New Saudi tack on Al Qaeda

The arrest of 172 suspected militants reveals a Saudi public that is helping in the fight against the terrorist group.

from the April 30, 2007 edition

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"It's like we have done nothing against Al Qaeda in the past four years. It's only the security forces that are working against the militants. The other branches of the government are not doing anything. Where are the ministries of education and Islamic affairs?" says Mr. Hizam, a Saudi expert on Al Qaeda who is based in Dubai.

Hizam says that most of the those arrested over the past few months are young Saudis in their early 20s and that Al Qaeda has found a fertile recruiting ground on the Internet. "They recruit them mostly now through the Internet, and they communicate through [text messaging]," he says. "Most of the new recruits are students in high school and college, and not all of them are from religious families. I just visited a liberal Saudi family in Dammam whose son has joined the ranks of Al Qaeda," says Hizam.

Hizam said that many Saudis were puzzled at the lack of a coordinated government plan to fight militants in the kingdom and said that he thought arrests of more militants would continue for many years to come.

"No one can understand what the ministries of Education and Islamic affairs are doing to fight these terrorists," he says. "I don't believe that the government is going to do anything new in the future to fight terrorism."

Over the weekend, the Saudi government did take the occasion of the arrests to reiterate to the Saudi public that Al Qaeda is working against the kingdom's interests.

State TV showed security forces digging up weapons and explosives, and a government statement said the men had received training in an unspecified, nearby "troubled" country, and that they intended to target both Saudi nationals and foreigners.

General Turki told the AP that the men might have been trained in Iraq, Somalia, or Pakistan. Counter-terrorism officials inside and outside of Iraq say that a growing number of young Saudi men have been crossing the border to fight in Iraq, and that the conflict there is inspiring a new generation of radicals.

• Rasheed Abou-Alsamh in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Jill Carroll in Cairo contributed reporting.

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