OBSERVERS watching the terrorist outfit Daesh affirm that the group is not linked to any particular religion or ideological faction. They say members of the so-called Islamic State (IS) kill Sunni Muslims in Tunisia and Libya, Shiite Muslims in Kuwait and Christians in France, reiterating the fact that terrorism has neither religion nor nationality.

Three young Saudis detonated explosive vests near a mosque in Qatif early this month, killing only themselves, while an attack by another young suicide bomber in a car park near the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah killed four policemen.

Before dawn the same day a 34-year-old Pakistani driver had blown himself up outside the US Consulate in Jeddah and injured two security guards.

“Technically these people are poor. Psychologically they are very poor.
Training-wise they are poor,” said Mustafa Alani, a security expert at the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Center. “Out of five suicide bombers, four killed themselves for nothing.”

The attacks were not claimed by any group although the government believes Daesh is responsible after detaining 22 suspects linked to the five attackers.

Over the past three years, Saudi security agencies have foiled several terrorist plots by Daesh and arrested 3,642 militants who have joined various extremist groups. The suspects belonged to 40 nationalities, including Americans, French and Chinese.

According to a report carried by Al-Jazirah Arabic daily, some of these arrests took place after armed confrontation between the militants and security forces. “We have seized weapons, explosives, vehicles and electronic devices from the militants,” said a security source, requesting anonymity.

Security forces have carried out 33 preemptive strikes on militant hideouts and strongholds, killing at least 49 hard-core terrorists during the period.

“The 3,642 militants detained by security agencies are still facing investigations,” the source pointed out.

Special criminal courts have issued verdicts in some cases involving the militants, all of them young men who have pledged their allegiance to Daesh. Most of these men did not have any combat skills and were contacted by Daesh operatives abroad.

An IS recruit inside the Kingdom will then seek friends or relatives to join him in an attack, while his handlers in Syria or Iraq suggest a target and help provide explosives and instructions on how to make a bomb.

That low profile makes it very difficult for the security forces to identify networks or uncover attacks before they are carried out, and the minimal investment in operations means Daesh has little to lose if a plot goes awry.

The coordination but poor training appears to be a sign of the group’s operational model in Saudi Arabia — recruiting would-be terrorists online and managing plots remotely with minimal involvement in training.

“We’re talking about highly organized attacks under a central command (outside Saudi Arabia) and with a chain of supply,” said Alani.

However, he said the lack of an in-country leadership able to carefully select and groom recruits, provide training, centralize bomb making and prepare attackers psychologically meant that many of its operations were ineffective.

The attackers in Jeddah and Madinah were both approached by police in car parks near their likely targets because their nervous behavior attracted suspicion. The Jeddah bomber detonated his device too far from the police to kill them.

After the attack in Qatif, police found explosive packs intact, Alani said, indicating that only the detonators had exploded, killing the bombers but not causing wider damage.

Unlike during the Al-Qaeda campaign a decade ago there is no network of interconnected cells under a central leadership in Saudi Arabia that can be infiltrated or rolled up by the security services.

“They ask young people to stay in Saudi Arabia and create sleeper cells and this is a very dangerous thing because you do not know who is in a sleeper cell or who is a lone wolf,” a senior Saudi security officer told Reuters last year.

Security agents have arrested some of the young men while they were communicating with Daesh through Internet websites.

Mohammed, a 15-year-old in Riyadh, was contacted by the extremists while playing games on his desktop computer and messaging other online players, his father said earlier this year.

He was chatting with someone who started to send him messages about the injustice faced by Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Syria. “Come play with us for real,” the person said, and sent Mohammed some films showing Daesh attacks. His parents blocked the contact.

“Daesh is trying to be very active in social media, but I think we are winning thanks to their stupid operations. How can you defend somebody who kills innocents in mosques?” said the security official.

Daesh has succeeded in convincing some of its recruits in the Kingdom to kill even their parents. Two young men killed their elderly mother and wounded their father and a brother in an attack in eastern Riyadh recently.

Saudi Arabia’s success in clamping down on Al-Qaeda since its 2003-06 attacks has forced Daesh toward its model of remote control for lone wolves or sleeper cells.

Western diplomats say the Kingdom has developed one of the most formidable counter-terrorism operations in the Middle East under Crown Prince and Interior Minister Muhammad Bin Naif.

The security police have detained over 15,000 suspects since the Al-Qaeda campaign began. The rate of arrests slowed near the end of last decade but accelerated again after 2011, when Arab Spring uprisings and civil wars across the Middle East impelled many young Saudis to head overseas to join the fight, officials said.

“The Saudis have come up with a successful strategy with dealing with this sort of problem and they have mounted a highly effective public education campaign in the mosques,” said former US Ambassador Charles Freeman.

“And second, they have very effective internal security mechanisms that have enabled them to spot people in the process of turning to terrorism.”

Security tactics have been accompanied by softer measures too. The rehab centers for militants employed clerics to preach that obedience to the King trumped individual decisions to go and fight in defense of Muslims overseas.

Meanwhile, Saudi media were given access to young men who had returned from fighting overseas whose stories of the brutal reality of life among extremist groups were broadcast in an effort to dissuade others from militancy.

A senior security official accused Iran of fomenting the recent terrorist attacks inside the Kingdom. “Tehran wants to destabilize Arab countries.
Its role is very clear and does not need any in-depth analysis,” he said.

According to him, Iran is the main supporter of extremist factions in Iraq, Syria and Libya. “Moreover, Iran tries to create new extremist groups among Shiites to clone Daesh factions to launch terrorist attacks. Iran does not differentiate between Sunnis and Shiites so long as the attacks serve its vested interests,” he explained.

Dr. Abdullah Bin Thani, a columnist, said Iran tried to export its ideology to countries in the region following the 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. “This had created an explosive situation in the region,” he said.

He said Iran has interfered in the internal affairs of Arab and Islamic countries over the years and called for demonstrations and subversive activities during important religious occasions. They did not have any compunction in violating the sanctity of the holy places to realize their political goals.

Political and security researcher Tawasif Al-Anazi described Daesh and other terrorist groups as “modern khawarijs”, in reference to members of a faction that appeared toward the end of the Rashidoon Caliphate in the first century of Islam.

“There is a great similarity between their actions,” she said, citing the assassination of Caliph Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) by the khawarijs, who have gone against the teachings of Islam. — With input from Reuters.

Courtesy: Saudi Gazette