... Those who know modern Arabian history would never have predicted that Asir would embrace Wahhabism, a product of Najd, the home province of the Al-Saud. What are the primary causes of Al-Qaeda’s global jihad? The bombings last year in Istanbul and Riyadh point us toward the answer. Secular Turkey and theocratic Saudi Arabia could hardly have less in common, yet the attacks exposed striking similarities. In both cases, Al-Qaeda took root among disaffected provincials with links to the state security apparatus. Not surprisingly, both governments are working to cover up the radical Islamist skeletons in their closets. In Turkey, DNA analysis helped identify four suicide bombers. All came from the same depressed Kurdish town in Eastern Anatolia. According to reputable Turkish journalists and opposition figures, the four had strong connections to a Kurdish Islamic terrorist organization called Hezbollah (with no connection to the Lebanese group of the same name). For years, the Ankara government has been unable to shake free from claims that Turkish intelligence supported Hezbollah as a counterweight to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In the 1980s and 1990s, the PKK fought, in the name of Marxism and Kurdish nationalism, for an independent state in southeast Turkey. As the enemy of secular nationalism, Hezbollah assassinated hundreds of PKK supporters. By the late 1990s, Hezbollah had itself become a threat to Turkish security. In early 2000, Ankara cracked down on the organization, but not before allegations surfaced concerning its connections to Turkish intelligence. All across the country the authorities discovered graves containing scores of Hezbollah's victims. It is becoming clear that Hezbollah was much larger than originally believed. According to Ali Bayramoglu, a respected political analyst, the Turkish security services recovered computer disks revealing the names of 20,000 members and sympathizers of the organization. Police arrested 14,000 of these. Following a general amnesty, however, only 400 remained in custody. Many activists reportedly melted into a new group called the Union of Imams, which sent men to Syria, Iran and Pakistan to receive military training. The police report that as many as 1,000 have made their way back to Turkey. Given this background, the investigation into the Istanbul bombings proved to be a political burden for Ankara. Eager to deflect attention from the clandestine connection between Hezbollah and the Turkish state, the government attempted to simply blame Al-Qaeda for the bombings and be done with it. Opposition groups, however, would not let the matter drop so easily. Deniz Baykal, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, said the authorities must stop “trying to make excuses for … Hezbollah. They have to name the name of the terror.” This demand for truth was a jab at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He is struggling to make moderate political Islam respectable among Turkey’s secular elite. Not wanting to be tarred with the brush of Al-Qaeda’s radicalism, Erdogan refuses to use the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” in the same sentence. However, the mounting evidence of a connection between Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah forced him to cede ground, so that he defined the bombings as “religious terrorism.” In so doing, he tacitly acknowledged the domestic roots of the attacks. If past support for religious radicalism is posing a problem for Turkey, it is driving Saudi Arabia into the most serious political crisis in its modern history. Few governments have done more than Riyadh to foster the spread of radical Islam, which is deeply encrusted in a number of state institutions. The Saudi monarchy likes to depict itself as the target of Al-Qaeda, but the reality is messier. As in Turkey, the Saudi state has used radical Islamic groups as its proxy ­ against, in this instance, secular reformers and Shiites. Al-Qaeda enjoys a much higher profile in mainstream Saudi political life than did Hezbollah in Turkey, representing a clearly defined political platform that affirms independence from the West and staunch support for clerical domination of the state. It also calls for the suppression of feminists, secularists and Shiites. On the simplest level, Al-Qaeda’s says: “Down with the West and the Muslims who imitate it!” This nativist appeal helps to explain why the group has a strong following in Asir, a depressed region in the kingdom’s south. Those who know modern Arabian history would never have predicted that Asir would embrace Wahhabism, a product of Najd, the home province of the Al-Saud. The south was one of the last areas to be conquered by the Al-Saud, and was dragged kicking and screaming into Saudi Arabia. Four generations after the Saudi conquest, however, Asir has converted. All indications are that the extremist Wahhabism of Al-Qaeda now flourishes in the south. More than half of the Saudi hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks came from Asir, as did the mastermind of the bombings in Riyadh last May. Like Turkish Kurdistan, Asir is a backwater. However, the north-south divide in Saudi Arabia is not nearly as deep as the ethnic gulf separating Kurds and Turks. As Arabs and Sunni Muslims, the Asiris can participate in mainstream Saudi culture ­ at least in theory. In practice, the southerners are derisively referred to as “zero-sevens” (the area code for Asir), which translates very roughly as “rednecks.” They have almost no representation at the top levels of government. Asiri support for Al-Qaeda, therefore, is also a way to rebuke the royal family. Asiris are disproportionately represented in the security services, one of the only avenues southerners have for advancement. This provides the social context for a conspiracy theory ­ now circulating among Saudi opposition groups ­ that the November Riyadh attack was an inside job. Witnesses testified that a car belonging to one of the security services was involved in the operation. Ali al-Ahmed, the director of the Saudi Institute in Washington, states that the Asiri dimension adds another layer to the story. “Because it is often the southerners who do work such as guarding foreign compounds,” he explains, “it is easy for Saudis to imagine that somebody opened up the gates for the bombers.” Riyadh is anxious to avoid deep examination of the Al-Qaeda phenomenon, which leads directly back to the unbridgeable social, political and religious chasms inside Saudi society. At the moment, the Saudi regime is betting it can rein in the violence by cracking down on the militants and enforcing nonviolent religious orthodoxy. This new, aggressive attitude toward the terrorists is welcome in Washington. The policy, however, is unlikely to solve Saudi Arabia’s long-term political problems. Both at home and abroad, pressure is mounting for widespread anti-Wahhabi reforms. Crown Prince Abdullah is, in fact, entertaining such ideas. His plans, however, are anathema to conservative religious groups ­ to say nothing of Al-Qaeda. The Al-Saud, therefore, have yet to face the greatest test of their legitimacy. The radical Islamic worldview has been in gestation for a century. As the example of the Kurds and Asiris demonstrates, it is now extremely supple. In a manner similar to mid-century Marxism, radical Islam allows groups with highly localized political agendas to feel as if they are participating in a unified global struggle. On a more cynical level, these groups can associate themselves with Al-Qaeda’s trademark in order to transform their parochial conflicts into something that will attract the attention of an otherwise indifferent world. US terrorist experts assert that, as a centralized organization, Al-Qaeda is breaking up. As both an idea and a role model, however, it lives on. The next stage of the war on terror, therefore, will witness the emergence of splinter organizations, as well as new groups mimicking Al-Qaeda and reproducing its ideology. The evidence from Saudi Arabia and Turkey supports this analysis. It also serves as a cautionary tale. Turkish Kurdistan and Asir have their counterparts in every Muslim country. Al-Qaeda’s global jihad against America thus draws its power from a thousand dirty little civil wars ­ conflicts, that is to say, that have almost nothing to do with the United States. These are the deepest roots of anti-Western terror. They are also the hardest for Washington to address. http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=6727