Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- A note on conventions
- Introduction
- 1 The politics of pan-Islamism
- 2 The classical jihadists
- 3 Recruitment to the early jihad fronts
- 4 Opportunities for global jihad
- 5 Al-Qaida and Saudi Arabia
- 6 Recruitment to al-Qaida
- 7 Post-9/11 Saudi Arabia
- 8 The mujahidin on the Arabian Peninsula
- 9 Recruitment to the QAP
- 10 The failure of the jihad in Arabia
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 – Socio-economic data on Saudi militants
- Appendix 2 – Chronology of Islamist violence in Saudi Arabia, 1979–2009
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES 33
9 - Recruitment to the QAP
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- A note on conventions
- Introduction
- 1 The politics of pan-Islamism
- 2 The classical jihadists
- 3 Recruitment to the early jihad fronts
- 4 Opportunities for global jihad
- 5 Al-Qaida and Saudi Arabia
- 6 Recruitment to al-Qaida
- 7 Post-9/11 Saudi Arabia
- 8 The mujahidin on the Arabian Peninsula
- 9 Recruitment to the QAP
- 10 The failure of the jihad in Arabia
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 – Socio-economic data on Saudi militants
- Appendix 2 – Chronology of Islamist violence in Saudi Arabia, 1979–2009
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES 33
Summary
War on the Arabian Peninsula was a radical project even by Saudi jihadist standards. While the early jihadists had joined conventional conflicts and the al-Qaida recruits explored training camps, the QAP members were to launch suicide bombings in the streets of Riyadh. The militants also knew that domestic activism was likely to attract a much harsher government response than would fighting abroad. In short, the QAP's project was vastly more controversial and dangerous than anything previously undertaken by Saudi Islamists. Why did it still attract hundreds of people?
To answer this question, we shall look at the backgrounds, motivations and trajectories of individual QAP recruits, as we did with the previous activists. The following analysis is based on a collection of 259 biographies of people involved in the QAP campaign between 2002 and 2006. To address the issue of varying depth of involvement, the analysis distinguishes between the full sample of 259 and a core sample of 69 of the most active militants.
Boys of Riyadh
The QAP consisted primarily of Saudi nationals, but there were also foreigners, especially from Yemen, Chad, Morocco, Kuwait, Syria and Mauritania. Some non-Saudis in the QAP, such as the Yemeni Khalid al-Haj and the Moroccans Karim al-Majati and Yunus al-Hayyari, held positions of leadership, but most foreigners played marginal roles in the movement, which remained a distinctly Saudi phenomenon. Interestingly, there were virtually no South Asians.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Jihad in Saudi ArabiaViolence and Pan-Islamism since 1979, pp. 186 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010