Customer Reviews

Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (American Empire Project)

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Anyone interested in learning about the true dynamics behind Hamas's reportedly "shocking" victory in recent Palestinian elections may want to pursue this book's many stirring revelations about Hamas's roots. Dreyfuss reports that Israeli intelligence--particularly the Mossad--not only endorsed but participated in the creation and development of Hamas as an organization that could be used to defeat the PLO. "In the early 1980s", Dreyfuss writes, "Israel supported the Islamists on several fronts. It was, of course, supporting the Gaza and West Bank Islamists that, in 1987, would found Hamas . . . They were trying to defeat Arab nationalism with Muslim zealots." Hamas's recent electoral victory was hardly the surprise that mainstream media reported it to be. In reality, it was a rather predictable response to a gradual increase in support for Hamas over recent years inspired by the marginalization of Arafat and the PLO by Bush and Sharon (conspicuously absent from Dreyfuss's analysis, however, is that corruption within the Fatah party also contributed to Hamas's surge in popularity). As Dreyfuss's book documents, "in 1996, only 15 percent of Palestinians backed the Islamists", but, by 2002, that support had risen to 42 percent.

Contrary to what some may think, "Devil's Game" helps readers understand that Islamic fundamentalists are adamantly opposed to Arab nationalist movements such as Arafat's PLO on religious grounds. This includes opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, a concept of far less importance to Islamists than their agenda of "first Islamizing Palestine and the Arab world." Admittedly, one cannot help but wonder whether Dreyfuss shoots himself in the foot here, given that a major contention of his introduction is that peace between Palestinians and Israelis would end much of the current strife between east and west. Dreyfuss's analysis opens the door to another possibility--though apparently without the author's comprehension: perhaps Islamist assertions that tensions between Israel and Palestinians motivates their campaign of terror is actually a front designed to perpetuate their fundamentalist indoctrination of the region. The PLO's association with movements to "modernize" the Arab world by allowing for a comparatively more secular society provoked the bitter and vengeful disdain of Islamists. While the PLO sought to "secularize" The Islamic University in Gaza, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood from which Hamas emerged fought violently to "preserve its Islamist character".

Reading Dreyfuss's book within the context of Hamas's recent triumph further enhances the allure of this absorbing read. It becomes especially amusing, for instance, to listen to Israeli officials denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization in the wake of their recent democratic victory--as if they didn't know what Hamas was back when they found it convenient to shake hands with them. Israeli officials continue to brilliantly manipulate Islamists to their advantage, as evidenced by Sharon's strategically-timed visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in 2000 just when a "comprehensive deal" was about to be achieved between Barak, Arafat and Clinton. The temple visit was calculated to destroy these negotiations by inciting Islamists into violence, and it worked with stunning and terrifying success.

The CIA translated the Islamists' violent resistance to nationalism in the Arab world as vehement anti-communism that could be used to stave off the USSR's influence in the region. The U.S. routinely supported Islamist movements from the early stages of the Cold War era on into much more recent years, forging relationships with any fundamentalist group or leader that American intelligence viewed as a tool against communism, despite knowledge of their involvement in terrorism or human rights abuses. The cataclysmic flaw in this policy became especially apparent after the U.S. left Afghan freedom fighters out to dry when the USSR withdrew from battle there. An entire force of CIA-trained Jihadists was abandoned without any regard for where they would invest their acquired skills, leaving a wasteland of warlords to reign over an Afghanistan that would soon give birth to the Taliban and bin-Laden's Al-Qaeda organization, which absorbed much of the suddenly unemployed freedom fighters into a militantly anti-western army whose influence spread across many nations. "We knew exactly who these people were, and what their organizations were like, and we didn't care" says a Rand corporation expert on political Islam. While Dreyfuss's notably balanced investigation into this topic tends not to explicitly link 9/11 to the history of American policy in the mid-east, it is fairly difficult for the reasonable reader to conclude otherwise. Even Dreyfuss cannot help but indulge in the ominous observation that the consequences of this environment "would become painfully obvious on September 11, 2001." Such a conclusion is consistent with the kind of "blowback" which, as Dreyfuss's narrative suggests, was an inevitable consequence of American ignorance, avarice, arrogance and fear.

