged from the Arab nationalist movement founded by George Habash in 1940s. He would later create the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine. By mid 1970s, the strength of Arab nationalists had seriously alarmed the rulers of Kuwait, and they reached out to the Islamists (42).
The Brotherhood had helped king Husain to crush Palestinians in 1970. the massacre was remembered as ‘Black September’.
Few Kuwaiti women wore the veil, and in the universities, men and women attended classes together. The ruler dissolved the parliament, an act applauded by the Brotherhood. Kuwait appointed a Brotherhood ally as finance minister, who established the Kuwait Finance House (KFH) which was based on interest free Shariah laws (43).
It bypassed the merchant elite. The government mobilized desert tribal Bedouins against them (44). KFH financed the Islamists.
The US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia blithely continued using Islamic right in their foreign policy calculations. In the late 1970s the US laid the groundwork for jihad against the USSR in Afghanistan, and Israel/Jordan launched their mini-jihad against Syria and PLO, all using the Islamic right.

Chap 8: Israel’s Islamists.
During 1970s, two members of the anti-US bloc, Syria and PLO, found themselves facing simultaneous wars against forces led by the Muslim brotherhood, supported by two US allies, Jordan and Israel, in turn tacitly backed by the USA. The Islamic right would eventually turn anti-American and throw up Osama bin Laden, launch a revolt in Saudi Arabia, murder Sadat and take over Iran. At no time did the USA dissuade Israel and Jordan.
Beginning in 1967 to late 1980s, Israel helped the Brotherhood establish itself in the occupied territories, and in fact assisted its leader Ahmad Yassin in creating it, hoping that it would weaken the PLO. According to Charles Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “Israel started Hamas, it was a project of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence agency…” (1).
Hamas was formally established in 1987, and the founders were all members of the Brotherhood. The roots of Hamas, though, go back to 1930s to Amin al-Husaini, the Grand mufti of Jerusalem. He met al-Banna’s emissaries in 1935, and a forerunner of the Brotherhood, the Mukarem Society of Jerusalem was formed in 1943. The Brotherhood’s first office was opened in Jerusalem in 1945 by Hassan al-Banna (3) In 1950, it was formed in Jordan (5), and was promoted by the king as a counterbalance to leftist, communist and nationalist forces and king Abdullah “granted…legal status as a welfare organization…(6). Its social base was rooted in the wealthy land-owning families of the East Bank which saw land-reforms as existential threats.
In 1958, US troops were sent to Lebanon and the British army to Jordan and Kuwait, to make war on nationalists, and the Brotherhood joined both.
In July 1957, Khalil al-Wazir, a future PLO leader wrote a paper, “the Palestinian…establish …organization …no visible Islamic …agenda…stated goal of liberating Palestine”. The movement was split between nationalists who went on to form the PLO in 1958-59, and the Islamists , who opposed it (12).
The PL:O began guerrilla attacks on Israel in 1965, while the Brotherhood remained in the camp of kings, and its membership among Palestinians declined sharply.
When Israel gained control over the West Bank and Gaza, Ahmad Yassin who had been arrested by Egyptians, was released (14). After 1967, Palestinians, like Egyptians and other Arabs, were being Islamized. (15). In 1970, having lost in Jordan, the PLO was expelled from the country, and Ahmad Yassin asked the Israeli administration in Gaza to establish an organization, which was initially rejected, but after three years, was allowed to found the Islamic Center, a thinly disguised as a religion institution.
In 1978, Begin formally licensed Yassin’s Islamic Association. Israeli backed Maronite Christians were battling the PLO in Lebanon. Begin also created village leagues run by anti-PLO Palestinians. Shin Bet gave paramilitary training to up to 200 members of the leagues and recruited many informers and Quislings.(16). David Shipler, a reporter of NY Times, “ the Israeli military governor of Gaza, Brigadier General Yitzhak, once told me how he had financed the Islamic movement as a counterweight to the PLO and the communists (17).
Religious elements in Saudi Arabia, wealthy businessmen helped finance Yassin, and Israelis collaborated by allowing funds to flow (18).
It seemed unlikely that the Brotherhood would find a foothold among Palestinians, many of whom were Christian, and were the Arab world’s most modern, educated components, its diaspora was well traveled and connected through the world, and above all nationalist.
Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA, “We saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism.” (21).
King Husain was on CIA payroll, and, “long tradition of covert relationship between Hashemites and Zionists” per Philip Wilcox, A senior US foreign service officer (23).
In 1964, the Brothers led ant0Baatrh riots in Syria, and in 1967 declared a jihad against the Syrian government (25). Beginning in 1976, the Brotherhood carried out carried out assassinations and bombing all over Syria. In June 1979, they killed 83 cadets in a Syrian military school in Aleppo (26). Israel funneled support to the Brothers through Lebanon (27).
No magazine or newspaper, except for Newsweek, made a perceptible attempt to report the violence in Syria, “over the past 5 years the Brotherhood has assassinated hundreds of Alawite members…with their relatives…Assad’s doctor…soviet advisers” (32). For Assad it was an existential threat. Martha Kessler, CIA analyst Israel and Jordan “…were playing with fire…” (34). US diplomats were aware, Tolcott Seelye, US ambassador to Syria “…By 1979, we sensed the Islamic movement in Syria…I went to see Assad…I don’t think it bothered us too much…(35).
Husain admitted as much in a letter to Assad, “It turns out that …who did have connection…were present in our quarters…(36).
In Syria, the final confrontation between Assad and the Brotherhood came in the
Syrian city Hama, with a population of 200,000. Seelye, “The event started with a rumor that Assad had been overthrown”. The Brotherhood went on murder spree, killing hundreds of soldiers…officials (41).Assad sent in his brother at the head of 12,000 troops and killed at least 5,000 according Amnesty International (43).
