Is Hamas run from the United States? Have Arab-Americans rushed to resupply its militants with cash and directions? So said unnamed “senior security sources” in Jerusalem, who also cite Iran and Saudi Arabia as the fundamentalists’ paymasters. U.S. officials were dubious about the American connection. Still, there is no denying Israel’s core point. The United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait-and Israel itself-all have a long history of complex ties with Islamic, groups now denounced as “terrorists.” Indeed, they all helped build and sustain the movement that has become their most potent Mideast rival, Sunni Muslim extremism.
Decades of heavy subsidies from the gulf Arabs helped the Muslim Brotherhood and its more radical offshoots-including Hamas-build the infrastructure that now makes it almost impossible to separate guerrilla networks from Islamic relief agencies. The movement threatens governments in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan and preoccupies every other Arab country, as well as Israel. Now aided by Iran, the first Sunni Muslim Islamic republic-Sudan-has become the linchpin of an aggressive, Pan-Arab Islamic front.
The change may have been inevitable once the cold war wound down. “Fundamentalism is growing because of the failure of other ‘isms’-Baathism, socialism, communism,” said Richard Murphy, assistant secretary of state for the Middle East during the Reagan years. But hardly anyone saw that coming. Until about four years ago, most of the disparate fundamentalist movements seemed to pose little threat. Secular powers-military cliques of various stripes-appeared firmly in control. Then, in 1989, the Soviets finally left Afghanistan-and the fundamentalists who fought them began turning on their sponsors. In Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front swept local elections. In Sudan, fundamentalist leader Hassan Turabi and his military allies took power, creating the first important Sunni Islamic republic. Iran, its war with Iraq finally over, began looking for low-cost ways to extend its influence. And though the Shiite fundamentalists of Iran and the Sunni fundamentalists in most of the Arab world have little in common, they formed a tactical alliance.
For years the Arab fundamentalists seemed like dependable pawns in a series of high-stakes proxy battles. They bitterly opposed the West’s main enemies-communism and its regional allies, left-wing Arab nationalists. Hostile to the Palestine Liberation Organization, they seemed perfect for an Israeli divide-and-conquer strategy. And they were theologically in tune with the West’s key Arab ally and oil supplier, Saudi Arabia. The largest group, the Muslim Brotherhood, preached jihad-struggle–on a mild level; the first task of followers was to change society. As its wells came on line in the 1950s, Saudi Arabia began pouring money into the Brotherhood.
But the Brotherhood’s philosophy always carried the potential for violence. It called on Muslims to fight any government that fails to live by the Koran and Islamic law; in 1954 its members tried to assassinate the founder of Arab nationalism, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who then drove the group underground. Still, the Saudis bankrolled the Brotherhood and more extreme spinoff groups in Sudan, Jordan and Syria, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria and the Al-Nahdah movement in Tunisia, as well as Hamas in Israel, State Department officials say. In Sudan, Turabi directed the Brotherhood out of offices in Khartoum’s Feisal Islamic Bank–owned by members of the Saudi royal family. But with U.S. intervention in the gulf war, the Saudis’ long-funded Sunni friends all turned against them. “Instead of buying brothers, they bought enemies,” says an Afghan intellectual. “The Saudis have been indiscriminate in their support of extremist elements,” says Morton Abramowitz, the State Department’s top intelligence official from 1985 to 1989.
Western nations had nothing against extremism, so long as it was channeled in the right direction. According to Arab and European intelligence services, France and Jordan provided assistance to a Muslim Brotherhood uprising that in 1982 almost brought down Syria’s President Hafez Assad, the Soviet Union’s most important Mideast ally. And if Washington approved, that was understandable. Assad was revolutionary Iran’s best Arab friend. In Washing-ton, “Shiite” had become a dirty word; the Sunnis were thought to be moderate. “This was a convenient way to separate the ‘good’ Muslims from the ‘bad’ Muslims,” says Shireen Hunter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Israel fell into the same trap. In the 1970s, it began building up the Brotherhood as a counterbalance to the PLO-and continued even after Israeli troops began battling Shiite radicals in Lebanon. Funding from Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia helped double the number of mosques in the West Bank and triple the number in Gaza between 1967 and 1987.
The fundamentalists dug in. They infiltrated the Waqf (Islamic trust fund) administered by Jordan in the West Bank and the Israelis in Gaza, and built hundreds of orphanages, libraries, clinics, community centers and sports clubs-all under the watchful eyes of occupation troops. And they were given a free hand to trash liquor stores and attack their nationalist rivals. The authorities assumed that the Brotherhood would confine its struggle to the social jihad against corruption, drugs and prostitution. But the 1987 Palestinian uprising forced the fundamentalists’ hand. Reborn as Hamas-an Arabic acronym meaning “Zeal”-they issued a new covenant in 1988, the same year that Israeli troops discovered a cache of explosives in Gaza. “Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time,” it said, declaring Palestine “an Islamic trust.” Israel had wanted to split the Palestinians. Says Ghassan Khatib, a delegate to the peace talks: “They succeeded.”
The United States also succeeded in its most important alliance with fundamentalists: the Afghan war. But the Middle East is still feeling the aftershocks. The Saudi and American billions helped pay for what amounted to an international brigade of 5,000 to 10,000 battle-hardened radicals; many of the modern Islamic movement’s best fighters drew first blood there. The main Western beneficiaries consider themselves part of the Brotherhood. Hundreds of Afghan veterans have been arrested in upper Egypt: a new law makes it a capital crime to receive military training outside the country. In Algeria, hundreds of veterans, known as the “Afghans,” have rejoined the fundamentalists’ ranks. In 1991, Jordanian officials broke up a terrorist group called the Muslim Mujahedin that had allegedly bombed a policeman’s car and plotted to assassinate the Canadian ambassador. “Those guys took us for a ride,” says one congressional intelligence aide who monitored the program during the 1980s.
The West still hasn’t evolved a strategy for dealing with the growing radical movement beyond fighting “terrorism.” The United States no longer needs the Brotherhood, but Saudi Arabia still does-and funds it. Israel belatedly cracked down hard on Hamas, but is finding it more difficult to penetrate than the PLO. Addressing the root causes of Sunni fundamentalism’s growth will be harder still. Most of America’s Arab allies are dictators, while the Gaza Strip is one of the world’s most wretched places. “Secularism was not solving any of our problems,” explains Abdallah, a Gazan nationalist turned Islamist. Until governments counter that argument, they will be increasingly at risk.
