Recent Gulf Terrorism in Perspective, Part 1: Kuwait

For those who are curious about this statement in contrast to my previous hiatus announcement, here is the explanation and I would like to thank all of those who offered e-mail support during the last 48 hours. That being said, you may have noticed an upswing in violence in a number of Gulf countries over the last several weeks (the AP certainly has) and sought in vain a cause for what is now taking place in the Gulf states. While I can't provide a cause per se, I can provide a little of background on what is now taking place that will hopefully help to put things in context. Some of this is taken from the partial dossier I wrote up in 2002 and revised in 2004 as far as all of the information I've been able to amass on the al-Qaeda network.

Backgrounder: Al-Qaeda in Kuwait

• Stripped al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith of his citizenship immediately following his appearance on a videotape with bin Laden and al-Zawahiri in October 2001.

• Al-Qaeda infrastructure inside the country is poor due to an overwhelming respect for the United States among both Kuwaiti elites and the ruling House Sabah as a result of the Gulf War and rests mainly in the hands of Islamists led by the Saudi-born Sheikh Hamoud al-Aqla al-Shuebi opposed to the monarchy and Western influence in the emirate.

• Because of high security and poor infrastructure, Kuwaiti al-Qaeda members are forced mainly to rely on a periodic assassinations of foreign nationals with the hopes of driving out foreign investors and destabilizing the monarchy.

• Kuwaiti al-Qaeda members first carried out the murder of a Canadian technician working at the Ahmad al-Jabr airbase in October 2001 in retaliation for the emirate’s backing of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

• Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah, a member of the royal family and a former oil and information minister, launched the first of several blistering attacks on Kuwaiti Islamist parties in al-Sharq al-Awsat in October 2001. These attacks forced most respectable Kuwaiti Islamist groups, such as the Society for Revival of Islamic Heritage, to sever both overt contact with al-Qaeda, though the followers of Sheikh al-Shuebi did not.

• 50 Kuwaiti al-Qaeda members attempted to return home following the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan but were apprehended in December 2001 entering the UAE from Iran. Interrogating them, Kuwaiti authorities learned that Suleiman Abu Ghaith had been injured during the US bombing of Kandahar and was currently undergoing medical treatment at an IRGC military base in eastern Iran. A correspondent from the Kuwaiti daily al-Watan entered Iran and met with Abu Ghaith, who stated his belief that al-Qaeda would continue its struggle even if bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were killed.

• Kuwait agreed to allow CIA experts to examine its Islamic charities’ records in January 2002 to ensure that no NGOs based in the country were al-Qaeda fronts.

• 2 Kuwaiti al-Qaeda members killed 1 US marine and injured another during US war games on Failaka Island off the coast of Kuwait in October 2002. The two attackers, who were killed when US forces returned fire, had recently returned from fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the first concrete evidence of an al-Qaeda presence inside Kuwait.

• Galvanized by the Failaka shooting, Kuwaiti security forces arrested 2 medical students both believed to have been recruited by al-Qaeda. The two men are believed to have plotted a Khobar Towers-style bombing attack with other extremists at the diwaniyah (government-provided villa) of former Islamist MP Jamal al-Kandari.

• Mohsen al-Fahdli, the top al-Qaeda leader in Kuwait, was arrested by Kuwaiti security forces in November 2002. Al-Fahdli had close ties to Wahhabi clerics in both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and was planning attacks on Western hotels in Yemen with the assistance of 3 Kuwaiti military officers. Al-Fahdli served in Brigade 055 in Afghanistan and the International Islamic Peacekeeping Brigade in Chechnya and is believed to have been a close associate of both Suleiman Abu Ghaith and Amir ibn al-Khattab. Adel Abu Hamid, al-Fahdli’s top deputy, had visited Afghanistan at least twice and met with bin Laden in Kandahar, where the al-Qaeda leader had given him $100,000 to finance terrorist attacks against Western targets in Yemen. Another al-Fahdli associate, Mohammed al-Motairi, had served in Brigade 055 under the command of Abdul Hassan al-Masri at Kandahar airport. Al-Fahdli

• Kuwaiti Al-Qaeda fighters are believed to have planned the January 2003 attack on an SUV that killed an American civilian and wounded another. Sami Mohammed Marzouk Obeid al-Mutairi, an employee of the Kuwaiti Department of Social Affairs, is believed to have carried out the attack and then attempted to flee to Saudi Arabia to seek shelter with the organization’s supporters there.

