December 7, 2004: Headlines: COS - Oman: Diplomacy: Saudi Arabia: Terrorism: AZ Central.com: The daring daytime attack on Monday on the fortresslike U.S. Consulate in the second-largest Saudi 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
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December 7, 2004: Headlines: COS - Oman: Diplomacy: Saudi Arabia: Terrorism: AZ Central.com: The daring daytime attack on Monday on the fortresslike U.S. Consulate in the second-largest Saudi 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
The daring daytime attack on Monday on the fortresslike U.S. Consulate in the second-largest Saudi 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
The daring daytime attack on Monday on the fortresslike U.S. Consulate in the second-largest Saudi 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
Jidda attack tests security strategy
Saudi militants show daring, skill at regeneration
Faiza Saleh Ambah and Dan Murphy
Dec. 7, 2004 12:00 AM
Caption: Saudi forces gather outside the U.S. consulate compound in Jidda after Islamic militants forced their way in and killed five employees. Officials said four of the five assailants were killed, and the last was being held.
(Saudi Gazette)
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia - The daring daytime attack on Monday on the fortresslike U.S. Consulate in the second-largest Saudi 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-Qaida videotapes threatening assaults on U.S. 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, 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.
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"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 explosives who scaled a wall and fought their way into the U.S. compound, though they failed to kill or capture any Americans.
The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh said all U.S. diplomats and citizens were accounted for, and the Saudi Interior Ministry said five civilians and four attackers were killed.
The U.S. Consulate in Jidda has been heavily guarded and fortified since attacks against foreign compounds in May 2003. Cinder blocks surround the compound, and side streets around it are blocked.
Although there were no immediate claims of responsibility, all similar attacks in Saudi Arabia have been carried out by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula or the Al-Haramaine Brigades, an al-Qaida 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-Qaida 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-Qaida 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-Qaida was severely disrupted inside the country." Only one al-Qaida cell remains operational, he said.
But the latest al-Qaida 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 United States there.
The Saudi decision to allow U.S. troops to be stationed there after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, a military presence that continues, is seen by most militants as a betrayal of Islam, because they believe that non-Muslim fighters should be kept at all costs from the land of Mohammed.
Though militants retain the ability to strike, they haven't shown the ability to threaten the government, instead carefully picking their spots every few months or so. ''The regime isn't under direct pressure, but what we're virtually guaranteed of is continued insecurity and instability in Saudi Arabia," says Toby Jones, the Saudi Arabia analyst for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels, Belgium-based think tank.
He says the violence comes against the backdrop of increasing political ferment and anti-Americanism inside Saudi Arabia, with some preachers emboldened by anger at the war in Iraq to use the issue as an oblique way to criticize the monarchy. Saad al-Faqih, a leading Saudi democracy activist in exile, has called for street protests on Dec. 16.
The Saudi government, meanwhile, is planning elections for largely ceremonial municipal councils in February, the first of any kind inside the country since the 1960s.
When this story was posted in December 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: AZ Central.com
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Oman; Diplomacy; Saudi Arabia; Terrorism
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