Stay Just on the Horizon, Please

By Strobe Talbott

Worried Arab rulers want U.S. help, but not if it is too obvious

The area surrounding the Persian Gulf is vital to the industrialized democracies of the world. More than 20% of the U.S.'s oil imports, 56% of Western Europe's and 68% of Japan's come from the gulf. That lifeline is acutely vulnerable to the disruptions of war, revolution and political turmoil. The region has been beset by all three. The conservative Arab states--Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman--face threats to their security at every point of the compass: a simmering, potentially explosive war between Iran and Iraq, armored Soviet divisions in Afghanistan, Soviet proxy forces in South Yemen, and the growing militancy of Islamic fundamentalists everywhere.

The gulf states know that only the U.S. has the power to deter major acts of aggression. But the U.S. is also the chief backer of Israel, and as such, it is the object of as much resentment as reliance. The gulf rulers are afraid that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's determination to annex the West Bank is at least as likely to plunge the region into chaos as are the combined threats of Arab radicalism, Islamic fundamentalism and Soviet adventurism. In that respect, they see the U.S. as part of their problem rather than part of the solution. Therefore the dilemma: even the most pro-Western leaders in the region have been reluctant to cooperate closely and openly with American policies that are intended to bolster their own security.

To help defend the gulf, the U.S. has organized the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (R.D.F.). Established in 1980 after the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the R.D.F. draws on units from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. Its mandate is "to ensure the unimpeded flow of oil" and "to deter aggression from outside [Southwest Asia and the gulf] and to assist nations in the region in resisting aggression." The R.D.F. has headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and until now has inhabited a kind of bureaucratic limbo, falling between the European and Pacific commands of the U.S. military. But as of Jan. 1 the organization will have a "separate unified" command.

That is fine with the nations it is supposed to protect as long as the R.D.F. remains out of sight, but not out of mind. When the U.S. tries to mount training exercises in the area, it encounters political and diplomatic obstacles almost as daunting as the logistical challenge of airlifting halfway around the world the Seventh Marine Amphibious Brigade, which is stationed at Twenty-nine Palms, Calif.

Part of the problem is that the U.S. seems incapable of conducting military maneuvers quietly, without jarring the sensitivities of the moderate Arabs and setting off backlashes. Last year's Operation Bright Star rushed 4,500 R.D.F. personnel to Egypt with great fanfare and the highly publicized spectacle of B-52s bombing targets in the desert. This year, when the Pentagon began planning a new war game, code-named Jade Tiger, Washington discovered that Cairo was reluctant to play. In addition to resenting last year's headlines, the Egyptians were miffed because, in their view, the U.S. had failed to use its influence with the Israelis to advance the West Bank autonomy talks. That was, of course, before President Reagan's initiative of Sept. 1, which was well received in the Arab world, and there is now some chance that the Egyptians may join in the maneuvers after all.

Another participant in the Bright Star exercise of last year, the Sultanate of Oman, said it would take part once again and on a larger scale than last year, but with a condition: no publicity. Then the story leaked in the Washington Post that an elaborate exercise would take place in Oman this month. The Omanis were furious, and the Pentagon was mortified, fearing that the Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said, would pull out.

Qaboos decided not to stop the maneuvers, but ever since there has been a tight lid of secrecy on the operation, and Saudi Arabia has persuaded the Omanis to put off the exercise until later in the year, partly in order to give the dust of the Lebanon crisis more time to settle.

A buffer between the Indian Ocean and Saudi Arabia, Oman (pop. 948,000) is on a permanent state of alert against its neighbor to the southwest, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, or South Yemen, which has the only Marxist regime in the Arab world. Until early 1976 South Yemen fueled a rebellion inside the Dhofar province of Oman, and South Yemen still keeps nine infantry and three artillery battalions, plus 60 Soviet-made tanks, just across the Oman border, as well as 160 more tanks in the rear. The Soviets are expanding an air base at Al Ghaida, a town just down the coast from Oman. The runways there will soon be able to handle the South Yemeni air force's MiG-21s, which Omani officials say are piloted by Cubans, East Germans and North Koreans. Oman's own armed forces include officers from Britain and Baluchi tribesmen from Pakistan on contract to the Sultan.

