Thursday, April 07, 2005
The Saudis bag a big one
AL-QAEDA’S commander in Saudi Arabia was among more than a dozen terrorists killed in a three-day gun battle with security forces in the north of the kingdom, according to an exiled Saudi opposition leader.
In a major coup for the authorities, Saleh al-Aufi’s body was said to have been found burned beyond recognition in a wheelchair in the wreckage of a complex where the militants were besieged.
Aufi lost a leg last July when he escaped a police raid on his apartment where the severed head of a US hostage, Paul Johnson, was found in the freezer of his fridge alongside food.
"They have to do a DNA test [to identify him] because there’s nothing left of his features," Dr Saad al-Fagih, the leader of the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, said.
The authorities did not want to declare Aufi’s death - a major blow to al-Qaeda in Osama bin Laden’s homeland - publicly until the DNA test results had confirmed his identity, Dr Fagih told The Scotsman, but they were "99 per cent certain".
Read the whole article, which details other significant Saudi victories against al Qaeda's command structure. This has the Saudis crowing about the progress they are making against al Qaeda.
Saudi Arabia has occupied a strange place in the space between al Qaeda and its war. On the one hand, the Saudis have underwritten the spread of Wahhabism, a strict school of Islam that leaves little room for moderate Islam and which apparently provides much of the intellectual support for al Qaeda's militancy. Various wealthy Saudis have financed al Qaeda directly, and al Qaeda has deep roots in the Kingdom. This short piece from The American Thinker hits the high points.
On the other hand, al Qaeda clearly considers the Saudi regime to be the premier apostate 'puppet regime' that stands in the way of its objective of establishing a pan-Islamic caliphate. The government of Saudi Arabia, even if not the people or the entire royal family, is in a fight with al Qaeda for its life.
Since September 11, when the West finally stopped, er, dicking around, we have been struggling to coerce Saudi Arabia into cooperating aggressively with us in our war against al Qaeda. By most accounts, we got little genuine help from the Saudis until the spring of 2003. Why? Because until the spring of 2003 the Saudis feared al Qaeda more than they feared the United States. After all, the Saudis believed several things about the United States (which beliefs were, not surprisingly, shared by Osama bin Laden). First, that no American presidency could survive high oil prices, and that Saudi Arabia's ability to influence the marginal price of oil would prevent the United States from taking serious steps against the House of Saud. Second, that the United States was not, in fact, serious about its war against al Qaeda, and that it would cut and run from the region at the first significant American casualties. Both of these beliefs were much supported by the history of American conduct under Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, at a minimum.
In the spring of 2003, the United States withdrew its troops from Saudi Arabia via Iraq. Bleatings of the left notwithstanding, it was obvious that the Iraq war put the price of oil at great risk (witness the planning that went into protecting Iraq's oil fields from sabotage). More significantly, the United States demonstrated its willingness to invade and occupy a big Arab country notwithstanding significant casualties and the opposition of the world's chattering classes. America's intransigence in the teeth of the insurgency in Iraq has only reinforced our credibility. This is, perhaps, the silver lining in the persistence of the insurgency -- America's credibility is greater today than it has been since perhaps the Nixon administration. Credibility is more important than popularity when dealing with the likes of the Saudi royal family.
Finally, the invasion of Iraq triggered a specific response from al Qaeda -- a major escalation in its attacks against the Saudi homeland. Al Qaeda understood what most of the Western critics of the Bush administration did not -- that the invasion and occupation of Iraq signalled an American willingness to use any effective means to motivate Muslim regimes to go to war against al Qaeda. Al Qaeda escalated against Saudi Arabia -- and supposedly "American" targets within Saudi Arabia -- with at least three objectives in mind. First, it hoped to divide the Saudi regime from the United States. Second, it hoped to divide the Saudi regime from its own people. Finally, it hoped to regain the military initiative in the region by "vexing and exhausting" another American 'puppet,' which would, along with the insurgency in Iraq, "vex and exhaust" America itself.
Al Qaeda did not achieve any of these objectives. Instead, it motivated the Saudi regime to strike back seriously. The combination of al Qaeda's escalation and America's much improved credibility (and the eventual success of the elections in Iraq) "changed the 'strategic calculus' in the region to al Qaeda's great disadvantage.
In March 2003, the United States and its allies invaded and occupied Iraq. In May 2003, the House of Saud and al Qaeda finally went to war. There is an intimate connection between the two events.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Apr 07, 12:35:00 PM:
One thing I've noticed in these Saudi - Al Qaeda confrontions is that the Saudis don't take too many prisoners. Seems as if the target of the Saudi law enforcement efforts usually ends up on a slab, like this one. Maybe it's the cynical part of me, but I always think part of the reason for the sudden Saudi interest in attacking Al Qeada is to cover their tracks, to make sure there's nobody left to spill the beans on any past Saudi-terror links. Hey, I don't care what their motivation, I'm happy to see the Saudis making moves against Al Qaeda.
By 
Sluggo, at
Thu Apr 07, 12:59:00 PM:
Despite all the squawking about WMD and the imminance or non-imminance of the threat, I had no doubt from the beginning that the war was about providing a disincentive for Arab regimes to continue in their customary relationship with Islamism. Both by democratization and by killing them. To a large extent it has worked. Obviously a more specifically targeted disincentive needs to be applied to the Saudis to clarify and revise their relationship with Wahabbism. Every Wahabbi madrasa that opens is a loss in the war.
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Apr 07, 01:30:00 PM:
I agree with both of roberto and Sluggo. Great comments.
By Cardinalpark, at
Thu Apr 07, 02:14:00 PM:
The current administration's willingness to overhaul US Middle East policy and launch an aggressive campaign, positioning 150,000 US troops into the heart of Arabia scared the wits out of the Saudis. As a reactionary and corrupt tyranny, they were pleased with the status quo, which recall is plagued with this fabulous hypocrisy. Western wealth and materialism and modernity for the Crown (and access to big jets to leave the sandy desert), wahhabism for the plebes. Marx would be proud (you know, the opiate of the people and all that).
By opting for a dramatic change to the status quo, Washington blew up the Saudi Crown's neat world, and reduced its reliance on the Saudis for cheap oil. That's the critical piece. Once we made it clear that we would no longer be held hostage to their oil policy, their behavior changed. their initial opposition to our toppling of Saddam has receded into memory. And now they have to eliminate al qaeda.
The additional happy corollary here is that it is deeply unlikely that saudis will continue to provide financial support to al qaeda now that they are actively warring with it. So al qaeda will continueto atrophy -- its aged warriors dead, wounded or hiding, its leadership under seige and its cash flow reduced.
By , at
Fri Apr 29, 11:25:00 PM:
Al Qaeda?, oh, I thought it was about the royal prince dude holding hands with the bushwhacker at his ranch... you know, tiptoeing thru the bluebonnets...ha ha
