EVIL OR INCOMPETENCE

The escape of the three terrorists in Khobar last weekend prompted a tin-foil hat moment on my part. Here are some more sober thoughts:

Mark Steyn suggests in the Spectator (registration required) that the Saudi Security forces are simply either incompetent or evil.

The authorities are ruthlessly efficient when it comes to chasing Saudi schoolgirls who’ve made the mistake of fleeing without first putting on their head coverings and shooing them back into their burning schoolhouse to perish in the flames. But every time they have some al-Qa’eda-affiliated terrorists surrounded, the bad guys mysteriously fly the coop.

What’s going on? Either the Saudi police agencies are totally incompetent, as suggested by their high level of casualties on these occasions. Or a significant proportion are hopelessly corrupt and on the take from the terrorists. Or they’re under the sway of some of the murkier members of the ‘royal’ family. Or they’re following orders from higher up the chain of command, maybe even from the long-time (three decades) interior minister Prince Nayef himself.

The Religious Policeman, who bravely blogs from within the 'kingdom' and is worth reading, notes some of the likely scenarios for escape from a captured Al Qaeeda training manual.

"Chapter 17. Evading Capture.
Scenario: You are completely surrounded by Saudi Arabia's Finest. As you are exiting by a back staircase, you run into an entire platoon of these fierce menacing killers....

"Hey, Ali How you doing? Yea, we got rostered as Duty Terrorists today, what a bummer! See you down the Social Club tonite?"

"OK, fellas, you know the routine. One of us gets taken, the rest go. Eeny-meeny-miney-mo....."

"Hi guys, we'd like to stick around, but we're due for cocktails at Uncle Nayif's this evening. Let's do lunch sometime!"

"Let me hold your gun for a minute while you try this shawarma."

Brian Whitaker of the UK's lefty Guardian newspaper suggests the escape was just a matter of Saudi incompetence, noting that the security forces have long been too dedicated to prosecuting (torturing) people for offenses against Islam than they have been to actually maintaining security.

There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia is in the throes of an insurgency aimed at toppling its monarchical regime. It may not be as serious as the insurgency in Iraq, but it is likely to get worse. The militants are ruthless and smart, and the Saudi security forces are not up to dealing with them. Neither is their boss, Prince Nayef, the interior minister.

In any sensibly run country there would by now be a great deal of public debate about Prince Nayef's future. Not in Saudi Arabia, though. For one thing, the prince's tentacles stretch well beyond the interior ministry and into the Saudi media.

Prince Nayef has run the interior ministry for almost 30 years, on supposedly Islamic principles which include extracting confessions through torture and executing people for numerous offences other than murder - such as witchcraft, adultery, sodomy, highway robbery, sabotage, apostasy (renunciation of Islam) and "corruption on earth".

Whitaker suggests it's well beyond time for Nayef to go.

Muttawa worries that if things deteriorate further the West could find justification for an invasion - noting “who could blame them?”

Steyn already has found justification and is developing post-invasion plans for the 'kingdom':

Washington needs to have solid, detailed contingency plans for securing the oil fields, and making sure the Hashemites are on stand-by to return to Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia can’t be saved, and the more we postpone reaching that conclusion and acting on it, the messier it’s going to be.

It's not the first time Steyn has suggested handing Saudi Arabia to the Hashemites (the Jordanian royal family). Among the Arab leadership, they are the best of a bad lot. And they may have some legitimacy. After all, they did govern huge chunks of what is now Saudi Arabia up until early last century. And, unlike the Sauds, the Hashemites claim a bloodline going back directly to Mohammed, and thus meet most of the criteria necessary to call themselves a royal family.

The Sauds, meanwhile, are a bunch of inbred kleptocrats. Their claim to royalty is pretty bogus. The 'founder' of Saudi Arabia Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al-Saud was more of a tribal warlord than a prince.