In part two of our series, we examine the uneasy relationship between
Riyadh’s tough stance on jihadis and its reputation as an incubator of
violent extremism
Ha’ir
prison, in the desert south of Riyadh, is not an attractive place. It
is surrounded by concrete walls and watchtowers, as befits a facility
run by Saudi Arabia’s internal security service. It holds terrorists,
dissidents and others deemed a danger to the state, whose green and
white crossed swords and palm tree emblem is stamped everywhere around
the sprawling compound.
Armed guards check vehicles and ID cards in a chicane of barriers by
the main gate. Military police jeeps block access from the nearby
highway. Two weeks ago, Islamic State
threatened to destroy the prison after the execution of 47 men, mostly
convicted al-Qaida members. Seven had been inmates at Ha’ir before they
were taken away to be beheaded or shot. Last summer, a young Isis
supporter blew himself up outside.
Visiting journalists, however, are welcome, greeted by coffee, cakes
and PowerPoint presentations about conditions for the 1,700 prisoners
and the programmes to rehabilitate them. It is part of a Saudi
government effort to demonstrate its determination to tackle terrorism
at a time when Isis, known in Arabic as Daesh, has become a grave threat
to the Middle East and far beyond, thousands of miles from its
strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
Ha’ir seems well run. The detention blocks are clean and light, the
heavy cell doors painted an incongruous lilac. Pot plants line the
corridor. Interrogation rooms are equipped with CCTV, a desk and chairs,
and a thick steel ring welded to the floor for securing manacled
prisoners. Special rooms, equipped with double beds, are available for
conjugal visits. There is even a children’s playground.
It is natural to suspect that Ha’ir, one of five prisons run by the
Mabahith security service, is designed to impress and mislead. Human
rights groups say conditions are worse in general criminal prisons.
Allegations of torture are widespread. “Many prisoners do complain about
their treatment,” confided a visiting Saudi from another institution.
Inmates, in any event, seemed happy to speak.
“My views have changed,” said Saud al-Harbi, a 30-year-old with a
wispy beard who is coming to the end of a 12-year sentence for
attempting to leave the country to fight in Iraq, and for “contact” with
a wanted man. “I saw the pictures of Abu Ghraib [showing the abuse of
Iraqi detainees by US soldiers] and that was why I wanted to go,” he
said. “I was young then.”
Moaz, who has been held without trial for 11 months, was arrested
after returning voluntarily from Syria, where he had gone to fight
Bashar al-Assad with the Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham. “It turned
out to be Muslims killing Muslims,” he said. “That wasn’t what I
wanted.”
Saudi Arabia’s tough stance on terrorism sits uneasily with its
reputation. The homeland of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers
on 11 September 2001, struggles to counter the widely-held belief that
it is an incubator and exporter of murderous fanaticism. Its intolerant
Salafi or Wahhabi ideology is shared by Daesh, though the jihadis’
thinking includes modern Islamist strands alien to the conservative
kingdom. Riyadh dismisses Isis as khawarij or deviant, though beheadings and other sharia punishments are common to both. Daesh uses the takfiri doctrine of excommunication to justify the slaughter of Shias and Yazidis.
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Having
defeated al-Qaida inside their borders a decade ago, killing and
capturing hundreds -including many of those executed on 2 January - the
Saudis are fighting Isis, and want to be seen to be doing so. They
carried out airstrikes with Barack Obama’s anti-Isis coalition in 2014,
but abandoned them at the start of the war in Yemen. Last month, the
young deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, announced the creation
of an anti-terror alliance of Sunni states, though that was greeted
sceptically as more about PR than substance. “It’s about building a
system,” Prince Turki al Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief,
told the Guardian.
Isis clearly threatens Saudi Arabia.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, its self-proclaimed caliph, has singled it out
for abuse and designated the Nejd and Hijaz regions as Islamic wilayat or provinces. The ruling Al Saud family is vilified as Al Salul, a reference to a seventh-century figure depicted as outwardly embracing Islam while conspiring against the prophet Muhammad.
In 2015, Isis carried out 15 attacks, which killed 65 people. The
worst was a suicide bombing of a Shia mosque in the eastern province
village of al-Qudeeh that killed 22. It was presumably mounted to foment
sectarian hatred. Most attacks have been by so-called lone wolves.
“Isis wanted to create an organisation but failed to do so,” said
General Mansour al-Turki, the interior ministry spokesman. “They could
not recruit trained people like al-Qaida.”
