Middle East Terrorism

Most governments and peoples of the Middle East categorically oppose terrorism. The taking of innocent human life is proscribed under Islam just as it is under Christianity and Judaism. However, a number of radical Middle Eastern states—such as the Islamist military government in Sudan, the Libyan regime of Muammar Qaddafi, the Baathist government of Syria, the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Saddam Hussein's former regime in Iraq—have provided or continue to provide funding and logistical support for terrorist groups.

Such activities have contributed to these governments' international isolation, although the United States has at times exaggerated the extent of support these regimes have provided terrorists in order to further advance other policy goals. U.S. forces bombed Libya in 1985, Iraq in 1993, and Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998 because of their governments' alleged support for terrorism, although some of these air strikes resulted in widespread civilian casualties themselves. In 2001, the U.S.led air strikes played a decisive role in the ouster of the Taliban Poster celebrating Palestinian suicide bomber, Jenin, 2002. Palestinian desire for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories such as the West Bank has led to the formation of several terrorist organizations who utilize violent methods of coercion such as kidnapping, hijackings, and bombings. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS government in Afghanistan, which had provided sanctuary for Al Qaeda. Some intelligence and military officers and other officials in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are believed to have quietly supported Islamist terrorists, although top government leaders largely support antiterrorism efforts.

Far more consequential, however, both politically and in terms of civilian lives, have been acts of state terror stemming directly from armed forces of governments themselves. For example, the Kurdish minorities in Iraq (particularly during the 1980s) and in Turkey (particularly during the 1990s) were subjected to widespread massacres, destruction of villages, and forced relocation, with civilian death tolls in the tens of thousands. In the former case, the United Nations Security Council set up a safe haven for Kurds in the northern part of Iraq following a devastating 1991 Iraqi offensive, the first time the UN had restricted the right of the armed forces of a sovereign country to operate within its internationally recognized borders on human rights grounds. During the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, hundreds of ethnic Greek civilians were killed, and ethnic cleansing uprooted the majority of the population in the northern one-third of the island; killings and forced relocations on a lesser scale occurred in other parts of Cyprus during this period against ethnic Turks. Successive Arab-dominated Sudanese governments contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Christian and animist blacks in the southern part of the country through massacre and forced starvation, more recently targeting black Muslims in the Dafur region in the west. Algerian forces killed thousands of civilians in counter-insurgency operations in the early to mid-1990s. In southern Iraq, Saddam Hussein's armed forces were responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians following an uprising by Shiite Arabs in 1991. In Iran, too, under both the U.S.-backed shah and the Islamic regime that replaced it, thousands of Iranians have been killed by secret police and other government forces. The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan during the fall of 2001 appears to have killed more civilians than the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States that prompted it.

Decades of Israeli bombing and shelling of civilian areas in Lebanon are believed to have resulted in the deaths of more than twenty thousand people. The number of Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli assaults in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip far surpasses the number of Israeli deaths from Palestinian terrorists. Israeli maltreatment of Palestinians under occupation, which has included widespread violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, has been the subject of a series of UN Security Council resolutions demanding that such practices be halted, although the United States has blocked their enforcement and vetoed dozens of similar resolutions. Reports from reputable human rights organizations have also accused Moroccan occupation forces in Western Sahara of widespread abuses, particularly during the initial conquest of the former Spanish colony in 1975.