The attack on the BBC team in Riyadh in which cameraman Simon Cumbers died and security correspondent Frank Gardner was seriously injured was another in a series of motivated terrorist acts. The strategy of these armed groups has now become apparent — scaring foreigners into leaving the country.
They know that such operations will receive media coverage around the world and will compel some to leave. Small in number, the repercussions of such attacks can be huge, especially in the immense foreign workers’ market in Saudi Arabia — some 8.8 million at the latest count. The attacks are calculated for maximum exposure, because the terrorists know that if even one person is killed in an operation like the one in Riyadh, the negative publicity is bound to be massive.
Since the start of the attacks, the government has adopted a policy of transparency where — in most cases — it announces the events as soon as they happen, giving full details of the names and locations. In so doing so it has tried to prevent rumors and gain credibility. The confrontations are bound to continue, and the security forces will have to continue to acknowledge that there are other terrorists ready to carry out more attacks.
Terrorism will remain a media event around the world, no matter how small the number of people killed, for reasons that have to do with the importance of Saudi Arabia and the nationalities of the victims of terrorism, which means greater attention from the media in their home countries.
Though the terrorists plan operations for maximum exposure at minimum risk — as the two quick assassinations in Riyadh within a few days of each other showed — the media itself may be the rope on which they will hang themselves. I believe that it is a good idea indeed for foreign journalists to discover the true nature of these cells and the ideology of their leadership instead of learning of them by proxy.
Their apologists give a false impression of their ideas. They say that these are opposition movements demanding their civil rights. The reality is that these are apostatizing groups and that they are anything but democratic. These organizations have limited contact with the outside world and therefore their ideology will remain unknown and their “case” to be promulgated by others.
It is my belief that the best weapon to confront these groups with is to give them the chance to explain their ideas for themselves, because it will shock many. Being apostatizers, they believe they must fight all establishments in existence. They want the Arabian Peninsula cleansed of all “infidels”, and by infidels they mean such a huge class of people that essentially not a single member of their audience would be acceptable to them on their terms.
Let them damn themselves out of their own mouths.