That was the end of the Brotherhood in Syria, but Israel continued supporting it in occupied territories, and in Afghanistan, and ironically backed Iran, its most ideologically fervent opponent, in its war with Iraq. It was the Israeli right, Begin, Shamir and Sharon who pursued the policy most vigorously. Patrick Lang middle East director for DIA, “The Israelis, most of them secularists… thought that these… were a flash in the pan, and …were trying to defeat Arab nationalism… (45).
Victor Ostrovyski. One time Mossad officer, “Supporting the radical…Muslim fundamentalism sat well with Mossad’s… plan for the region (48).
During most of 1980s, the Brotherhood did not support resistance to Israeli occupation. Most of its energy went into fighting the PLO (49). Fatah tried to co-opt the Brotherhood, but were told to eliminate its left wing (and Christian members) (50).
Early in 1983 Yassin was arrested by Israeli authorities, “ordered members to…gather firearms…(51). He was sentenced to 13 years, but was released only after one year, making his critics suspicious of his ties with Shin Bet.
Hams gathered support from Kuwait and wealthy Saudis, but “Saudi Arabia did not want money going to an Israeli front organization…per Charles Freeman, the US ambassador to the country (53).
Arabists and other anti-Israel elements in the Pentagon were not happy with the emergence of Hamas.(54).
Yassir Arafat, told an Italian newspaper, “Hamas is a creation of Israel…Yitzhak Rabin “admitted Israeli support for Hamas to him in the presence of …Hosni Mubarak (55), describing it as a “fatal error”.
Hamas took up arms against Israel during the ‘intifada’ of 1987-93, which persuaded moderate Israelis like Rabin, Peres and Barak to negotiations, culminating in Oslo Norway. But whenever the PLO and Israelis moved towards an accord, Hamas would unleash a violent wave of attacks, playing into the hands of Likud (56). From 1993 onwards, Likud and Hamas would reinforce each others’ opposition to peace talks.
In 2/1994, an Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein killed dozens of unarmed worshippers in a mosque in Hebron. The massacre reinvigorated Hamas, and gave a boost to its falling fortunes during the peace process. Then in 11/1995, a Likud terrorist killed Rabin, leading to a Netanyahu win in 1996. He fell in 1999, and Barak reengaged in negotiations, and with Clinton’s help came close to reaching a comprehensive accord, only to have Sharon make a highly provocative visit to Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, which unleashed the second intifada (2000-2004). Sharon came to power, and along with Bush refused to talk to Arafat. In 1996, only 15% Palestinians supported Hamas, by 2000, it was 17%, but by 2002, it was 42% (59).
In 2004, Sharon announced plans to withdraw from Gaza (though to keep the region under siege).
But the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran transformed Islamism from a non-state actor to the government of one of the most powerful countries of the region.

Chap 9:Ayaollah
Never was the US caught by more surprise than by the Iranian one of 1978-79. for a while it seemed that no Arab monarchy was safe. The US panicked, and asked the CIA to determine if the revolution might spread, and hired experts on Islam to offer insights. The worry was that the USSR would take advantage to swoop into the region.
Political Islam moved center stage.
When the dust settled, the American position held.
In the 1980s, the US spent more than $ 3 billion to support the Mujahideen in Afghanistan whose objectives were little different from those of the Ayatollahs.
Liberals in Carter administration tried to befriend the moderate/western educated leaders around Khomeini. Reagan reached out to the hard core clergy. The policy towards Iran was confused, bumbling and contradictory.
Washington relied on its inertial reliance on the Shah. The intelligence agencies continued to conclude that the Shah was secure.
Carter administration had pressed the Shah for reforms, and had established sub0rosa contacts with the opposition, including religious leaders. They failed to realize that the anti-Shah movement would be driven by the religious right, and led by the steely figure of Khomeini. From November 1978 to February 1979 capture of Teheran by Khomeini, the US had no coherent policy towards Iran. It was not any clearer after the revolution either. They tried to develop a modus vivendi with the politicians around Khomeini, but the policy came crashing down with the mob invasion of the US embassy in November 1979.
US hardliners saw the Islamists as a threat to the USSR, some thought that the Mullahs could be potential allies. By mid-1980s, the Israeli intelligence joined hands with Oliver North of NSC and Bill Casey of CIA to reach out to Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani
The Iranian revolution had wrought a fundamental change in the Islamic right, which had been taking place since the creation of the Brotherhood decades earlier. It became radicalized and assertive.
The enormous mistakes that the US made at the time fall largely at the door of intelligence services. Islam was not seen as world wide movement linked by fraternal bonds. Brzezinski and Casey continued to regard political Islam as just another pawn on what the former called “the Grand chessboard”.
On February 02, 1979, just a day after Khomeini returned to Teheran, George Lambrakis. A senior officer at the US embassy in Teheran dispatched a missive to Washington, “…Shia… movement…better organized, enlightened…able to resist…communism…nether as weak nor as ignorant as the shah’s government…probably not…be able to avoid making some accommodation with westernized…government…(1).
Kissinger, Helms, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers, and oil/defense corporations had turned Iran into a virtual colony. The country was hosting tens of thousands of military advisers, and CIA had reportedly more personnel in Teheran than in Langley VA. The right wing (neo-conservatives), allied with Israel wanted to make an Arab axis with Iran. Reagan’s tea, negotiated with Iran to keep hostages till he got into office, and along with Israel supplied arms and intelligence during the war with Iraq (another view is that the two countries wanted Iraq and Iran to demolish each other. Downing of an Iranian airliners with some 176 passengers, when Iranian forces were on the verge of a decisive break though would substantiate that).
Carter’s inauguration revived memories of Kennedy’s plan to replace the Shah with a less dictatorial regime (6). But there was no alternative except the clergy.
