BEIRUT — In the High-Intensity Wake Up Call Department, this is as shrill as it gets: The aborted terror attack against the Abqaiq oil production and refining complex in Saudi Arabia this week was followed by police action that killed five suspected Saudi terrorists and captured one. We must not get so fixated on energy and terror that we forget the third critical element in this equation: discontented young men who pursue political deviance and violence.
The important events at Abqaiq represent the intersection of three critical Middle Eastern and global phenomena:
· The continuing, expanding threat of Arab home-grown and exported terrorism, partly exacerbated by America’s military and political presence in this region;
· Arab societies and governing regimes’ continuing search for the right combination of police capabilities and political, social and economic reforms that can counter their own youth’s desperate attraction to terrorism;
· An increasingly tight global energy market vulnerable to disruptions due to natural phenomena (hurricanes) or political attacks.
The Abqaiq attack happened as I was reading through a fact-filled and illuminating new book entitled National Security in Saudi Arabia: Threats, Responses and Challenges (Praeger Security International, Westport, Connecticut and London, 2005, 426 pp, published in cooperation with CSIS). The book is by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. and Nawaf Obaid, a Riyadh-based Saudi author and national security consultant.
They make important and relevant points, especially in view of this week’s attack. The most important are while the country no longer faces a major threat from Iraq, and continues to study how to deal with potential threats from Iran and Yemen, “the kingdom’s most urgent security threats no longer consist of hostile military forces; these threats have been replaced by the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism; [other regional and global security] factors interact with a longer-term set of threats to Saudi stability that are largely economic and demographic but that may well be more important than any combination of outside military threats and the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism.”
The world rightly worries that indigenous Arab terrorism may disrupt energy flows and sharply increase prices again. Abqaiq is something of a lynchpin of an already volatile global energy picture, given existing or potential disruptions to oil production and exports in Iraq, Iran and Nigeria. Saudi Arabia accounts for 16 percent of total global oil exports (7.5 million barrels a day), and Abqaiq has the capacity to process more than 7 million barrels a day.
The world’s continuing energy supply vulnerabilities are due to two main reasons: there is no such thing as absolute security that can prevent an attack against a facility like Abqaiq (despite the 2005 Saudi security budget of $10 billion, including $1.5 billion to secure energy facilities); and, extremist and terrorist movements continue to be fuelled by local events in the Middle East.
The Saudi security establishment has made a late but significant adjustment in the past three years to fight domestic threats. Improved counter-terrorism strategy, intelligence capabilities, and internal security forces are showing results in incidents like the failed attack at Abqaiq. Cordesman and Obaid were correct to note that improved security measures around energy facilities “have significantly lessened the probability of any major attacks being carried out successfully.”
We should expect more such attempts, though, because groups such as Al-Qaeda will continue to choose targets that simultaneously hurt Arab governments, the United States, and global energy security. So, we should all pay more attention to the critical challenge that Cordesman and Obaid call “the broader priorities for security reform”.
They note that while conventional military and police forces address new challenges and adjust to changing realities, “Saudi security also requires a broad process of continuing evolutionary reform of the kingdom’s political, economic and social systems, not just reform of the Saudi military, internal security and intelligence services. The health of the Saudi economy and coming to grips with the kingdom’s problems with education, Saudization, youth employment and demographics are the true keys to security.”
They explicitly identify another key to security as “a level of political progress that expands the role ordinary Saudis can play in government and in making further reductions in sources of social unrest like corruption. Even the best counter-terrorist operations can only deal with the small fraction of the Saudi population that represents violent extremists. True internal security is based on popular support.”
Cordesman and Obaid note the many changes that have taken place in Saudi Arabia in recent years. They acknowledge the need for greater speed in some cases while arguing that lasting change can only reflect indigenous values and a pace of reform that has the consent of the citizenry. Their work and thoughts take on added significance in view of the Abqaiq attack this week. Their linkage of security with political, social and economic reforms is a vital message that applies to the entire Arab region.
Jordan, for example, has grappled with the issue of how to enhance security in the wake of the hotel bombings last November, using a combination of police work and political reform, without yet identifying the right combination. Finding that elusive balance between cops on the street and the consent of the governed remains the key priority for all countries in this region.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 01 March 2006
Word Count: 881
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