TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050790/0507009.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.9 KB | 214 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 40

MIDDLE EAST

One Home, 21 to Go


Why it would be a surprise to see any more captives freed soon
-- and why there is also more hope for them than ever

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by Dean Fischer/Cairo and
Christopher Ogden/Washington


    Iran eager to patch things up with the Great Satan? Syria,
the pre-eminent Soviet client state in the Middle East, avid for
U.S. approval? Those developments sound as unlikely as . . .
well, as the release of an American hostage by Lebanese
kidnapers who apparently got nothing whatsoever in return from
Washington. But Robert Polhill, 55, a professor at Beirut
University College who had been abducted and held for three
years and three months, was in fact turned loose on the streets
of Beirut at the start of last week. His freedom did result from
a combination of arm twisting and blandishments by Iran and
Syria. And these surprising turns point to a new constellation
of forces gathering in the Middle East, potentially favorable
to U.S. interests -- above all, to the return of the seven
Americans and 14 citizens of other Western nations still held
captive.

    Not that freedom for the rest can be expected immediately.
The fate of each prisoner is subject to tortuous maneuvering
among Iran, Syria and one of the terrorist groups that hold the
hostages. Their interlocking self-interests bred a culture of
kidnaping in the 1980s; now the question is whether they can
each serve themselves best by giving up their captives. Clearly
none is in a position to deliver all the hostages independently.

    The U.S. has little leverage on this process, which can
break down abruptly for no obvious reason, as was also
demonstrated last week. Early on, the air was filled with
predictions that another hostage would be freed. But at midweek
the movement suddenly stopped dead. Hussein Musawi, a Lebanese
Shi`ite leader who was instrumental in Polhill's release, blamed
the breakdown on the U.S. House of Representatives for passing
a nonbinding resolution urging that a united Jerusalem become
the capital of Israel. "The Muslims in Lebanon offered a rose
only to get a stone thrown on them," said the bearded cleric.
The resolution was ill timed as well as contrary to
long-standing U.S. policy; it gave Musawi a handy excuse for
failing to produce the second hostage release he had forecast.

    So Polhill spent most of the week alone in the VIP suite at
the U.S. Air Force hospital in Wiesbaden, West Germany, where
freed hostages first go. The professor was severely
undernourished, and his muscles were wasted from lack of
exercise. On the flight to Wiesbaden, Polhill exulted at seeing
the sun for the first time after 1,182 days in windowless rooms,
and he spoke in a hoarse whisper; doctors in the U.S., where he
arrived at week's end, found a growth on his vocal cords. Still
he displayed a lively wit and undiminished anger at his captors,
which he said he had kept hot in order to avoid turning into "a
vegetable."

    The Bush Administration has kept a cooler head in its
campaign of silence to encourage freedom for the others. Press
and government frenzy over hostages during the Carter and Reagan
administrations probably encouraged kidnaping. It seemed to pay
-- and handsomely. George Bush's policy of waiting out the
kidnapers may at last be convincing some of the state sponsors,
if not yet the captors, that the hostages have become a
liability rather than an asset. There is nothing to be gained by
holding them longer and perhaps some profit in letting them go.
Fundamentally, though, the hostages' fate depends less on
anything the U.S. does than on the changing dynamics of Middle
Eastern politics.

    Iran, the patron and spiritual leader of the Shi`ite Muslim
kidnapers, is in an economic slide brought on by slumping oil
prices, eight years of war with Iraq, Western economic sanctions
and the inefficiencies of nationalized industries. Inflation is
running at 60%, and the unemployment rate has hit 25%. To
rebuild the economy, President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
needs Western help. He is seeking no less than $27 billion in
Western credits. Return of the $1 billion or so remaining assets
frozen in the U.S. in 1979, when zealots seized the American
embassy, would help too. Rafsanjani knows he has no chance of
getting such assistance as long as he appears to be the
hostages' head jailer. So he has turned into the foremost
advocate of letting the captives go.

    The President, however, must move cautiously. The Iranian
Parliament is still dominated by anti-American radicals like
Speaker Mehdi Karrubi, who last week marked the tenth
anniversary of Jimmy Carter's failure to rescue the embassy
hostages by declaring that U.S. "spite against Iran's Islamic
establishment has increased" during the past decade. Polhill's
release proves that Rafsanjani can prevail, but he cannot yet
take on the radicals too openly. Last week he apparently felt
constrained to advocate the unconditional release of a second
hostage not in his own voice but through an editorial in the
English-language Tehran Times, which often reflects his views.

