Al Queda Strikes the Saudis

They remind me of that old Clint Eastwood western:


"They don't like Strangers [in Agua Caliente]."

"They don't like ANYBODY [in Agua Caliente]."  [wry, sardonic
laughter]


Al-Qaeda doesn't like anybody -- the UN, the Red Crescent, even the
"insufficiently" puritanical fundamentalist Wahhabi fellow Saudis (not
to mention farther-"fallen" Sunnis and worse yet, the Shiites).

Our Bush administration's willingness to coddle the royal family (due
to oil interests) only baits al-Qaida more and gives it propaganda
fuel.  (One of the true curses of this world, proof that life is
unfair, is that so much oil wealth is found in such a God-forsaken
part of the world as the Middle East, with such dysfunctionality and
worse.)

The succession is going to be messy in Saudi Arabia.  Abdullah, the
leader to be successor, is a worse hard-liner toward the West than the
King; that's only one of many problems we face in the future.

...

[DEBKA]

Tribal Backing for Saudi Rulers Ebbs as al Qaeda Creeps Closer 


Though similar in operational method to the May 12 triple suicide
attack in Riyadh, al Qaeda's suicide assault on the Muhaya housing
complex in the Saudi capital Saturday night November 9 exposed two new
features. Osama bin Laden's terrorists have taken a threatening step
closer to one of their premier targets, the Saudi royal house; and
their recruitment base of non-Saudi zealots is expanding.

US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, who flew into Riyadh
for security talks with Crown Prince Abdullah from Baghdad, said
Monday, November 10, to Al Arabiya TV: "It is clear to me that al
Qaeda wants to take down the royal family and government of Saudi
Arabia."

The final casualty toll was impossible to confirm Monday, November 10
because, for one, rescuers were still digging through the rubble of
the destroyed 200-villa compound that housed highly-paid professional
foreigners from Arab countries; for another, Saudi officials were as
usual at pains to minimize the death and destruction. The figure is
certainly is the range of hundreds. The killer team reportedly gained
entry to the fenced compound by posing as Saudi security officers and
opening fire on the guards before driving in and blowing up their bomb
car -- or cars.

The attack, occurring one day after the United States shut down its
diplomatic missions in the kingdom, struck a district close to the
diplomatic compound and, even more significantly, around half a mile
from the homes of top royal princes, including Prince Nayef, the
interior minister responsible for the kingdom's crackdown on al Qaeda.

Saudi security forces are braced for further terrorist attacks before
Ramadan ends next week. They have beefed up security strength in
Mecca, center of Muslim shrines and pilgrimage, after a series of
clashes in the city prefaced the Muhaya bombing -- in an exact
parallel to the May 12 assaults.

On November 3, Saudi police killed two armed men and captured six. On
November 6, two terrorists blew themselves up in a shootout to evade
capture. On the same day, the Riyadh police shot a third terrorist who
had reached the capital from Mecca. November 9, the suicide bombers
struck.

The Saudis found to their surprise that, while two of the captured
terrorists, were Saudis, four were Nigerian. They revealed under
questioning that their al Qaeda commanders had exploited the stream of
Ramadan pilgrims making for the Muslim shrines to plant several
African killer cells in the kingdom, assuming Saudi counter-terror
agents would be watching out mainly fro Muslims from Arab states or
the Far East. Each of these cells has two or three Saudi "escorts,"
who take them to hideouts where they pick up weapons and explosives
and are then led to target. The number of these infiltrator-cells is
unknown. They are thought to have scattered among the pilgrimage
cities of Mecca and Medina as well as other cities, primarily Riyadh.

The two terrorists who blew themselves up in Mecca on November 6
turned out to be the remainder of the cell which moved to Riyadh. The
investigation is probing to find out if this cell executed or
supported the attack on Muhaya. Two of its members preferred to die
rather than betray the operation scheduled three days hence, the third
got away.

Similarly, three or four days before the May 12 attacks, Saudi and US
intelligence discovered and encircled the bombers' hideout in advance
of their operation, but enough escaped to regroup at prepared
alternative secret bases and pounce from there.

This time too, the Americans and Saudis knew a fresh assault was
imminent. On November 8, Washington released information that
terrorists had moved from the planning to the operational stage and
shut all diplomatic missions in the kingdom.

DEBKAfile's terrorism experts note: The sequence of events lays bare a
major obstacle in the capabilities of the royal Saudi authorities and
the intelligence resources at their command to fight al Qaeda. On top
of the conventional terror prevention methods, like human and
electronic surveillance and intelligence gathering, the Saudis are
confronted with the need to bargain perpetually for the cooperation of
local tribal, clan and clerical leaders in handing over al Qaeda
suspects. Saudi security officers in pursuit of terrorists dare not
venture into a district before the local chiefs and imams have been
won over. The alternative is wholesale war against one or more of the
tribes that are the backbone of the kingdom's population.

Shortly after the May 12 attack, our sources reported that Crown
Prince Abdullah and other influential princes rebuked Prince Nayef,
accusing him of falling down on the job of prevention. This charge
would not be warranted now. Nayef and Saudi intelligence performed to
the limit of their ability to prevent the Muhaya attack. Their efforts
this time were defeated by the widening rift between the throne in
Riyadh and the local chieftains and clerics, especially the teachers
at the local madressas. The situation now is that local leaders often
let security forces believe they are are operating in friendly
territory when those leaders give the game away to their al Qaeda
quarry and help them elude capture.

This lack of local sympathy for the royal house and its efforts to
fight terror is particularly striking in the southern provinces and
the Hijaz region of Mecca and Medina on the Red Sea coast, where the
Ramad Tribe reigns. For the decades that the Sudeiri branch of the
royal house has ruled the government in Riyadh, the southern and
eastern tribes have been left in the cold while royal favors were
bestowed on the tribes of the central Nejd region. The alienated
tribes, long denied privileges and senior positions in central
government, are now settling their scores with Riyadh by granting
solidarity to the anti-royal resistance posed by al Qaeda.

The Saudi Interior minister's efforts to clamp down on terrorists and
foil attacks are seriously cramped by this lack of support in key
regions of the kingdom.

A further danger is posed by al Qaeda's success in developing another
center of recruitment, Kuwait. DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources
reveal exclusively that since mid-October, hundreds of al Qaeda
recruits in Kuwait are entering Iraq directly or through Saudi Arabia.
The scale of this traffic is beginning to rival the movement of Arab
and other al Qaeda fighters into Iraq from Syria. The Kuwaitis find it
easy to enter Iraq posing as merchants with business in Baghdad. At
the border, they are picked up by former Iraqi military intelligence
officers loyal to Saddam Hussein and transferred to flashpoint zones
in Baghdad, Ramadi, Falluja, Samarra, and Tikrit where they join the
battle against the coalition.

Both the Saudi and Kuwaiti authorities have not been able to stop this
dangerous cross-border movement.

The Muhaya bombing exposed the breadth of al Qaeda's Middle East
operations and objectives. Operating from bases in Iran, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Syria, and Lebanon, the fundamentalist
extremists are acting on a broad front against America and its allies,
the Saudi throne, and Israel.