Terrorism Changes Its Spots

The Shi'ite fundamentalists are down to a handful of Western hostages, and hope is growing that there will soon be none. Years have passed since innocent air travelers were massacred in a departure lounge or held at gunpoint for days on a baking tarmac. No truck bombs have created havoc for many months. Is it safe to conclude that the tide has turned, that terrorism is going out of style?

Probably not, as long as there are people prepared to pursue their grievances with violence. But the climate for terrorism has certainly changed. Some of the most infamous offenders -- the Palestinians and Arab radicals who perpetrated shocking outrages from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s -- have largely lost their governmental support. Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq are less willing -- or less able -- to provide them with money, equipment and support for their operations. What has become known as state-sponsored terrorism is, at least for now, on the wane.

"They haven't all stopped for the same reasons," says a Western analyst based in the Middle East, "but there is a basket of reasons that affects them all." Syria and Iran found themselves on the same side as the U.S. in the gulf war, and their need for foreign investment is a powerful incentive to stop sponsoring violence.

The Tehran government, which originally organized and subsidized Lebanon's Hizballah, had already been leaning westward, however grudgingly. President Hashemi Rafsanjani wants increased trade, especially from Europe, to help rebuild an economy destroyed by eight years of war with Iraq. By turning away from radicals abroad, he can also undercut his extremist domestic rival, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, Hizballah's godfather.

Syria, facing the future without its own longtime sponsor, the Soviet Union, also needs friends in the West and has signed on to the U.S. plan for a regional peace conference. President Hafez Assad has apparently decided to move to negotiations in hopes of reclaiming the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. "He can do that a lot more effectively through diplomacy than terrorism," says a Western official.

Allied bombs and the hostility of the Arab world have knocked Iraq out of the game for the foreseeable future, though Saddam Hussein's willingness to strike back if he can should not be underestimated. Libya -- also chastened by / U.S. bombs five years ago -- is conducting what the U.S. State Department calls a "charm offensive." Even so, President Muammar Gaddafi still provides bases and support for Abu Nidal and other terrorists.

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union's preoccupation with its internal crisis helped deflate some terrorist groups. Moscow directly or indirectly supported many radical factions for years, says Hans Josef Horchem, director of the Institute for Terrorism Research in Bonn, but "now it is almost out of business and has little influence."

Terror organizations with a Marxist-Leninist ideology are also in trouble because their political dogma has been so discredited that they are losing members and morale. The Japanese Red Army, which launched a series of bloody attacks in the 1970s, is down to 20 members. Germany's Red Army Faction is a similar example, though its small remaining core group can still inflict serious pain. R.A.F. assassins have killed two leading German financiers since December 1989.