[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: It would be usefull to have some examples of
other Red Team reports to see the extent that they present serious rational
alternatives or instead are intellectual exercizes in the extreme.]

Red Team
CENTCOM thinks outside the box on Hamas and Hezbollah.
BY MARK PERRY Foreign Policy JUNE 30, 2010
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/29/red_team?page=full

While it is anathema to broach the subject of engaging militant groups like
Hizballah* and Hamas in official Washington circles (to say nothing of
Israel), that is exactly what a team of senior intelligence officers at U.S.
Central Command -- CENTCOM -- has been doing. In a "Red Team" report issued
on May 7 and entitled "Managing Hizballah and Hamas," senior CENTCOM
intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and
marginalizing the two movements. Instead, the Red Team recommends a mix of
strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective
political mainstreams. While a Red Team exercise is deliberately designed to
provide senior commanders with briefings and assumptions that challenge
accepted strategies, the report is at once provocative, controversial -- and
at odds with current U.S. policy.

Among its other findings, the five-page report calls for the integration of
Hizballah into the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hamas into the Palestinian
security forces led by Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas. The Red Team's conclusion, expressed in the final sentence of
the executive summary, is perhaps its most controversial finding: "The U.S.
role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes
Hizballah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a
Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more
effective than providing assistance to entities -- the government of Lebanon
and Fatah -- that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian
populace respectively" (emphasis in the original). The report goes on to
note that while Hizballah and Hamas "embrace staunch anti-Israel
rejectionist policies," the two groups are "pragmatic and opportunistic."
The report opens with a quote from former U.S. peace negotiator Aaron David
Miller's book, The Much Too Promised Land, which notes that both Hizballah
and Hamas "have emerged as serious political players respected on the
streets, in Arab capitals, and throughout the region. Destroying them was
never really an option. Ignoring them may not be either." The report's
writers are quick to acknowledge that the two militant groups "are vastly
different," and that treating them together is a mistake. Nevertheless, the
CENTCOM team directly repudiates Israel's publicly stated view -- that the
two movements are incapable of change and must be confronted with force. The
report says that "failing to recognize their separate grievances and
objectives will result in continued failure in moderating their behavior."

"There is a lot of thinking going on in the military and particularly among
intelligence officers in Tampa [the site of CENTCOM headquarters] about
these groups," acknowledged a senior CENTCOM officer familiar with the
report. However, he denied that senior military leaders are actively
lobbying Barack Obama's administration to forge an opening to the two
organizations. "That's probably not in the cards just yet," he said.

In the wake of the Gaza flotilla incident, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister
Daniel Ayalon said that those on board the Mavi Marmara, the scene of the
May 31 showdown between Israeli commandos and largely Turkish activists, had
ties to "agents of international terror, international Islam, Hamas, al
Qaeda and others." The same senior officer wasn't impressed. "Putting
Hizballah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda in the same sentence,
as if they are all the same, is just stupid," he said. "I don't know any
intelligence officer at CENTCOM who buys that." Another mid-level SOCOM
[Special Operations Command] officer echoed these views: "As the U.S.
strategy in the war on terrorism evolves, military planners have come to
realize that they are all motivated by different factors, and we need to
address this if we are going to effectively prosecute a successful campaign
in the Middle East."

The most interesting aspects of the report deal with Hizbollah. The Red Team
downplays the argument that the Lebanese Shiite group acts as a proxy for
Iran. The report includes a quote from Hizballah Secretary-General Hassan
Nasrallah, stating that if Lebanon and Iran's interests ever conflicted, his
organization would favor Lebanese interests. "Hizballah's activities
increasingly reflect the movement's needs and aspirations in Lebanon, as
opposed to the interests of its Iranian backers," the report concludes. It
also criticizes Israel's August 2006 war against Hizballah as
counterproductive. "Instead of exploiting Hizballah's independent streak ...
Israeli actions in Lebanon may have had the reverse effect of tightening its
bonds with Iran," the authors note.

