The evidence showed up last month in Riyadh, where drivers woke up to find leaflets stuffed into the handles of their car doors and in their windshields. They were promoting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which has grabbed the world’s attention by seizing parts of northern Iraq. The militant group is also using social media, such as Twitter and YouTube, to recruit young Saudi men.
Already at war with the governments of Iraq and Syria, ISIL also poses a potential threat to the Al Saud family’s rule over the world’s biggest oil exporter. Saudi authorities gained the upper hand in their battle with al-Qaeda, which targeted the kingdom a decade ago, yet analysts said the latest generation of militants may be harder to crush.
ISIL, known as Da’esh in Arabic, has “territorial ambitions and is far more difficult to deal with than al-Qaeda,” Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center, said in a telephone interview. “These people are able to hold ground, they have army-like units, and they conduct terrorist attacks.”
In the past, the Saudi oil industry was an al-Qaeda target. The group’s followers, including Saudi veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who returned to the kingdom, attacked Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil processing plant in the Eastern Province, with car-bombs in 2006.
There are concerns that conflicts in Syria and Iraq will play a similar role to those earlier wars, pulling fighters from different Arab and European countries.
Al-Qaeda’s offshoots such as ISIL are increasingly taking the initiative in the war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In Iraq, they control a swathe of territory, and Saudi authorities are on guard against local cells. Saudi Arabia conducted large military exercises along its northern border in April, in a show of force against possible threats.
“The Saudi leadership is seen by many extremist groups, even those groups that Saudis financially support, as corrupt,” said Paul Sullivan, a Middle East specialist at Georgetown University in Washington.
Saudi Arabia is backing the mainly Sunni rebels fighting Assad in Syria, though there is no evidence that authorities are funding ISIL.
ISIL’s printed literature also accused Western nations of using the war on “terror” to assault the Muslim world, a message that may ring true with some Saudis, who are suspicious of the U.S. role in the Middle East.
In the western Saudi city of Taif, a video posted on Youtube showed militant slogans spray-painted on government buildings.
Major General Mansour al-Turki, the Ministry’s of Interior spokesman, said police monitor young Saudis who engage in activities such as spraying graffiti, or filming themselves carrying the banners of radical groups, “in response to requests posted on terrorism-related accounts” on social media. He said several are being questioned by authorities.
There’s a potential audience of sympathizers in Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, a group of veiled Saudi women posted a video on YouTube calling upon ISIL’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to topple Al Saud because of “their un-Islamic and unjust reign.” The authenticity of the video couldn’t be independently verified.
The language in the leaflet, and on the video, is reminiscent of Osama Bin Laden, who also urged the overthrow of the Saudi rulers. By taking control of a swathe of territory across northern Iraq and Syria, Al-Baghdadi’s fighters have achieved gains that al-Qaeda never managed. The U.S. has dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf as President Barack Obama weighs options to halt the group’s advance in Iraq,
“Its members are more brutal in their killings,” Abdulsalam Mohammed, head of the Abaad Studies and Research Center in Sana’a and a specialist in Islamic movements, said in a phone interview. “They have a greater tendency to exploit and promote sectarian division. But they’re also willing to target Sunni groups.”
Source: Bloomberg
