The Abu Nidal Organization
ABU NIDAL: _ORIGINS, STRUCTURE, AND OPERATIONS
Abu Nidal (Sabri al-Banna) serves as a perfect example of factionalism in the PLO. At one point, Abu Nidal and Yasser Arafat were comrades-in-arms in the struggle for Palestine, but as George Habash, Walid Jabril, and others broke from Arafat, so too moved a rebel organization called Black June. In the end, Abu Nidal and his organization became a mercenary group, not only abandoning Arafat, but also completely forsaking the Palestinian cause.
Patrick Seale (1992), a British veteran Middle Eastern correspondent who has extensive contacts among Palestinian leaders, provides the most comprehensive and objective account of Abu Nidal to date in Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire. According to Seale, Abu Nidal joined Fatah in the hope of regaining a homeland for the Palestinians, but he soon became disillusioned with Fatah, especially with Yasser Arafat. When Arafat began the gradual shift away from terrorism in the early 1970s, Abu Nidal began to take action. In 1973, he authorized the murder of Palestinian moderates and went to Baghdad.
The Iraqis welcomed Abu Nidal with open arms and helped him build the infrastructure to support his own terrorist organization. At first, Abu Nidal’s purpose was to purge Fatah, but the 1975 Lebanese civil war quickly drew his attention. He entered the war with his own agenda, also representing the interests of his Iraqi benefactors.
Seale states Abu Nidal’s relations with the Iraqis started going bad after the rise of Saddam Hussein in 1979. Courting his former enemy, Hafez Assad of Syria, Abu Nidal moved his operations to Damascus in 1983. The Syrians, using their newfound terrorist allies through their air force’s intelligence service, hoped to employ Abu Nidal in Lebanon. They soon found, however, that Abu Nidal was not easy to control. Once ensconced in Damascus, Abu Nidal’s terrorists set up a command and control structure that defied Syrian intervention. He provided some services to his Syrian patrons (for example, he waged an assassination war against Jordan), but the Syrians gradually tired of Abu Nidal’s insubordination. By 1987, he had worn out his welcome, and the Syrians were glad to be rid of him (Wege, 1991).
Seale says Moamar Khadaffy was happy to bring Abu Nidal to Libya. Khadaffy offered financial help and gave Abu Nidal space for recruiting and training terrorists. Most of the group continues to operate from secret bases in Libya today. Although they claim to represent the Palestinian cause, Abu Nidal works as a private contractor. Many of his hit teams have targeted other Arabs, including high-ranking officials of the PLO.
Ilan Peleg (1988, pp. 538–540) traces the origins of Abu Nidal to militant Iraqi rejectionism, an attitude that emerged in 1969. Rejectionism is a Middle Eastern political term meaning unilateral refusal of any peaceful settlement with Israel. Rejectionists rule out any settlement that acknowledges Israel’s right to exist. This stance was the original basis of the Abu Nidal group.
Iraq was one of the more militant rejectionist countries. Like extremists in the PLO, they were appalled by Arafat’s apparent softness toward Israel. The Iraqis also expressed a growing concern over Syrian influence in the PLO and Syrian designs on Lebanon. In 1969, the Iraqis established a PLO splinter group called the Arab Liberation Front to give themselves a voice in the PLO. Militant fedayeen began to gather in Baghdad under Iraqi protection. This attitude explains the warm reception Abu Nidal received in Baghdad in 1973.
Yossi Melman (1986) says the Baghdad mission was a recruiting trip for Arafat, but Abu Nidal turned on the PLO leader because of Arafat’s moderation toward Israel. As a result, Peleg said, Abu Nidal raised and trained 150 to 200 terrorists before leaving for Assad’s protection. David Schiller (1988, pp. 90–107) states that the growth of the Abu Nidal group should have come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Palestinian struggle. Schiller believes the entire movement, from 1920 to the present, has been characterized by violent disagreements and terrorism. He views the factionalism that spawned Abu Nidal as nothing more than a reflection of the nature of Middle Eastern terrorism, and Abu Nidal as just another of the major characters trying to gain control of the PLO.
