TERRORISM DIFFICULT TO COMBAT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402670002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 2, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-Ri P90-00965R000402670002-4
ARTICLE APP REq BALTIMORE SUN
DIN PAGE 2 June 1985
U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait; then,
in December. 1984, members hijacked a
K4twaiti airliner, new it to Tehran, murdered
two American foreign service officers, then
gave up to the Iranian authorities only to
vanish from sight altogether.
Leban anti-terrorists. trained by the
GA, hired a hit quad to114 the spiritual
Jesoer of the Party . Sheikh Mo-
hamm Hussein a They exploded a
Jihad (Holy War) are threatening to massacre ists -a-nZ-IdU former Prime Minister
four American and two French hostages, all Aldo Moro. A Japanese Red Army terrorist
kidnapped in Lebanon, unless their 17 com- goes with two comrades to Israel and kills
rades now in jail in Kuwait are released. To Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico in Lod
emphasize their point, they recently ' kid- airport. West German heirs to the infamous
napped yet another prominent American in Baader-Meinhoff gang kidnap and kill indus-
Beirut. David Jacobsen, director of the Amer- trialists and bomb U.S. military installations.
icon Unviersity Hospital. and tried to assassi- Other offshoots of these demented people
Hate Kuwait's ruler, Sheikh Jaber el Ahmad keep murdering diplomats in France, in Bel-
el Sabah. glum and elsewhere.
0 The same group blew up the Marine The common thread to all terrorist acts
headquarters in Lebanon in October, 1983, - distinguishing them from the acts of guer-
and car-bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut rillas who fight the powers of the state
twk e, in April, 1983. and in September, against which they rightly or wrongly rebel
1984. In 1983 Islamic Jihad also bombed the - is that, invariably, innocent bystanders
Consider the following current and recent Sandinistas decimate and disperse Misquito
instances: Indians, while the "contras" study assassi-
0 Iranian-inspired terrorists of the Islamic nation manuals. in Italy, Red Brigade terror-
i ire "Reign of Terror" during the French
Rsyolution in 1793-1794; it led to the anar-
c 3st assassination of U.S. President William
Mp Unley in 1901, and it sparked World War
i I.in,11914 when Austrian Archduke Francis
Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Saraje-
vo.liy a Serbian nationalist.
"Through many other instances of terror-
ism. the infection has survived into the pres-
ent and is today alive and thriving more than
I+Cwr.- particularly since some governments
use, support or abet it to promote their own
policies.
d
most Africans
who
LU COM IXI L
Terrorism difficult B., eaise na prominent anti-Kadafi po"ntcran obvious agent for action, cannot be used for
~'~ Abdel-Hamid Bakoush, a Libyan in exile in the purpose, at least for now. This became
he opening of the second trial of Turk- :Cairo. clear as early as the fall of 1972, when for-
ish assassin Mehmet Ali Agca in Rome ..-,L] Sikh terrorists in India killed about 100, mer Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, in
last week focused attention again on people in bombings on May 10. The FBI ar- the wake of the killing of Israeli athletes by
the; z, problem of international terrorism, rested three Sikhs in the United States who Palestinian terrorists during the Munich
against which neither the United Nations nor were planning to kill.Indian Prime Minister Olympics, brought the issue before the Gen-
the most affected countries have been able to Rajvi Gandhi during his American visit early ! eral Assembly.
take effective action. this month. No sooner did he do so when the Arabs,
-obThe infection of violent political fanati- 0 Forty Tamil terrorists-went on a ram- I suspecting pro-Israeli sentiments behind his
_ ... ..........- . a 4nnt the nrnnosall.
from the window of the embassy building.
Libyan-inspired Islamic fundamentalists as-
sassinated Egyptian President Anwar el
Sa4at. Most recently, Libya financed and
trained a terrorist in Syria to blow up the
'U.S. Embassy in Cairo. The plot was foiled,
as,pvas the earlier one last November to as-
by
,
Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka on May 14, kill- They were supporte
ing 145 bystanders and wounding about were afraid that any anti-terrorist legislation
100. would crimp the stile of their guerrillas bat-
0 IRA terrorists blew up an armored po- tling South Africa over apartheid and Namib?
lice car in Ulster near the Irish border on ia. The Soviet bloc and China, eager to pre
May 20; four constables were killed, five serve their g00d Third World credentials.'
civilians hurt and a bus carrying handi- provided verbal support to the anti-terrorist
capped children narrowly escaped destruc- idea, but in the crucial votes sided with the
tion. majority, side-tracking any decisive action.