The Shah made half-hearted attempts at reform in the shape of the “White revolution”-land reforms. The clergy had close links with landowners, and began to mobilize against land reforms. Khomeini came to prominence in 1963, when he made a speech denouncing the shah and formed the coalition of Islamic societies, led by 21 bazaari merchants, from 3 Teheran mosques . Many of them, like Mohammad Hosein Beheshti, would rise to power in 1979 (8).
In 1963, Khomeini was arrested by SAVAK, and since an Ayatollah could not be executed, he was expelled to turkey, and moved to Iraq till 1978, thence to Paris, France.
After a visit by Cyrus Vance to Iran in may 1977, rumors spread that the opposition could now operate under an American…umbrella…(11).
The key person bridging the gap between the clergy and the national front was Mehdi Barzagan, who founded the liberation movement, a pro-clerical part. He himself was a quasi-mullah-an Ayatollah without a turban (16).
A state department analysis saw Khomeini embodying “liberal values” (18).
An August 1977 NIE concluded that “the Shah will… active participants in Iranian life well into 1980s”, and in august 1978 “Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation (19). Outside of a handful of Iran specialists, no body in the Carter administration had an idea of who Khomeini was, or any awareness of religious underground and opposition forces in spite of thousands of CIA agents stationed in Iran.
Beginning in mid-1970s the British were the first to pick up rumblings of trouble, and the Mossad which had agents in the bazzar (25).
According to the Iranian PM’s brother Hoveida, the Shah was diagnosed with cancer in 1969, but the secret got out only in 1970s (26). The French knew of it 1n 1972 (27). The US started taking the news seriously in 1976 (28).

Sullivan, US ambassador to Iran in his memoirs Mission to Iran, obliquely mentions that religious restiveness had been reinforced by revival of Islamism in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan (33).
One former US official Richard Cottam, purported to understand Shia Islam was close to Ibrahim Yazdi and Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, nicknamed “Americans’ as they had lived in the US for year, and both had worked with the Brotherhood-linked Muslim Students Association in Iran. In 1967, Yazdi had settled in Houston, Texas.
State department officials opened dialog with Yazdi and his son in law Shahriar Rouhani. Cottam introduced US embassy officials to Ayatollah Behesti. They reassured US officials that Khomeini did have political ambitions for himself (39)
Walter Cutler designated US ambassador to Iran in mid-1979 says, “we wanted to establish a dialog” and “we had to prove that we were not the Great Satan…”. But he never reached Iran, and Yazdi told him later that a congressional resolution condemning Khomeini, greatly infuriated him. He wanted to break relations, but Yazdi persuaded him to refuse to accept Cutler (41). Others with little experience of Iran were sent and were shortly taken hostage.
Bruce Laingen, who headed the embassy in absence of an ambassador said he was not an expert on Islam, “with little contact with the clergy I never saw Khomeini…We were caught up in the belief that the secular side of the revolution will prevail…Bargazan, Yazdi and Ghotbzadeh believed …would be able to contain Khomeini…”. “We tried to do business with them…that the CIA warned them about Iraqi war intentions” (47).
One of the most surprising converts to the idea that the Islamists would threaten the USSR, was Brzezinski, who had earlier advocated using the military to stop Khomeini revolution. In the summer of 1979, he was convinced of Khomeini’s fierce ant-communism (52), and in pursuance of the objective, met P.M Barzagan and F.M Yazdi in Algiers. But the timing was bad. Weeks earlier the Shah had been allowed in NY for treatment, and Khomeini seized on the opportunity to move against Barzagan. The embassy was taken over just three days after the meeting.
In economic relations Iran and USSR had got along well. Iran’s stability meant that the USSR did not have to worry about irredentism on its flank. Now all bets were off.

Chap 10: Jihad 1
The revolution in Iran sent Pentagon planners and the CIA scrambling to calculate its impact on allies in the region. Saudi Arabia, with its small population, and its oil producing region, dominated by the Shias, was the most vulnerable.
But others saw an opportunity, that it could inspire the Soviet Union’s Muslim republics. The twin Islamic movements in Iran and Afghanistan persuaded the Reagan team to pursue the Islam in Asia theme aggressively. Until Afghanistan, Islam was a bulwark, now it was a sword against Soviet expansion. It signaled a significant escalation in the policy of cooperating with the Brothers and other elements of political Islam.
Afghan jihad empowered political Islam’s most radical fringe. It also created a battle hardened cadre of skilled guerilla fighters. It vastly strengthened the international bonds tying Islamists all over the world.
In 1980s Islamists seized control of Afghanistan and the Sudan, and held power in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and threatened Egypt and Algeria. Foundation for Al-Qaida was laid at the time.
The afghan Jihad energized what had till the 1980s, been a neo-conservative pipe dream of military occupation of the oil producing Persian Gulf. There is a direct link between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the current US military presence in oil rich Central Asia. It began in 1980s, when the Jihadis took US, Chinese, Israeli weapons to fight the Red army and continued to 1990s, when the US cooperated with the Taliban. 9/11 facilitated further massive US penetration of the newly independent Muslim Central Asian countries.
It led to new military relationship with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and creation of the Rapid Deployment force, and the establishment of the Central US command. In January 1980 Carter had proclaimed what came to be called “ the Carter Doctrine” which was a forceful restatement of US claims to the Persian gulf by Roosevelt (1943), and Eisenhower (1957, that “…any attempt by any outside power to gain control of the Persian Gulf…regarded …an assault on…vital interests of the US”
At the time, it was mostly bravado. The US did not even have token forces in the Gulf. Soviet Union’s reluctant move into Afghanistan was a last ditch defensive action against the US and Pakistan inspired Afghan Islamist provocateur threat against it.
There had been talk of US invasion of Saudi Arabia and occupation of its oil fields since mid-1970s oil embargo imposed by OPEC in 1973. In 1975, Kissinger wrote an anonymous article using the pseudonym Miles Ignotus in Harper’s, headlined, “Seizing Arab oil( Saudi Arabia pledged investment of all its oil income in NY, so was not attacked).(1). Kissinger summoned a CIA executive heading out to the Middle East, “We have to teach Saudi Arabia a lesson. Pick one of those sheikhdoms…and overthrow the government…”(2).
