TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081991/0819008.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 15.8 KB | 355 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 26

COVER STORIES

A Game of Chances


As three captives are freed and pressure grows on Israel to make
a deal, can it be that the hostage era is drawing to a close?

By JILL SMOLOWE -- Reported by Anne Constable/London, Lara
Marlowe/Beirut and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington


    In the cruel hostage game that is constantly being played
out in the Middle East, a large measure of cool calculation
always underlies the apparent madness. Western pawns are seized
and sometimes killed in direct retaliation for unpopular
arrests, military strikes or political slights against
governments in the region. Those who are released have been
quietly bartered either for tangible rewards -- weapons, cash
-- or for subtle political and economic gains -- the enhancement
of a regime's credibility, the restoration of diplomatic
relations with a Western power, the exchange of prisoners.

    So why was British journalist John McCarthy freed in
Beirut last week after 1,940 days of captivity? Why now, after
nearly a year of uneasy silence, punctuated by occasional
threats about the fate of the remaining 12 Western hostages? And
who orchestrated McCarthy's release: Iran? Syria? His captors?
As ever, there was a stated trade-off. Islamic Jihad, a radical
Shi`ite cell that operates beneath the larger umbrella of the
pro-Iranian Hizballah, armed McCarthy with a sealed letter
addressed to U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. It
is believed to call for the release of 300 Shi`ites from
southern Lebanon and the release of 75 more prisoners held in
Israel, among them the spiritual leader Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid.

    But McCarthy's actual release was a something-for-nothing
swap that for the first time pointed tantalizingly toward the
prospect of a comprehensive resolution. McCarthy informed the
world that Terry Waite, the British envoy for the Archbishop of
Canterbury who disappeared Jan. 20, 1987, and was rumored to
have died, was alive and well. Islamic Jihad also sent a message
that "health and living conditions are good" for the remaining
captives. While Islamic Jihad holds only some of the hostages,
its message, which appeared to be authoritative, suggested that
the group is coordinating a complex negotiation for the release
of all 12. Islamic Jihad signaled a new flexibility, dropping
its perennial demand that Israel release Palestinians jailed
during the course of the nearly four-year-old intifadeh in the
occupied territories. It also flagged a willingness to mediate
through the U.N., which, unlike Western governments, is prepared
to negotiate openly with hostage takers.

    The pace of liberation quickened on Saturday, when another
Hizballah faction called the Revolutionary Justice Organization
issued a communique stating that one American hostage would be
set free within 72 hours. The message was accompanied by a
photograph of Joseph Cicippio, the comptroller of American
University of Beirut, who was abducted on Sept. 12, 1986. On
Sunday, however, the group released a different hostage, Edward
Austin Tracy, 60, a writer from Burlington, Vt., who was
snatched one month after Cicippio. Tracy, who had spent 1,757
days in captivity, was driven immediately to Damascus to be
turned over to U.S. authorities there.

    The release of McCarthy and Tracy seemed to indicate that
key players in the Middle East are finally tiring of the
hostage sweepstakes. Since Iraq's ill-fated invasion of Kuwait
a year ago, the currency of the hostages has been sharply
devalued. Such longtime sponsors of terrorist activities as Iran
and Syria now regard the hostages as a bothersome obstacle to
the renewal of ties with the West. The faceless abductors
themselves are reaping diminishing returns from the hiding,
feeding and clothing of captives. One of the initial impulses
that guided Islamic Jihad's first seizures back in the early
1980s -- the freeing of 17 fundamentalists jailed in Kuwait --
is now a moot point; after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the remaining
15 prisoners were set free.

    The timing of the latest hostage releases may be linked to
the growing likelihood that a U.S.-Soviet-sponsored peace
conference on the Middle East will take place this fall.
According to the byzantine theory offered by some Middle East
experts, McCarthy's discharge conveniently pre-empted the
favorable publicity Israel has received in recent weeks for its
newfound willingness to attend a peace conference. If Israel now
refuses to free the Shi`ite prisoners, it will be charged once
again with intransigence. If Israel complies, the prisoners are
released, and Syria, appearing to have delivered the hostages
to the West, goes to the negotiating table with a strengthened
hand. The role of the U.N. is also enhanced, a fact that will
no doubt please the Arab states and anger Israel.

