The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Recruiting Terrorists in Saudi Arabia
by James Dunnigan
November 3, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
Saudi Arabia is still having a hard time accepting
the fact that 79 percent of the 911 attackers were Saudis. That feeling was
made worse when reports coming out of Iraq indicated that up to half the al
Qaeda suicide bombers, who were mostly killing Iraqis, were Saudi volunteers.
Naturally, the Saudis conducted their own study, and concluded that only twelve
percent of those suicide attackers were Saudi (20 percent were Algerian, 18
percent Syrian, 17 percent Yemeni, 15 percent Sudanese and 13 percent
Egyptian.) Many Saudis believe that, either it’s just a lie that so many Saudis
were involved in 911, or that evil al Qaeda (or maybe the Israelis) deceived
weak minded young Saudis into getting involved. Meanwhile, the Saudi government
has added new counter-terror efforts to keep Saudi volunteers out of Iraq.
These efforts seem to be working, judging from the experience Iraqi police are
having with Saudi al Qaeda volunteers of late. The captured Saudis (who have
often fled from al Qaeda control) tell of deception and coercion being used to
get them into Iraq to serve as suicide bomber. Such desperate measures to
obtain suicide bombers is not unusual. The Palestinian terrorist organizations
had to use similar coercive techniques when they ran short of volunteers. Some
bad publicity, or a lot of failed attacks (and live bombers being sent to
prison for a long time), would discourage a lot of potential volunteers. To
make up the shortage, kidnapping, blackmail or other forms of coercion would be
used.
The Iraqi government has captured many Saudi volunteers, and presented them on
television shows intended to show government success against the terrorists.
Several of the recent captives were Saudis who told a convincing tale of
kidnapping, coercion and not really wanting to have anything to do with suicide
bomb attacks. Based on reports from all over the world, it would appear that al
Qaeda is running into recruiting problems. While millions of (mostly young)
Moslems, the world over, profess a willingness to be suicide bombers, very few
actually follow through, and find themselves doing the deed. Partly, this is
because the middlemen, who find the volunteers, and get them to the teams that
can train, equip and guide the volunteers to the target, are few, and often on
the run from the police. Not only is Saudi Arabia finding and arresting (or
sometimes killing) these middlemen, so are many European nations. Recently,
France arrested six such middlemen, who had recruited about two dozen French
Moslems for suicide bomber duty. The police arrested everyone before anyone
could travel to the Middle East. Similar arrests have been made in other
European nations recently. For the past four years, European police have been
digging into the Islamic radical underground in their own back yards. It’s been
slow going, but results have become more frequent as more information
piles up. Meanwhile, in Iraq, American and Iraqi military operations have done
major damage to the terrorist infrastructure. U.S. commanders say they have
destroyed some 80 percent of the terrorist infrastructure in northern central
Iraq over the last month. The survivors of terrorist organizations are
scrambling to find other towns or neighborhoods where they can rebuild their
operations (bomb workshops, safe houses for suicide bombers and technical
staff). This is getting more difficult, as more Sunni Iraqis turn against the
terrorists, and use the growing number of cell phones to rat out the bad guys.
Saudi Arabia is angry with al Qaeda for other reasons as well. With a large
Shia minority, official Saudi policy is that Shia are not heretics. But many
Saudi Sunnis believe otherwise, and the government has long looked the other
way as some Sunni clergy preached that Shia are heretics, or worse. No more of
this is allowed (some of theses preachers have gone underground) officially,
and the Saudi government has openly condemned al Qaeda for advocating “war”
against Iraqi Shia. These efforts are long over due, but they are often too
late. Decades of allowing radical Sunni clergy to preach hatred of the Shia, and
all non-Moslems, has created millions of Moslems who believe all this hateful
stuff. You can’t just turn it off like a faucet. It’s going to take a
generation to eliminate the attitudes that provide all the pro-terrorist
attitudes.
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