Carter ordered creation of RDF, Reagan would expand it into the Central command.
In the 1970s several factors combined to give a stronger hand to those who had for years, sought to play the Islam card against Moscow. Muslim population of Soviet Central Asia was growing far more rapidly than the population of other soviet republics. The revolution in Iran catapulted militant Islam to the forefront. The pro-soviet regime in Afghanistan seemed particularly vulnerable.
In 1960s, Brzezinski joined the ranks of those calling for greater support of Central Asian Muslims.(5). He was a militant ant-communist. Gates, the then CIA director wrote, “B… was deeply interested in exploiting soviet nationalities problem….(6).
B and Co were the acolytes of Alexandre Bennigen, a European academic with aristocratic Russian roots. He initially went to Paris, then to the University of Chicago, and wrote many books and articles on Islam in Central Asia which fostered a movement among scholars and officials who believed in the viability of the Islamic card.(7).
In The Islamic Threat to The Soviet State, he claimed that the movement harked back to “armed religious resistance…began in the late 18th century…spearheaded by…
Sufi brotherhoods (tareeqa), and opposed Russian imperial presence (8).
The most significant society, according to him was the secret Naqshbandiya, a Freemason style fraternity closely tied to turkey, “…have a long tradition of “Holy War” against Russians (11). US effort to encourage political Islam to revolt…would be”…comparable to…Islamic Revolution in Iran (12).
By toppling the Shah, Khomeini had rewritten the rules. After the soviet intrusion into Afghanistan in December 1979, Zalmay Khalilzad, a neo-conservative analyst and RAND strategist, and future US diplomat wrote a paper. “ the Khomeini regime also poses risks to the Soviets…has encouraged similar movements in Iraq…might even affect Soviet Muslim…(14).
Referring to Shamil, the 19th century Muslim resistance leader, who had opposed Russian expansion in Asia, Henze, a former CIA station chief in turkey wrote, “…be extremely difficult for the Soviet Union… to continue their pro-Arab “anti-colonial policy”…without running the risk of provoking …Central Asian peoples…” (17).
The trio of Bennigsen, B and Henze joined forces with Richard Pipes, who wrote “The entire…Central Asia…may well tend to move…in the direction of independent statehood…” (18). Under Reagan, Pipes assumed chairmanship of the nationalities working Group.
No such anti-soviet Muslim revolt emerged in Central Asia, but America’s support did aid extremist Islamist groups in Chechnya, Uzbekistan and other countries of the region.
Long before 1979, in fact America’s connection to the Brotherhood-linked Islamists began in 1950s, and US support for Islamist political right began in 1973. The CIA sent a team through the offices of Asia Foundation, which was a CIA front organization in the 1950-50s. the organization helped the Islamic Research Institute in Lahore, and helped it publish the encyclopedia of Islam. The students were target number one. The Foundation established relations with the Mujaddidi family in Afghanistan (22).
The version of Islam that prevailed in Afghanistan, until the 1960s, was not political Islam. But under the influence of the Brothers and Pakistan’s Jamaat e Islami, Afghan Islam became politicized and militantly anti-communist. The origin. According to Oliver Roy, a French Orientalist, began with a semi-secret clique called “the professors” who had studied at Al-Azhar, led by Professor Gholam Muhammad Niyazi of the theology faculty of Kabul university and a major CIA beneficiary through the Asia Foundation. In 1972, according to declassified US embassy documents, that a member of the Muslim youth led by Niyazi, met a US official several times and described his activities, including the murder of four leftists, and asked funds to buy a printing press (27).
In 1958, the movement coalesced and clashed with Muhammad Daoud, the king’s cousin and future president. It called itself the Islamic Society (23).
By mid-1960s the Society was following in the foot steps of its Arab and Pakistani counterparts, and started assaulting left wing and communist students (24).
Among the leaders of the Islamist movement in Afghanistan were Abdul Rauf Sayaf affliliated with the Brothers, and Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hikmatyar.
In 1973, Daoud, with the help of communists, toppled the king and established a republic.
The CIA, and Pakistan, first under Bhutto, later under Zia, and the Shah of Iran, made zealous efforts to undermine the new Afghan government. Later the government admitted its role, with the full complicity of CIA, “PM Benazir’s special assistant Nasirullah Babar…in a press interview in April 1989…the US had been financing Afghan dissidents since 1973…had taken… Hekmatyar under its wing.
Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, drawing on the released Soviet archives, “ …Beginning in 1974, the Shah launched a determined effort to draw Kabul into…security sphere embracing India, Pakistan and Persian Gulf states…the US actively encouraged…” (29). “SAVAK and CIA worked hand in hand with Afghan fundamentalists who were linked with the Brothers and the Muslim world League…while Pakistan’s ISI helped coordinate raids on Afghanistan” (30).
Though in 1975, Afghan’s Islamists felt they had enough power to launch a rebellion against Daoud, “What went almost unnoticed in the excitement of Pakistani involvement…was that Daoud was putting down a manifestation of “International” Islam…and it was the Brothers who, as the larger group, …entered an agreement with Pakistan’s ISI chief General Jillani. (31).
Daoud, under pressure from the US, Iran and Pakistan began to tilt to the right, met the shah and Bhutto, and started installing right wing officers in key posts. His power base was reduced to a small ultraconservative clique, and according to Cordovez and Harrison, the real power behind the scene, was wielded by SAVAK, the Brotherhood, and the World Muslim league (22).
In April 1978, Noor Mohammad Taraki, staged a coup, and the Islamists supported by ISI, carried out a Pol Pot style campaign of terrorism, assassinating hundreds of teachers and civil servants.
The US was well aware of the terrorism (33).
