Saudi Arabia is intensifying its high-profile crackdown on extremists against a background of growing alarm about jihadis in Iraq and Syria. It announced the arrest of 88 people, days after an imam was jailed for glorifying al-Qaeda and the leader of the Islamic State.
Scores of alleged militants have been imprisoned in recent weeks as the authorities have condemned the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and warned, as Saudi Arabian King Abdullah told foreign envoys at the weekend, that terrorism needs to be fought “with force, reason and speed.”
The government in Riyadh is rattled by the advances made by the jihadists and embarrassed by the fact Saudi nationals are estimated to make up the second-biggest contingent of Arab foreign fighters in the organization’s ranks, about 2,500 compared with 3,000 from Tunisia.
The Saudi Ministry of the Interior said it had arrested 88 people accused of preparing attacks at home and abroad. Three were Yemenis, one of unknown nationality and the remainder Saudis. Of those, 59 had previously been detained for membership of a “deviant group” — the usual term for al-Qaeda. All had been under surveillance before being detained in the last few days, al-Arabiya TV reported.
Saudi media are reporting almost daily on the discovery of signs of support for the Islamic State — most recently in slogans scrawled on the walls of schools in Riyadh’s al-Naseem neighborhood.
Having in effect defeated al-Qaeda in a concerted anti-terrorist campaign in 2004, the government fears the consequences of fighters returning from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq and the enthusiasm they command at home.
It rejects accusations that it is responsible for creating the group because of Saudi promotion of fundamentalist doctrine and anti-Shiite sectarianism over many decades. However, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states played a key role in backing Islamist brigades fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, some of which later morphed into Islamic State fighters.
“ISIS [Islamic State] could not have come about without the Gulf states turning a blind eye to funding,” said Toby Matthiesen, a Gulf expert at the University of Cambridge. “It’s this ad hoc mentality where they do something and don’t think of the consequences. They felt they occupied the moral high ground. They wanted Assad to go, but now are confronted with people who want to take over Mecca and Medina on the basis of Salafi Wahhabi ideology. Monarchs don’t fit into that. Potentially there are a lot of ISIS supporters in Saudi. It is a really tricky situation for them. And they are under heavy pressure from the west to show they are fighting ISIS.”
The campaign against the Islamic State is also being pursued diplomatically, with the Saudis urging allies to shore up those threatened. Saudi Minister of Defense and Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz, was in Paris on Monday, seeking US$3 billion worth of weapons to help Lebanon’s army fight a growing threat from jihadists in Syria.
The Saudi government bans its citizens from fighting abroad, donating money or sympathizing with militant ideologies. Last week the grand mufti urged young people to ignore calls to jihad from people representing deviant principles.
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