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LONDON: Saudi Arabia is locked in a high-stakes struggle with militants thriving on discontent with the royal family and its US ally.
A crackdown by security forces since bombings in Riyadh on May 12 that killed 35 people, including nine Americans, has led to a series of bloody clashes with militants in which at least 16 suspects and 11 Saudi policemen have been killed.
News on Wednesday that British Airways was suspending flights to Saudi Arabia over security concerns will come as a further shock after years of proud assertions by Saudi rulers that the country was the safest place in the Middle East.
Saudis are already groping to come to terms with recurrent clashes between security forces and militants along with proliferating checkpoints and tough security measures.
“This is something new, we are not used to this,” said a Saudi analyst, Jamal Khashoggi.
He said the Riyadh bombings, regardless of US pressure, had brought home to the government that national security was at stake, prompting the hunt for militants who were now on the run.
“Eventually they will be contained, but the government underestimated the power of the jihadis and how widespread they are,” Mr Khashoggi said.
While the Riyadh bombings may have focused the minds of Saudi rulers on the need to thwart future attacks, the threat to the stability of the world’s biggest oil exporter is not clear.
“I’m not sure if we are looking at an increased danger,” said Neil Partrick of the Economist Intelligence Unit in London.
He said Saudi rulers were now more willing to challenge the authority of a growing minority of religious scholars seen as encouraging militancy, while senior and middle-ranking religious leaders had shown more solidarity with the government since the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
FRACTURED TIES: The Sept 11 attacks drove deep cracks into a once-solid alliance between the royal family and the United States based on interlocking oil, business and regional security interests.
London-based Saudi scholar Mai Yamani said support for Osama bin Laden was widespread among alienated Saudis.
“The militants are disparate and dispersed, but they are all sympathizers with (Osama) bin Laden and with the idea of fighting infidels, especially Americans, and the Saudi royal family.”
She said the Saudi government had been ambivalent towards radicals.
“They now realize for the first time that this monster they have helped to create is out of control,” she said.
Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Al Quds al Arabi newspaper, said the Riyadh bombings, along with intense US pressure for tougher Saudi action, had led to the collapse of an unwritten truce between the authorities and militants.
“The Saudis are fighting a very difficult war,” he said, adding that the militants seemed to have been able to infiltrate the security forces, where they enjoyed some support.
Mr Atwan said the old alliance between the royal family and Wahhabi establishment had frayed, with radicals turning against the government. Some were disgruntled Afghan veterans, others young scholars adopting Osama’s anti-US creed.
The Saudi authorities were quick to blame militant activities on Al Qaeda, but Partrick said the network’s presence in Saudi Arabia appeared to be as amorphous as it is internationally.
“To escape detection in Saudi Arabia, they have to be small cells and organizations,” he said.
Interior Minister Prince Nayef last month compared the militants to a “sick body organ” which he vowed to excise.
According to London-based Saudi dissident Saad al Faqih, the security forces have already locked up 3,000 suspected militants, while others had moved to Iraq to help fight US forces there. He could not say how many remained at large.
He said Saudis had lost faith in their government, with many viewing it as a stooge for the United States, whose policies towards Israel and Iraq evoke widespread Arab hostility.
Faqih, who advocates a peaceful struggle for change, says “jihadi” groups are under orders to restrict their attacks to foreigners, especially Americans, and senior royals, but not to attack policemen or other local targets.
He said Al Qaeda might have a few hundred members in Saudi Arabia, but there were several thousand sympathizers, mostly from a new generation who never fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia or Chechnya, but who were filled with hatred for the United States.
Mr Khashoggi said it was important for Saudi authorities to tackle the security threat by detaining militants and seizing their arms caches and false documents. “But we must also ask the question of why we have those people, what is motivating them.” —Reuters
