A picture taken in November 1979 shows smoke billowing from Mecca's Great Mosque, which was attacked on November 20, 1979 by gunmen belonging to a group commanded by Juhayman al-Oteibi, alias ‘Lieutenant Mahdi’ (the Messiah). — AFP
Thursday, 19 Nov, 2009
RIYADH: Thirty years ago, as tens of thousands of hajj pilgrims were completing dawn prayers inside Mecca, gunshots pierced the sanctity of the Grand Mosque.
To mark a new century on the Islamic calendar, a group of millennialist zealots, who claimed to have with them the new redeemer — the mahdi — seized Islam's holiest site.
The November 20, 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque by Juhayman al-Oteibi and his 400-plus fundamentalists, and the subsequent unholy, bloody military assault to dislodge them, stunned Muslims worldwide and rocked the Saudi monarchy to its foundation.
While Oteibi and 67 fellow militants were ultimately caught and beheaded, and the mahdi was shot dead in the battle, the incident continues to reverberate through Saudi society and the world, say historians.
‘It is painfully clear: the countdown to September 11, to the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, and to the grisly Islamic violence ravaging Afghanistan and Iraq all began on that warm November morning,’ wrote Yaroslav Trofimov, author of the most complete account of the uprising, ‘The Siege of Mecca’.
The hajj had just finished when Oteibi and his band smuggled hundreds of assault weapons into the mosque at the centre of Mecca.
Angered at what they saw was Saudi society's plunge into immorality, with Muslims embracing ‘Western’ entertainment like cinema, television and sports, and Muslim women taking jobs, Oteibi's act was to herald a new age of purism.
His army took over every corner of the massive walled mosque, locking shut the normally welcoming gates, sending machine-gun armed snipers into the seven minarets, and taking hostage hundreds of the faithful.
Quickly shooting dead two guards who resisted, they denounced Saudi Arabia's leading clerics as corrupt and the ruling Al-Saud family as illegitimate.
Snipers picked off arriving policemen and soldiers and it would take two weeks and a massive Saudi army effort, that began with shelling the mosque and ended up with hand-to-hand fighting, to regain control.
The soldiers were backed by a small team of French commandos, led by the now infamous Lieutenant Paul Barril, and endorsed by a fatwa extracted the highest clerics that it was permissible to shoot the militants inside the sanctum.
The official death toll was 127 soldiers, 117 militants, and an unknown number of civilians. Trofimov cites independent observers in reporting a toll of ‘well over 1,000 lives.’
For most of the three million pilgrims massing in Mecca in the coming week for the hajj, Oteibi's takeover of the Grand Mosque is likely a vague memory.
Many details — including whether the non-Muslim French commandos were allowed
inside Mecca — remain secret.
But 30 years later, the intense security around Mecca, a sharp turn toward more conservative behaviour in Saudi society, and the very present Al-Qaeda threat, attest to lasting effects of the 1979 siege.
Sparked by Oteibi's complaints, Saudi religious leaders now ban movie theatres, and public concerts of all but traditional music are unknown.
Women cannot drive or attend soccer matches, and the religious police try to enforce a stringent dress code for them: all-black shroud-like abayas, with all but the eyes covered.
Robert Lacey, whose new book ‘Inside the Kingdom’ traces Saudi history from the Mecca siege to the present, said there is no proven direct link between Oteibi and Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
‘The link between Juhayman and bin Laden is that they are clearly in the Salafi tradition,’ he told AFP, referring to the arch-conservative Islamic movement.
‘Their messianic style — from their long, Salafi beards to their quarrel with the House of Saud — stem from the same violent and rejectionist reading of traditional Islam,’ he said.
‘We can now see that Juhayman's revolt helped shift Saudi society in the conservative and reactionary direction that has only been seriously contested in the last few years.’
Trofimov drew a closer parallel, saying that in many ways Oteibi's multinational army of zealous Islamic fighters ‘was a precursor to Al-Qaeda itself.’