I should add that Kuwaiti officials are generally fairly hesitant to publicly discuss al-Qaeda presence in the Emirate for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being fears of a panic among foreign investors. All the same, Kuwait is not Saudi Arabia and ruling Sabah family has nothing resembling the not-so-informal deal that exists between the al-Sauds and the Wahhabis within the Kingdom that has so often been responsible for the Saudis' (*ahem*) interesting behavior on how it deals with al-Qaeda. And quite frankly, if the Saudis want to know how to crack down on terrorism, they could probably learn a lesson or two from their neighbors to the northeast.

Status report on Kuwaiti al-Qaeda

The recent al-Qaeda activities in Kuwait were first anticipated by the US and British governments, both of whom had warned their nationals inside the emirate to prepare for an al-Qaeda attack as early as December 14.(1) It is likely that the recent audiotape issued by Osama bin Laden to the Iraqi people was the proximate cause of this warning given that it contained the following orders for the Iraqi al-Qaeda:

I urge you to strike supply routes and oil lines, and to plant twice as many mines that leave behind no wounded, and to assassinate company owners who provide the enemy with supplies, whether in Riyadh, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, or other places.(2)

Many observers, both in and outside of government, have been tempted to over-analyze or dismiss the potential command and control value wielded by bin Laden's statements. Sometimes, however, it would seem that he means exactly what he says with respect to statements issued with the intention of reaching his subordinates. This does not, however, rule out the possibility of the audiotaped statements containing coded messages or that the Kuwaiti al-Qaeda members received command and control instructions from bin Laden or his senior lieutenants through other means such as the Zarqawi-led coalition of Islamist groups in Iraq, the al-Qaeda fi al-Jazeera in Saudi Arabia, or orders relayed from Saif al-Adel or other senior al-Qaeda leaders currently residing in Iran.(3, 4) The fact that the first identified suspects in detained in connection with the al-Qaeda threat were members of the emirate's military would seem to support the claim that al-Qaeda had been planning attack in Kuwait for sometime now as well as to justify earlier public claims that al-Qaeda had successfully infiltrated the military-security apparatus of a number of Gulf states.(5) What is perhaps most alarming is that while the arrested servicemen were tied to comrades who had gone to fight in Chechnya or Afghanistan, they themselves hadtaken part in neither campaign and may well have been recruited into al-Qaeda while in the Kuwaiti military.(6) While past experience in Europe has shown instances of al-Qaeda cells being formed by only a handful of actual trained members of the organization (most notably in the case of 3/11), it is generally unheard of for such cells to continue in operation following the detention of the local ringleaders. According to press reports, the soldiers were planning attacks on US forces around the Eid al-Adha celebrations during joint training exercises with the Kuwaiti military, a likely indications that the would-be attackers were familiar with the October 2002 attacks on US forces in Kuwait, which also took place during training exercises.(8)