    Syria, whose troops occupy many of the Lebanese areas where
the hostage takers operate, is suffering keenly from a reduction
in support from its longtime Soviet ally. Moscow has bluntly
informed Damascus that it can no longer afford to underwrite
Syria's efforts to achieve military parity with Israel. Western
experts say Soviet deliveries of arms and equipment are already
being significantly reduced. Syrian President Hafez Assad is
scheduled to visit Moscow this week. But he has little chance
of coaxing more aid out of a Kremlin struggling to avoid chaos,
even though Syria faces the menace of Iraq, which is seeking
nuclear capability to go with its poison gas and long-range
missiles. Assad and Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein share a deep
mutual hatred and a fierce rivalry for dominance in the region.

    Syria seems to be following an obvious strategy: if one
superpower lets you down, start making overtures to the other.
Assad has significantly moderated Syria's once radical politics
in an effort to restore its standing in the West and its
influence in the Arab world. The country's strapped economy
needs Western help. And Syria must have U.S. acquiescence to
join in if any Mideast peace negotiations ever start. So Assad
swallowed his resentment over Egypt's peace treaty with Israel
and resumed diplomatic relations with Cairo after an eleven-year
lapse. He has been urging radical terrorist groups he once
supported to cease their operations. And Syria actively helped
secure Polhill's freedom -- enough to win Assad a personal
thank-you from Bush.

    Such internal pressures brought Iran and Syria together to
intrigue for Polhill's release, but even acting in concert, they
cannot simply order the hostage holders to give up their
captives. The kidnapers, mainly clandestine factions of the
Lebanese Hizballah, or Party of God, do not necessarily care
very much what happens to the Iranian economy or which
superpower backs Syria; they have their own fish to fry. Few
diplomats hold out much hope of freedom for Americans Terry
Anderson and Thomas Sutherland, captives of Islamic Jihad. This
tightly knit tribal group has never wavered from its demand that
15 Shi`ites imprisoned for a bombing in Kuwait, some of whom are
relatives and friends, be released in exchange. Neither Kuwait
nor the U.S. will consent to such an outright capitulation to
terrorism.

    Other kidnapers, like the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation
of Palestine, the Revolutionary Justice Organization and the
Arab Revolutionary Cells, seek primarily the return of hundreds
of prisoners held by Israel or its allies in Southern Lebanon,
notably the Shi`ite sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, kidnaped by Israel
as a bargaining chip last July. Though these groups are more
amenable to Iranian and Syrian influence, it took another
arms-for-hostage deal to win Polhill's release. This time --
sweet irony! -- it was Iran that provided the tanks and rocket
launchers turned over to Hizballah just before the professor was
freed.

    The goals of these groups bring another player into the
circle: Israel. In the past the Israelis have been perfectly
willing to release hundreds of Arab prisoners in return for a
handful of their own or Western captives. But Israel has been
immobilized by an endless political stalemate. In addition,
Israel insists that three of its servicemen lost in Lebanon be
part of any exchange. And Jerusalem's eagerness to swap is a
problem for Washington, because it undercuts the U.S. policy of
no deals.

    For Americans, all this subtle maneuvering is immensely
frustrating, the more so because any U.S. attempt to influence
it is likely to backfire. But the West can take considerable
comfort in the thought that the internal dynamics of Middle
Eastern politics, so often conducive in the past to rabid
anti-Americanism, are now beginning to work in the opposite
direction.


____________________________________________________________
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE EAST MAZE


    Iran needs Western goodwill as a prelude to receiving help
for its shattered economy. But it has to seek hostage releases
in concert with

    Syria, which occupies areas of Lebanon where the hostage
holders operate. Losing Soviet backing, Syria is making
overtures to the West, but can only influence, not control

    The Lebanese kidnapers, who have their own goals --
principally the release of hundreds of prisoners held directly
or by allies of

    Israel, which would make a deal that includes its three
captive soldiers, but is paralyzed by a government crisis,
leaving

    The U.S. with little or no leverage to exert on the whole
situation.