By the 1990s, when bin Laden turned against the Saudi rulers, ‘he started to repeat almost word for word Juhayman's repudiations of the royal family,’ Trofimov wrote.
And indeed, several Oteibi acolytes joined Al-Qaeda after their release from Saudi prisons, he said.
Similar tensions remain in Saudi society. Progressives are pressing for theatres; a women's soccer team plays — though not publicly — in Jeddah; and clerics are battling what they see as licentious television shows broadcast by satellite from abroad.
Meanwhile a resurgent Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen attacks King Abdullah's reforms as abandoning ‘true’ Islam. In August a Qaeda operative tried but failed to kill a top security official, Prince Mohammmed bin Nayef, with a suicide bomb.
In October Qaeda plots to attack unknown targets in the kingdom were interrupted, with hundreds of weapons, explosives and suicide vests discovered and dozens of suspects captured.
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700 CCTV cameras installed for security in Makkah
Updated at: 2110 PST, Thursday, November 19, 2009
MAKKAH: A public safety official announced on that 2,194 security officers would be deployed at the Haram.
He explained that the �high-tech� Operations Room of the force would be the nucleus of all security activities. There are 700 CCTV cameras to monitor the entire mosque and its surrounding courtyards.
�The force working in the Grand Mosque is comprised of 1,557 ordinary security men, 114 inspectors and 23 other officers, in addition to four high-ranking officials and 500 Makkah policemen,� head of the Grand Mosque security forces Col. Yahya Al-Zahrani said on Tuesday.
Special emergency forces and regular security forces in addition to battalions of military and National Guard will be posted to manage crowds near the gates of the mosque and in the mataf (the area of circumambulation), Al-Zahrani added.
Undercover police would also be deployed to �watch for any untoward developments� in the Haram, such as pickpocketing or other forms of theft.
Crowd control and missing persons� reports would also be monitored from the Operations Room, he added. The officer urged everyone to wear his or her identification bracelets or badges showing their contact information. This is particularly important for children, he said.
�(Parents should) at least put their telephone numbers in their children�s pockets,� he pointed out.
For the second time, there will be Grand Mosque �stoplights� at the gates of the mosque: Red indicates that there is no room inside while green gives the go-ahead.
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Saudi troops killed in Yemen rebel clashes-report
22 Nov 2009 17:17:39 GMT
Source: Reuters
DUBAI, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Three Saudi soldiers were killed and an unspecified number wounded as they fought to stop new cross-border raids by Yemeni rebels, the Saudi-owned daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on its website on Sunday.
It said Saudi forces foiled attempts by the Shi'ite rebels to gain control of Yemen's Red Sea port of Midi, in a coastal area near the border where Saudi Arabia has imposed a naval blockade to stop weapons being smuggled to insurgents.
Saudi air force planes took part in operations in the border area, where the Yemeni rebels launched an attack on Saudi border guards earlier this month, the website said.
The rebels' Nov. 3 cross-border raid into Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, raised concerns about the wider impact of instability in Yemen, one of the poorest nations outside Africa.
In August, Yemen stepped up its military campaign against the rebels, who belong to the Zaidi Shi'ite Muslim minority, after about five years of sporadic fighting with the group. The rebels say they suffer religious, economic and social marginalisation and neglect in the poor Arab country.
Regional media reported on Sunday that the rebels launched hit-and-run attacks against advancing Yemeni troops.
Yemeni forces backed by artillery and tanks combed mountain regions in the north of the country, killing a number of rebels, Al Arabiya television reported.
The rebels said on their website they had captured several Saudi soldiers and killed and wounded an unspecified number of the troops whom they accused of trying to cross into Yemen.
"We again advise the Saudi regime to stop its unjustified aggression on Yemeni territory and to respect neighbourly rights," said a statement on the rebels' website.
On Friday, Yemeni state media said troops foiled an attempt by rebel fighters to take over government buildings in the northern provincial capital of Saada. (Writing by Firouz Sedarat; Editing by Janet Lawrence) ((dubai.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com; +971 4 391 8301))
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