Saudi militants in Iraq - backgrounds and recruitment patterns

This brief report looks at the participation of Saudi militants in the Iraqi insurgency by addressing four questions: Which Saudis go to Iraq? Why do they go? How do they get there? And which role do they play in the insurgency? The study is based on an analysis of 205 biographies of Saudis who died in Iraq between 2003 and 2005. The biographical information is derived from jihadist literature and press reports. The analysis also draws on the author’s fieldwork in Saudi Arabia in 2004 and 2005. The presence of Saudi fighters in Iraq is a result of the same extreme pan-Islamic nationalism that drove young Saudis to foreign conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Bosnia from the mid 1980s onward. From the pan-Islamic nationalist perspective, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq represented a textbook case of defensive jihad and required the participation of all Muslims, including Saudis. The total number of Saudis who have gone to Iraq is disputed, but it may seem that the figure does in fact not exceed 1500. The number of Saudis going to Iraq peaked in late 2004 and seems to be slowly decreasing. Volunteers come from a variety of geographic and socio-economic backgrounds, though the north is overrepresented and the south underrepresented. They are motivated primarily by pan-Islamic nationalism and inspired by friends and relatives who have gone before them. Some are enlisted by active recruiters, others seek out passive “gatekeepers” on their own initiative. Mecca is a major recruitment arena. Clerics inspire many recruits. The most popular departure time is the month of Ramadan. Saudi authorities have acted to stem recruitment, but they are restricted politically by public perceptions of the Iraqi resistance as legitimate. In Iraq, Saudis are overrepresented among suicide bombers. While the future Saudi returnees from Iraq may come to represent a considerable security challenge in Saudi Arabia, the ”Iraqi Arabs” will not represent as serious a threat as the Afghan Arabs, because the returnees from Iraq will be fewer and the Saudi state is better prepared.