While Dreyfuss consistently characterizes America's approach to fundamental Islamist movements as a naive policy based on an ignorant underestimation of the fundamentalist movement, the boundless strategic and corporate advantage behind Western and Israeli support for Islamic fundamentalism over the past 60 years suggests that they knew exactly what they were doing and simply did not care about possible consequences. It may not be a matter of ignorance, but rather a matter of willful near-sightedness without any regard for future implications of current policies. Such "near-sightedness" appears to have been motivated in no small part by an American Cold War strategy that favored the interests of international corporations in the Arab world, including funds for the dissemination of Islamist propaganda and visits to Eisenhower's Oval Office by Muslim fundamentalist organizer and likely U.S. intelligence agent Said Ramadan, provided by such companies as Aramco, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, U.S. Airlines, Pan Am, TWA and Chevron. You do the math.

Two perfect--if not essential--companion pieces to Dreyfuss's excellent book are Chalmers Johnson's "Blowback" and "the Sorrows of Empire", which further explore the motives behind American exploits in the mid-east while documenting their tragic ramifications for global stability.

Devil's Game" is an account of our efforts over six decades to cultivate the Islamic right in an effort to dominate the Middle East. Dreyfuss contends that this is greatly to blame for the emergence of Islamist terrorism in the 1990s.

In the 1950s, the enemy was not only Moscow, but also Third World emerging nationalists in Egypt and Iran. Thus, the CIA tried to overthrow Nassar, despite his immense popularity, because of his independence vs. the Cold War, and worked with the Muslim Brotherhood - a member even tried to assassinate Nassar. Meanwhile, in Iran the CIA got the most political ayatollahs to support an overthrow of the elected government (it had nationalized oil assets) and restore the Shah (the U.S. got 40% of oil rights in return); what was not recognized at the time was the key importance of a young ayatollah involved - Khomeini's mentor, as well as Khomeini himself. In the '60s Arab socialism spread from Egypt to Algeria, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. To counteract this seeming threat the U.S. joined with Saudi Arabia to export its Wahhabi religious right and Muslim Brotherhood factions. Even after the Iranian revolution of '79, the U.S. failed to recognize that Islamism was a dangerous force.

Carter's inauguration alarmed the Shah and encouraged Iranian opposition groups - both due to U.S. pressures and memories of Kennedy's earlier thoughts of replacing the Shah with a less authoritarian regime. Sensing blood the clergy began to mobilize the wealthy landed population against land reform, the Shah was overthrown, and soon we were in the midst of the 444-day hostage crisis.

Dreyfuss's most stunning account, however, involves the CIA's assistance to Afghan rebels PRIOR to the Soviet's invasion, and that it was INTENDED to provoke that reaction. Then, to help insure that the Soviet military was then bled to death, the CIA helped train insurgents, sent billions to Pakistan for allocation to insurgents, and even allowed recruiting within the U.S. The Afghanistan insurgency also led to the development of strong funding from private sources within Saudi Arabia, as well as the government's matching U.S. support. Regan's CIA Director Casey then got Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, driving prices down from $28/barrel to $10 - effectively shutting off Russia's source of foreign currency. Finally, Casey pushed the Saudi-Pakistan alliance to launch propaganda, sabotage, and guerilla activity into the Soviet Union's Muslim republics (a dangerous tactic, to say the least - could have led to retaliation against Pakistan). During the multi-year war, another long-term result was that most Afghan moderate leaders were killed.

Dreyfuss concludes that only by rapidly withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, reducing our reliance on the Gulf, and reversing U.S. support for Israel can the U.S. undercut the resentment and hatred fueling Islamism.

Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Berlin; these are the places of confrontation one thinks of when one considers the Cold War between the USA and the USSR. But there was one region often missed, yet which is influencing world events even now; the Middle East. It is here that the West in general, and the USA specifically, committed various acts and supported fiends of all sort in its endeavor to stop the spread of communism.

Starting in the early 1900s, and picking up after WWII, western powers fought against nationalistic groups throughout N. Africa and the Middle East. They did this by allying with and aiding local Muslim fundamentalist organizations, such as the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia, the ayatollahs in Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The nationalist groups were secular and progressive, and made easy targets for the religious fervor of the Islamists to campaign against them in various ways overt and covert. This was encouraged by the US thru the CIA, the embassies, international organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, and treaties of all sorts. The initial results were civil strife throughout the Arab world. This was followed by the rise of Islamist groups throughout the Muslim world, most noticeably the rise of Hamas in Palestine.

