US intelligence agencies determine Arab states' security agendas

[Judi Lynn]

Posted: July 21, 2003 Toll-free: 1 866 MediaNet

Perspective

US intelligence agencies determine Arab states' security agendas

by M. A. Shaikh

US intelligence agencies, whose operatives now maintain a strong presence in Arab capitals and rural areas, play a decisive role in determining what organisations, or individuals, are to be classified as terrorists or financiers of terrorism, and therefore prosecuted or banned. The result is that Arab leaders are devoting most of their time to the ‘pursuit of terrorists’, to the neglect of more pressing social and economic issues. Laws relating to security and human rights have been drastically amended, as have fiscal laws, to facilitate the persecution of ‘suspected terrorists’ and ‘al-Qa’ida sympathisers’, and to block the flow of funds to Islamic organisations (even charities) labelled as such. Arab governments are mobilizing Arab Muslim scholars and ‘intellectuals’ to hold meetings to "reinterpret" the Qur’an and ahadith and depict ‘Islamic extremists’ and their backers as ‘terrorists’.

Arab rulers, who openly back the ‘war on terror’, do not feel it necessary to deny the presence of CIA and FBI agents in their countries. Yemeni president Ali Saleh Abdullah, for instance, admits that the FBI and CIA have offices in his country, as they do in other Arab countries. In an interview with ash-Sharq al-Awsat, an Arabic daily, on June 29, he denied that he had given permission to the US to set up a "regional FBI office", adding that "the agency has only a local office similar to that of the CIA". He made it clear that many Arab states have allowed similar ones to be established in their territories.

Yemen not only has a regional FBI office butalso hosts US troops helping it pursue "terrorist groups" in the south. The FBI office is regional in the sense that its agents, are active in the pursuit of ‘al-Qa’ida terrorists’ in the Horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

But FBI and CIA agents are also active in other Arab countries, especially Morocco and Saudi Arabia, where attacks on May 16 and May 12 provided a pretext for Washington to establish a strong presence, and take over the running of the security machinery. Washington accused Moroccan and Saudi officials of ignoring warnings that the attacks were imminent, and of failing to take pre-emptive action. Both governments gave in to pressure, agreed to receive FBI and CIA agents, and began unprecedented action against Islamic organisations and activists. This tendency to give in to the Americans has grown since September 2001. (snip/...)

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"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

- Samuel P. Huntington