The announcement that an Al-Qaeda cell planning terrorist attacks on a number of vital installations in the Kingdom has been broken up shows that the government is fully involved in the battle against the organization. It is a major intelligence coup. It is clear that those arrested — 13 Saudis and foreigners — were intent on causing maximum destruction within the Kingdom.
Al-Qaeda is not just a threat to the West. The Kingdom is as much their target as New York or Washington. These people do not care who they kill. They will as happily slaughter Saudis or Muslim expats who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as they would Westerners or Saudi servicemen. So, the fact that there are Al-Qaeda operatives in the Kingdom will not come as a great surprise to anyone. The authorities have clearly been keeping their eyes open to every possibility, leaving no piece of information unchecked. The disclosure that the authorities kept the members of the cell under surveillance for some time before arresting them indicates that there was a major intelligence operation.
This announcement does not mean the dangers are over. The intelligence work has to continue. When last week Morocco announced that it had thwarted an Al-Qaeda plot to destroy a NATO warship in the Straits of Gibraltar and had arrested three Saudis and two of their Moroccan wives, it was subsequently revealed that Saudi investigators had been sent to find out as much as they could about the men. Typically, this was presented negatively in sections of the Western media: the insinuation was that the Kingdom planned to deny that any Saudis could have been involved in what looked suspiciously like a copy of the attack on the USS Cole in Aden in October 2000. Clearly, though, it was all part of intelligence gathering; and if the authorities wanted to hush up the fact that individual Saudis have been involved in Al-Qaeda cells, they would have hardly put out yesterday’s announcement.
It will be interesting to see how others, most particularly the Western media, respond. They have consistently presented Al-Qaeda as a Saudi organization targeting the world. Convinced as they are that their tunnel vision is the only acceptable vision, they may still refuse to accept that it is a global organization that targets Saudi Arabia as well, and is, in turn, pursued by the Kingdom.
That it is international is clear from the cell discovered in Morocco, from other cells set up elsewhere in North Africa and in Europe (as revealed during interrogation of the three men arrested by the Moroccans), and not least from the evident link between yesterday’s announcement and the Sudanese suspect detained in Khartoum and then handed over to Saudi authorities and who has admitted firing a missile at a plane taking off from Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh.
It is also a miniscule organization in any one place; but as Sept. 11 showed, size is no barrier to immense devastation. Clearly an ever-vigilant eye is necessary — as well as the closest international cooperation to contain and destroy it. The organization is still out there. But we can be confident that that cooperation and vigilance is in place — and will defeat it.