By reading this book, one comes to understand that the actions of the US during the Cold War helped to create Al Queda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and various other Muslim fundamentalist groups both local and international. This then was the Devil's game that the US played. By siding with Islamists the US betted that together they could defeat communism. This happened, but what came after might be a lot worse.

Robert Dreyfuss, an American journalist who covers national security for Rolling Stone magazine, has written a splendid book, part of the very useful American Empire Project. He shows how the US state has followed the British Empire's example of funding and backing right-wing fundamentalist Islamic activist groups to defeat Arab nationalism.

From 1885 on, the British state fostered a pan-Islamic alliance against Russia and the Ottoman Empire. It also backed Ibn Saud, leading to the creation of Saudi Arabia, the Hashemites, who became kings of Iraq and Transjordan, the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist party, and Haj Amin, the mufti of Jerusalem.

After World War Two, the US state took over Britain's role. In the 1950s it used the Muslim Brotherhood against President Nasser of Egypt and Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran. From 1957 on, it allied with Saudi Arabia, whose money funded Islamist banks and madrassas across the world. In the 1970s, the US state used fundamentalists in Jordan and Israel against Syria and the PLO. From 1973 on, it funded the mujehadin in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden.

Dreyfuss shows that Al Qa'ida is not an existential threat to the USA. It has no access to weapons of mass destruction and since 9/11 it has not fired a shot in the USA. Bush inflated the threat from Al Qa'ida to create a pretext for US expansion into the Middle East and Central Asia. Dreyfuss argues that the US state could have destroyed Al Qa'ida without attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. He maintains that the war on terror was the wrong response to 9/11. It has not led to democracy or security but to tyranny, war and reaction.

The US state is now supporting Iraq's Islamists and still backs the feudal autocracy of Saudi Arabia. As usual, it is backing the worst people in every country, and the worst people back it. Instead, we need to back a Palestinian state and get the USA to withdraw its military presence from the Middle East.

U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East over the years has helped to create a monster. Adapting a policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", without understanding Islamic fundamentalism, has empowered the jihadists and backfired on us. Devil's Game begins with how the British used the fundamentalists to try to maintain their empire, by preventing Egyptian pan-Arabism, and supporting Saudi Islamism. Dreyfuss details how the United States, in its war on communism, abandoned secular Arab nationalist leaders in favor of militant Islamic radicals. The abandonment of Nasser and the support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are given a lot of focus in this book. The fear was that the nationalist leaders would lean towards communism, since they were engaged in such abominations as nationalizing industries.

In the case of the Shah, we ignorantly hung on to a peacock feather dictator on his way out, who had no popular support, all the while grossly underestimating the fundamentalist threat in Iran. The failure to anticipate the Iranian revolution was a huge intelligence failure. The CIA was focused on clandestine minutia, while ignoring the political winds by watching mundane sources. Then there were attempts at courting Iran's fundamentalists, figuring they would be tough on communism and a bulwark against the Soviets. Ironically, they may have hated us more than they hated the Soviets, since Iran opened some trade with them.

Israel also made its mistakes. The chapter on the Mossad's clandestine support of Hamas is timely, considering Hamas' electoral victory in Palestine. The Mossad used Hamas to drive a wedge in the secular PLO.

Timely and important, read this and watch daily events in the Middle East unfold as a result of the blunders of our foreign policy. Dreyfus provides a good place to start figuring out what went wrong with such hotspots as Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Any one of these is deserving of a large volume or two. Yet Dreyfus manages to support his thesis on each of these areas. This is an important addition to a collection supporting the thesis that the biggest threat to national security is our blundering national security establishment. Not a conspiracy - they only wish they were that skillful.

America has been the biggest supporter of international Islamism in the world, indeed, and a major financial source for it to get on its legs. However the role of America and the victories of Islamists have only sometimes coalesced.

Let us do a rundown:
Militant Islam begins in the early 20th century in Egypt among the Muslim Brothers and in Saudi among the Wahabbis and in Pakistan. Militant Islam gains its first victories in Iran(1979) and unleashes the Algerian civil war, then beats the Russians in Afghanistan, takes over Sudan. Then it spreads to Lebanon in the 1980s, Egypt as well and Pakistan and then into Europe in Bosnia in 1990s and Chechnya as well. Then there is 9/11. All the while it maintains Saudi as a rear bease.