Omani and Western planners fear that South Yemen, with additional East-bloc backing, might be able to launch a tank attack against the principal Omani airbase at Thamarit in the desert plain north of Salalah, the capital of the Dhofar. An armored column would need only five hours to reach Thamarit. That threat is one of the many contingencies that the U.S. R.D.F. is meant to deter and to thwart if it ever arises. Therefore the Jade Tiger maneuvers will probably have the U.S. Air Force landing large transports at Thamarit, which has one of the longest runways in the world, and U.S. Navy fighters from aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean may practice missions in support of the Omani air force's Hawker Hunter and Jaguar fighter-bombers based at Thamarit. But this time with zero news coverage.

Another key point on the map for both the Omanis and the U.S. is Masirah Island, just off the central coast of Oman. It is 40 miles long, mostly barren rock, a haven for loggerhead sea turtles that come there to lay their eggs and for 200 species of birds, but inhospitable to man except for a few small fishing villages, a relay station for the British Broadcasting Corp., and an Omani airbase. Masirah currently serves as an air-force training facility, and a rather sleepy one at that. Although a Soviet Ilyushin 11-18 reconnaissance plane occasionally lumbers up from South Yemen to look around, the most persistent headache for those who guard the base is keeping camels from wading around the fences at low tide and grazing at the end of the runway.

Masirah is undergoing important changes, however. In exchange for access to the facility in a crisis, the U.S. is spending nearly $170 million over four years to expand and improve the base. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers team is supervising the extension of the main runway and the construction of metal tanks and concrete "igloos" for the storage of fuel, water and ammunition. In the event of a conflict, American transports, fighters and bombers would be able to use Masirah as a staging area, provided the Sultan gave his permission. The U.S. has already used the base as a jumping-off point on one important, though unhappy occasion: the ill-fated attempt to rescue the hostages from Tehran in 1980.

At the northern tip of Oman, on the mountainous, desolate Musandam peninsula, the U.S. has spent $3.6 million to extend and surface the dirt runway at Khasab, a base that supports a naval station at Goat Island, used by Omani patrol boats to police the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the gulf. Iran is only 60 miles away.

In addition to obtaining access agreements for the use of facilities in an emergency, the U.S. is looking for a permanent in-region, onshore forward headquarters for the R.D.F. The leading candidate for what would be a dubious honor in the Arab world is Bahrain, the island emirate off the coast of Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Navy's Middle East Force, a small flotilla that patrols the gulf, already calls regularly at Bahrain and maintains an Administrative Support Unit on a ten-acre compound leased from the local government. The Americans try to be as inconspicuous as possible. They wear civilian clothes on most occasions, and the sailors must stay on their ships most of the time.

Some Pentagon planners argue that Bahrain should become the home away from home for the entire Rapid Deployment Force. But the State Department, out of deference to delicate regional politics, would prefer a more low-key, less formal, less visible arrangement, along the lines of the one that already exists. The Saudis, too, are uneasy about the idea of an R.D.F. command post near by, and they have told the Bahrainis so in no uncertain terms. Said one key Saudi official: "We want the U.S. to stay perhaps not quite over the horizon, but on the horizon--where we can just see it--but not onshore."

In an interview with TIME, the Prime Minister of Bahrain, Sheik Khalifa bin Sulman al Khalifa, said: "I'm all for maneuvers [such as those scheduled for Oman later this year], and I welcome full cooperation with the U.S. in the security of our area, but only on the condition that it is handled and presented properly." Translated, that means "Stay out of sight."