The roll call of outrage goes on and on. In As a result, then and since, the General
El Salvador, leftists murder and kidnap Assembly has adopted resolutions condemn-
thi
d-
th
i
h
"
"
r
e
r
in
- whic
state terrorism
mayors while the rightist death squads still Ing
kill people they dislike. In Nicaragua, the world dictionary means South Africa. Israel
ed mute
ta
b
t
t
s
y
u
es -
and the United Sta
about the real terrorists. Western countries,
the main objects of actual terrorism, are so
discouraged that by now they do not even
vote against these drafts, preferring to ab-
stain to show their disdain. Last December,
yet another of these resolutions was passed,
by a vote of 117-0. with 30 abstentions.
With the United Nations out of the pic-
ture, the question is what the affected coun-
tries can do on their own. Israeli U.N. Am-
bassador Benjamin Netanyahu, brother of
the commander who died in the successful
Entebbe operation, is writing a book on how
to combat terrorism through concerted ac-
tion by afflicted nations. His thinking is
three-pronged.
In diplomacy, he wants the embassies of
are involved and harmed, most often pur- countries that are found providing help to
posely. The twisted idea is to invite counter- 1 terrorists closed down. In economic action,
measures by the authorities that. presum- he calls on governments not to buy products.
ably, will make the terrorists into martyrs primarily oil, from countries that finance ter-
and thus popular with the masses, attracting rorism. Finally, he calls for specific military
volunteers cooperation against terrorists when such a
.,The ultimate nightmare is that sooner or move is feasible, as it was at Entebbe.
later a group of these fanatics gets hold of a His ideas are not likely to turn out to be
nuclear device, transforming terrorism from more successful than were Mr. Waldheim's
a dangerous nuisance into a mortal threat to z orts 13 years ago. Mr. Netanyahu has just
all mankind. I had his principles contradicted by his own
What can be done about the plague? The government, which freed 1,155 convicted
n
,,,but Sheikh Fadlallah was unhurt. and threat is international: The connection be. terrorists for the freedom of three Israeli
triumphant tween geographically and politically varied 'POWs. thus proving the efficacy of terrorism
Libyan "diplomats" killed a British pogroups In taking hostages to protect its own disciples
- is more and more documented, .to-
or FM e and woun
;;:;;g killi
countries such as Iran. Libya or Syria, and at
least toleration by Soviet-bloc countries that
appreciate their primarily anti-Western
thrust.
This being the case. the remedy ought to
be international, too.
The United Nations, which should be the
Incidentally, the Israeli action leaves the
U.S. State Department and Secretary George
P. Shultz high and dry, too. The longstanding.
American policy never to negotiate with ter-
rorists has been reasserted in the painful
case of the Americans virtually under terror-
ist death sentence in the Middle East. With
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402670002-4
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402670002-4
even the Israelis yielding to terrorist black-
mail, how could Washington hold out in the
face of the desperation of the families of the
hostages?
And what about the repeated threat of
military retaliation against Iran if the hostag-
es are harmed? What if the Islamic fanatics
call Mr. Shultz's bluff - if indeed it is a bluff
- and kill the hostages just as the two
Americans were murdered on the tarmac of
the .Tehran airport? What kind of military
action would cool the ardor of the extremists
who have proven themselves ready to be sac-
rificed at the drop of a mullah's turban? And
if the threat proves empty, would that not be
an open invitation to further acts of terror
against Americans and American interests
worldwide?
Inshort, countries that are prime targets
of the terrorist plague have neither been able
so far to come up with reliable preventive
measures nqr, even to pool their resources for
that purpost~ Where that leaves the tran-
anllity of Western civilization is not even
open,to question. _
M;Nalasz is a veteran United Nations cone-
t.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402670002-4