Can of Worms?

The Saudi Arabian authorities are employing a broad range of strategies to contain the threat of the elusive "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" group and other militant Islamists. Saudi security forces killed Al- Qaeda's reputed leader in Saudi Arabia Abdul-Aziz Al-Muqrin in a gun battle last Friday in Al-Malaz district of the capital Riyadh. This city of five million inhabitants is situated in the heart of Nejd, the ultra- conservative Saudi province which dominates the country culturally and politically and which is home to the country's most faithful devotees of Al- Muwahiddun, (literally, the monotheists) -- better known to the world as the Wahhabis.

The kingdom has, since its inception in 1902, been governed jointly by the ruling family Al-Saud and the religious establishment, who have traditionally ruled the country in equal measure. This delicate balance, however, appears to have shifted.

Taking action against militant Islamists is no easy matter in a country run by a religious establishment, many of whom are descendants of Mohamed Ibn Abdel-Wahab, the founder of the austere Wahabi sect, whose followers profess a puritanical form of pristine Islam.

A prominent theme in the history of Saudi Arabia is the periodic battle to contain Islamist extremists. After decades of enduring a precarious but peaceful co- existence with the ruling Al-Saud family, the zealous warrior brotherhood, Al-Ikhwan, rose in rebellion in 1929-30 against Al-Saud, who ironically were Al- Ikhwan's chief benefactors.

History seems to repeat itself. With British help the kingdom's founder, Abdul-Aziz, crushed Al- Ikhwan's rebellion. The Al-Saud rulers are now bent on the destruction of religious zealotry and has the support of Western powers, chief of which is the US. But as in the days of King Abdul-Aziz, it is something of an embarrassment for the country's rulers to openly embrace the West. The fight against Al-Qaeda, however, is taken as seriously as King Abdul-Aziz's battles with Al-Ikhwan. "We tell this deviant group that if they do not return to the right path, they will meet the same fate as Al- Muqrin or worse," warned Crown Prince Abdullah.

According to Saudi analysts, Al-Muqrin was something of a paper tiger. He fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and other trouble spots of the Muslim world, but he was handed over to the Saudi authorities by the Ethiopian government after five years of imprisonment in Ethiopia. Al-Muqrin fought alongside a Somali faction inside Ethiopian territory when he was captured by the Ethiopian military. The Saudi authorities, however, released him two years after his return to the country because he memorised the Quran by heart.

Al-Muqrin was not an unknown quantity to the Saudi government and security forces by the time of his capture. They knew his whereabouts which accounts for his quick arrest.

Ominously, Al-Muqrin was quickly succeeded by Saleh Al-Oufi, an ex-policeman and war veteran of Afghanistan. The quick succession suggests that there is no shortage of militant Islamist leaders in the country, and Saudi analysts believe Al- Oufi to be an even more formidable foe of the Saudi authorities than Al- Muqrin.

Indeed, it is the Saudi authorities' relatively lax attitude to militant Islamists in the past which the kingdom's detractors say helped spawn militant Islam at home and abroad. The fact that a former policeman succeeded Al-Muqrin as head of Al- Qaeda in Saudi Arabia reinforced the widely-held suspicion that militant Islamists have infiltrated all strata of Saudi society including the royal family, the security forces and the military establishment.

The fact that Al-Qaeda has penetrated deep into the Saudi security apparatus is the greatest concern of the kingdom's Arab and Western allies. The Saudi authorities deny any such possibility. "Al-Oufi left the security forces of his own volition a long time ago. He chose instead to join Muslim fighters from Saudi Arabia and other countries in Afghanistan," Mohamed Bin Abdullah Al-Zulfah, a member of the Saudi Shura (Consultative) Council told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Al-Zulfah explained that the "extremists" -- the term most commonly used by Saudi officials and the Saudi media to describe militant Islamists -- cannot be lumped together as a single group. "Some are hard-core criminals, others are disgruntled, frustrated and overzealous youth," he explained. "The biggest group, however, comprise sympathisers with Al- Qaeda in the country at large. They might attend public debates at mosques, universities or symposiums. They are not actively involved in combat action, but they do lend invaluable tacit support to Al-Qaeda. Their support is both moral and financial," Al-Zulfah said. But he insisted that this latter group of Al-Qaeda sympathisers are not the silent majority in Saudi Arabia.

The militant Islamist Sawt Al-Jihad (Voice of the Jihad) website claimed that Al-Qaeda sympathisers among the Saudi security forces provided the uniforms and vehicles used during the kidnapping of Paul Johnson, the latest US national to be abducted and murdered by militant Saudi Islamists. Even more perturbing was the fact that Sawt Al-Jihad was careful to convey special thanks to those "who are sincere to their religion in the [Saudi] security apparatus".

Be that as it may, a single person can set up a website anywhere in the world and the Internet has emerged as an influential propaganda tool for militant Islamists. The Saudi authorities are up against the unknown; again the kingdom's critics say that Saudi authorities are simply reaping what they have sown. But even the Saudi authorities now concede that change is inevitable and desirable.

"A complete overhaul of the educational system is now needed," Al-Zulfah told the Weekly. "The extremists want to turn the clock backwards. They don't want women to have political and civil rights. They are against the education of women and the participation of women in the decision-making process and in civil society."

As the Saudi government begins to initiate change, albeit at a tortuously slow pace, the militant Islamists grow bolder in their demands that Saudi Arabia be turned into a Taliban-like governed theocracy. Indeed, Saudi Arabia was one of the last countries to sever relations with the ousted Taliban regime of Afghanistan. Only Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia recognised the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

A combination of factors -- local, regional and international -- have turned Saudi Arabia into a tinder box. Today Saudi Arabia is awash with arms, and especially so after the ousting of the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But the financial squeeze applied by Saudi authorities on Islamist charities and organisations have compounded the problems faced by the militants. "Today the building of mosques is strictly controlled by the government," Al-Zulfah said. And likewise the preaching from the pulpits in the mosques and Friday prayer sermons is closely monitored. But as Al-Zulfah ominously pointed out, "Saudi Arabia is a free market economy and some of the richest magnates in the kingdom are religious zealots."