Saudi Arabia mired in its worst militancy crisis

A decade ago, Saudi militants were attacking small-scale targets in a crusade against immorality. Now they're attacking the Saudi state itself. This kingdom is going through the most serious crisis in its seven decades of statehood, says writer and former militant Mansour Al Nogaidan.

As a young and idealistic 21-year-old full of religious outrage, Nogaidan took part in several acts of violence, including a firebomb attack on a Riyadh video store.

"We were young and we were angry. Prominent clerics supported us, so after serving over a year of a 16-year sentence we were pardoned by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd," said Nogaidan, now a respectable intellectual whose weapon of choice these days is a laptop.

"The situation is much more serious today and the big difference is that religious anger is being directed against the state itself," he said.

"It's easy for young people to get into militant groups which think the state is subservient to America. They think that we must get rid of this ruling system in order to strike the Americans. They think these are all illegitimate Arab regimes."

While these ideas are not new in the Arab world, first emerging in Egypt in the 1960s, they are novel to Saudi Arabia, where strict Islamic codes at home and lavish funding for Islamic causes abroad have kept militants from turning on the country.

Commentators say alarm bells rang after the Sep-tember 11, 2001 attacks on US cities, which Washington blamed on Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida network.

Fifteen of the 19 suicide hijackers were named as Saudi nationals. But the US ally began a heavy crackdown on militants only after a May suicide bombing in Riyadh killed 35 people, including Saudis and foreigners.

The attacks shocked the kingdom. Dozens of Saudis have been shot or arrested in a series of bloody skirmishes between militants and the police in recent months, and "fighting terrorism" has become a daily staple of official rhetoric.

The police presence on the streets of the capital has been markedly higher since the May attacks, and soldiers peer out from behind sandbag barriers in defence of some ministries.
Political analyst Dawoud Al Shiryan said the shock was indicative of how late the kingdom had woken up to extremism.

"We still have problem that people don't believe we have a problem. People still find it hard to believe that Saudis would be prepared to kill other Saudis," he said. The home-grown insurgency comes amid a battle between religious conservatives and liberal reformers over the future of the country.

Crown Prince Abdullah has promised political and social reforms, but diplomats say his efforts have been hampered by influential members of the establishment.

Interior Minister Prince Nayef has been a vocal defender of the country's unique religious morality police - who have wide powers to enforce gender segregation, strict dress codes for women, and keep drugs and alcohol off the streets.

The government has responded to US security criticisms, and Washington last month launched a joint task force in Riyadh to tackle the funding of terrorism.

Yet Washington has been largely silent on issues of domestic reform.

So far the hardline clerics appear to have the upper hand. A host of liberal writers have been banned from writing in the press in recent months, after religious figures complained to the interior ministry or to newspapers directly.