Middle East: A Game of Chances

By Jill Smolowe

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.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola

CAPTION: WHO HOLDS WHOM -- AND WHY

With reporting by Anne Constable/London, Lara Marlowe/Beirut and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington