August 13, 2007: In the last week, Saudi Arabia
completed another major roundup of suspected Islamic terrorists, taking 135
people into custody. Another such roundup was expected, after an incident last
February when four of nine French Moslems were murdered on a road leading into
Mecca (which is closed to non-Moslems.) No Islamic radicals ever took credit
for the February attack, perhaps because it quickly became known that the people
attacked were Moslem (and part of a larger group of 26 French and Belgian
expatriate workers on a holiday trip, which had split up when the Moslems in
the group decided to make a side trip to Mecca). The Islamic terrorists are
getting smarter, and have figured out that killing Moslems only makes them more
unpopular among Moslems in general. The Saudi police depend on tips from
civilians about who might be an Islamic terrorist. Late last year, that
resulted in the arrest of 172 terrorism suspects.
A similar scenario is playing out inside Saudi
Arabias southern neighbor, Yemen. There, Spanish tourists were attacked (and
nine killed) by Islamic terrorists last month. Normally, Yemen tries to get
tribal leaders to take care of Islamic terrorists living in their midst. But
several al Qaeda cells in Yemen have been taken over by foreigners, and are now
outside of any tribal influence, and
increasingly violent. So the Yemeni counter-terror forces were let
loose. This resulted in four terrorists being killed, including an al Qaeda
leader. The dead men were found to have been involved in the murder of the
Spanish tourists. Islamic terrorists then retaliated by attacking police and a
power station. But, as to the north in Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni terrorists have
been unable to carry out any major attacks, and keep suffering losses.
Many people in Arabia, especially Saudi Arabia,
still support terror attacks on infidels (non-Moslems), but have no patience
for terrorists who attack Moslems. While a basic tenet of al Qaeda is deposing
the Saudi monarchy, trying to do this only turns the Saudi population against
the terrorists. Same problem in Yemen. This has caused quite a bit of debate
within al Qaeda, but no consensus yet about what to do. So al Qaeda continues
to get hammered in the areas where it has the most potential support.