Pakistan’s ties with the Islamist terrorists grew stronger. Zia established a regime based on ‘Islamic law’, and promoted Maududi’s Jamaat e Islami.
Bzezinski gave an interview to La Nouvel Observateur in 1998, “…CIA aid to Mujahidin started…after the Soviet army invaded Iran on December, 24 1980…but the reality…is completely otherwise…it was July 3, 1979, that…Carter signed the first directive for secret aid (36).
The Afghan holy war began not in 1980, after the soviet troops crossed the border…, but in 1978, when the Islamists began a…uprising with ISI support. During the time the US maintained relations with the Iranian government of Barzagan,…providing intelligence about the USSR and Iraq…, till the seizure of the US embassy in December, 1979.
According to Gates, the CIA had…Afghanistan…to replace listening posts in Iran…(37). The CIA contacted Saudi Arabia and Pakistan about providing aid to Afghan rebels. In the interview mentioned above, Brzezinski had admitted that his intention had all along been to provoke a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan…Now he told Carter in 1979, “We can give the USSR its Vietnam,,,”(39).
Steve Coll wrote in his Ghost Wars, Zia sought and obtained political control over the CIA’s weapons and money…” (40). Saudi Arabia agreed to match US contributions…dollar for dollar. Saudi aid came with strings. The growth of Islamism in Pakistan was directly tied to Saudi aid to Islamabad.
For Pakistan, it was Hekmetyar. By all accounts, he was responsible for throwing acid in the faces of Afghan women who failed to cover themselves properly (42).
Hekmetyar’s specialty was skinning prisoners alive (43). Sibghatullah Mujaddidi called him a true monster (44). But representative Charles Wilson, a Texas Republican who was the leading congressional advocate for the Afghan jihad, approvingly noted that Zia was “totally committed to Hekmetyar, because Zia saw the world as a conflict between Muslims and Hindus, and he thought he could count on Hekmetyar to work for a pan-Islamic entity that could stand up to India” (45).
As the war evolved, Abdul Rasul Sayaf, the Afghan Muslim brotherhood leader and Hekmetyar as the Afghan leaders closest to the legions pf foreign, mostly Arab fighters who flocked to Afghanistan to join the jihad. By the end of 1980s, it would be the so called “Arab Afghans” who would graduate to become leaders of the militant and terrorist Islamists from Egypt to Chechnya. Both Sayaf and Hekmetyar were close to Osama bin Laden, whose rise to prominence began as early as 1979-80, when he enlisted in the Afghan jihad. “Once in Pakistani exile, Hekmetyar gathered around him the most radical, anti-western Islamists…including bin laden…”(49).

Chap 11 Jihad: 2
From 1945 to 1979, the Islamic right seemed firmly attached to the Western, anti-communist camp. With Khomeini’s direct challenge to US interests in 1979, things changed. Islamic right began to spawn deadly anti-Western offshoots, which attacked US interests and pro-US rulers.
The US was slow to grasp the developments. It failed to focus on Islamic terrorism in spite of the pleas of minions like Hosni Mubarak to do so. It also failed to realize that the Islamic right was not just anti-communist, but ant-west as well, and Reagan decided to join the jihad. The same neo-cons who today lead the charge for a “clash of civilization” pressed the hardest for an alliance with Afghan mujahideen and a deal with the ayatollahs.
Following the Iran revolution Carter convened a government wide study to analyze political Islam. Harold Saunders, then assistant secretary of state for Near East, “the main focus was…whether…could happen in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt…In Egypt…we thought Sadat could handle it” (1). In the end, it was thought that the movement could be contained by existing governments. Saunders “…concluded that we couldn’t have a policy towards political Islam” (2).
At the CIA, Martha Kessler was one of the few analysts…paid attention to the Brothers, “we had a world war II era…just plopping officials…in capitals…movement wasn’t…in cities…happening out in small towns.
Sadat, who had close links with the Brothers, was the least aware of political Islam, and joined the US and Saudi Arabia in sending jihadists to Peshawar.
In Afghanistan, there were about 300,000 fighters, of whom 285,000 were Islamists. They were drawn from all over the Muslim world. The ‘Arab Afghans’, referred to earlier included bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
After the war was over, they went to home countries, and other areas of conflict-Bosnia, Chechnya etc, with terrorist skills-car bombs, sabotage learned at the hands of US operatives, and arms given by the latter.
In January 1980, B visited Egypt. Sadat gave permission for the US Air Force to use the country as a base. John Cooley, “Egypt’s military inventory was being scoured for soviet supplied arms to send to jihad” (8).
A number of Muslim countries decided it would be prudent to send militants to the afghan war, to please the Americans and to get rid of them at the same time (promotion of Madressahs by Saudis started when the rulers started living it up with oil money. Mullahs objected to wining and womanizing, the latter without Nikah (not more than 4 at one time), or without ‘taking them under the right hand’ a euphemism for buying girls-the practice of having carnal relations with slave girls has Quranic sanction. The rulers gave money to Mullahs and sent them to India and other countries for Tabligh (proselytization) and Taleem (indoctrination).
The British MI6 activated old networks (16).
Steve Coo, “under ISI direction, the mujahideen received training and malleable explosives to mount car bombs…CIA director bill Casey endorsed these techniques…(12). CIA and ISI were providing…explosive devices disguised as pens, watches, cigarette lighters and tape recorders (15).
Afghan mujahideen had qualms about suicide bombing. Arabs did not (17). Afghan mujahideen also trained inside the US (18).
Various Arab governments, international organizations, such as the Brotherhood, The Muslim world League, and Pakistan based Tablighi (missionary) Jamaat ran campaigns to recruit jihadis. Cooley, “many were offered trips to Pakistan for religious studies…This (military training) came after six weeks religious studies (22). (Pakistani Madressahs supplied Taliban, up to 25,000 recruits on a few days notice, during their war with other factions). Ahmad Rashid, author of Taliban, “…between 1982 and 1992, 35,000 radical Islamists from 43 countries fought alongside the mujahideen…eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan…” (23).
