Saudi militants down, but not
out By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - The killing of a Western expatriate
in Saudi Arabia last week is the latest in a series of
hit-and-run attacks by Islamic militants in the desert
kingdom. While some view the adoption of this strategy
by militants as a signal that their capacity to mount
large operations is declining, the fact that they are
still able to strike at targets of their choice
indicates that it is too early for the government to
declare victory.
French citizen Laurent
Barbot was shot dead in Jeddah, allegedly by
al-Qaeda militants. He was an employee of French
defense electronics firm Thales, which is negotiating
a multibillion-dollar contract to supply surveillance
equipment to the Saudis. Less than a fortnight earlier,
British expatriate Edmund Muirhead-Smith, an employee of
communications firm Marconi, was gunned down in Riyadh.
Seven Western expatriates have been gunned down
on the streets of Saudi Arabia over the past five
months. The victims were not random targets, but appear
to have been carefully chosen. Not only were they
Westerners, but most were employees of companies that
are providing Saudi Arabia with defense-related
equipment. For instance, Paul Johnson, the first Western
hostage to be beheaded by militants in Saudi Arabia, was
an employee of US defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
The killing of expatriates is part of a
campaign by Islamic militants to drive "infidels" from Saudi
Arabia, which is home to some of the most sacred Islamic
sites. Their ultimate aim is to overthrow the Saudi
monarchy by weakening the economy. The exodus of
expatriates, the militants hope, will deal a severe blow
to the oil industry and the economy.
Since
May 2003, Saudi Arabia has witnessed a wave of
violent attacks by suspected al-Qaeda militants. At least
150 people have been killed in these attacks, more than 60% of
them expatriates. On May 12, 2003, suicide bombers
attacked residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 35
people and injuring at least 200. On November 9 that
same year suicide bombers blew up a Riyadh residential
compound housing foreigners and Saudis, killing 18. In
May this year, militants carried out a couple of
spectacular attacks, including one on a petrochemical
facility at Yanbu, where five Westerners and two Saudi
policemen were killed, and another in Khobar, where
scores of expatriates were taken hostage and about 22
of them killed.
For decades, the House of Saud has
funded Islamic extremism and terrorism directed at other
countries. It was only last year after the two suicide
attacks in Riyadh that the Saudi government, in an
unprecedented move, started taking measures to dismantle
the terrorist network that was until then allowed
to flourish in the country. It is said to have taken
hundreds of "terrorists" into custody over the past
year. Of the 26 most wanted militants in the
country, about 15 are said to have been captured or
killed, including top-rung leaders of the Saudi
al-Qaeda. An offer of amnesty to militants who surrender
netted a few militants as well.
Saudi security
officials claim that the terrorist infrastructure has
been dismantled to a considerable extent. Weapons supply
routes, safe houses and couriers have been identified
and are said to be under constant surveillance. This
apparently has made a serious dent in the militants'
access to weapons and sanctuaries and reduced their
capacity to plan spectacular attacks.
Many
believe that in the name of the crackdown on terrorists,
the Saudi government has really rounded up Islamists and
secular activists who are opposed to the House of Saud
and have been campaigning for democratic reforms in the
country.
However, the government has been
claiming victory in its "war against terrorism" in the
kingdom. In an interview with the Kuwaiti daily
al-Siyasah, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's
de facto ruler, claimed that Saudi Arabia is "past the
stages of terrorism". "What you see now is the
elimination of the last pockets" of militants, he said.
Describing how his government achieved this
"victory" in the battle against terrorism, Abdullah
said: "We went directly to the heads of the snakes
[meaning those who are the brains of the organization,
those who mastermind the attacks] to cut them off," he
said, adding that "we know the tails [the foot soldiers]
are a group of our sons who went astray", and that his
government knows "how to deal with them and how to bring
them back to the right path".
The Saudi
government has achieved a measure of success in cracking
down on terrorism. It has perhaps been able to take out
several terrorist cells and dismantled the network to
some extent. Indeed, since June this year, there has
been a fall in spectacular attacks. Attacks have not
been on the scale of those in the past, where scores of
people would die in suicide missions or which required
considerable planning and coordination. And it is true
that in recent months, attacks in Saudi Arabia have been
more in the nature of individual assassinations of
civilians.
While a shift from large-scale
attacks to the targeted killing of individual civilians
might be because militant outfits are under pressure, it
is too early to view this as a victory for the Saudi
government. Switching tactics to ensure survival is a
classic guerrilla strategy. When under pressure
guerrillas lie low, bide their time and live to fight
another day. This is what the Saudi militants are doing.
The Saudi government might want to see the
killing of individual Western expatriates as a sign of
the militants' weakness. It is more a sign of the
militants opting to lie low, while regrouping and
simultaneously persisting with small but significant
attacks that would bleed the economy slowly. It is a
sign of what lies ahead - protracted violence in the
kingdom.
Targeted killings of expatriates suit
the militants' agenda of weakening the economy, by
driving out Western expatriates who are considered vital
for the survival of the Saudi economy. Last year's
sensational suicide bombings triggered an exodus of
expatriates from the kingdom. There is little to
indicate that the terror generated by those attacks has
lessened with the militants switching to killing of
individual Westerners.
The Saudi government has
tightened security around its oil installations,
foreign-owned companies and residential areas where
expatriates live. Several Westerners have personal
bodyguards. But providing security to every individual
expatriate is an impossible task. And the militants need
only one assassination per month to keep the terror
among the expatriate community in Saudi Arabia alive.
The fact that employers in Saudi Arabia are
offering their expatriate employees fat bonuses and pay
hikes to prevent them from fleeing the country indicates
that the terror among the expatriate community is very
much alive. There has been a sharp fall in the number of
expatriates living in Saudi Arabia.
While the
House of Saud is celebrating victory over the militants,
the expatriate exodus continues. The militants might not
be on the verge of overthrowing the House of Saud. But
that does not mean they are losing.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent researcher/writer based
in Bangalore, India. She has a doctoral degree from
the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, in New Delhi. Her areas of interest include
terrorism, conflict zones and gender and conflict.
Formerly an assistant editor at the Deccan Herald
(Bangalore) she now teaches at the Asian College of
Journalism, Chennai.
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