The report goes on to say that, while there are "many ways in which Lebanese
Hizballah is not like the IRA," there are "parallels" between the Irish
Republican Army's eventual participation in the Northern Ireland peace
process and a potentially productive U.S. strategy for dealing with
Hizballah. CENTCOM officers cite a meeting between the British ambassador to
Lebanon and Hizballah leaders in 2009 as providing an appropriate model to
begin the integration of the organization into the LAF. Such talks should
"be pursued again with the same vigor that peace talks in Northern Ireland
were pursued," the report recommends. "As the US took the lead with peace
talks in Northern Ireland, the British could take the lead with unity talks
between the LAF and Hizballah in Lebanon."

The brief's authors also have interesting things to say about Hamas, which
has ruled in Gaza since its takeover of the impoverished coastal strip in
2007. While the Red Team report does not make explicit policy
recommendations, the senior intelligence experts that drafted the statement
signal their unease with Israel's anti-Hamas policies, particularly the
continuing Israeli siege of Gaza. CENTCOM officers note that Israel's
strategy of keeping Gaza under siege also keeps "the area on the verge of a
perpetual humanitarian collapse" -- a policy that the intelligence report
says "may be radicalizing more people, especially the young, increasing the
number of potential recruits" for the organization. The report argues that
an Israeli decision to lift the siege might pave the way for reconciliation
between Fatah and Hamas, which would be "the best hope for mainstreaming
Hamas." The Red Team also claims that reconciliation with Fatah, when
coupled with Hamas's explicit renunciation of violence, would gain
"widespread international support and deprive the Israelis of any legitimate
justification to continue settlement building and delay statehood
negotiations."

In supporting the creation of a unified Palestinian security service,
CENTCOM's Red Team distances itself from the U.S. effort to provide training
to the Fatah-controlled security forces in the West Bank, which began during
George W. Bush's administration. While that effort, currently headed by Lt.
Gen. Keith Dayton, is not mentioned specifically in the report, the Red Team
makes it clear that it believes that such initiatives will fail unless the
Israelis and Palestinians negotiate an end to the conflict. While Dayton and
the administration are focused on building a "National Security Force" in
the West Bank that excludes Hamas, and jails its members, the focus of
Palestinians is elsewhere. "But all Palestinians are watching the clashes in
East Jerusalem, which continue to feed into the Palestinians perception the
Israelis are incapable of negotiating in good faith," according to the
report.

CENTCOM's implicit criticism of Dayton is not a surprise: the general's
program is controversial among some senior military officers, who question
an effort that, in Palestinian perceptions, makes the U.S. a partner in the
Israeli occupation. Dayton is also criticized in military circles for making
a May 2009 speech before the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (which he described as "the foremost think tank on Middle East
issues, not only in Washington, but in the world"). In the speech , he said
that the reason a high-ranking general was appointed as security coordinator
was because he "would be trusted and respected by the Israelis." The
statement was not universally welcomed at the Pentagon, where one officer
shook his head. "You would have thought Dayton's primary mission would be to
win the respect and trust of the Palestinians," he told me.

According to a senior CENTCOM officer, while the CENTCOM Red Team report has
been read by outgoing CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus, it's unknown
whether its recommendations have been passed on to the White House. Even so,
there's little question the report reflects the thinking among a significant
number of senior officers at CENTCOM headquarters -- and among senior
CENTCOM intelligence officers and analysts serving in the Middle East. And
while any "Red Team" report by definition reflects a view that is contrary
to accepted policy, a CENTCOM senior officer told me that -- so far as he
knows -- there is, in fact, no parallel "Blue Team" report contradicting the
Red Team's conclusion. "Well, that's not exactly right," this senior officer
added. "The Blue Team is the Obama administration."

*Note: To avoid confusion, this story uses the spelling “Hizballah”
throughout, although Hezbollah is FP’s preferred spelling.

Mark Perry is a military and political analyst and author of eight books,
including Partners In Command, George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War
and Peace, and the recently released Talking To Terrorists.