Desert Shield: Saudi Arabia’s Campaign to Dismantle Terror Networks

Middle East as we know it today is known from many perspectives. The Middle East is one of the most important places when we talk about oil because there are many sources of this commodity. It is known for its popular tourist places and in many places luxury life. However, we can know more things from the Middle East, which is not always positive. The Middle East is known for its radical parties which are known as terrorist organizations. On the other hand, no one is accepting these radical moves that can harm people and many states of the Middle East are picking sides in conflict of state against terrorism. One of these states is Saudi Arabia, which is practically in the center of the Middle East and is the largest state in this region. But there is the main question. How does Saudi Arabia deal with terrorism and on which side is it standing?

Shadows and Threats: Defining The Contours of Terrorism

Terrorism is one of the problems these days mainly in the Middle East where many of these groups are attacking everything that is against their way of life and most of the time fighting just to bring up their religion into talk. Terrorism wants to plan up big-scale attacks like attacks on trade ships, hijacking planes, and many others. Most of the time they want to focus strategic infrastructure of their enemies and make their enemies react to situations that they make so they can be seen. These attacks can cost a lot of money in today’s world it is estimated that 9/11 is estimated to cost about 500 000$. However, it is still worth it for attackers of these terrorist organizations because they have multiple combatants and very expensive weapons. On the other hand, the defending state that is attacked by this act needs to incur even more expenses to repair and defend itself from more attacks that can come. For example, to eradicate the Islamic state known as ISIS it was needed almost 2 billion American dollars. For this reason, states‘ counter-offensive strategies in their fight against terrorism focus on their strategic income and financial resources. On the other hand, there are lone wolf attacks that are targeted mainly to people and these attacks are just a man with a knife trying to hurt most people before getting stopped. These attacks do not have big expenses for terrorist organizations and states can’t exactly do anything against them because these cold weapons can be concealed very well and these attacks are in places where there are many people and police cannot perfectly control everyone. But how do these organizations come to money? The answer is pretty simple because these organizations are full-scale criminal enterprises so they get money from human trafficking, drug smuggling, counterfeit goods, and many others. States in the world like the USA and many others have been trying to suppress these income streams for these organizations for many years with the largest increase in 1998 after attacks on US embassies and mostly after 2001 when there was announced War on Terror.

Crossroads of Tradition and Modernity: The Saudi Tapestry

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is known as the biggest state in the Middle East. With over 30 milion inhabitatants. With absolute monarchy as the leading force. The question is on which side it stands in the fight against terror on the Arabian peninsula. With many aspects playing against their position. Saudi Arabia is by many sides not meeting the criteria for democratization. Saudi Arabia is a very conservative state in many aspects like religion, laws, and other aspects. They are not even making moves in human rights ideals to meet democratic views. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia made their position very clear to the whole world as being the leader of trade with oil in the Middle East. They managed to transition from one of the poorest states into one of the richest states in the Middle East a became a leading voice of the Middle East. After that, they made many investments in housing, infrastructure, education, and many others.

Fortress of Peace: Saudi Arabia’s Struggle Against Extremism

Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest states that are taking big actions against any terrorist moves. After 2001 Saudi Arabia is taking many actions to fight domestic terrorism in the region and they are adopting policies that prevent radicalism and terrorism. This was not automatic and actual moves against terrorism and moves of counterterrorism began after 2003 when there was a big bomb terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia known as the Rijad bombings of 2003. Until 2003 Saudi Arabia was not very open to cooperating and their position was more of a part of the problem than helping for US in fighting terrorism. After the Rijad bombings in 2003, Saudi Arabia finally picked a side and started to work with the United States to bring an end to terrorism caused by Al-Qaeda. After that terrorism in the Middle East took a big hit and specifically targeted Al-Qaeda was practically on its knees when the US with Saudi Arabia took a big hit to their financing and their global network that has been disrupted. After that, there were 26 highest-ranking terrorist leaders 23 of them were killed or captured and sent back to Saudi Arabia to face justice mainly for their bombing attacks. That was good news for the Western world with whom Saudi Arabia cooperated in intelligence multiple times a day. On the other hand in the past, there was a big problem in cooperation with Saudi Arabia because they were under investigation too by the United States because after 9/11 came information that many of the hijackers in the 9/11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia. Specifically, 15 out of 19 attackers were from Saudi Arabia and even the USA took action against that by letting people sue Saudi Arabia. That even raised concerns about Saudi Arabian people if they are sympathizers of Al-Qaeda attacks on the US. After all of that, there was a big question if Saudi Arabia was a friend or an enemy but from many sources, we can see that both sides benefited from this partnership. The USA even wanted Bin Ladens son to be given to the USA as a “rewards for justice“ program and offered Saudi Arabia over 1 million dollars to do so. Saudi Arabia revoked the citizenship of Hamza bin Laden after that.

