Counterterrorism Blog

As Andrew Cochran noted, there were major arrests in Saudi Arabia today. Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia announced that "it foiled an al Qaeda-linked plot to attack oil facilities and military bases, arresting more than 170 suspects, including some trainee pilots preparing for suicide operations." In connection with these arrests, the Associated Press reports that the Saudi state TV channel Al-Ekhbariah "broadcast footage of large weapons cache discovered buried in the desert. The arms included bricks of plastic explosives, ammunition cartridges, handguns and rifles wrapped in plastic sheeting."

There are a few implications to these arrests. First, it is true that Saudi official announcements should be met with some skepticism. (One diplomat told Reuters that there seemed to be "a lot of padding" to these arrests, thus suggesting that Saudi Arabia was trying to play up its anti-terrorism efforts.) However, this plot announcement is consistent with al-Qaeda's evolving methods. When Osama bin Laden first declared war against the West, he stated that Saudi oil wealth was off limits as a military target because "it is a great Islamic wealth and a large economical power essential for the soon to be established Islamic state." But bin Laden's thinking on the subject shifted as he came to see crippling the U.S. economy as key to winning his war against the West. In a mid-December 2004 audiotape, bin Laden reversed his earlier declaration that oil was off limits, urging his followers: "Focus your operations on it [oil production], especially in Iraq and the Gulf area, since this [lack of oil] will cause them to die off [on their own]." It is now not uncommon for al-Qaeda and its affiliates to urge attacks on oil facilities. Most recently, in the online magazine Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of the Jihad), the terrorist faction Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula called for attacks on oil facilities throughout the world.

Second, the information that Saudi Arabia has put forward is skeletal, but the details that have been made public suggest a very serious plot. Couple the anticipated use of suicide planes with the explosives that the Saudis uncovered, and this is reminiscent of a warning that former CIA agent Robert Baer delivered in 2003, that "a single jumbo jet with a suicide bomber at the controls . . . would be enough to bring the world's oil-addicted economies to their knees" if crashed into a major offshore loading facility.

Third, these arrests continue the pattern of Saudi Arabia cracking down with ruthless efficiency when the kingdom could be affected by terrorism, but doing much less when the terrorists are hurting other countries. Saudi Arabia has killed or captured many of the major terrorists that threaten the kingdom, yet it does virtually nothing to clamp down on terrorist financing from within its borders. Members of the Golden Chain, a group of wealthy individuals from the Gulf States who have donated millions of dollars to al-Qaeda, operate openly in the kingdom; Saudi money has heavily financed the jihads in Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere. This is evidence of a deeply mixed record where terrorism is concerned, to put it very mildly.