| Focus
Placed on U.S. and Other Western
Targets in Bid to Bolster Network,
Officials Say
By
Craig Whitlock
|
|
RIYADH,
Saudi Arabia -- Al Qaeda forces in Saudi Arabia
have shifted their strategy and are now almost
exclusively searching for U.S. and other Western
targets in the kingdom while avoiding attacks on
domestic institutions in a bid to strengthen
their flagging network, according to security
officials and Saudi experts on radical groups.
While
al Qaeda retains its primary goal of eventually
toppling the Saudi royal family -- as Osama bin
Laden made clear in an audio recording released
Thursday -- an 18-month campaign of car
bombings, gun battles and kidnappings has so far
failed to generate many new recruits and has
resulted in a backlash among many Saudis, even
those who otherwise are critical of the
government, the officials and experts said.
More
than 80 people have died in the attacks, the
majority of them Saudis or non-Western immigrant
workers. Many people in the kingdom are not only
angry over the bloodshed but also fearful of al
Qaeda's attempt to turn Saudi Arabia, a deeply
conservative tribal society, into an even more
conservative Islamic theocracy, several Saudi
reformers said in interviews.
"People
want government reforms and changes, but they
are more scared of al Qaeda extremists,"
said Mansour Nogaidan, a former Islamic radical
who has moderated his views but is still one of
the most prominent critics of the Saudi
government. "The common people -- those
people who thought their life might improve if
the government changed -- they are not ready to
lose all this for what some young teenagers have
in their minds as a utopia."
Despite
an al Qaeda-sponsored attack on the U.S.
consulate in Jiddah this month that left 9
people dead, including the four assailants,
Saudi government officials expressed confidence
that they are steadily gaining the upper hand in
their fight with the militants.
Security
forces have arrested or killed 17 of the 26 most
wanted militant leaders in the country. Two
others on the most wanted list are believed to
be dead or badly injured, while a key
operational planner reportedly fled the kingdom,
Saudi security officials said.
Saudi
officials said that they have dismantled three
of four known al Qaeda cells and that the
insurgents are finding it harder to obtain
ammunition, weaponry and money. The size and
scope of the attacks have also dwindled since
last year, when car bombs in Riyadh blew up two
Western residential compounds and caused more
than 200 casualties.
"The
people who are still there are not as skillful
as the ones who were there in the
beginning," said Brig. Gen. Mansour Turki,
a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry.
"We feel more confident than we did in the
beginning of this fight. We thought it would
take much longer to be in control. We cannot
deny that there are still possibilities that the
terrorists could execute more acts, but they are
not as strong as they were a year ago."
Still,
few people are predicting that the attacks will
end anytime soon.
"The
hands-on folks see this as a serious engagement
that has some time to run," said a Western
official involved in counterterrorism efforts in
the kingdom, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "They don't see this as ending
near term. It's going to take a period of time.
Is it months? Is it years? We don't know."
Turmoil
in neighboring Iraq is also fueling anger
against Americans. A number of Saudis involved
with al Qaeda in the kingdom became radicalized
after going to Iraq to fight U.S. military
forces there, American and other Western
counterterrorism officials said.
Last
month, 26 Saudi clerics signed a fatwa,
or religious edict, declaring it a duty for
Muslims to fight the U.S. presence in Iraq. The
fatwa was vague as to whether it was encouraging
Saudis or Iraqis to resist the U.S.-led
occupation, but American officials said they
took it as a serious threat.
"The
intent behind the clever words was to encourage
young people -- and by that I mean jihadists --
to kill American soldiers in Iraq, and that is
something we must protest vigorously," said
James C. Oberwetter, the U.S. ambassador to
Saudi Arabia.
For the
moment, al Qaeda is seeking to recover from the
loss of leaders who have been arrested or
killed. Abdulaziz Muqrin, a former cell leader
who asserted responsibility in the deaths of
three U.S. military contractors last summer,
including the beheading of Lockheed Martin
employee Paul M. Johnson Jr., died in a shootout
with Saudi police in June. Murqin's replacement,
Saleh Awfi, is believed to be dead or seriously
injured, Saudi officials said.
Internet
postings monitored by Saudi intelligence show
that al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers cannot
agree on who is in charge these days, or even
what strategy they should adopt to remain
viable, officials said. The internal disputes
have simmered for more than a year, but are now
becoming more of a handicap for al Qaeda because
it does not have a firm leadership in place,
officials said.
The
dissension goes back to early 2003, before the
start of the attacks that began in May of last
year and quickly rattled the desert kingdom,
helping to drive up the price of oil worldwide.
On the
run after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, top
al Qaeda leaders including bin Laden and chief
ideologue Ayman Zawahiri pressed local
operatives in Saudi Arabia to launch an
offensive to destabilize the royal family. Local
leaders in the kingdom had been building cells
and amassing weapons for more than a year, but
asked for more time, saying they were unprepared
for an all-out assault on the Saudi government
and were worried about a public backlash,
officials here said.
After a
debate, bin Laden ordered the local cells to go
ahead with the strikes anyway, officials said.
"The internal guys here thought it would be
a mistake because it would foul their own
nest," said another Western official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity. "They were
overruled, but they were right -- it has fouled
their own nest."
While
the opening attack -- a May 2003 car bombing of
a compound in Riyadh housing Westerners --
caught the government off guard, the al Qaeda
cells had difficulty sustaining themselves as
Saudi security personnel began arresting
hundreds of suspected militants.
"It
immediately condemned their ship," said
Nawaf Obaid, head of the Saudi National Security
Assessment Project, an independent institute
that is preparing to publish a study, along with
the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington, about the al Qaeda
terrorist threat in the kingdom. "They
weren't ready for it. They didn't have the
support or the manpower that they originally
thought they could muster."
Another
turning point came last April, when militants
detonated a car bomb in front of a five-story
police building in Riyadh, killing four people
and injuring about 150. Unlike previous attacks,
most of the casualties were Saudi civilian
employees, prompting many Saudis to rally around
the government.
Soon
after, al Qaeda began shifting its targets to
avoid Saudis. In May, militants attacked a
Western compound in the oil-producing city of
Khobar, killing 22 civilians. Gunmen burst into
a residential and office compound, looking for
hostages and shouting, "Where are the
Americans?" The next month, three U.S.
military contractors were killed after
assailants followed them home from work in
Riyadh.
On Dec.
6, gunmen mounted a direct assault on one of the
most prominent U.S. targets in the kingdom: the
consulate in Jiddah, a half-century-old building
overlooking the Red Sea. During the middle of a
three-hour gun battle and standoff with Saudi
police, the assailants made it a point to lower
the U.S. flag flying outside the consulate's
main entrance and light it on fire.
The
flag was singed, but not destroyed, and embassy
personnel raised it again later that day. But
U.S. officials said it was clear that the
militants had placed a renewed emphasis on
attacking American symbols in an effort to drum
up support.
� 2004
The Washington Post Company
Al
Qaeda Shifts Its Strategy in Saudi Arabia
By
Craig Whitlock
Washington
Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Reprinted
with permission.
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