Interrogation of the detained soldiers led to the arrest of Mohsin al-Fadli, believed to be a relative of the Mohsen al-Fahdli (name Romanized in order to avoid confusion similar to that which occurred in the case of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir) and like al-Fahdli was involved in recruiting fighters on behalf of Abu Musab Zarqawi to fight in Iraq.(9,10) The detention of the servicemen and al-Fadli may have forced the Kuwaiti al-Qaeda to take action prior to their preferred target date of the Eid al-Adha, as a gun battle erupted in Kuwait City on January 10 that left two security personnel and one terrorist dead after Kuwaiti security personnel attempted to detain the dead terrorist, Fawwaz Tlaiq al-Otaibi, while he was entering a shop in Hawali.(11) Al-Otaibi opened fire on the security forces just as they were coming to arrest him and tried to go into a black sedan where his accomplices were waiting, only to be injured by the pursuing security forces in the process and taken to a hospital where he later died of his wounds.(12) The accomplices managed to drive off in the sedan, prompting a US embassy alert and a warning from former information and oil minister Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah to the Kuwaiti media concerning the existence of al-Qaeda sleeper cells inside the country.(13) In an effort to nip any al-Qaeda plots inside the emirate at the bud, Kuwaiti security forces proceeded to detain 30 suspected al-Qaeda members, including al-Otaibi's suspected accomplices.(14, 15) These detentions apparently led to the arrest of an unidentified "Iranian agent" who had been previously been identified by Saudi authorities as being in contact with having been contact with al-Qaeda and having had prior knowledge of terrorist attacks that had taken place within the Kingdom.(16) Given previous reporting that al-Qaeda leaders including current military commander Saif al-Adel are currently based in Iran and are being harbored by hardline and quasi-autonomous branches of the Islamic Republic, the issue must be raised as to whether or not this Iranian agent was acting in a command and control capacity for the network as part of his official duties on behalf of the Iranian regime.

The crackdown and interrogation of the suspected al-Qaeda members appear to have given Kuwaiti authorities enough of a reasonable picture of the network's infrastructure inside the emirate to engage in further crackdowns outside the Kuwait City area. On January 15, security forces raided an al-Qaeda arms cache that had identified by detainees in the Umm al-Haiman containing weapons, explosives, and munitions, killing Saudi national Hamada al-Enezi and arresting two others.(17) A fourth man apparently fled the scene of the raid back into Saudi Arabia, where he was arrested by the Kingdom's security forces along with another individual believed to be linked to the Umm al-Haiman arms cache.(18) According to Kuwaiti press reports, the two terrorists arrested in Umm al-Haiman confessed to planning attacks on foreign embassies, shopping malls, state security buildings, and planting roadside bombs on highways used by American military convoys.(19) Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah told reporters covering a parliamentary committee on the security situation that the raid in Umm al-Haiman had thwarted a wave of terrorist attacks against Kuwaiti infrastructure and revealed that the interrogation of the suspects taken during the raid had yielded a tip-off that enabled Kuwaiti Special Forces to recover 349 detonators and 349 hand grenades buried under a garden in the southern Sabahiya district.(20)

Now aware of al-Qaeda's designs on the emirate and unwilling to ease up pressure on the network, Kuwaiti security forces arrested 10 additional Saudi and Kuwaiti al-Qaeda members in a gunfight in which a security officer was killed and a secondary arms cache was discovered in the Abdullah al-Salem suburb of Kuwait City, this one yielding 8 grenades, 10 detonators, and a chest full of munitions.(21, 22) From these raids and another in the Jaber al-Ali district that yielded bombmaking material, Kuwaiti authorities were able to learn that the Kuwaiti al-Qaeda was made up of both Saudi and Kuwaiti members, was lacking an effecient leader following the arrest of Mohsen al-Fahdli, and was receiving money subsidize its operations from a neighboring country, likely Saudi Arabia.(23) The Kuwaiti network consisted of three distinct components, one known as the Peninsula Lions (a subset of the late Saudi al-Qaeda leader Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin's al-Haramain Brigades) led by Nasser Khalif al-Enezi and his brother Amir who had been ordered to target US forces in Kuwait by members of Abu Musab Zarqawi's Iraq-based Islamist coalition, another consisting of al-Qaeda members who had been trained at camps inside Saudi Arabia and led by Khalid al-Dousari and Ahmad al-Mutairi, and a third group, the Kuwaiti Mujahideen, that had formerly been led by Mohsen al-Fahdli.(24)

The Dousari/Mutairi Connection

The surnames of Khalid al-Dousari and Ahmad al-Mutairi appear to support the Kuwaiti assertions that their component of the Kuwaiti al-Qaeda network is made up largely of Saudi-trained members of the organization. Consider the following:

• Nasser al-Mutairi was captured by US forces in Afghanistan and was until recently detained at Guantanamo Bay.