Members of the public are encouraged to call the confidential 990
phone line, which gets 180 tips a week about suspected terrorists, Turki
said. Less transparent methods are also employed. “The Mabahith listen
to everyones’ phones and will arrest you if you even mention the word
Daesh,” said a middle-aged man in Riyadh. “They really are tough on
terrorism,” said a woman academic. “Other laws are barely enforced in
this country.” Thousands have been arrested under a vaguely defined law.
Saudi Arabia still supports anti-Assad groups in Syria, including
the Islamist Jaysh al-Islam. It changed policy, however, over fears of
“blowback” from returning fighters – a repeat of what happened when
officially sanctioned jihadis came back from Afghanistan in the 1990s.
In spring 2014 they proscribed Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida’s
Syrian affiliate, and banned nationals from fighting abroad. Crackdowns
on financing and charity collections have been effective, the control of
firebrand preachers less so. Western diplomats increasingly complain of
an “outdated stereotype” of Saudi tolerance for terrorism.
An estimated 3,000 Saudis have been to Syria since 2011, and about
700 have returned home. Officials like to note that in proportion to the
country’s 21m citizens, fewer Saudis fight with Isis than do Tunisians,
with their French colonial background, secular republican regime and
relatively successful experience of the Arab spring.
“Yes, there are people in Saudi Arabia who sympathise with Daesh, but
there are in other Muslim countries too,” said Turki. “Two to three
thousand Tunisians didn’t come out of a so-called Wahhabi upbringing. Or
Chechens or Dagenstanis.” Others talk about “Belgiqistan”, a scathing
reference to the role of Europeans of Arab or Muslim background in Isis
atrocities.
About 5% of the population, or some 500,000 people, support Isis, according to independent polling. An element of this support is admiration for a Sunni group that is uncompromisingly in its fight against Iran and Shias.
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Non-official Saudis acknowledge the scale of the problem and blame the
influence of extremist clerics in mosques and schools. “I used to oppose
capital punishment,” said Mazen Sudairi, an economist. “But then I saw
what Daesh does and I changed my mind.” Liberals fret about the effect
of uncritical Qur’anic teaching. One young mother was horrified when her
English-speaking child was denounced as a kafir or
non-believer by a classmate, and came home from school asking why his
Christian nanny had no religion. “We are a Muslim country but we need to
moderate Islam,” says Fawziya al-Bakr, an education specialist. “The
government realises that this violent takfiri ideology is a danger to our own society.”
There is also criticism of the celebrated munasahat or
counselling programme, in which teams of social workers, psychologists
and imams rehabilitate former militants. It claims a success rate of
85%, including with prisoners who have done time at al-Ha’ir. “With
Isis, we need to be more open-minded,” says Saud al-Sarhan, a researcher
at the capital’s King Faisal Centre. It is a common complaint. “People
who went through the munasahat went on to fight again,” said Haifa al-Hababi, a Riyadh architect. “You can’t trust people who have been brainwashed.”
Whether by “brainwashing” or conviction, the jihadis who fight the
Saudi state are sticking to their guns. Evidence for that comes from a
story about Fares Al Shuwail al-Zahrani, an al-Qaida spiritual leader
who was among those most recently executed. Zahrani reportedly rejected
attempts by government-approved Islamic scholars to persuade him to
renounce his views. But he also refused “to board the sinking ship of Al
Saud, for their ship carries nothing but airplanes for America”.
It does not look like a problem that is going to be solved any time
soon. “Saudi Arabia is still fertile ground for radicalisation and there
is a sizeable minority that is sympathetic to what Daesh says,” a
Riyadh-based diplomat says. “Only a very small minority would be
prepared to act, but the number of terrorist acts is almost as bad as it
was in the al-Qaida years. Now they attack Saudi security personnel and
Shias, just like in Iraq. Cells are very small, of two, three, four
people, and though they are not easy to detect, it is hard for them to
act. In the mid-2000s, the authorities were caught off guard. Now they
are better prepared. They have arrested a lot of people, though it’s a
fragile situation. For the time being, they are managing.”
Saudi crown prince and defence minister Mohammed bin Salman last month
announced the creation of an anti-terror alliance of Sunni states.
Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images
Other countries are said to have more Isis fighters in Syria as a
proportion of their population than Saudi Arabia. Photograph: Fayez
Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
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