Terrorism

By John Greenwald

Amid the kidnapings that have tormented Beirut in recent years and sown frustration and despair in Western capitals, Anglican Envoy Terry Waite has been a calm symbol of hope. In five missions to Lebanon, the 6-ft. 7-in. troubleshooter has established himself as one of the few Westerners able to bargain with the terrorists holding foreigners hostage. So it was all the more disturbing last week when Waite himself, who vanished Jan. 20 during his latest mission, appeared to have become a captive. While reports of Waite's kidnaping remained unconfirmed, they steadily grew more alarming. Over the weekend Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze militia that has taken responsibility for Waite's safety in Lebanon, was said to have offered himself to Waite's abductors as a hostage so the envoy could go free.

Waite's disappearance was the most dramatic development last week in a Beirut hostage crisis that seemed to be getting completely out of hand. From the White House to 10 Downing Street, leaders struggled to cope with the deteriorating situation. In less than a month nine foreigners, including three U.S. citizens, were seized in the violence-torn Lebanese capital, bringing the number of foreign captives to 24. The Reagan Administration responded last week by ordering U.S. citizens out of Lebanon and strengthening its naval presence in the Middle East. In London the Archbishop of Canterbury sent urgent messages to Beirut seeking news of Waite. In Bonn authorities feared that more West Germans would be seized in addition to the two kidnaped in retaliation for last month's arrest of a terrorist wanted for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner.

Casting a lengthening shadow over all the frenzied activity was the crippling embarrassment of U.S. arms sales to Iran. Since last November, when the secret deals first became known, counterterrorist experts have been worried that the transactions could spur more hostage taking. They reasoned % that the weapons sales, aimed partly at securing Iran's help in winning freedom for kidnaped Americans in Lebanon, would be seen as capitulation to terrorist demands.

Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament, last week gave credence to their concern by expressing support for the kidnapers. Speaking of recent abductions, Rafsanjani declared, "The people of Lebanon are so ignored and so oppressed that they have no defense for themselves other than this."

Whatever their immediate motives, Lebanon's Shi'ite terrorists, who revere Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and want to turn Lebanon into a fundamentalist Muslim state, have embarked on an orgy of abductions since the beginning of the year. Of the 24 foreign captives now being held in Lebanon, eight are Americans, six Frenchmen and two West Germans. Recent victims include two Saudi Arabians, a sign that the terrorists may be trying to pressure the Saudis to moderate their support for Iraq in its six-year-old war with Iran.

For all their notoriety, the captors remain a bewildering collection of groups that Western intelligence agencies know little about. All appear to be allied with the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hizballah, or Party of God, which seems to be largely controlled by Iran. The terrorist groups -- Islamic Jihad, Revolutionary Justice Organization and the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth -- may compete with one another and goad one another on. Or, as Secretary of State George Shultz observed last week, "It is our basic information that, with whatever names may emerge, they are to a substantial degree linked together. We also observe some very strong ties to Iran."

In Beirut a previously unknown group called Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine responded to U.S. naval movements by warning that it would kill the three Americans and one Indian national kidnaped from Beirut University College two weeks ago if the U.S. attacked Lebanon. Along with the message, they released a photo showing Hostage Robert Polhill, 52, an accounting lecturer from New York, with automatic weapons aimed at his head. The other captives: Alann Steen, 47, a journalism instructor who previously taught at California's Humboldt State University; Jesse Jonathan Turner, 39, a mathematics professor from Boise; and Mithileshwar Singh, chairman of the business-studies division. The kidnapings set off a wave of student protests that sent thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Beirut.

Nowhere was consternation over the hostages greater than in Washington, where both the Administration and Congress came near to blaming the victims for their own abductions. In a White House statement, President Reagan conceded that "there is a limit to what our Government can do for Americans in a chaotic situation such as that in Lebanon." The State Department barred U.S. citizens from traveling to Lebanon and said it would revoke U.S. passports of Americans living there. However, most of the 1,500 residents who are affected by the order also have citizenship in other countries.

The arms deals last week claimed a victim of a different sort. In Los Angeles, Triad America Corp., a cornerstone of the U.S. business empire of Saudi Arms Dealer Adnan Khashoggi, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Khashoggi lost millions of dollars in the secret weapons sales.

West Germany, which holds suspected TWA Hijacker Mohammed Ali Hamadei, 22, in a Frankfurt jail, wrestled with its own problems. The capture of Hamadei, who is wanted in the U.S. for the hijacking and the murder of Navy Diver Robert Stethem, seemed to have led to the kidnaping of the two West Germans in Beirut two weeks ago and helped set off the recent rash of abductions. Some German officials fear that giving in to U.S. pressure for speedy extradition of Hamadei could lead to more West German kidnapings. Still, the Germans last week arrested Abbas Ali Hamadei, 30, the suspect's brother, at the Frankfurt airport.

No government was able to come any closer to developing a long-range policy to cope with terrorist kidnapings. The U.S., for its part, indulged in some saber rattling. The Navy ordered the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, originally scheduled to leave the eastern Mediterranean in mid-February, to remain on station. The Nimitz, the other carrier in the area, canceled port calls in Italy, France and Spain.

Otherwise, Washington was clearly without new ideas. Declared Secretary of State Shultz: "If there's a silver lining, it's that there has emerged a broader and deeper appreciation in our own body politic about why it is not a good idea to get involved in trading for hostages." But the damage to America's image as a nation that stands up to terrorism has already been done. "It's going to be hard to make this stick after the Iran thing," conceded a senior U.S. diplomat. Indeed, the disappearance of Waite may have provided evidence of that. In the aftermath of the scandal over secret U.S. arms sales % in exchange for hostages, the temptation to seize and hold the Anglican envoy as a bargaining chip may have been too great for terrorists to resist.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo and Johanna McGeary/Washington