NEW YORK, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- U.S. and Saudi intelligence played key roles in helping Kuwait's recent efforts to destroy its al-Qaida cells, even as the terrorist group intensified its efforts to infiltrate Kuwait and other Persian Gulf states where America has military bases and civilian contractors, administration officials said.
"We're aware of a new level of activity that targets not only Kuwait and other Persian Gulf states such as Qatar and Oman," one administration official said.
Following the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq, the Gulf States became a new area of focus for al-Qaida, and the latest ratcheting up of activity may also be getting a boost because of the "decisive" defeat of jihadi terrorists in Saudi Arabia, the official said.
A former senior Pentagon official confirmed this view: "The Saudis have basically won their war against al-Qaida. The performance of Saudi forces was magnificent and has been devastating to the extremists. We are very impressed."
U.S. intelligence assistance to the Saudis had played a major role in that victory, the former senior Pentagon official said.
David Long, a former State Department official and Saudi expert, agreed, saying that in Saudi Arabia "al-Qaida is in retreat and disarray."
As a result, Saudi Arabian extremists have either moved into Iraq to fight as part of the growing anti-U.S. insurgency or its members have gone back to countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman, their purpose to either use ice cream trucks packed with explosives to attack U.S. military convoys going to Iraq, or target for killing or kidnapping resident U.S. soldiers and civilians, according to several U.S. officials who spoke to United Press International on condition of not being named.
Former CIA operations chief Vince Cannistraro, who retains ties to the agency, confirmed Arab and U.S. press reports that Kuwaiti security forces "have had several vicious gun battles" with at least three al-Qaida cells in Kuwait since the start of 2005.
According to public statements by Kuwaiti Interior Minister Nawaf al Ahmed al Sabah, thanks to raids by Kuwaiti security forces since the first of the year, eight al-Qaida operatives have been killed and another 40 detained, including three women, two of whom are non-Kuwaitis.
In a gun battle on Jan. 31, the fourth confrontation in Kuwait that month, Kuwaiti forces captured Amer Khalef al Enezi, the spiritual leader of one of the main cells.
Enezi had been a preacher at a mosque in Jahra, northwest of Kuwait City, until his extremist views got him dismissed by a Kuwait government committee newly set up to promote moderate Islam and confront extremism.
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas reported that Nasser Khalef, the brother of Amer Khalef al Enezi, was killed in a gun battle on Jan. 30.
U.S. officials confirmed that while being interrogated, Enezi had identified the major al-Qaida leaders before he died of a heart attack while in custody.
The Arab newspaper "Al Rai al Am," quoting "informed sources," said a Kuwaiti raid on Feb. 5, the fifth this year, on a compound at Sulaibiyah, west of Kuwait City, netted five suspected terrorists.
The Arabic langauage "Al Qubas" said on Feb. 7 that interrogations had yielded admissions that the suspects had contacts with al-Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, perhaps the most wanted man in Iraq,
The leader of another major Kuwaiti cell, Mohsen al Fahdli, was a subordinate of Khaled al Dousari and Ahmad al-Mutairi, according to Kuwaiti government statements.
Several serving and retired U.S. intelligence officials had quite a bit to say about Dousari. One serving U.S. official said that Douseri, a former resident of Saudi Arabia, was the leading strategist for al-Qaida in Kuwait, tasked with expanding terror activity beyond Iraq.
This official said that after mulling over plans for months, Douseri moved to build his Kuwaiti network by recruiting followers from mosques, universities and schools until it numbered "well over 100."
Many recruits were "stateless Arabs" or Egyptians recruited for suicide attacks, he said.
Kuwaiti authorities have been looking for Douseri since July 2004, but he is still at large, U.S. officials said.
Al-Qaida specialist Youssef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress' House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, said in an a recent interview that Kuwait had "long been of interest" to terrorist mastermind al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden because of Kuwaiti authorities "persecution" of Egyptian Islamists associated with his henchman, Egyptian Dr. Ayman Zawahiri.
In a 1998 Zawahri speech quoted by Bodansky in his book "Osama Bin Laden: The Man who Declared War on America," described Kuwait as "an oil pipe that is plundered by the United States."
U.S. officials said that al-Qaida's leadership had long believed that the Persian Gulf states were more vulnerable to its activities than bigger countries such as Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the latest raids is that interrogation by Kuwaiti officials had revealed terrorist accomplices have penetrated Kuwaiti police and security forces.
"To what extent is really not known yet," a U.S. official said.
Thanks to a tip last year from Syrian intelligence to the CIA, the United States was able to foil a planned al-Qaida attack on U.S. installations in Bahrain, using an explosives-laden glider that would be invisible to radar, according to these U.S. government officials.