America's support for this long history is scattered. America bankrolled the war in Afghanistan against the Communists. America supported the Muslim Brothers against Nasser in the 50s and 60s. America was involved in Bosnia and sided with Militant Islam against the Serbs. The case for American support of Hamas is tangential, and more an Israeli blunder. America had its first battle with Militant Islam in Lebanon in 1982. America ignored the Algerian Civil war. '

The truth is more blurry than this volume makes out. America didnt create militant Islam. America helped it grow. However America didnt 'cause' 9/11 anymore than America caused the Holocaust or America caused the Bombing of Pearl Harbor. Rather like in the latter cases, America is part of the picture. The choice to kill people in suicide mission is the fault and responsibility of the terrorist and his leader. America hopefully has learned from this disasterous policy, however in the case of Pakistan and Saudi, perhaps America is still blind.

Seth J. Frantzman

I've only read the Introduction to Devil's Game, but if it is typical of the whole book, readers are in for quite a lively and insightful narrative. While describing the long historical developments that created the right-wing fundamentalism of the Islamist movement, Dreyfuss reminds us of the more mainstream secular, religious, and political currents in the Arab/Muslim world-and why U.S. policy chose to ignore or oust more moderate but "less reliable" leaders from power. He vividly shows us how a Cold War "maginot line" strategy of extreme Islamist regimes from Turkey through Pakistan was meant to hold and even destabilize the Soviet empire.

Dreyfuss details how successive U.S. administrations directly or indirectly supported the numerous fanatical fundamentalist Islamist organizations: the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Wahabbis-empowering Frankenstein monsters throughout a region that U.S. policy makers understood primarily through a prism of fictional or prejudicial images.

Devil's Game also shows how the demise of Iraq strengthened, not weakened, the Islamist fundamentalist fanatics and how ignoring the remaining Arabists in the U.S. left the planning for the Iraq war to "be carried out by know-nothings."

The lively narration of the Introduction of Devil's Game alone is worth the full cover price, but the book gives much more.

Three themes from Dreyfuss's work which helped me gain insite into politics of the Middle East..

(1) Secular Governments v Political Islam: Dreyfus gives a historical overview of how both British/US/Israel/ have cynically supported muslim funadmentalist organizations to undermine nationalism and secular governments. The roots start from the Muslim Brotherhood during British domination which have resulted in many offshoots such e.g., Hamas, Hezbolla and Al Qaeda.

(2) How Saudi Arabia, through organizations such as the Muslim World League have dissiminated educational/ religious fundamentalism in part to manipulate the politics of countries which dovetail with Western/Isreali interests. Also, the House of Saud sponsoring "Jihads" which serve as a safety valve to deflect fundamentalist discontent within Saudi Arabia... So we see Jihads in Afghanistan and the former Yugoslav republic.

(3)Islamic finance/banking: How western multinationals like Citibank helped sponsor/underwrite Islamic finance. Islamic finance is a form of social control by undermining secular governments and provides cover for western economic & political penetration/ serves as a bridge to relay western consumerism.

A great read!

The tie in to the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh is wonderful.

The only thing I could wish for is a companion volume showing how Britain exploited hatred between Moslems and others, especially Hindus, and even created the first schools that taught religious hatred as part of their divide-and-conquer strategy.

I gave this 5 stars because while most people are unfortunately still not clued in on the Carter/Brzezhinsky/Shah and Reagan admin and CIA and ISI roots of the mujaheddin, bin laden, and the taliban, even those people who are clued in don't usually look at the big picture or the long run. Once you realize this is old hat and that the technique has been passed down personally from operative to operative and government to government, a lot of what seems almost absurd or insane as a policy becomes understandable.

I do a fair amount of this sort of reading and a great deal of research quality reading on the Middle East in particular, yet I found that this book put things together for me far far better than anything I've prefiously come across. Suddenly, after a great deal of reading on the Middle East I feel like I have a strong foundation in the fundamentals which have been at work through the history of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the Middle East. Thank you Robert Dreyfuss !!

Also, as other reviewers have pointed out, it's very well-written and well-referenced. It is very helpful in understanding what is going on in the Middle East today (March 2007).