Terrorist Challenges to Saudi Arabian Internal Security

Saudi Arabia has faced a full-fledged Islamic insurgency since May 2003. In combating this insurgency, the kingdom is hampered by the lack of loyal security forces, which seem to be penetrated by al-Qa'ida. In the beginning the regime tried the old methods of co-optation, including a generous amnesty to bring in the insurgents. However, it has recently discovered that it must go on a determined offensive, and it is this strategy that has brought several recent successes. Crushing this insurgency is Riyadh's top priority, and it should be Washington's as well--far ahead of reform or democracy.

This article was originally written for a project and conference on "After the Iraq War: Strategic and Political Changes in Europe and the Middle East," co-sponsored by the GLORIA Center and The Military Centre for Strategic Studies (CeMiSS) of Italy.

Since May 2003, Saudi Arabia has been threatened by a terrorist insurgency inspired by Usama bin Ladin.[1] This is not to suggest that Saudi Arabia was not plagued by violent internal opposition in the past. One could actually start an examination of this insurgency with the 1979 attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, or the attack on the U.S. Office of the Program Manager/Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM/SANG) in 1995, but compared to the rate and nature of the current wave of attacks, those were isolated incidents. An examination of incidents since the year 2000, however, reveals that there were a series of under-reported incidents that predate 9/11--a small bomb here, the killing of an officer there. Since May 2003, hardly a week goes by without some kind of attack or confrontation. According to Saudi officials speaking at a counter-terrorism conference in February 2005, over the past two years a total of 221 people, including 92 terrorists were killed in terror attacks and clashes.[2] In December 2004 alone there were three significant attacks: the December 6 assault on the U.S. Consulate in the Red Sea port of Jeddah, the December 29 car bomb attacks at key security installations in Riyadh, and another attack in which the Ministry of Interior was hit by a remote-control car bomb, following which the bomber engaged in a gun battle with police. Later that evening two suicide bombers drove into the Special Forces Training Building.[3] These attacks demonstrated that al-Qa'ida was still alive and kicking despite several key Saudi successes in killing or capturing al-Qa'ida leaders.[4]

Saudi Arabia is not the only Gulf country beset by these ills. Since January 2005, Kuwait has been witness to a series of terrorist incidents, some involving Saudis sympathetic to Usama bin Ladin. Al-Qa'ida sympathizers in the Kuwait armed forces have been arrested and accused of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers during joint maneuvers. Kuwait houses nearly 37,500 U.S. troops and military contract personnel supporting operations in Iraq. Large arms caches and plans have been discovered, although the cells in Kuwait seem to be less "articulated," meaning that they have not achieved the level of terrorist operation specialization in areas such as finance, bomb making, etc.[5]

Even other Gulf countries are not immune. In January 2005, reportedly hundreds of Islamists were arrested in Oman in unclear circumstances relating to what Omani officials termed "endangering the national order," that involved intercepted arms and an apparent plan to sabotage a cultural event in Muscat.[6] In Qatar as well, a suicide bomber killed one Briton and injured several other people watching a performance of the mostly British Doha Players Theater in March. In April, explosive devices were found in a residential compound.[7]

Needless to say, these countries are oil producers whose stability is key to the world economy. Their location on the edge of the Persian Gulf sets them astride a major oil artery and across the Gulf from Iran, an adversary of the US and a country assured of becoming armed with nuclear weapons within the next few of years.

Saudi Arabia is beset by many acute problems, such as the need for economic and political reform, corruption, unemployment, and a burgeoning population. These are concerns of a strategic nature, and they need to be addressed, even if they are close to insurmountable, since Saudi legitimacy is based on an ideology of religious extremism, and a new vision of a tolerant Islam is too slow in the making. Reform will not immediately stop the insurgency, nor will it rob the insurgents of support. Indeed, Kuwait is an example of a country seemingly on the road to democracy (it has an elected legislature), yet it has also suffered from terrorist attacks. But in Saudi Arabia, it is unclear how ready the current leadership is for serious change, despite the restricted municipal elections of early 2005, and a succession struggle is looming.

THE FAILURE OF TRIED AND TRUE METHODS Today the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia faces a full-scale Islamic-based insurgency. This is an immediate and present danger to the regime, or, as military analyst Anthony Cordesman has written, "The Kingdom's most urgent security threat…"[8] The regime can ill-afford a long-drawn out insurgency that would cripple its economy, from the oil-industry to the pilgrimage. Putting down this insurgency must therefore be the regime's first priority, as well as Washington's.

The insurgents have been compared to the Ikhwan tribal forces of the early twentieth century who helped Ibn Sa'ud conquer most of the Arabian Peninsula, but who eventually rebelled when they objected to the Saudi leader's contacts with Christians and his limitations on their cross-border raiding.[9] But today's threat is much greater, not the least because the methods used to quell the Ikhwan rebellion in the 1920's are not working this time around, and, more importantly, the loyalty and efficacy of the Saudi security forces are in doubt.

The Saudis are historically adept at co-opting their opposition. Usually marriages with families of rebellious shaykhs, jobs, and financial rewards have sufficed to calm even the most determined rebels. But these methods, although they are being employed once again, do not seem adequate to quell the present and immediate challenge.