The birth of the Abu Nidal group may have mirrored standard Middle Eastern terrorism, but the group’s exploits drew more attention than did those of its rival terrorist organizations. Abu Nidal operated on an international level, and he was particularly ruthless. Making no distinction among targets or the types of people in and around targets, Abu Nidal’s terrorists became noted for the harsh brutality of their murderous attacks. His organization’s international exploits gained attention: The world was a battleground for Abu Nidal (see Box 9.2 for a timeline of the development of his group).
Schiller points out that Abu Nidal first broke into the world of terrorism by striking an international target: In the mid-1970s, his group hijacked a British airplane en route from Dubai to Tunis. In a Western magazine interview, Abu Nidal said his first goal was to eliminate Zionism, but his second goal was to destroy the reactionary regimes in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Carl Wege (1991) states that Abu Nidal had widened his war. Israelis, Arabs, and Westerners alike became his targets, and violence started to spiral. Abu Nidal dropped Syria from his list of enemies when Baghdad grew cold.
Both Schiller and Wege separately conclude that during the Syrian phase, Abu Nidal turned his wrath on Jordan and expanded operations to Europe. Seale reinforces this position. Schiller adds that German radicals, increasingly bored with their anti-American campaign because of the end of the Vietnam War, embraced the Palestinian struggle. In return, Abu Nidal embraced them and eventually the East European Communists. By the time of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Abu Nidal had a solid infrastructure in Europe. His group was truly an international terrorist organization.
Seale uses this period to describe Abu Nidal’s fluctuating ideology. At the heart of his actions was a willingness to accept different dogmas. After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Abu Nidal established training centers and support camps in Lebanon. The group’s activities increased, and Schiller says it increased further by the mid-1980s, when Libya was added to its list of supporters. In exchange for Libyan support, the organization was willing to do Khadaffy’s bidding. When the Syrians rejected Abu Nidal, Libya had already prepared for his reception. Abu Nidal was a rejectionist, an Iraqi Ba’athist, a Syrian Ba’athist, and a Khadaffy socialist. Fighting was more important than ideology.
Seale has the best description of the move to Libya and its impact. As Abu Nidal’s followers established bases in Libya, Abu Nidal himself went to Poland. Although his group prospered in Libya, it was less effective during his four-year absence. In addition, in 1991, Abu Nidal faced a revolt from some of his most loyal lieutenants. He purged the group with massacres in Lebanon and assassinations in Libya, while some of his leadership bolted. The internal executions—Seale documents several hundred killings—hurt the group’s effectiveness but saved Abu Nidal’s position.
Since the purge, Abu Nidal has been rebuilding the group through Libya. He runs the organization on fear, and Seale has an outstanding account of the methods Abu Nidal uses to recruit and train terrorists. Abu Nidal’s terrorists are controlled through torture, brainwashing, and individual terror. They are isolated and kept under the constant threat of torture and death for the slightest rule infractions. Many of his actions appear to be irrational, but they allow him to rule through fear and intimidation. Despite the purges and the defections, the group’s infrastructure allows Abu Nidal to remain active in the world of murder and mayhem.
Seale gives a thorough picture of the group’s organizational structure. Although the organization looks like many other terrorist groups, Abu Nidal has been successful because his group is so well-ordered. According to Seale, Abu Nidal rules by contempt and browbeating. His organization is managed by three groups: a small Political Bureau, a Central Committee, and a Revolutionary Council (see Figure 9.2). The Political Bureau is the most important, and Abu Nidal personally commands it from Tripoli.
The Secretariat is the staff organization of the Political Bureau, and in military terms, it would be considered the command-and-control structure. According to Seale, it is currently based in Lebanon and commanded by Abu Nidal’s second, Dr. Ghana al-Ail. All operations, except those from the Committee for Revolutionary Justice, are centered in the Political Bureau and cleared through the Secretariat.
Several committees support overall operations. Terrorist operations are the mainstay of the organization, and they are controlled by the Military Committee. Other committees support terrorist operations. The functions of these committees include intelligence, finance, technical support, a people’s army in Lebanon, membership, and special missions. The most important internal group is the Committee for Revolutionary Justice. Its purpose is to terrorize the terrorists into proper behavior. This no small task. Over the years, Abu Nidal has killed over one-third of his followers for suspected breaches of discipline. Except for the Japanese Red Army, few terrorist groups have spent so much time murdering their own followers.
