I wonder if Ollie North's company makes bullet-proof bed sheets..........
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Saudi rulers new target
Bombing illustrates extremists angry at more than U.S.
Patrick E. Tyler
New York Times
Nov. 10, 2003 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - For years, Osama bin Laden called for the violent overthrow of the Saudi royal family for allowing U.S. bases in the holiest land of Islam.
But with U.S. forces gone, the bombs continue to explode, signaling that the withdrawal did not address the deeper grievances among the hardened Saudi extremists who were behind the car bomb attack in Riyadh on Saturday. They now are seeking to exploit the opposition growing within Saudi Arabia to a regime long immune to political challenge.
Officials said the attack had started with two to three gunmen standing high atop the khaki desert cliffs facing the gated complex and raining bullets on the guards.
With the few guards either dead or pinned down by the barrage from above, other attackers, possibly using a vehicle and uniforms to make them look like a security team, sneaked a booby-trapped car into the compound to devastating effect, the officials said. Initially, multiple blasts were reported.
What seems ever more apparent in the Saturday night attack in Riyadh that left at least 17 people dead and about 122 wounded is that it is no longer Americans or even Westerners who are the targets of terrorism in Saudi Arabia. Rather, the target is the kingdom's stability, and the writ of the House of Saud.
"I think they are after the royal family," said Wyche Fowler Jr., the former senator who was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from October 1997 to February 2001.
So the terror campaign is merging with the domestic struggle over political reform in the conservative kingdom, where demonstrations against the royal family in Mecca last month showed a new boldness.
Though Saudi officials were quick to blame the bombing on al-Qaida, it was difficult even for Saudis to distinguish where domestic political opposition ends and the goals of the terror campaign begins.
But the danger for the Saudi royal family, analysts said, was that the growing ranks of domestic opponents to the Saudi monarchy would adopt the violent tactics of al-Qaida or look to the terror network's members for leadership.
"I think that is the ultimate concern of the Saudis," Fowler said. "I think that is why they are being so thorough to uncover these cells and eliminate them."
The threat to the royal family has mobilized security forces, which have used increasingly aggressive tactics and firepower to detect and break up terrorist plots and to seize large caches of explosives and ammunition. These have shocked the Saudi public in their scale and volume.
To counter both domestic political opposition and the terrorist instinct that courses through dissident mosques, Crown Prince Abdullah, the day-to-day ruler, has attempted to accelerate some political reforms. But he is offering far less than the even most centrist opponents demand.
Last month, the government announced that elections for municipal offices would be organized next year and, more recently, the crown prince opened for television coverage the deliberations of the consultative assembly whose members he appoints.
Although the steps he has taken or talked about draw derisive comments - as in: too little, too late - from Saudi dissidents, the crown prince is regarded as the most reform-minded among the sons of King Abdul Aziz bin Saud, who unified the warring tribes of the Arabia Peninsula and thus created the modern Saudi state.
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