    In the hours immediately after McCarthy won his freedom,
speculation intensified that other hostages -- possibly American
journalist Terry Anderson, the longest-held prisoner -- would
soon be released. But room must always be left in the Middle
East for the unanticipated: eight hours after McCarthy's
release, French relief worker Jerome Leyraud was seized by two
kidnappers in Beirut. It was the first abduction of a Westerner
in Beirut since May 1989, and it too had a cold logic. An
anonymous phone call from a man claiming to speak for the
hitherto unknown Organization for the Defense of Peoples' Rights
warned that if another hostage was released, Leyraud would be
executed. A day earlier the same group had claimed
responsibility for a grenade attack on a U.N. agency building
in Beirut.

    The immediate, angry reaction in the Arab world
highlighted the deep rifts that exist among kidnapping clans
inside Lebanon. Hours before Leyraud disappeared, Lebanon's most
influential Shi`ite cleric, Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah,
renewed his persistent calls for a freeing of all foreign
hostages. In successive interviews with British and American
journalists, Fadlallah insisted that "the ploys of hostage
dealing have been exhausted" and that even Iranian hard-liners
"desire an end to the whole problem."

    Syria's response indicated that Damascus was outraged by
the abduction. Syrian troops, joined by Lebanese forces,
quickly mounted a search for Leyraud, checking cars halted at
roadblocks erected every 25 yards in West Beirut. Damascus also
delivered an ultimatum, warning that Leyraud must be set free
within 48 hours or security forces would go door-to-door,
raiding homes to find him. Shortly after the raids began,
Lebanon's National News Agency reported on Sunday that Leyraud
had been freed. An anonymous caller said the kidnappers had
released the Frenchman to promote efforts to gain freedom for
Lebanese prisoners held in Israel.

    Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, meanwhile,
had his own reasons for promoting the release of Western
hostages. The pragmatic Rafsanjani regards the hostages as
relics of an era no longer relevant to his country's problems.
Iran, which wields much more influence than Hizballah,
desperately needs Western credits, trade and technology to
rebuild after its devastating eight-year war with Iraq, which
ended in 1988. Rafsanjani, who knows improved relations with the
West hinge on the happy resolution of the hostage drama,
undoubtedly ordered or at least pressed for the release of
McCarthy and Tracy. He may also have acted out of fear that Iran
is becoming too isolated. "Iran's only Arab ally, Syria, is
shifting strongly toward the U.S.," says a White House official.
"Iran finds itself playing no role in the move toward a Middle
East peace conference."

    Rafsanjani is also feeling pressure from Syria, which has
a huge stake in the pending peace conference. Iran opposed
Syria's acceptance of Secretary of State James Baker's peace
proposals. But that displeasure did not prevent a visit last
week to Damascus by Iranian Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri,
who almost certainly had a hand in McCarthy's release. How,
then, to explain Leyraud's subsequent abduction? "Rafsanjani may
be in the driver's seat," says Sir John Moberly, a former
British ambassador to both Iraq and Jordan, "but there are quite
a few backseat drivers."

    Some of them wrested the wheel from Rafsanjani last week.
In recent months Rafsanjani has pursued better relations with
Paris, seeing France as his gateway to the West. The U.S. is
still perceived by many Iranians as the Great Satan, and bitter
feelings linger from the feud with Britain over the safety of
novelist Salman Rushdie, who was condemned to death in 1989 by
the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini for his book The Satanic Verses.
But France has been in a position to deal openly with Tehran
since April 1990, when its last hostage was freed. Last month
Paris agreed to return to Tehran $1 billion worth of Iranian
loans frozen at the time of the Shah's overthrow in 1979. To
celebrate the renewed friendship, French President Francois
Mitterrand accepted an invitation to pay an October visit to
Iran.

    Last Tuesday hard-line fundamentalists apparently bent on
sabotaging Rafsanjani's rapprochement with the West stabbed to
death Shahpour Bakhtiar, the Shah's last Prime Minister, inside
his home in a Paris suburb. This was the second attempt on
Bakhtiar's life, and its success embarrassed the French
government. The four-member police detail that watches
Bakhtiar's house round the clock did not even notice that
anything was amiss until 36 hours after the slaying.

    While no Western experts suggested that they saw the
Iranian President's hand in the murder, there was just enough
noise to damage Rafsanjani's credibility. Former Iranian
President Abolhassan Banisadr, who also lives in exile in
France, asserted that the hit on Bakhtiar had been "ordered by
the mullahs," and possibly Rafsanjani, to appease hard-liners.
"It was to cover up the assassination that they freed the
hostage," said Banisadr, whose antipathy toward Rafsanjani makes
his analysis of Iranian politics somewhat suspect.

