Saudis Facing Return of Radicals

The frequency of attacks within Saudi Arabia has picked up in the past two months, as attackers have conducted deadly raids on Western compounds in Khobar and blown up a police building in Riyadh. In May, they began to target individual Westerners in Riyadh, killing a German man at a bank machine and stalking two Americans before fatally shooting them at their homes.

Saudi security forces have arrested hundreds of alleged radicals and sympathizers but largely have been unable to stop the violence since it ignited 14 months ago. Saudi leaders said they are optimistic, however, that their efforts reached a turning point when security forces killed Muqrin and three of his lieutenants in a shootout in Riyadh. Since then, security forces have gone on the offensive and have rounded up numerous other suspects by identifying several hideouts they used in the Riyadh area.

Saudi security officials said they have disrupted each of the five cells known to exist in the kingdom. Although 12 of the government's 26 most wanted terrorist suspects remain at large, Western and Saudi counterterrorism officials said the movement has been dealt a heavy blow.

"The terrorist networks created over the past few years have been almost entirely compromised and will have to be rebuilt largely from scratch," said Nawaf Obaid, a Riyadh-based security consultant. "There are no longer any known senior, battle-hardened bin Laden associates left to run the organization or create new cells."

Most of the original architects of that network were veterans of al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, including several who were personal acquaintances of bin Laden, according to Saudi officials.

The Saudi government has long drawn criticism for allowing Islamic extremism to flourish within the kingdom and encouraging it abroad. Many Saudi leaders have minimized their responsibility, arguing that the insurgents became radicalized only after leaving the country.

Prince Saud Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, told reporters in Jiddah last month that "the university of Afghanistan" had brainwashed many Saudis. "They were being mentally reformed and turned into killing machines," he said.

But other officials said most of the leaders trained in Afghanistan have been killed or captured, creating a void that is being filled by younger people whose primary fighting experience comes from Iraq or North Africa, or who have never been out of Saudi Arabia.

"The Afghanistan group is starting to get aged," the Western diplomat said. "A lot of them are now out of the system. I don't know how many of those guys are really left."

Other analysts said the Afghan veterans presented a more serious threat and questioned the ability of their replacements.

"You have two distinct generations," said Ramzi Khoury, a journalist who tracks violent extremists in the kingdom. "You have those guys who came from Afghanistan, who are very well trained, very effective, very well brainwashed. And you have the kids. The kids are angry and depressed, angry over what's going on in Palestine and Iraq."

Weakness on Both Sides

Awfi, the apparent new leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, traveled to Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001, and met with bin Laden, according to interviews his family has given to Saudi reporters. More recently, he spent time in northern Iraq, but returned to Saudi Arabia after he was nearly killed during the U.S. invasion, according to Mohsen Awajy, a lawyer and former Saudi radical who said he was contacted by Awfi last year.

Although Awfi's militant resume looks impressive on paper, his ascension is a sign that the group has become severely weakened, Awajy said. "If he's going to be the next leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia," he said, "then they are in big trouble, because he has no capability as a leader."

The Saudi security forces, however, have been confronted by weaknesses of their own. Counterterrorism experts and government officials said the kingdom was ill-prepared to respond to terrorism, in part because the government mistakenly assumed it would never become a target.