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International Affairs – July Issue
28 July 2008
In this issue of International Afffairs, Thomas Hegghammer traces the history of the Saudi jihadist movement.
Based on primary sources and extensive fieldwork in the Kingdom, the article argues that jihadism in Saudi Arabia differs from jihadism in the Arab republics as it's driven primarily by extreme pan-Islamism and not socio-revolutionary ideology.
The article also traces the outbreak - and failure - of the 2003 terrorist campaign by 'Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula' (QAP). This campaign was made possible by the presence in 2002 of a critical mass of returnees from Afghanistan, a clever two-track strategy by Al-Qaeda, and systemic weaknesses in the Saudi security apparatus. The near-absence of violence in the Kingdom before 2003 was due to Al-Qaeda's weak infrastructure in the early 1990s and bin Laden's 1998 decision to suspend operations to preserve local networks. Now, the Saudi regime is more stable and self-confident - and therefore less inclined to democratic reform -than it has been in many years. Read article.
Full list of contents:
The Responsibility to Protect and the Problem of Military Intervention
Alex J Bellamy
Righting the Course? Humanitarian Intervention, the 'War on Terror' and the Future of Afghanistan
Fatima Ayub and Sari Kouvo
The Vienna Negotiations on the Final Status of Kosovo
Marc Weller
Iran Under Ahmadinejad: Populism and its Malcontents
Ali Ansari
Islamist Violence and Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia
Thomas Hegghammer
'An Enemy at the Gates' or 'From Victory to Victory'? Russian Foreign Policy
Andrew Monaghan
Security and Democracy: The ASEAN Charter and the Dilemmas of Regionalism in South-East Asia
David Martin Jones
Using Negotiation to Promote Legitimacy: An Assessment of Proposals for Reforming the WTO
Cecilia Albin
The Dynamics of British Military Transformation
Theo Farrell
The End of Impunity? Lessons from Sierra Leone
Gillian Wigglesworth
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