    Syria, by contrast, seemed only to benefit from the
hostage releases. Perez de Cuellar praised Damascus for the role
it had played, thus reaffirming Syria's rising stature as a
country with which the West can do business. Although Syria has
now consolidated its control of Lebanon, the secular regime of
President Hafez Assad exercises little direct control over the
Hizballah factions. Certainly, Syria has the military capability
to clean out radical fundamentalist pockets, as it has disarmed
the camps of other warring militias in Lebanon. But as yet,
Assad has not shown an inclination to alienate Hizballah's
backers in Tehran.

    Instead, Assad has been more intent upon building bridges
with affluent Western allies who might take the place of
Assad's former patrons in Moscow. By siding with the anti-Saddam
coalition last fall, Assad placed himself firmly in the moderate
Arab camp. Then he earned George Bush's gratitude by
dispatching Syrian troops to Saudi Arabia to wage war against
Iraq. Assad's agreement last month to go along with the Bush
Administration's peace proposals signaled that Damascus is
willing to trust Washington to make good on its pledge to force
Israel to give up at least part of the Golan Heights. Assad also
aims to get Syria off the State Department's terrorism list,
thus paving the way for normalized relations with the U.S. and
an infusion of American investment and trade.

    Still, some of the old Syrian hostility showed last week,
as Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara'a seized upon McCarthy's
release to tweak Israel. Although the continued imprisonment of
Western hostages by several Hizballah factions shows that Syria
and Iran either cannot or will not assert firm control over all
the kidnappers operating in Lebanon, al-Shara'a insisted the
"only condition" holding up freedom for the remaining Western
hostages was the release of the prisoners held by Israel. Perez
de Cuellar and the British Foreign Office also appealed to
Israel to swap its prisoners for the hostages.

    Despite that mounting chorus, the U.S. insisted that there
should be no deals. The hostages, said White House spokesman
Marlin Fitzwater, should "be released immediately, safely and
unconditionally." The Bush Administration also tried to dampen
expectations of further hostage releases anytime soon. The
caution was intended not only to protect the White House from
political fallout at home in case no other hostages were freed
but also to avoid giving the kidnappers the impression that
renewed public concern about Anderson and his comrades gave them
fresh leverage over the Administration. Says a senior White
House official: "The lesson of the Carter and Reagan
administrations' experience with Iran is that you shouldn't make
heroes out of your hostages."

    The signals from Israel are clear: a deal can be worked
out. With Hizballah no longer demanding the release of
Palestinians jailed for their intifadeh activities, Israel is
willing, even eager, to comply with demands for the release of
the 375 Shi`ites and other prisoners. The sticking point is
seven Israeli prisoners, captured over the years in Lebanon, who
Israel insists must be released as part of the bargain. It is
not known, however, how many of the seven are dead. Last week
Hizballah announced that at least one, Ron Arad, is alive.
Israel is demanding a strict accounting of the seven --
confirmed by the International Red Cross -- before any deal is
made. If Islamic Jihad agrees to those terms, there is still no
guarantee that it is in a position to deliver all seven, dead
or alive.

    There is at least one other wild card: the future of the
Lebanese brothers Mohammed and Abbas Hammadi. The two members
of a prominent Shi`ite family associated with Hizballah are
imprisoned in Germany -- Mohammed for his part in the 1985 TWA
hijacking, Abbas for the abduction of two German businessmen.
Some Lebanese and Syrian officials believe that Leyraud's
seizure was an attempt by a third Hammadi to secure the release
of his brothers. Western intelligence officials say the Hammadi
family has warned the leadership of Hizballah that it will
release none of its hostages until the Hammadi brothers are set
free.

    That leaves the bargaining power of Islamic Jihad weakened
at a time when the organization is finding itself increasingly
politically isolated. McCarthy's and Tracy's release may have
been a desperate attempt to remind an inattentive international
audience of the fundamentalists' agenda. But as the Leyraud
abduction demonstrated, that agenda is fragmented and riddled by
competing demands. Islamic Jihad may also have acted in hopes of
preventing a Syrian disarming of fundamentalist camps in Lebanon
and of gaining new respect from disaffected Shi`ites. Says
Richard Murphy, former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern
and South Asian Affairs: "It's getting pretty lonesome these
days to be a hostage holder."

    Analysts now predict that it may take a series of
bilateral deals to resolve the hostage crisis over the next
several months. Some of the kidnapping clans inside Lebanon,
fearful of Syria's strengthened presence, may react with greater
intransigence, wielding the hostages as protection against
Syrian reprisals. Because of their high profile, Terry Waite and
Terry Anderson, the best-known hostages, may be the last to walk
free. But at least, notes Sir Anthony Parsons, a British Arabist
and a former ambassador to Iran, "everybody is facing in the
same direction." And that is surely the most promising sign to
emerge from the hostage madness in a long time.