At the al-Kifah Afghan Refugee Center in Brooklyn NY, many Arabs signed up for jihad, “there were hard to trace suitcases full of cash and anonymous bearer checks or bank drafts, from the Muslim world league, the Tablighi Jamaat and other charitable organization…”(24). One of the key recruiting individuals was Abdullah Azzam who was bin Laden’s professor and who was a cofounder of Al-Qaida’s predecessor organization, the Services bureau in Peshawar in 1984. Bin Laden got on the ground floor …of Islamic NGOs for military support activities when he joined Azzam to found the Services Bureau…(27).
Herb Meyer, Casey’s chief of the staff, “the real split in the Reagan administration was… between those who wished not to lose the cold war and those who wished to win it” (32). Casey was in the latter camp.
Meyer “The Saudis were very helpful…They hated the soviets, expanded oil production, the price of oil dropped from $ 28.00 a barrel to $ 10.00 per barrel in…weeks, soviet income was severely restricted…” (33).
Meyer in ghost Wars “Casey saw political Islam and the Catholic Church as natural allies…to thwart soviet imperialism.” (34).
Casey’s views on religion and politics dovetailed with Reagan’s.(37)
The ISI’s General Yusuf provided the most detailed account. (42). At first, the effort was restricted to smuggling propaganda into USSR’s Muslim republic.
Saudi Arabia was especially interested, because it saw Iran…as a competitor …to spread its version of Shia fundamentalism…against Wahhabi brand…(43).
Beginning in 1984, it became more than just Qurans and propaganda. According to Yusuf {“The cross border raids were at their peak in 1986…virtually every incursion provoked massive aerial bombing and gunship attacks (47).
The Afghan jihad did not end when the USSR withdrew. The US had no exit strategy. The mujahideen broke into factions and fought with each other, and Pakistan supported the Islamists.
The US support for the mujahideen, most of which went to hard core Islamists turned out to be a catastrophic mistake. Yet advocates of the global war on terror continue to assert that, Daniel Pipes “I think, it was the correct thing to do…”. Stephen Cohen, a top state department official in 1980s “if you want to win the cold war, you can’t use the Salvation army” (51).
Soviet officials were among those warning Washington of the dangers inherent in the Islamist movement. Soviet FM, Eduard Shevardnadze asked for American cooperation in limiting the spread of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ (52).
Walter Cutler, the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia in most of 1980s “The fact that you had these zealots, trained and armed with Stingers, did not come up” (53).
According to Yusuf of the CIA, some Americans did become alarmed at the prospect of Hekmetyar and Co taking power, but Gen Akhtar Abdul Rahman, the chief ISI architect of the jihad, managed to counter US efforts to strengthen non-fundamentalist groups. (55).
At the time Islamist mujahideen were fighting the Soviets, they were killing post war Afghan opponents by the thousands. Cheryl Benard, Rand corporation expert on Islam, and married to Zalmay Khalilzad “in Afghanistan, we made a deliberate choice…at first every one thought there is no way to beat the Soviets…so we have to throw the worst crazies against them…then we allowed them to kill all the moderate leaders…” (56).
Deal with Ayatollahs: It appears likely…members of Reagan campaign team, including Casey, contacted Iranian officials to postpone release of hostages till after elections. Gary sick, a US navy officer who served on the National Security Council under Ford, Carter and Reagan. Wrote in “October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and election of Ronald Reagan”. The Reagan-Bush campaign mounted a professionally organized intelligence operation to subvert the American democratic process” (57). Sick suspected that the basis of GOP-Iran talks was a promise… for shipment of Israeli and other arms to Iran, which Carter adamantly refused… till the hostages were free (58).
Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility on June 07. 1981, only days after the outbreak of Iraq-Iran war. (61).
In the event the hostages were released only on January 20, 1981 (as a camouflage to keep the role of Casey hidden “Few suspected that the release of hostages was the denouement of an elaborate plot…hatched by William Casey” (64).
Washington’s main approach was the ‘tilt’ towards Iraq. Virtually the entire Arab world backed Iraq (including the ingrate Yasir Arafat. Iran handed over the Israeli embassy premises in Teheran to the PLO). While the US officially backed Iraq from 1980 to 1987, Israel supplied Iran with arms.
Israel’s links with Iran were multifaceted-with the army, SAVAK, and thousands of Iranian Jews had long been active in the bazaar (65).
Vladimir Kuzichkin KGB station chief in Teheran defected to the West in 1982, and “provided the British with a list of several hundred Soviet agents operating in Iran. Kuzichchin’s information was shared with Iranian authorities…arrested over a thousand Tudeh party members…this dramatic destruction of the Tudeh party in 1983 completed the dismantling of Iranian left” (69).
Americans knew nothing about the CIA’s sub rosa cooperation with Iran (70).

Chap 12 Clash of Civilizations:
A lot of questions arise. If the cold war was WW II, is the US engaged in WW IV, against Islam. How serious is threat of Islamist terrorism?
Islamic right was seen as a valuable US ally during the cold War. Why did the Islamic right, after the elimination of the communist enemy, direct its wrath towards the Great Satans of the secular West.
Since 9/11, the notion that the US and the Muslim world are on a collision course has gained credibility. Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington see the war on terrorism as a titanic struggle pitting Judeo-Christian civilization against the Muslim world.
James Woolsey, former CIA director and Norman Podhoretz of Commentary regard the struggle against Islam, as WW IV. Along with key bush officials, they compare, not just the Islamic right, but the religion of Islam itself with fascism and communism. To fight WWIV, would require unilateral. Preventive wars, vast increases in military and intelligence expenditure, as well as creation of a surveillance state at home.