The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Bandar bin Sultan, has held up Ibn Sa'ud's treatment of the Ikhwan as a paradigm for how to deal with the threat. In an article in his uncle Khalid Al Faysal's newspaper, al-Watan, Bandar called for "war" against the insurgents, just as Ibn Sa'ud fought the Ikhwan, and he mentions their defeat at the "Battle of Sabila" on March 30, 1929.[10] But to learn what really happened with the Ikhwan, Bandar should take a look at scholar John Habib's classic study of that movement.

Following the defeat of the Ikhwan at Sabila (it was really just a short-lived skirmish), Ibn Sa'ud did not pursue the rebels and kill them. Instead he created alliances and so isolated the leadership. When he finally caught up with them, he demonstrated magnanimity and let them live out their lives in prison, which, given the circumstances of the rebellion, Habib judged to be relatively lenient. Others were pardoned and received high positions, such as Majid bin Khuthayla, who was made responsible for Ibn Sa'ud's camels. It was Bin Khuthayla who was authorized to form repentant or loyal units of the Ikhwan into what would later become the Saudi Arabian National Guard.[11] Ibn Sa'ud's handling of his enemies is summarized by Habib:

Ibn Sa'ud's ability to consolidate his hold over the country, after the rebellion, was due in no small part to his ability to rise above small and petty rivalries and sometimes over major clashes, to forgive his enemies and to give them a share and vested interest in the regime.[12

In other words, Ibn Sa'ud removed the wind from the movement's sails by co-optation, not by war, as Bandar suggests.

But the tried and true methods of co-optation do not seem to be working this time around, even as Ministry of Interior Na'if bin 'Abd al-'Aziz meets with tribal leaders in an attempt to enlist their support.[13]

Even if Bandar's historical analogy is wrong, his prescription may be right on. In al-Watan he states that his call for war against the terrorists "does not mean delicacy, but brutality." He concluded his article with a call to kill them all.[14] Co-optation, as with the Ikhwan, does not seem to be the solution for this insurgency. Indeed, in the month-long amnesty offered by the regime in June 2004, only six terrorists gave themselves up.

In both Egypt and Algeria, governments have successfully put down Islamic insurgencies (more successfully in the former than in the latter). This was due to a determined government and a concerted effort, what Israeli scholar Emmanuel Sivan terms "the stiff and increasingly effective resistance of existing governments."[15]

The Egyptians have definitely crushed their Islamic insurgency. One method used in 1992 was to enter the Cairo suburb of Imbaba, which was an Islamist stronghold, and attack the Islamists. The Egyptians moved later to crush the Islamists entirely. It was not a nice affair, but it did turn public opinion against the terrorists. The Mubarak regime is still in power, and terrorism has nearly ended.[16] Algeria seems well on the way to ending its Islamic terrorist nightmare. Apparently, nothing succeeds like suppression........

Dr. Joshua Teitelbaum is Senior Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. He is the author of The Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia, and Holier Than Thou: Saudi Arabia's Islamic Opposition.

There is a way to ferret out the disloyal troops hiding in the ranks. You have to use the polygraph (lie detector) under the trained eyes of polygraph professionals who are themselves of certain loyalty to the Royal Family. Nothing else will do.

1 Welcome aboard
2 I'm sure they are doing that.

Things are SLOWLY changing (way to slowly IMO) with Abdullah becoming king. Weather or not he will win the ongoing civil war is anybodies guess. I remain mildly optimistic that he will.

Very good post, and contents has been voiced in other articles which appear to have a solid non-biased approach. No western country is innocent in creating a monster that ultimately would surface in the way of fundelmentalist Islam to bite us.
But how did say US president Eisenhower and his State Department even conceive of what would come to past. Now what can we do to rectify something that is not rectifiable? And we need the oil and gas they provide us with.

Begs the question, what monsters are we creating now? I (vaugely) recall reading an article at the end of the Soviet-Afghan war that the mujahideen would come back and bite us in the butt.

"Begs the question, what monsters are we creating now?"
Can make one wonder. I do think the emerging Iraqi leadership at least will not be monsters. To many know full well the horrors of living under the Butcher. I just got a gut feeling most of them, and lets face it, many of them are educated folks that are somewhat articulate in how they deal with the US and other western countries, e.g. Allawi. Iraq is not monsterville. Likewise not all Syrians (hell some of them want westernized secular government) are monsters etc.. The trick is to bolster and support all the ME governments that have been trying to put down the internal Islamofacists groups that effect their own countries as well as those that are a world wide menace. But I say nothing you are not completely familiar with.

The current Islamic "troubles" were inevitible. They were not brought on by any western lapse or action. The war against the Soviets perhaps accelerated the process but did not cause it. This is how Islam interacts with the world. With the fall of the Soviets there was a huge release of pressure on Islam. There were no longer 2 great powers reacting to every hiccup for strategic advantage.

The USSR is gone and America quit paying attention because America could not conceive of Islam as a monolithic force and had no reason to believe that Islam would be a real force in the world. But Islam always strikes out when the West has relented its pressure, colonial or otherwise. Remember Tours. Remember Constantinople in 1453. Remember Lepanto. Remember Vienna. Islam will never change until all Islamic countries are rearranged to be Democracies and then it is only maybe.

Strict control or universal democracy or conversion to Islam or dhimmitude or extermination is the set of options.

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