Issue 834, 25 July 2008

Kuwaiti role in Iraqi jihad gives cause for concern

The proportion of Kuwaiti fighters in Iraq has typically been considered to be tiny – a mere 1% according to AQI records captured by the United States late last year – so there was understandable concern when the Iraqi government recently announced the identification of 25 Kuwaiti fighters in Diyala province, one of AQI’s last remaining strongholds in Iraq.

Iraqi authorities claim that Kuwaiti jihadists are among the last Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) hardliners left in post-surge Iraq, giving rise to some concern in the neighbouring emirate. The claim was made by the Iraqi Popular Committee Against Al-Qaeda’s leader in Diyala, Abu Islam Al-Iraqi, who urged Kuwaiti authorities to advise local imams to focus on showing the dangers of Al-Qaeda in their Friday prayers. He said AQI had manipulated credulous young Kuwaitis into volunteering for suicide operations in Iraq. Indeed, the role of Kuwaitis in such operations has been highlighted by a series of recent incidents, posing questions about the scale of Kuwait’s foreign fighter problem and potential for future ‘blowback’.

The current hullabaloo about Kuwaiti volunteers in Diyala province comes hot on the heels of an earlier scandal in which three suicide bombers who died in Mosul in March and April were publicly identified as men the Kuwaiti Security Service (KSS) were supposed to have under preventative surveillance.

One pair of suicide bombers travelled to Iraq together, after leaving Kuwait to visit Saudi Arabia, ostensibly to undertake umrah (pilgrimage) to Makkah. They flew from Saudi Arabia to Syria and then entered Iraq. Forty-five days after leaving Kuwait, both men were dead. Badr Mishel Gamaan Al-Harbi, who operated under the nom de guerre (kunya in Arabic) of Abu Omar Al-Kuwaiti was a 36-year old from Jahra who had previously fought in Afghanistan and had been detained by Kuwaiti authorities on his return in 2002. He died during a suicide car bomb attack on the Tel Al-Rumman police station in Mosul on 26 April, which killed six police officers. He left behind two wives and eight children, including one born just months before his death.

A second bomber travelled with Al-Harbi – 38-year-old Abdullah Al-Ajmi (Abu Juheiman Al-Kuwaiti), an ex-Kuwait Armed Forces (KAF) soldier who spent eight months fighting in Afghanistan in 2001/02, eventually being captured in Pakistan after escaping the Tora Bora fight. He spent 2002-05 in Guantanamo Bay, being consistently “aggressive and non-compliant”, his records said. After his November 2005 release into Kuwaiti custody he made bail and disappeared. Al-Ajmi died on 23 March when he drove a massive truck bomb into Combat Outpost Inman in western Mosul. Driving a dump truck, armoured against small arms fire, he detonated an estimated 5,000-10,000 pounds of home made explosives mid-point in the facility, killing 13 Iraqi soldiers, wounding 42 and leaving a crater 15ft deep and 25ft wide.

A third attacker, about whom less is known, was called Nasser Al-Dosari. Also formerly of the KAF and a released Guantanamo detainee, since 2007 Al-Dosari had tried to enter Iraq to join AQI; he failed on the first attempt and could not reach Syria. After a period of active posting to the Al-Hesbah, Al-Ekhlaas, and Al-Boraq Islamist militant websites – all bona fide jihadist forums – he travelled to Iraq and participated in a suicide bombing in Mosul on 20 April.

New evidence of Kuwaiti activism

The new Iraqi accusations suggest that the three cases above were not isolated examples. Abu Islam Al-Iraqi’s claim that 25 Kuwaiti fighters had been identified in Diyala province alone suggests that recruitment networks remain active in Kuwait, where boredom and lack of economic productivity or opportunity creates a conducive environment for radicalisation at the sidelines of the emirate’s many radical Salafist mosques.

Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia is a key focus area (see article below). Saudi/Kuwaiti tribes living in the border area are a key recruitment base for the foreign fighter cells, and it has emerged that the vehicles used in suicide bombs in Iraq are also sometimes sourced in Kuwait. The significance of ongoing arrests in Saudi Arabia may be somewhat exaggerated but they continue to cause ripples in Kuwait, whose Interior Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Khaled Al-Sabah went so far as to admit the presence of sleeper terrorist cells following the announcement of four Kuwaitis detained by Saudi Arabian security forces on charges of belonging to terrorist groups. The Kuwaitis in question were arrested at different times over the last year, according to sources. It is likely too, that they were on the wanted list for some time.

One of these Kuwaiti nationals, identified only by his initials – SH – was reported to be in his 30s and was arrested by Saudi authorities at the Khafji border last year when he and his brother were performing umrah. He had previously fought in Afghanistan in 2003 and was arrested more than once by Kuwaiti authorities when he returned. The second Kuwaiti, identified only as JA, was reported to be an ex-soldier from the Kuwait National Guard. He was arrested six months ago by the Saudi authorities at the same Khafji border crossing. Two other Kuwaitis arrested in 2008 were caught in the Ar-Ar area, trying to cross over into Iraq.

Further raising concerns were the series of disconcerting bomb hoaxes, including the placement of one crude pipe bomb at a Kuwait girls’ school in March. The sequence began on 2 March, when an unknown individual called the Ministry of the Interior (MoI)’s Operations Centre to say that a bomb would explode at the Marina Mall in Kuwait City. Police evacuated the mall in 15 minutes. A three-hour search, revealed nothing conclusive. Hours later, the MoI received another call claiming a bomb was in the American University of Kuwait. A search by the anti-bomb squads yielded nothing. Security men later tracked the man and arrested him.

On the same day, an anonymous person telephoned the Directorate General of Civil Aviation claiming that a bag at Kuwait International Airport had a bomb. Security personnel searched two airplanes that had landed at the facility. One flew in from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the other from Damascus, Syria. Again, no suspicious ordnance was found. On 10 March, authorities evacuated patients from a public hospital after a caller warned that a bomb was about to explode. A suspicious device was found on a roadside between Firdaus and Ardiya that required a bomb squad response. However, no explosive ordnance was found. This incident involved an actual device left at the Odhaliya Elementary School for Girls at Abdullah Al-Mubarak. It contained black powder and shrapnel-producing items but no detonator.

Kuwait’s UXO issue

With Interior Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Khaled Al-Sabah talking about sleeper cells, one of the most unsettling aspects of Kuwait’s security scene is the seemingly endless quantities of unexploded ordnance (UXO) from 1991 that could be salvaged by militants. Unexploded ordnance still causes an estimated four deaths a month; in early July alone, two major UXO finds were made. First, labourers at a contracting company in Sulaibiya found a large quantity of ammunition in a ditch near the construction site, left behind by the Iraqi army in 1991. In the second incident, the Ministry of Interior said two unusual objects were located near the camel racing field in Jahra. Bomb disposal teams arrived at the scene and detonated the explosives, which were again Iraqi army munitions from 1991.

Such caches have been exploited by terrorists in the past. In 2005, the Peninsula Lions cell disrupted in Kuwait City used such explosives to make rucksack bombs for delivery against Kuwait malls. Three individuals associated with these incidents are still at large. More recently, the militant At-Tibyan website released a communiqué on 26 February entitled Witness Some of the Miracles of the Mujahideen in Kuwait, which made mention of US bases in Kuwait as well as the actions of the mujahideen who have “readied themselves to hit the crusader bases from which the American and British convoys leave.” In 2005, such a convoy was targeted by a crude hand grenade tripwire across a road, and US convoys were later covertly filmed in 2007 for a jihadist video aired on extremist websites.

For the moment, at least, Kuwaitis still seem focused on fighting abroad, but relatively weak local policing practices and available explosives mean that the means and opportunity for domestic attacks exist. The Kuwaiti security services are under increasing pressure to clean up their act before means and opportunity are joined by motive with the emergence of a determined attack cell.