But it was not Islam or even Muslim fundamentalists, the Brothers, Hezbollah, or Hamas which attacked. It was Al-Qaida. It is a group of mafia style fanatics, which does not pose an existential threat to the USA..
9/11 provoked world outrage, and outpouring of sympathy for the US. Al-Qaida could have been destroyed by using intelligence, legal, political and diplomatic pressure and selective military strikes. It did not require wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But Bush lied through his teeth to inflate the threat. Despite AG Ashcroft’s assertion that thousands of Al-Qaida operatives had infiltrated the USA, there has not been a single attack (2/2009) on the US since 9/11. There is no evidence that it has acquired nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
The entire Muslim world, as a whole, does not offer the level of threat that the USSR did to US global hegemony. By describing the Islamist threat in such a grossly exaggerated fashion, the neocons created a pretext for imperial expansion. It is fair to ask if the virtual occupation of the Middle East is related to goals other than terrorism? Is it oil, or simply a ploy for world domination? Is it at the behest of Israeli right?
If the target is Islamic terrorism, why invest so much effort against Iraq, Syria and PLO; they all are implacable opponents of the Bothers and al-Qaida. By attacking Iraq, Bush made common cause with the Islamic right.
The broad constellation of right wing Islamic groups and parties does represent a significant threat to progressive thought in the swath of Muslim nations from Morocco to Indonesia. But they can not be controlled by military means. Only by withdrawing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and by reversing unquestioning support for Israel’s aggressive policies towards Palestinians, can the anger, frustration and resentment that fuels Islamism, be contained.
Bush administrations support for democracy is, at best, hypocritical. It continued to prop up dictators, kings, Emirs and other satraps around the world. Opposition to these kleptocracies came only from American liberals, the European left and the Soviet Union.
Bush’s version of democratic reform was blatantly opportunistic. Not able to explain the inability to find WMDs in Iraq, it shifted to raison de la guerre to bring democracy. True democracy would pursue nationalistic initiatives, and almost guaranteed to run afoul of US agenda. And the US does not push for changes in autocracies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, on the Truman dictum, that these were “our sons of bitches”. Pressing for changes in the countries might bring the Islamists in power.
The actual idea was to squeeze Syria between Israel and occupied Iraq, and Iran between occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Bush people did not learn their lesson, and joined the forces of Shia fundamentalism in Iraq. Its Christian right allies continue to disparage Islam as a violent and evil religion. Millions of Americans have been sold to the idea that the Christians and Muslims must fight with each other to the end.
What happened between 1991 and 2001 to transform Islam from an ally to a malignant evil?
To understand that properly one has to the crises in Algeria, Egypt and the rise of Taliban. In Algeria a terrible civil war erupted when the Islamic right was denied the fruits of electoral victory. In Egypt, the Brothers supported terrorists nearly toppled Mubarak in mid-nineties. In Afghanistan, the Taliban backed by Pakistan, and funded armed by the USA took over, and imposed a brutal theocracy.
During the period Bill Clinton and the nearly a year he had before 9/11, bush failed to develop a coherent policy towards political Islam. The US intelligence failed miserably, and failed to stop al-Qaida even after pragmatists wanted to work with existing regimes, while idealists wanted democracy to flourish in the region. it made its presence known by spectacular attacks in the 1990s.
The US government, academia and think tanks were divided on how to respond to post cold war Islamic resurgence. Some wanted a country by country treatment, others supported a comprehensive policy.
Three Crisis in the 1990s:
Algeria:
The conundrum for the US was choosing between Islamists who had won an election 12/1991 118 to FLN’s 16), and an entrenched, military dominated secular regime.
The Islamists (FIS) did not emerge suddenly in 1989, they had been battling the leftists and nationalists for years, especially on campuses. As in Afghanistan, “the professors” tied to the brothers, were imported to teach Arabic. Like the Taliban, FIS imposed its version of Shariah in the municipal and provincial governments it controlled.
Arab governments, except for Saudis, were alarmed. Bush I and Baker sided, unofficially, with the Algerian government, though there was serious disagreement in the administration. Clash of civilizations point of view was still nascent. Graham Fuller, a CIA analyst favored FIS, “is likely to welcome US private investment in Algeria…”(19).
Egypt:
A dire Islamist threat emerged in the 1990s. Unlike Algeria, Egypt was in the very heart of Mid-East, and a loyal US satrapy.
Hundreds of people, military and police officers, officials, writers and intellectuals had were killed. The Brother gained control of professional associations, and student groups.(21). The US provided security assistance to Egypt’s police and intelligence service.(23). But in the US government, there was persistent belief, that the Brothers were a potentially useful partner and were uneasy with the heavy handed repression of Mubarak regime. Beginning in 1980s through 9/11 Mubarak had criticized the US for its failure to take action against the Islamic right. Abdel Moneim Said of al-Ahram Center in Cairo, “Omar Abdel Rahman was being harbored in the US…”(25).
The Taliban:
Ahmad Rashid, Taliban, Militant Islam, oil and fundamentalism in Central Asia The Taliban had strong support not only from Saudi Arabia…and from Pakistan…but from the United states as well, “Between 1994 and 1996, the USA supported the Taliban through its …allies…between 1995 and 1997…was even more driven because of its backing of the Unocal project (energy pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan…many US diplomats saw them as messianic do-gooders, like the born again Christians” (33).
In post cold war period, the US sought advantage in oil rich regions, and competed with Russia, china. India and Japan. After 9/11, the Northern Alliance became the chief US ally.
Graham Fuller, in The Future of Political Islam “Important external forces that shared a stake in Afghan events…disturbed at a Taliban takeover…Iran, Russia, Uzbekistan…India…Washington was initially neutral, …could facilitate gas pipelines…impose control…poppy production…crack down on guerrilla and training camps…(35).
