Training Our Enemies
By Patrick Devenny
FrontPageMagazine.com October 18, 2005
www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19781

Last month, NBC News correspondent Lisa Myers tracked down one Jihad Jaara,
a veteran Palestinian militant who currently resides in Ireland. Jaara's
career as a terrorist has been a remarkably effective one. As a member of
the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade - a violent militia tied to Yasser Arafat's
Fatah party - Jaara supervised and planned dozens of assassinations and
bombings against a wide-range of American and Israeli targets. One of the
more reprehensible actions authorized by Jaara was the kidnapping of Avi
Boaz, a 72-year-old American architect who was abducted by Al-Aqsa
terrorists while he waited at a Palestinian police checkpoint. His
bullet-riddled body was found a few hours later, dumped just outside of
Bethlehem. Upon being questioned by Myers, Jaara swore that he had renounced
such terrorism, a claim that was dismissed by former associates, who
identified him as an important interlocutor between Hezbollah and various
Palestinian terrorist groups.

What distinguishes Jaara from many of his fellow Palestinian terrorist
leaders is that he plied his bloody trade while simultaneously serving as an
officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, a body assigned with
combating militants.

His official status gave Jaara the ability to travel freely throughout the
territories, enabling him to plan his attacks while enjoying the protection
afforded to Palestinian officials by the Israelis. While his position gave
him some advantages, Jaara was unhesitant when asked what single factor had
most contributed to his transformation into a successful terrorist:
small-arms training supervised by officers of the Central Intelligence
Agency.

The fact that the CIA trained a man such as Jihad Jaara is hardly
surprising. For almost ten years, the American government has been engaged
in a series of hopelessly misguided endeavors designed to train and fund the
Palestinian security services, an initiative which can be deemed, politely,
as a dismal failure. Tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars have
simply disappeared into the covert bank accounts of corrupt Palestinian
officials, while CIA-trainers recklessly lent their considerable combat
expertise to fanatics such as Jaara.

The misguided attempt began in 1996, when the CIA led an effort - engineered
by then deputy director George Tenet - to train the Palestinian authorities
in anti-terror tactics. The initiative was secretly authorized by President
Clinton, who later signed a Presidential order sanctioning the expansion of
the program to include chaperoned tours of the CIA and FBI headquarters
buildings for Palestinian security chiefs. The covert training and funding
operation continued over the next two years, existing wholly outside of the
public's view.

In 1998, President Clinton - anxious to cement his legacy as Middle East
peacemaker - pushed for an expanded and formalized security assistance
effort which would be included as a provision in the Wye River agreement.
While the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was initially
reluctant to accept such an idea, Clinton managed to browbeat the Israeli
delegation into compliance, an acquiescence which ensured the continuation
and growth of the formerly covert training program. In doing so, the
President ignored the warnings of several veteran Israeli counter-terrorist
officials, who repeatedly warned their American counterparts that several
high-ranking Palestinian terrorists such as Al-Aqsa Brigades leader Nasser
Awis were simultaneously serving as senior security officials in the
Palestinian Authority, with responsibility for conducting counter-terrorist
operations.

Within months of the Wye agreement, the first Palestinian trainees arrived
aboard U.S. government aircraft. Their training regimen was rigorous, far
superior to the domestic "boot camps" offered by the Palestinian government
or terrorist groups. The Palestinian units were ferried to various military
installations, where they were given advanced small-arms training on firing
ranges normally used by the U.S. Army and special forces units.
Additionally, the recruits were taught how to effectively protect high-value
targets and "motorcade operations," skills that could easily be transferred
into protecting terrorist leaders from Israeli capture. Many of the former
CIA trainees turned terrorists have since praised the CIA course, including
Jaara, who made a point to extol the CIA's "shooting" course. Perhaps most
disturbingly, however, was that the Palestinian officers were given
"interrogation" training, which, in the hands of those who work in the
espionage services of groups such as Fatah, could prove extremely valuable.

American officials reasoned that - emboldened by their new training -
Palestinian authorities would immediately and aggressively crack down on
terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who were consistently
breaking ceasefire agreements during the late 1990s. To the U.S. government's
dismay, many of the Palestinian security officers quickly joined or began
aiding the very terrorist groups which they had been trained to combat.
Security personnel were also observed transferring arms and their American
training to militia groups such as the Tanzim, which was led by convicted
terrorist Marwan Barghuti.

