Faqih said 10,000 U.S. military experts and 30,000 civilians, including military technicians and security would remain in the kingdom

By Abdul Raheem Ali, IOL Staff 

CAIRO, May 13 (IslamOnline.net) – A number of Saudi opposition figures said the horrific bombing attacks which rocked the Saudi capital and claimed, according to American estimates, as many as 90 people including 10-12 Americans, were triggered by several changes on the Saudi front and anticipated a decisive battle between the Saudi authorities and militant groups.

In exclusive statements to IslamOnline.net over the phone Tuesday, May 13, Dr. Saad al-Faqih, head of the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia  (MIRA), said the attacks, which came days after the U.S. said it would withdraw troops from the kingdom, were likely carried out by Al-Qaeda.

“Al-Qaeda network, which declared a world-wide war on the United States in 1998, does not distinguish between military people and civilians,” he recalled.

Faqih said, “the American troops which were reportedly to leave Saudi Arabia only represent a small portion of the American forces deployed before the invasion of Iraq .”

According to the Saudi opposition leader some “ ten thousand American military experts as well as 30,000 American civilians, including military technicians and security experts would remain in the kingdom.”

Change Factors

He argued that “a number of basic change factors have contributed to supporting the trend of jihadists in the kingdom,” and resulted in the Riyadh bombings.

Faqih cited, in this respect, an anti-American popular momentum that was further fanned by the Saudi cooperation with the Americans.

The second factor, he added, is the emerging of a new group of young Saudi scholars who back the jihad tendencies against the United States and the Saudi regime through their fatwas.

He named, in this respect, Sheikh Ali el-Khodeir, Naser el-Fahd and Ahmed el-Khaldi who last week issued a statement calling  on the Saudi people not to cooperate with the state security authorities in hunting down the 19 “terrorists” suspected of links with Al-Qaeda.

The Saudi security authorities announced last week uncovering an Al-Qaeda cell and published the names and photos of 19 suspected members, urging the public to help track them down.

In their statement, the three scholars reportedly referred to the suspects as “mujahideen” and exhorted the Saudi people not to sell them to the security authorities.

According to the London-based Saudi opposition figure, the third change factor is the aggravation of the economic and social crisis in the kingdom, which sent unemployment, crime, bribery, corruption and poverty rates sky-high.

Concluding, Faqih underlined that all these changes prompted large sections of the Saudi people to support the “Islamic jihadist trend.”

For his part, Yasser el-Serri, director of the London-based Islamic Observatory, stressed that the Riyadh bombing attacks were triggered by the Saudi security authorities’ crackdown on the jihadist groups in Saudi Arabia .

“Attempts to tighten the grip on the jihadist groups in Saudi Arabia, the publication of their names and the clampdowns on them pushed them to accelerate the carrying out of a wide-scale operation to ease the heat ,” he added in exclusive statements to IOL over the phone.

Abdel Aziz el-Khamis, a Saudi opposition figure and director of the Saudi Center for Human rights, told IOL that “jihadist group wanted to convey a message to its supporters that they were forces the American forces to leave the kingdom.”

However, Faqih downplayed the argument, asserting that “Al-Qaeda does not adopt reaction techniques in their operations.

“The timing of the operation has nothing to do with the war on Iraq, (U.S. Secretary of State Colin) Powell’s visit to Riyadh or the American presence bur rather has to do with Al-Qaeda’s anti-American policies and plans for confrontations with the United States everywhere.”

He noted that Al-Qaeda had to lay low for a while after a word-wide war was ignited against it.

More Confrontations      

The explosions signal the beginning of a confrontation between Saudi Arabia and militant groups, said Awad

Mohammad el-Mas’ri, a Britain-based Saudi asylum, anticipated in an exclusive interview with IslamOnline.net Tuesday that the Riyadh bombings as “just the beginning of major operations” in the making.

In Cairo , Jihad Awad, a political science professor and researcher in Islamic military groups affairs, told IOL that “what happened in Saudi Arabia was expected in any minute.”

“The explosions signal the beginning of a confrontation between Saudi Arabia and groups,” that believe in the use of violence, he added.

“All Arab countries, particularly Egypt , Algeria , Yemen and the United Arab Emirates , witnessed decisive battles with violence groups. Only the Saudi regime tried to postpone the beginning of the confrontation until declaring it with the Riyadh   bombings,” asserted the expert.

He voiced his conviction that “this battle will be won by the Saudi regime as was the case in Egypt and Yemen in light of the favorable atmosphere and the immense assistance that could be provided by the U.S. as being the most affected by the bombings after the kingdom,” averred professor Awad.