Nationalist Turned Psychopath?

One of the most destructive figures in Palestine’s modern history, who has brought nothing but blood and disgrace to the Palestinian Cause, is the late Sabri al-Banna (Abu Nidal). From Damascus, I received news of his death with extreme passiveness, because as an observer of inter-Palestinian politics, I knew how bad Abu Nidal was. Weather he was killed, or had committed suicide—it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that after living such a bloody life, he had received the death he deserves. His life, drenched in rivalry, assassination and espionage, reminded me of the life of the Lebanese warlord Elie Hobeika, who also received a chilly ending when he was blown apart in a Beirut explosion in January 2002. Over a 30-year career, Abu Nidal killed some of Palestine’s ablest statesmen, alienated foreign countries sympathetic to the Arab Cause, and made the word Palestinian synonymous with the word terrorist. Patrick Seale, the Middle East expert who wrote a biography of Abu Nidal called A Gun for Hire, best described him saying, “he was a nationalist turned psychopath!” This article is an attempt at showing the true side of a man, who occupied world attention long before Osama Bin Laden made it to the international arena. Seale adds that he was “an outlaw and a killer” and confirms that, “to be awash in blood (as Abu Nidal had been), is not a normal human condition.”

Abu Nidal began his career when still a staunch Arab nationalist as a member of the underground Syrian Baath Party in Jordan then moved to Yasser Arafat’s Fateh movement. In 1970, he became Arafat’s envoy to Iraq. In Baghdad, he was bought off by the Baath Party regime of President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and charged with counter-balancing the influence of Arafat. Bakr hated the PLO leader and wanted an effective alternative to bring him down, or least, challenge his moderate authority and his willingness to recognize Israel and conduct peace talks with it. His terror debut, backed by Bakr, was launched in September 1973 when he seized the Saudi Embassy in Paris and took 13 diplomats hostage. They would be freed, he claimed, only if the late King Faisal pressured King Hussein of Jordan to release the thousands of Palestinian guerillas he had abducted in 1970 in Amman. To show he was serious, Abu Nidal ordered his agents to fly over Riyadh and threaten to throw off the hostages, one by one, if Faisal did not immediately comply. This amateur operation ended in failure three days later, but more was yet to come. In response to his madness, an embarrassed Arafat expelled him from Fatah and in October 1974, Abu Nidal tried to kill Abu Mazen, the PLO’s number two man, in revenge. He was tried in abstensia in a PLO court and sentenced to death. This prompted his all-out war against Arafat, claiming that the only way to deal with his Arab opponents was, “the gun, only the gun!”

In January 1978, six months after Menahim Begin’s rise to power in Israel, Abu Nidal began to kill off PLO moderates who were calling for peace talks with Begin and the establishment of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza. All of them, he dismissed as traitors. In January 1978, Abu Nidal murdered Sa’id Hammami, the PLO ambassador in London. In August 1978, Izz al-Dinn al-Qalaq, Arafat’s envoy to France, was slain and a few days later, Yusuf Abu Hantash, his ambassador to Pakistan, barely escaped an assassination attempt. In April 1980, he tried to kill Abu Iyad, the PLO’s intelligence supreme, in Belgrade, and in June 1981, shot Na’im Khudur, the PLO ambassador in Brussels. In July 1981, Abu Dawoud, a veteran PLO commando, barely escaped death in Warsaw and in April 1983, Dr Issam Sartawi, one of the most seasoned Palestinian statesmen and loudest advocates of peace, was gunned down in Lisbon. These were precisely the men who were internationalizing the Palestinian cause and influencing Western public opinion on the Arab-Israeli Conflict. When Syria entered its war in Lebanon in June 1976, President Bakr clashed with the Syrians for their decision to support the Christian militias in their war against the Muslims and unleashed Abu Nidal on them. He declared a Black June in Damascus, similar to the Black September of King Hussein against the Palestinian commandos in 1970, and blew up Syrian embassies in Istanbul and Rome. He planted bombs at the offices of Syrian Airlines in Kuwait and in trashcans scattered across Damascus. In September 1976, his men seized the Semiramis Hotel in downtown Damascus and took 90 people hostage. In October 1977, he tried to kill the then-Foreign Minister Abdul Halim Khaddam. The Syrian Minister escaped, but the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sayf al-Ghubash, was slain instead. When in 1980, Iraq entered its war on Iran, the new President Saddam Hussein needed to brandish his regional and international image, and decided to expel Abu Nidal—who took temporary residence in Syria and offered his services to the Syrian Government.