In the end, they showed that they were on the side of the Western world and they wanted to engage in a fight with terrorism after the accusations were settled. In 2004 Saudi Arabia became one of the founding members of MENA which supports and defends Geneva-based legal advocacy. After some time in 2015, they were invited to become observer and real members of the FATF organization. After that, Saudi Arabia became one of the first members of the Middle East. FATF is also known as the Financial Action Task Force. FATF is an international organization that is a practical watchdog for money laundering by terrorists in the world. After joining Saudi Arabia, FATF became more effective in the region, with Saudi Arabia being the first state of the Middle East in this organization. This organization is active these days with 39 members.

Defending the Desert: Today’s Frontline in War Against Extremism

These days Saudi Arabia is known for its support of any counter terrorism moves in the world. It was mostly known in the times of King Abdulah from 2005 to 2015 to support from the political side, financial support, religious support, and moral support for countries that were struck by any attack and wanted to fight it. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is making moves to rehaintensifbilitate and re-educate imprisoned terrorists to disengage them from their moves and put them back into normal life. Due to these and many more moves, Saudi Arabia is living a very long time in peace and security with no major terrorist attacks on their soil. Since 2015 Saudi Arabia has still been in the fight against terrorism mainly on the side of the Western world. They are a major part of the force in the fight against the Yemeni war against Houthi terrorists. They are also in a fight with unrest and terrorism made by Iraq and ISIS. The civil wars in Iraq and Syria and with all of that they are facing big economic struggles connected with terrorism to weaken these organizations that bring terrorism to its doom. And why do they still fight terrorism on these many frontlines while being safe for its people and due to big resources good army that defends the safety of the country against terrorist attacks? They are mainly in a fight with its biggest enemy which is ISIS which wants to destroy Saudi Arabia due to its position. Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam. Saudi Arabia is still pushing counterterrorism into the minds of people to be safe and protected from any of these attacks.

They are still scaling up their force to destroy ISIS forever being very successful in any many moves that they make. With all of its being very effective they are still using new mechanics to destroy any threats to national security. Saudi Arabia restructured their operations over 10 years and they are mainly focusing on preventing and stopping any possible attacks that could come with mainly finding and eliminating any terrorist in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian forces mainly focus on the fight against ISIS and they are part of an international organization focused just on ISIS named Global Coalition to Counter ISIS. They are one of the major attack forces of this coalition being second after the USA in count of bombing attacks on ISIS operating centers. After that, they even donated over 100 million dollars just for coalition-supported stabilization efforts in Syria. Just to fight ISIS, they managed to form a Counterterrorism Coalition in 2015. This Coalition has over 40 members to this day and they are still fighting terrorism with a joint operation center in Riyad. In 2017 Saudi Arabia managed to donate over 100 million dollars to support the G5 Sahel Coalition in the fight against terrorism in the region. On the other hand, they can move far from democratization with many moves to prevent terrorism. For example in 2017 King Salman created the Presidency of State Security in July 2017. This position just took responsibility from the Ministry of Interior and gave it to a newly established position under the direct rule of King Salman. Due to FATF Saudi Arabia is still mainly focused on money income routes for terrorists to prevent more moves against the kingdom.

How will it be now?

Saudi Arabia is still one of the most important players in international relations and politics period in the whole Middle East. It is still holding to its roots and showing that it has not planned to change things in which it operates for many years. Terrorism can be a big question for the future of the kingdom but it can be seen that Saudi Arabi is still scaling up its fight against terrorism and it is not making it easy for terrorism to get to a point where it can be dangerous for the kingdom or even region where people go for their holidays into modern cities build with its wealth. Saudi Arabia is not planning to reduce its operations and actually, they are still scaling up its force to put an end to terrorism for all at least in the Middle East. There are many terrorist organizations in the Middle East and no one can rule out the fact that terrorists that are not in direct fight with Saudi Arabia can join in the fight sometime in the future. The terrorist that are in confrontation like ISIS wants to destroy the whole kingdom and the Houthis that are against the Yemeni government coalition are uneasy and look like their position will not get better anytime soon.

 

Sources:

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Written by Tomáš Hutta

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