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The U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia has been threatened by an al-Qaida operative who has escaped the clutches of the American military for more than two years, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service.
Despite Saudi government efforts, al-Qaida operatives like Mustafa Abdul Kader Abed Al Ansari are driving the 35,000 Americans and many of the companies they work for out of Saudi Arabia. About 3,000 Americans work in the oil industry and another 3,000 work in the Saudi defense sector.
Al-Qaida has managed to raise the fear factor so high that even U.S. Ambassador James Oberwetter has told Americans to simply get out.
Mustafa Abdul Kader Abed Al Ansari was nearly captured in the U.S. military’s offensive against al-Qaida in the mountains of Tora Bora in 2002.
But Al Ansari fled Afghanistan and began his long trek of revenge.
On May 1, Al Ansari sent a squad to kill American nationals working at the huge Saudi petrochemical and refinery complex at Yanbu. Five Western engineers were brutally slain in an attack masterminded by Al Ansari.
Saudi security forces killed Al Ansari. But his death raised the question of how many other al-Qaida combatants are willing to carry out suicide attacks against the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia.
Al Ansari’s success centered on finding and then attacking weak points in the Saudi-U.S. relationship. He used his three brothers, who worked in the Saudi refinery and petrochemical facility at Yanbu, to provide intelligence on important American targets. The brothers then sneaked Al Ansari into the facility where he captured and executed Western engineers of the Texas-based ABB Lummus.
Al Ansari’s brutality astounded the Saudis and alarmed the Western community in Yanbu. Al Ansari had ordered one of the Western engineers to strip naked, shot him and then dragged his body throughout Yanbu, forcing passersby to watch. Saudi security agents killed him and his brothers.
Not surprisingly, after Oberwetter’s appeal to the Americans, ABB Lummus decided to cut its losses, and fast.
“All remaining 90 ABB expatriate employees in Yanbu, along with about 30 family members, will leave the country in the next few days,” a company statement said. “Other ABB operations in Saudi Arabia are continuing their work, amid heightened security.”
Al Ansari’s odyssey reflected the path of many al-Qaida operatives following the U.S. war in Afghanistan in late 2001. He participated in the Tora Bora battle and when his colleagues took flight, Al Ansari crossed the Afghan border into Pakistan.
Several weeks later, Al Ansari was in Yemen, which al-Qaida tried to make the new base in the Arabian Peninsula. Under heavy U.S. pressure, Yemen launched an offensive against al-Qaida operatives near the Saudi border. Al Ansari was arrested in 2003 but escaped.
Al Ansari recruited his family for international jihad operations. His younger brother, Abdul Muhsen, was killed in Chechnya in 1994.
Meanwhile, Al Ansari was fighting the Serbs in Bosnia. Afterwards, he used a forged passport to enter Britain, where he lived until 1997.
“This young man was involved in many Jihad activities in the whole of Africa, Bosnia and Afghanistan,” said Mohammed Al Masari, head of a leading Saudi opposition group.
“He stayed with us. A few months later he disappeared. We thought he might have left the country and gone to Afghanistan.
Life was not quiet for Al Ansari in Britain. Islamic sources said Al Ansari studied English in London and married a British woman in Cambridge.
“He was studying English in London,” Al Masari said. “Then he went to Cambridge and got married to an older lady. He was studying and she was helping him with his English. It did not work out because of the age difference.”
The FBI also had its sights on Al Ansari. In 2002, the FBI appealed for information on Al Ansari, whom the agency had discovered through interviews of al-Qaida insurgents captured in Afghanistan and interrogated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
At the time, the FBI had almost no information on Al Ansari.
“Mustafa Abdulkhader Aabed Al-Ansari/Saudi Arabia,” the notice said.
Saudi security sources aren’t certain whether Al Ansari operated on his own or on orders from al-Qaida. Regardless, Saudi authorities have reinforced security around Saudi Aramco and other facilities to protect against other attacks.
The United States expects another al-Qaida-inspired attack against Americans in Saudi Arabia within the next few weeks.
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