Beirut, August 30: An attempt to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s security chief, who is a prominent member of the royal family, appears to mark a new tactic by an Al Qaida network that is exploiting worsening instability in neighbouring Yemen.
A suicide bomber posing as a repentant militant failed to kill Prince Mohammad Bin Nayef at his Jeddah office on Thursday in the first known attack on a Saudi royal since Al Qaida began a bloody campaign in the world’s top oil exporter in 2003.
“If it had been successful, it would have been an incredibly significant propaganda victory for Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),” said Christopher Boucek, an associate of the Carnegie Middle East Programme. “But it’s not on the level of sophistication seen in previous multiple, coordinated attacks.”
The Saudi and Yemeni branches of Al Qaida merged early this year to form AQAP. They regrouped in Yemen following a vigorous counter-terrorism campaign led by Prince Mohammad, deputy interior minister, that badly damaged militants in Saudi Arabia.
AQAP is led by a Yemeni, Nasser Al Wahayshi, but it named as commanders two Saudis freed from the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay who had later graduated from Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation scheme for militants – run by Prince Mohammad.
Although one later surrendered to the authorities, that was a setback to a scheme that has won much publicity, even though the Saudis say its successes still outweigh occasional failures.
Boucek said the rehab programme was only an adjunct to tough tactics credited with derailing Al Qaida’s campaign by 2006.
“All of those soft counter-terrorism measures were only possible because of the hard security victories that were achieved earlier on,” he said. “This [attack] is only going to reinvigorate those continuing hard security efforts.”
The attack on Prince Mohammad, a son of the interior minister, Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz, who is seen as next in line to be named crown prince, was claimed by AQAP and may have been a gambit to show muscle behind its ambitious rhetoric.
“The group is now aiming to meet the goal of regional reach that it has set for itself,” said Gregory Johnsen, a Princeton University analyst, arguing that a months-long lull in AQAP violence indicated consolidation and planning, not inaction.
Saudi officials fret that militants are finding refuge in lawless swathes of Yemen, whose security forces are stretched by a tribal revolt in the north and separatist unrest in the south.
“We can’t say for sure yet that there is a direct connection between Yemen and the attack on Prince Mohammad, but Yemen’s security problems are going to affect the region,” Boucek said.
Saudi concern about Yemen is shared by Washington, which doubts Sana’a’s capacity to handle returning Guantanamo inmates.
“We worry about Yemen becoming a safe haven for Al Qaida,” State Department counter-terrorism adviser Shari Villarosa told a Carnegie audience in July.
-Agencies