• Mohammed al-Mutairi was among those arrested by Kuwaiti security services in 2002 for financing al-Qaeda attacks throughout the Persian Gulf.

• Sami al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti civil servant, shot 2 Americans in Kuwait in January 2003, killing 1 and wounding the other before attempting to flee to Saudi Arabia.

• Ahmed and Abdullah Mutlaq al-Mutairi were arrested with a third man in February 2003 for planning attacks on US forces in Kuwait.

• Hakim al-Mutairi is spokesman for the Kuwaiti Salafist Movement.

• Mehmas bin Mohammed Mehmas al-Hawashleh al-Dousari, Bandar bin Abdul Rahman Menawer al-Rahimi al-Mutairi, and Abdullah Farres bin Jufain al-Rahimi al-Mutairi were all suicide bombers who took part in the May 2003 Riyadh bombings.

• The Washington Post reported in October 2003 that Abdelrahman al-Dosari (Dousari) was a "senior al-Qaeda recruiter" who had spoken at several Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA) conferences during the 1990s.(25)

• Suleiman al-Dousari is a columnist for the Saudi al-Qaeda publication "Voice of Jihad" who has instructed members and supporters of the organization to target US and Israeli nationals rather than Saudi security forces, who are only to be attacked in cases of self-defense.

• Abu Harith al-Dousari served as the suicide bomber who drove a truck bomb into Baghdad's Kathimiya bridge on behalf of Abu Musab Zarqawi and whose videotaped "martyrdom statement" has appeared on a number of al-Qaeda websites.

• Turki al-Mutairi was killed with Saudi al-Qaeda leader Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin.

• Miejib Abu Ras al-Dosari (Dousari) was among those killed by Saudi security forces in July 2004 during a raid on a villa in Riyadh that recovered RPGs, a SAM-7 missile launcher, explosives, ammunition, and $360,000 in cash.

• Fayyaz al-Khashman al-Dosari (Dousari) was among those al-Qaeda members who accepted the Saudi amnesty offer in July 2004.

This evidence would seem to support earlier assertions that al-Qaeda prefers to adopt a November 17-style recruiting strategy whenever possible, recruiting its members along social circle, family, clan, or even tribal lines as a means of preventing infiltration and strengthening devotion to the organization.

The Battle Continues ...

Using new information regarding the composition of the Kuwaiti al-Qaeda, Kuwait arrested 3 individuals believed to have been in charge of the terrorist attacks that were being planned at the Umm al-Hamain arms cache identified as BK, AK al-Enezi, and MS al-Ajmi.(26) From the interrogations of the detained al-Qaeda members, it was learned that Sheikh Hamid al-Ali was attempting to persuade Kuwaiti youths to carry out attacks against US forces in Kuwait and Iraq and that the Kuwaiti al-Qaeda were in touch with and receiving orders from other cells based in Saudi Arabia and Syria as well as a number of Kuwaiti MPs and religious leaders prior to the clashes with security forces.(27) Another series of raids involving Kuwaiti Special Forces in the Salmiya district that left one security officer dead but succeeded in arresting Amir Khalif al-Enezi, a former mosque preacher who served as the spiritual leader of the Peninsula Lions.(28, 29) Al-Enezi's brother Nasser was also listed among those killed during the raid.(30) With the loss of their leader, 5 Kuwaiti al-Qaeda members who had previously been holed up at a house in the Sulaibiya suburb surrendered to the authorities.(31)

