| I kinda sorta mostly doubt it, but let's see what UPI has to say... |
Saudi security forces scored a spectacular victory in their war on terror Wednesday when they killed three top al-Qaida leaders in two shoot-outs in the capital Riyadh. The Saudis announced the killing of Sultan Bjad Saadun al-Otaibi, Bandar Abderrahman al-Dakhil and a Yemeni called Ibrahim Ahmed Abdel Majeed al-Reemy. Security officials said Reemy was believed to be the real leader of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia.
| Seems like everybody's trying to be in charge. Line forms on the right... |
However, in early November, the group in a web-release identified its new leader in the Desert Kingdom as Saud ibn Hamoud al-Otaibi who appears to have been a kinsman of Sultan Bjad Saadun al-Otaibi. Sultan Bjad Saadun al-Otaibi and Dakhil were both among the top 26 most wanted terrorists on an Interior Ministry list issued a year ago.
| There was nothing to prevent Saud from having the title and al-Reemy from being the actual head cheese. There's enough wheels within wheels/things are not what they seem in Arabia to make me expect things like that. |
The Saudi operation caught some other al-Qaida big fish in the country. Also among the dead according to a Saudi Interior Ministry statement were Thamer Khamis Abdel Aziz al-Khamis, who is believed to have run al-Qaida's Internet operations in Saudi Arabia and Saud Abdullah al-Jadhii who is believed to have been a key figure in organizing an April attack on a security forces headquarters that killed five people and injured 145. It was the fourth time in only a year that Saudi security forces have succeeded in decapitating al-Qaida in their country. In the past year, three previous al-Qaida directors of operations in Saudi Arabia have all been hunted down and killed. Khaled Haj was shot dead April 16 after trying to drive through a security checkpoint in Riyadh. His successor and deputy, Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, was detected and shot down after ordering the beheading of U.S. captive Paul Johnson. And Saleh al-Oufi, who succeeded them both, was reported by the group to have been killed in a security raid on one of his hideouts in Riyadh during the summer, though Saudi officials have neither confirmed nor denied this.
| Something about dumping the carcass out in the desert someplace... |
In fact, despite many prognostications of doom to the contrary from Western critics, the Saudi security forces have come up to speed and scored many impressive successes against al-Qaida over the past year. Out of the 26 most wanted terrorists on the list issued by the Saudi Interior Ministry a year ago, only seven are still at large. Despite a plethora of alarmist reports in the Western media, the Saudis remain effective masters in their own house. As Wednesday's successful operations indicated, they continue to enjoy a level of penetration and intelligence access to terrorist circles such as the U.S. armed forces have not begun to manage yet in neighboring Iraq.
| And vice versa, according to Debka and what we've seen here... |
Wednesday's success came right after daring bomb attacks outside two major security headquarters in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh Wednesday: the Saudi Interior Ministry and a Special Emergency Forces base. However, only one person was killed in the attacks and casualties were light. The pattern of those attacks confirmed the predictions we have made in Intelligence Watch over the past two months that al-Qaida would only be able to stay on the offensive in Saudi Arabia in the short term with small-scale, embarrassing attacks against high visibility, prestigious targets. Wednesday's bomb attacks were just an insignificant pinprick compared with the ambitious al-Qaida operations that slaughtered 2,800 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001 or the bomb attacks against Madrid's rail commuter system that killed 200 people on March 11, 2004. The tiny scale of the Riyadh bombings and the devastating response to them the Saudi security forces were able to mount with an hour of them taking place pose a striking contrast to the continued success of the massive Sunni Islamist insurgency that is decimating demoralized new security forces in neighboring Iraq. The Saudis' success this week reveals that they enjoy a level of penetration into terrorist circles such as the U.S. armed forces have not begun to manage yet in neighboring Iraq.
| I've been saying all along that intel is everything. And I know how military intel operations work, so I'm trying to figure why we're not seeing more dramatic success... |
Al-Qaida should certainly not be totally written off in Saudi Arabia. Resentment of continued U.S. support for Israeli policies, the continued U.S. military occupation in neighboring Iraq and the possibility of more U.S. military action in the coming year against either Syria or Iran, or both countries could easily swell their ranks again. But claims that Saudi Arabia is somehow a "failed state" or on the verge of dissolution are not borne out by the extremely impressive counter-insurgency record of the past year. |