Sheila Hanson, an NSC official, US policy was to “promote the independence of these oil rich countries, to in essence break Russia’s monopoly control over transportation of oil…” (36). UNOCAL hired former US officials from Kissinger to Khalizad. “the Taliban does not practice the anti-US style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran…” (37).
Besides Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Israel and Turkey joined the US for ousting Russia and containing Iran. Turkey was concerned about falling under the spell of its Brother allied Islamist movement.
About the same time, Osama bin Laden was setting up his HQ in Afghanistan, after being asked to leave Sudan, the Taliban leaders were crisscrossing the US, meeting officials, oilmen and academics. Protests by women’s groups were overlooked by Clinton and by UNOCAL. A state department official. “the Taliban will…develop like the Saudis…no parliament, and lots of Shariah law. We can live with that” (38).
During the US-Taliban era of cooperation 1994-98 (ended with bombings of two US embassies in Africa), a key UNOCL consultant Thomas Gouttierre of the University of Nebraska, secured over $ 60.00 million in Federal grants. His educational consisted of blatant Islamist propaganda, including the creation of children’s text books in which young Afghan were taught to count by enumerating dead Russian soldiers and adding up Kalashnikov rifles. The Taliban like his work so much that they continued to use…tem…and during a visit to the US in 1997, made a especial point on calling on him…Omaha World Herald, Gouttierre said that “you sit down with them, and they are relatively regular Joes”.
The CIA…finally responded…1996 destruction of the US military’s Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, 1998 car bombings of US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, by creating a series of task forces…
The US effort to find and eliminate bin laden was…incompetent. A $ 27 billion US intelligence budget, wit… 100,000 employees…an array of satellites… spies, agents, failed to find him (did they really want to), while countless journalists…found him with ease. (Cruise missile attacks on allegedly Al-Qaida facility only succeeded in destroying the country’s only Pharmaceutical factory).
On 9/11, the promoters of the clash of civilizations got the opening they needed. Until then, Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, were regarded as curiosities. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations “the underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam…the problem for Islam is not the CIA. It is the West…(42). And “The collapse of communism removed a common enemy of the West and Islam (45). Though not an expert on Islam, he asserted “Islam has from the start been a religion of the sword and glorifies military virtues” (47).
Bernard Lewis, his guru, “For almost a thousand years, from the first Moorish landing in Spain, to the second Turkish siege of Vienna, Europe was under a constant threat from Islam…”(49).
Lewis, a former British intelligence officer, and a longtime supporter of the Israeli right…and a propagandist and apologist for imperialism and Israeli expansionism for over half a century was the first to use the term “Clash of Civilizations” in a 1956 Middle East Journal article…(50). By blaming anti-Western feeling in the Arab world, Lewis absolved the West of its post WW II oil grab, its support for creation of a Zionist state on Arab land, and its ruthless backing of corrupt Arab monarchies.
A British Jew born in 1916, Lewis spent five WW II years as a British intelligence operative in Middle East…then settled in the University of London, and migrated to Princeton in 1974, became Senator Henry Jackson’s guru, said Richard Perle, a top Pentagon official, vested the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University and developed close links with Ariel Sharon(55).
By 1980s, he was hobnobbing with top US state department officials, and often invited to provide tutorials State and Pentagon officials
In 1990s, he gave up all pretence of academic detachment, and in 1998, he joined the neo-con camp, signed a letter cosigned by Perle, Martin Peretz. Of NY times, bush officials Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser and Dov Zakheim, demanding regime change in Iraq..
Two weeks after 9/11, Perle invited Lewis and Ahmad Chalabi to speak to the Defense Policy Board, starting a two year effort to link Osama with Saddam. Less than a month after the appearance of Chalabi and Lewis a secret intelligence unit was created which evolved into the Office of Special plans. Harold Rhode and Douglas Feith of this office, under Abram Shulsky, manufactured the false intelligence linking Iraq with Al-Qaida (59)
Bush was careful to insist that the US was engaged in a war against terrorism, not a war against the people of the Quran. In fact, from the start, it displayed a broad imperial vision. William Kristol of the Weekly Standard and The New Republic’s Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the War over Iraq, “the mission begins in Iraq, but it does not end there…” (61). “it may turn out to be war to remake the world” (62).
Perle, Feith, Wurmser and other in a blueprint for strategy in 1996 to then Israeli PM, Netanyahu “called on Israel to work with Turkey and Jordan to contain. Destabilize…various states…restore a scion of Hashemite…dynasty in Baghdad…as a prelude to a redrawing the map of Middle the East”. It did not suggest a policy of countering the Brotherhood or Al-Qaida (63). Chas Freeman “The intention of Iraq war was never to build… democracy…was to flatten it to remove it…as a threat to Israel” (65). Richard Perle and David Frum, An end to Evil: How to win the war on terror, suggest mobilizing Shias against the Saudi state “Independence for the eastern Province (Shia Majority, with all the oil under the sand)…catastrophic for…Saudi Arabia… but might be very good for the US…would want the Saudis to know we are pondering it”(66).
Michael Scheur writing in Imperial hubris “US policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama has been trying to do with incomplete success…it is fair to conclude that the USA remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally. (70).
Afghanistan is already falling under the sway of Taliban. Indonesia, BD and Pakistan are facing Islamic insurgencies. Bush, consciously and with deliberation, encouraged Iraq’s Islamists to reach for power. CIA brought an Ayatollah from London to Najaf, forged an alliance with ayatollah al-Sistani, and worked with another Iraqi cleric Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, promoted Al-Dawa. On the Sunni side, the chief political party to emerge after 2003 was the Brotherhood official branch in Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party.
Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA officer and a Fellow at the American enterprise institute, and a neocon hardliner, early in 2005 dropped all pretense of opposing the Islamic right, issued a call for encouraging Sunni and Shia fundamentalism, and announced the release of his new book, The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy, he declared that the future of the Arab world lies with the Islamic right and the US ought to welcome it.