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"The most clear and engaging history of the deadly, historic partnership between Western powers and political Islam."―Salon.com
Devil's Game is the first comprehensive account of America's misguided efforts, stretching across decades, to dominate the strategically vital Middle East by courting and cultivating Islamic fundamentalism.
Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with dozens of policy makers and CIA, Pentagon, and foreign service officials, Robert Dreyfuss follows the trail of American collusion from support for the Muslim Brotherhood in 1950s Egypt, to links with Khomeini and Afghani jihadists, to longstanding ties between radical Islamists and the leading banks of the West. The result is as tragic as it is paradoxical: originally deployed as pawns to foil nationalism and communism, extremist mullahs and ayatollahs now dominate the landscape, thundering against freedom of thought, science, women's rights, secularism―and their former patron.
Chronicling a history of double-dealing, cynical exploitation, and humiliating embarrassment that continues to this day, Devil's Game reveals a pattern that, far from furthering democracy or security, ensures a future of blunders and blowback.
- Sales Rank: #639696 in Books
- Brand: Dreyfuss, Robert
- Published on: 2006-10-03
- Released on: 2006-10-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .89" w x 5.50" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. One of the CIA's first great moments of institutional reflection occurred in 1953, after American covert operatives helped overthrow Iran's left-leaning government and restored the Shah to power. The agency, then only six years old, had funded ayatollahs, mobilized the religious right and engineered a sophisticated propaganda campaign to successfully further its aims, and it wanted to know how it could reapply such tradecraft elsewhere, so it commissioned an internal report. Half a century later, the most prescient line from that report is one of caution, not optimism. "Possibilities of blowback against the United States should always be in the back of the minds of all CIA officers," the document warned. Since this first known use of the term "blowback," countless journalists and scholars have chronicled the greatest blowback of all: how the staggering quantities of aid that America provided to anti-Marxist Islamic extremists during the Cold War inadvertently positioned those very same extremists to become America's next great enemy. (Indeed, Iran's religious leaders were among the first to turn against the United States.) Dreyfuss's volume reaches farther and deeper into the subject than most. He convincingly situates America's attempt to build an Islamic bulwark against Soviet expansion into Britain's history of imperialism in the region. And where other authors restrict their focus to the Afghan mujahideen, Dreyfuss details a history of American support—sometimes conducted with startling blindness, sometimes, tacitly through proxies—for Islamic radicals in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria. At times, the assistance occurred openly through the American private sector, as Dreyfuss describes in a fascinating digression on Islamic banking. But ultimately, too few government officials were paying attention to the growth and dangers of political Islam. A CIA officer summarizes Dreyfuss's case when he says, "We saw it all in a short-term perspective"—the long-term consequences are what we're facing now. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In an effort to thwart the spread of communism, the U.S. has supported--even organized and funded--Islamic fundamentalist groups, a policy that has come back to haunt post-cold war geopolitics. Drawing on archival sources and interviews with policymakers and foreign-service officials, Dreyfuss traces this ultimately misguided approach from support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1950s, the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, the ultraorthodox Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, and Hamas and Hezbollah to jihads in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden. Fearful of the appeal of communism, the U.S. saw the rise of a religious Right as a counterbalance. Despite the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the declared U.S. war on terrorism in Iraq, Dreyfuss notes continued U.S. support for Iraq's Islamic Right. He cites parallels between the cultural forces that have promoted the religious Right in the U.S and the Middle East and notes that support from wealthy donors, the emergence of powerful figures, and politically convenient alliances have contributed to Middle Eastern hostilities toward the U.S. A well-researched and insightful book. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Eye-opening, original, and important.” ―Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire
“Crisp, lively . . . Provides a concise and readable account of the evolution of America's partnerships with radical Islamic groups and regimes.” ―The American Conservative
Most helpful customer reviews
75 of 84 people found the following review helpful.
Blowback
By Gianmarco Manzione
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.
27 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Thought-Provoking!
By Loyd Eskildson
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.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Shows that playing with fire is not a good idea
By William Podmore
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.
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