al Qaede winning in Saudi Arabia?
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| Thu, 06-17-2004 - 7:05pm |
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, June 17, 2004; 7:00 AM
"We entered one of the companies' , and found there an American infidel who looked like a director . . . When he turned to me, I shot him in the head, and his head exploded. We entered another office and found one infidel from South Africa, and our brother Hussein slit his throat. We asked Allah to accept from us, and from him."
That's how Fawwaz bin Muhammad Nashami described one part of an attack last month in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that killed 22 people. The terrorist commander, who escaped after the attack, was interviewed by Sawt al-Jihad, a journal sympathetic to al Qaeda. As translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, the interview provides both a detailed account of the attack and a vivid glimpse into the minds of the jihadists who seek to overthrow the royal family of Saudi Arabia.
Since that attack, al Qaeda sympathizers in Saudi Arabia have killed three American military contractors and kidnapped a fourth. Their plan, according to a statement posted June 6 on an al Qaeda Web site and translated by the Washington-based SITE Institute, is to "fight and exterminate" all non-Muslims working on the Arabian peninsula.
Is the new jihadist campaign a threat to the government of Saudi Arabia, custodian of one-fourth of the world's known oil reserves?
In a piece for The Washington Post's Outlook section on Sunday, former correspondent Thomas Lippman said probably not. But several reports circulating in the international online media argue the al Qaeda campaign is gaining ground.
The Saudi government is in a "state of terminal denial and paralysis," according to Mai Yamani, a Saudi analyst based in London, interviewed by the Lebanon-based Daily Star.
"Termites of terrorism and violence are eating at the foundation of the state," said Yamani, an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Yamani says she has been barred from working in Saudi Arabia because of her writings.
Saudi leaders "have not shown a united front in dealing with security issues or the question of reform in the country," she said.
The government has few good options: "If they embark on reforms, they are accused of bowing to the Americans... If they don't do anything, even the moderates are going to throw themselves in the arms of the jihadists. If they try to curb the power of the religious police -- the Mutawa -- they will have a backlash."
Others note the Saudi kingdom is vulnerable because of its dependence on skilled foreign workers to run the oil industry, the foundation of the royal family's power.
"The operations are small in number but their impact could be major, particularly within the enormous foreign labor market in Saudi Arabia that includes over six million people from all over the world," notes the London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat (in Arabic).
"Several governments in the West have predicted a mass exodus of expatriate workers from the Kingdom, reliable European sources told the News," a leading Pakistani daily.
Without these engineers, technicians and scientists, the Saudis may not be able to sustain current production levels. According to the News story, the London-based Jane's Intelligence Digest (JID) has drawn "significant parallels between the current situation in Saudi Arabia and the final months of the Shah of Iran before his flight into exile" in 1979.
But Bruce Stanley of the Associated Press reports from Saudi Arabia that while "expatriate oil workers are taking greater precautions and venturing less often outside their fortified compounds," there has been no mass exodus.
"Industry analysts and staff of the state-run oil company Saudi Aramco see little evidence yet that a surge in anti-western violence is triggering a mass departure of foreign workers," Stanley wrote in a story picked up by the Canadian Broadcasting Company and many other foreign and U.S. news outlets.
James Zogby, an Arab-American pollster writing in the Arab News, says the notion that extremists are poised to take power is "laughable."
But just because the jihadists are not about to overthrow the government does not mean they are failing.
"The decision of the United States and Great Britain to withdraw their diplomats shows the terrorist offensive has "scored noticeable success," according to Al-Quds al-Arabi (in Arabic), a Saudi-owned, London-based newspaper.
The paper said U.S. demands that the Saudi government "put more efforts into confronting the perpetrators of these attacks, dry up all their financial sources, and exchange information with the United States" are misplaced. The editors argue that U.S. pressure for a forceful crackdown on the Islamic extremists will not succeed.
"The use of security solutions might achieve some successes but they remain limited ones because the problem has political, economic, and social dimensions," they wrote. Until those problems are addressed, the attackers may be able to "achieve the aim of toppling the ruling family or turning the country into a stage for bloody chaos."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48401-2004Jun17.html

>"significant parallels between the current situation in Saudi Arabia and the final months of the Shah of Iran before his flight into exile"<
I was thinking exactly this before I came across it in the article.
>"The decision of the United States and Great Britain to withdraw their diplomats shows the terrorist offensive has "scored noticeable success," according to Al-Quds al-Arabi (in Arabic), a Saudi-owned, London-based newspaper.<
There MUST be another source of energy made available, other than oil. Reliance on this country's is a curse
How long will it take the US to realize this.
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The following is an excerpt from an Asian source discussing how JI is changing it's tactics. Given the events in Iraq and Saudia Arabia, I wonder if this isn't a change worldwide. So, while the US is expecting another 9/11, we may face a number of isolated "special" human targets, like Johnson in SA. Something to watch.
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"We have seen they have the ability to build bombs and we have evidence of their capability in using weapons and we know they are well-trained and have Afghan backgrounds, so it is clear they have the capacity of carrying out such an attack," says Ansyaad M'bai, head of the counter-terrorism desk at the Ministry of Political and Security Affairs. "If the target is an important figure, then it would be just as effective as a bomb."
The most likely form of attack would be the shooting of targeted individuals while they are in their cars heading to or from work. In response, the United States, British and Australian embassies are insisting that staff vary routes to and from work and their times of departure. "I don't think it is a big leap to see going away from large types of events for more selected targeting," says one U.S. official."
http://www.feer.com/market/p016region-040617.html
Report: Former Saudi police officer is new al Qaeda leader in kingdom.
http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=279385&lang=e&dir=news
A former Saudi police officer has taken over as leader of Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia after the former chief was shot dead on Friday by Saudi securty forces.
Saleh Mohammad al-Oufi, 38, who is number four on the kingdom's list of most wanted men, "has been named Al-Qaeda chieftain in Saudi Arabia, succeeding Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin," the Londaon-based Asharq al-Awsat reported Monday.
The Saudi Institute, an independent news outfit based in Washington, quoted "intelligence" sources to confirm al-Oufi's appointment.
It said the former police officer, born in Medina, fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia where he was wounded and returned to Saudi Arabia in 1995.
"Al-Oufi was in the shadows while al-Muqrin was in charge, because he was busy running the secret Al-Qaeda camps in Saudi Arabia. He was essentially responsible for training, recruitment, and logistics," the institute said in an e-mail.
"Al-Oufi might be more dangerous than Al-Muqrin because he comes from the security ranks and the fact he is a Hijazi from the holy city of Medina where he can recruit from the most economically depressed areas of Saudi Arabia.
"Al-Oufi might also be a more effective Al-Qaeda leader because he is older, spent more time in the country than Muqrin, and is more familiar with Al-Qaeda network in Saudi Arabia as he was one of those who built it."
"Saleh al-Oufi is the most dangerous" of the Al-Qaeda lieutenants left alive in Saudi Arabia, said Al-Hayat newspaper.
Oufi left school as a teenager and enrolled in the police but left in 1988 to spend four years in the prison service before being sacked, according to biographical details quoted by several Arab media.
Al-Hayat said Oufi met Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan shortly before the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. (Albawaba.com)
It would seem that eliminating the economically depressed areas would achieve a reduction in terrorism. Hmm might this be a lesson for the US in the future?
>"economically depressed areas"<
One can understand why there's resentment towards