Attack tests Saudi security strategy

The daring daytime attack Monday on the fortresslike US Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second-largest city, is calling into question one of the basic precepts of the country's security strategy: that killing or capturing enough militants will eventually bring security back to the troubled kingdom.

Instead, it seems to be evidence of the militants' ability to regenerate quickly in the face of concerted government efforts to disrupt their networks, and then target some of the country's most closely guarded installations. Recent Al Qaeda videotapes threatening assaults on US interests had seen Saudi Arabia beef up security.

"It's a surprise they were able to hit such a high-profile target. Clearly, someone took their eye off the ball,'' says Turi Munthe, the head of the Middle East program at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "This is just one of the attacks that got through, but there have been lots of other attacks that haven't gotten through. The problem is, while security gets better inside the country, [the militants] are getting better too."

The assault, which started at around 11 a.m., involved a team of militants with rifles and bombs who scaled a wall and fought their way into the US compound, though they failed to kill or capture any Americans. The US Embassy in Riyadh said all US diplomats and citizens were accounted for, and the Saudi Interior Ministry said four civilians and three attackers were killed, while two other militants were arrested.

Thick gray smoke billowed out of the consulate grounds, located in the upscale al-Hamra neighborhood near Jeddah's seafront, and three helicopters circled as ambulances hurried to the site. Surrounding streets were blocked off for several miles, and parents were seen accompanying their children on foot away from the area.

The US Consulate in Jeddah has been heavily guarded and fortified since attacks against foreign compounds in May 2003. Cinder blocks surround the compound and sides streets around it are blocked.

Saudi security guards in small armored tanks protect the main gate. Monday, Saudi security forces in bulletproof vests stood with machine guns along the main road by the consulate as three fire trucks bordered the compound gate.

While there were no immediate claims of responsibility, all similar attacks in Saudi Arabia have been carried out by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or the Al-Haramaine Brigades, an Al Qaeda splinter group that carried out an attack on the Interior Ministry last April.

It was the first all-out terrorist assault inside Saudi Arabia since last May, when an Al Qaeda attack on the Oasis housing compound for foreigners in Khobar led to a daylong standoff and killed 22 civilians.

Since then, at least three successive leaders of Al Qaeda inside the country have been killed. Last June, Prince Turki al-Faisal, former head of Saudi intelligence and the current ambassador in London, told Jane's Intelligence Review that Al Qaeda was severely disrupted inside the country. "Only one Al Qaeda cell remains operational," he said. "Even now, it's in the process of being dismantled."

The attack was also the first major one in Jeddah, though it follows the September murder of a Frenchman in the city and a recent shootout that ended with the death of a suspect in a November 2003 assault on a foreign compound that left more than 15 dead.

But the latest Al Qaeda leader inside Saudi Arabia, Saud bin Hamoud al-Otaibi, emerged in early November, signing an editorial in the group's online magazine, "The Voice of Jihad," that urged stepped up attacks on Americans and encouraged Saudis to travel to Iraq to attack the US there. In a separate statement, he taunted Saudi security for lacking detailed knowledge of the organization.

"[Mr. Otaibi] is a big fan of Juhayman al-Otaibi [who attacked a mosque in 1979] and was always trying to emulate him," says Abdullah Bjad al-Otaibi, a former associate of Saud al-Otaibi who rejects extremism. "The reason they attacked the consulate is that they want to go back to their original raison d'être: getting the Americans out of Saudi Arabia," he says.

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