Indicative of the Clinton administration's staggering ignorance over this
issue was a class of 18 Palestinians brought to a top-secret location near
CIA headquarters in 1998 for a course in "anti-terrorist techniques."
American officials failed to realize, however, that most of the men hailed
from cities where militant infiltration of the police forces was acute, such
as Nablus. Not surprisingly, as detailed in the San Francisco Chronicle,
several of the students went on to become some of the most dangerous
terrorists in the Palestinian territories, including the infamous Khaled Abu
Nijmeh, who used his CIA training to supervise multiple suicide bombings in
2001 and 2002 in Bethlehem. More than half of the original class of 18 went
on to become fighters in the Al-Aqsa brigades.

Beginning in 1999, Israeli government officials began suggesting that the
American training effort be scaled back, in order to better judge its
overall effectiveness. In addition, Prime Minister Ehud Barak complained to
the White House that Yasser Arafat was using his seemingly close relations
with the CIA to bolster his negotiating position, which had become
increasingly aggressive. Tel Aviv's requests fell on deaf ears in
Washington, which stubbornly clung to the pipe dream that Arafat's police
forces would - given enough American aid and training - eventually confront
the various militant organizations. This expectation was abruptly dashed
during the intifada of 2000, in which large numbers of Palestinian police
joined militant groups in fighting the Israeli Defense Force. The sight of
Palestinian police stripping off their uniforms and engaging in raging
street battles with Israeli forces became commonplace. At the same time, the
Palestinian authorities failed miserably to curtain the actions of terrorist
organizations, who operated with total impunity inside the territories.

Apart from the blowback effect precipitated by the Clinton administration's
foolishly training men such as Jihad Jaara and Khaled Abu Nijmeh, the futile
quest to prop up a Palestinian security service has been an unqualified
financial disaster. All told, the U.S. government has squandered almost one
billion dollars in the effort to construct a viable Palestinian state, a
large portion of which has gone into building a Palestinian security force.
Despite this massive amount of funding, the Palestinian services have shown
little signs of progress, as detailed in a July 2005 report compiled on
behalf of the U.S. government by the consulting firm Strategic Assessments
Initiative (SAI). The SAI report stated that, even with millions of American
dollars and years of CIA training, the PA police were wholly ineffective,
wracked with divided loyalties and inferior equipment. Many of its officers,
charged the SAI analysts, were active or complicit in terrorist attacks or
organized crime rings.

Recent events have provided ample evidence of the overall program's failure.
The ongoing chaos in Gaza and the current inability of the Palestinian
Authority to enforce its own disarmament provisions with regard to Hamas
should serve to prove the utter futility of "reforming" the Palestinian
security apparatus. The latest example came on Tuesday, when Palestinian
police officers brazenly stormed the offices of the national legislature,
complaining that they lacked the basic resources to confront the
heavily-armed militant groups. Their lack of weaponry or funding suggests
that the tens of millions of dollars in Western aid which was specifically
earmarked for arming the police had been directed elsewhere, a violation of
the agreed-upon protocols.

Regardless of these past failures, the Bush administration seems determined
to follow a similar path, as training the Palestinian security services
remains at the heart of President Bush's efforts to keep the Palestinians
involved in the negotiation process. Earlier this year, while visiting
London, Secretary of State Rice suggested, "There will need to be some
international effort, and the United States is prepared to play a major role
in that, to help in the training of the Palestinian security forces and in
making sure that they are security forces that are part of the solution, not
part of the problem."

Echoing the Secretary of State's words was President Bush, who - while
meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in May - pledged
to "reform" the PA's security services through a $50 million dollar aid
package, assigning an American general to oversee the process. Just two
weeks ago, American officials in Ramallah proudly announced the transfer of
three million dollars to the Palestinian security services, for the
"enhancement of their capabilities." Additional measures have been approved
by the President, chief among them a CIA-run effort which would give the
Palestinians a supplementary $300 million dollars for security operations.

These recent overtures are the latest example of our government's puzzling
willingness to pour additional millions into anonymous Palestinian coffers,
all in the name of highlighting our "even-handedness" with regard to the
peace process. As we have already witnessed, however, any American
initiative to reform the Palestinian security services is doomed to fail so
long as no credible Palestinian government or judicial systems exists in the
territories. Yet - desperate to accrue some sort of good will from our
erstwhile Arab and European allies - the Bush administration sees fit to
throw such considerations by the wayside, disregarding our security - not to
mention Israel's - in favor of overseas image management.
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Patrick Devenny is the Henry M. Jackson National Security Fellow at the
Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C.