Organization differs little from other large terrorist groups. By changing the names of some of the various committees, one might think one was looking at the Provisional Irish Republican Army or Uruguay’s Tupamaros. The unique aspect of Abu Nidal’s organization is that it is based in several nations, and this presents a problem for security forces. Seale also points out that splintering has been minimized in the terrorist group by the constant purges. Except for the revolt in 1989, Abu Nidal’s constant internal murders have minimized splintering.
Marighella and Guevara
THE THEORY OF URBAN TERRORISM
The first wave of modern terrorism appeared in Africa and Asia after 1945. For the next 20 years, nationalistic rebellions broke out against Western colonial powers in struggles for independence. Some of the movements involved long guerrilla wars, while others involved terrorism. Some rebels, especially those in Latin America, equated economic revolution with national revolution, giving birth to ideological terrorism. Whether motivated by nationalism or ideology, the practice of modern terrorism began to gravitate toward one of two models: urban terrorism or guerrilla warfare.
The model for modern urban terrorism was intellectually championed by Frantz Fanon. Born on Martinique in 1925, Fanon studied medicine in France and became a psychiatrist. When Algeria revolted from French rule in 1954, Fanon was sent to Algiers, the capital of Algeria, to work in a mental hospital. His experiences there caused him to side with the rebels.
Fanon believed the pressures caused by exploitive imperialism were the primary causes for mental illness in Algeria. He produced two works, The Wretched of the Earth and A Dying Colonialism, as a result of his Algerian experiences. He died of cancer in 1961, a year before the Algerian War ended, unable to play a leading role in revolutions; his thought, however, was strongly imprinted on Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon indicts colonial powers and calls on all the colonized to practice terrorism. He writes that Western powers have dehumanized non-Western people by destroying their cultures and replacing them with Western values. Even when Westerners are not present, they are represented by a native middle class that embraces Western values and turns its back on the general population. Native culture is forgotten by the middle class as native intellectualism is replaced by Western traditions. The masses end up suffering a perpetual identity crisis: To succeed, they are forced to deny their heritage. Fanon argues the natives can only follow one course of action. He calls them to revolution.
To be sure, Fanon was no Gandhi. His only argument was for violent revolt, including guerrilla warfare and acts of terrorism. He claimed decolonization was destined to be a violent process because it involved replacing one group of powerful people with another group. No group would willingly surrender power. Therefore, according to Fanon, achieving freedom was inherently violent. Political action and peaceful efforts toward change were useless. Only when oppressed people recognized that violence was their only alternative would they be assured of victory. Fanon saw guerrilla warfare and individual acts of terrorism as tools of revolution. Guerrilla war was the initial method of revolt because Third World revolutionaries could not mount direct, conventional campaigns at the beginning of their struggles. Fanon’s concept of guerrilla warfare was based in rural revolution, but urban terrorism would become the major weapon rendering colonial administration impotent.
Terrorism was to be limited to specific acts. Fanon argued that terrorism should not be used against the native population in general. Like Communist Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Dze Dong, he believed it would alienate supporters. Instead, he proposed two targets for terrorism: white settlers and the native middle class. The purpose of terrorism was to terrorize Westerners and their lackeys into submission. Individual murders, bombings, and mutilations would force the white settlers to leave the country and frighten the native middle class away from their colonial masters. Brutality would be the example. It would bring on government repression, but this would only cause more natives to flock to the terrorist cause.
Popular throughout the Third World, Fanon’s ideas flourished in Latin America (see Figures 8.1 and 8.2 for maps of Latin America). Beginning in Brazil, some revolutionaries believed the city would be the focus of Latin American revolution, and they embraced Fanon’s idea of urban terrorism. They felt a revolutionary could create the context for an impromptu general uprising through the use of spontaneous violence. Directly reflecting Fanon, these revolutionaries believed terrorism could communicate with the people and infuse them with the spirit of revolt. The foremost proponent of this idea in Latin America was Carlos Marighella.
Marighella was a Brazilian legislator, a leader of the nationalist Communist party, and eventually a fiery revolutionary terrorist. He was killed by Brazilian police in an ambush in São Paulo in 1969. In two major works, For the Liberation of Brazil and The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, Marighella designed practical guides for terrorism. These books have had more influence on recent revolutionary terrorism than any other set of theories.