Conclusion

Kuwaiti security services were able to rise to the challenge of tackling Osama bin Laden's infrastructure in the emirate both due to excellent intelligence and response capabilities as well as an unwillingness to engage in willful ignorance towards the problem of al-Qaeda, as has frequently been the case of their southern neighbor. Indeed, it seems far more likely that the limited presence of al-Qaeda in Kuwait is more due to problems in Saudi Arabia radiating outwards than it is an indication of Kuwaiti negligence. The targeting of the leadership, financiers, and ideologues of the Kuwaiti al-Qaeda cell (Saudi Arabia has only taken the first step) is likely to deal a severe blow to al-Qaeda's ability to operate inside Kuwait in the near-term as well as the long-term if it is properly sustained. The unequivocal denunciation of al-Qaeda and its ideology by Kuwaiti Islamic authorities is also likely to stem the ability of the network to claim legitimacy for any violent actions it may succeed in carrying out within the emirate.

Tomorrow - Oman and there will be a more thorough listing of conclusions in the final segment.

Endnotes:

1. "US, UK warn of attack in Kuwait," Middle East Newsline, December 19, 2004.
2. "Website Posts Full Version of New Audiotaped Attributed to Bin Laden," FBIS, December 28, 2004.
3. "Raid nets 5 foreign militants; Two Saudis, 3 Jordanians identified as wanted terrorists," Arab Times, January 27, 2005.
4. "Iran Al-Qaeda link arrested in Kuwait: Radio," Iran Focus, January 13, 2005.
5. "Kuwait Detains Soldiers for Plot Against US," Wired News, January 1, 2005.
6. "Detained Kuwaiti soldiers linked to Al Qaeda: report," Agence France Presse, January 4, 2005.
7. ibid.
8. "Kuwaitis 'planned to hit US troops in training,' Reuters, January 5, 2005.
9. "Prominent al-Qaida figure arrested in Kuwait," Arabic News, January 8, 2005.
10. "Kuwait Court Clears Four Islamists of Attack Plots," Reuters, November 10, 2004.
11. "3 Killed in Kuwait Shootout," Reuters, January 11, 2005.
12. ibid.
13. "Raid nets 5 foreign militants; Two Saudis, 3 Jordanians identified as wanted terrorists," Arab Times, January 27, 2005.
14. Hasan, Omar, "Kuwait Questions Terror Suspects Linked to Shootout," Agence France Presse, January 13, 2005.
15. "Raid nets 5 foreign militants; Two Saudis, 3 Jordanians identified as wanted terrorists," Arab Times, January 27, 2005.
16. "Iran Al-Qaeda link arrested in Kuwait: Radio," Iran Focus, January 13, 2005.
17. Mohammad, Oussama, "Gunman Killed, Two Kuwait Police Hurt in Clash," Reuters, January 15, 2005.
18. "Saudi security forces arrest two suspected militants," Reuters, January 17, 2005.
19. "Terrorists in Kuwait targeted malls, embassies: report," Khaleej Times, January 18, 2005.
20. "Kuwait Hikes Security at Oil, Vital Sites," Arab News, January 18, 2005.
21. "Arrests made after Kuwait clashes," Al-Jazeera, January 17, 2005.
22. "Kuwait seizes arms in capital suburb," Reuters, January 19, 2005.
23. "Raid nets 5 foreign militants; Two Saudis, 3 Jordanians identified as wanted terrorists," Arab Times, January 27, 2005.
24. ibid.
25. Schmidt, Susan, "Spreading Saudi Fundamentalism in US," Washington Post, October 2, 2003.
26. "Raid nets 5 foreign militants; Two Saudis, 3 Jordanians identified as wanted terrorists," Arab Times, January 27, 2005.
27. ibid.
28. Haddadin, Haitham, "Militants kill Kuwaiti officer in shoot-out," Reuters, January 30, 2005.
29. "'Five Militants' killed in Kuwait," BBC News, January 31, 2005.
30. "Raid nets 5 foreign militants; Two Saudis, 3 Jordanians identified as wanted terrorists," Arab Times, January 27, 2005.
31. Haddadin, Haitham, "Five Militants Surrender After Kuwait Police Raid," Reuters, February 5, 2005.