From Damascus, he provided his new patrons with information on the Muslim Brotherhood, who were waging a war against the Asad regime (and who he had helped train in Baghdad), and pledged to shake the throne of King Hussein, who was also at odds end with the late Asad. In October 1983, the Jordanian Ambassador in New Delhi was killed. In March 1984, Abu Nidal set off a bomb next to the Amman Intercontinental Hotel. In December 1984, he killed the Jordanian envoy to Bucharest and in April 1985, blew up Hussein’s embassy in Rome. In July 1985, the Madrid office of Alia was gunned-down. Fed up, Hussein brought Abu Nidal onto his payroll, where he began to launch attacks on Syria—while still residing on Syrian soil. He set off bombs at the office of the Syrian Arab News Agency in Damascus and the Syrian Minister of Interior and tried to demolish the Syrian Embassy in London. When he fell from grace in both Damascus and Amman, he turned to the Arab Gulf—not for the cause of Palestine, but simply, to make more money! Seale describes him as having become nothing but a “highway robber.” In April 1987, he crashed a Gulf Air plane en route from Dubai to Karachi, and in February 1984, killed the UAE Ambassador to Paris. In June 1982, he killed a Kuwaiti diplomat in Delhi, and in September 1982, murdered another in Madrid. He then moved to the Libyan service and was charged with killing off the opposition members to the Quaddafi regime. Abu Nidal’s former right-hand-man Atif Abu Bakr, who was director of the Revolutionary Council’s political bureau, gave a series of interviews to the London-based al-Hayyat following his ex-master’s death in August 2002, implicating him in the terrorist bombing of the American airplane over Lockerbie in. When the first Intifadah broke out in 1987, Abu Nidal refused to support it or provide it with money, claiming that it was pro-Arafat. He followed the same policy with the regard to the current Intifadah that broke out in September 2000. Instead, he worked to further alienate foreign opinion to the Palestinian cause. He began to kill indiscriminately—not Palestinian opponents, not Arabs, and not Israelis, but foreigners who were un-connected in any way to the Arab-Israeli Conflict. In 1988, he set off a car bomb in Cyprus, killing tens and alienating Cypriot opinion from the Arab Cause. Other senseless killings were made in the Sudan and in Athens, where he attacked a cruiser ship on holiday. He killed off Saudi diplomats and took French children hostages—damaging whatever support that Palestine had in Europe.

Now, he is dead and nobody in the world seems to miss him. The contradicting reports from Baghdad show that even in his death, Abu Nidal arouses controversy. Some claim that President Saddam Husayn ordered his death, to show that he was keen on cracking down on terrorism himself. Supporters of this argument claim that the official Iraqi alibi, which claims that he committed suicide when summoned for interrogation for illegally entering the country on a false passport, is hard-to-believe. First, the Iraqis know, more so than others, that never in his life had Abu Nidal carried a real passport and that all his identity proofs are fake. Arresting him for a fake passport is a bluff. And, in a regime like Iraq, which has recently been rocked by paranoia of a eminent attack by the USA, it is unlikely that someone as controversial as Abu Nidal, who is very well known in Baghdad, would be residing on Iraqi territory without government approval. Another more convincing tale claims that Abu Nidal had been working as a double-agent since the Gulf War of 1991 for both the Kuwaiti and Iraqi Governments. Published in the Paris-based al-Watan al-Arabi, this tale claims that Abu Nidal’s bases on the outskirts of Baghdad were transformed into detention centers for Kuwaitis following the Gulf War. Abu Nidal was able to draft files on the names, location, and condition of all Kuwaiti nationals in Iraq, along with cassette recordings and video footage of their interrogation, and had been negotiating a deal with the Kuwaiti Government to hand them over for $150 million in order to frame Baghdad in light of the upcoming US offensive. This number had been brought down, after much debate, to $100 million. If the Iraqis killed him, however, for the mentioned cause, then they have done humanity a favor. I would not blame Saddam Husayn if he cracked down on a murderer like Abu Nidal. If he killed himself, as the Iraqis claim, it is only natural that a man so immersed in blood, who is so accustomed to taking the life of others, would accept that no one but himself take his own life. Either way, Abu Nidal is dead and the world is a little better than what it was before!.