Bahrain's rulers are readier today to take the political risks of opening their country to a more substantial American military presence, because they are more worried than they were a year ago about their security. They are still recovering from the shock of an abortive coup d'etat last December. It was staged by dissident Shi'ites, members of a Muslim sect that dominates Iran and constitutes a majority in Bahrain. The nation is an obvious target for Iranian attempts to export the Ayatullah Khomeini's Islamic revolution. One of the masterminds of the December "incident," as it is called in Bahrain, was Hadi Modaresi, a mullah who had lived in Bahrain during the rule of the Shah and fomented trouble among the Shi'ites there. After the fall of the Shah, Modaresi returned to Iran, and he has been among the principal organizers of the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain. Pro-Western Arab intelligence organizations believe that Modaresi is also head of a so-called Gulf Affairs Section of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and that he has had connections with the Soviet KGB.

For the past several weeks, the Ayatullah has been trying to stir up resentment against the government of Saudi Arabia by including fundamentalist Shi'ite zealots among the Muslims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Speaking for many gulf Arabs, Bahrain's Prime Minister Khalifa says: "The continual upheaval in Iran is a great danger. But subversion is the greatest threat of all. I have no doubt that the U.S. appreciates the scope of this threat."

True enough. But American military and political experts are less sure about what the U.S. could actually do to help a friendly regime like Bahrain's against internal turmoil, even if it were instigated from outside. For two years after the Rapid Deployment Force was created, the official Arabic translation of the name could have been understood to mean "rapid intervention force." That is exactly the connotation Washington wants to avoid, and the Arabic phrase was changed so that there would be no such misunderstanding.

"We are not an interventionist force," insists R.D.F. Commander Lieut. General Robert Kingston. But in fact the R.D.F. does have plans for various contingencies, ranging from mere intelligence sharing to armed assistance if a beleaguered government in the gulf were to call upon the U.S. to provide it. The trouble is, U.S. analysts are hard pressed to imagine a moderate Arab state subjecting itself to--and surviving--the humiliation of having to call the Marines to its rescue. Therefore, says William Quandt, a leading American expert on the Middle East now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, "the gulf states are looking for sources of help that are closer to home and less problematic than excessive reliance on the U.S."

One incipient but promising source is the Gulf Cooperation Council (G.C.C.), a kind of common market joining six countries: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The gulf states had long contemplated the creation of a loose federation, but they were deterred by Iraq, which actively discouraged the idea. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had aspirations to become the regional superpower, especially after the fall of the Shah of Iran. Saddam wanted to keep his neighbors to the south as divided as possible, the better to dominate them. But the Iran-Iraq war changed all that. As Iraq found itself first bogged down inside Iran, then holding off an Iranian counteroffensive, Saddam lost his power to intimidate the gulf Arabs. Moreover, he has needed their political and financial assistance. The gulf states have been pumping about $1 billion a month into Iraq, more than half of it coming from Saudi Arabia. The underwriting of Iraq is the largest transfer of aid among Arabs that has ever taken place. With Saddam suddenly beholden to them, the gulf states have moved ahead in the formation of the G.C.C.

Spurred by the coup attempt in Bahrain in December, the G.C.C.'s police and intelligence organizations have worked much more closely together. The member states are also drafting a collective security agreement and considering the creation of their own rapid deployment force. Their defense ministers are holding a meeting to discuss the plan later this month, and the heads of state will gather early in November. Yet another reason the Saudis urged the Omanis to postpone Jade Tiger was to give the G.C.C. a chance to hold its meetings first.

This kind of regional cooperation is the gulf Arabs' first, and probably best, line of defense, and it makes the U.S. R.D.F. all the more an instrument of last resort. With that in mind, the Administration is seeking congressional permission to sell Bahrain six sophisticated F-5 jet fighters for its fledgling air force.

Arab and American officials alike can imagine those planes being used not just to defend Bahrain but perhaps chipping in to help the United Arab Emirates or one of the other gulf states. Or better yet, their very presence as part of the gulfs collective security forces may contribute to deterring any hostile power in the area from starting anything. Deterrence, in short, begins at home. The more America's friends in the gulf can do to help themselves and each other, the less likely it is that General Kingston's Marines will ever have to hit the beaches there for any reason other than practicing their skills in dry runs like Jade Tiger. --By Strobe Talbott/Gulf States

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