Monday's Riyadh attack was proof of al-Qaeda's new strategy in the Middle East, writes Lynne O'Donnell in Amman, Jordan
Paramilitary police wearing blue combat fatigues and armed with sub-machine guns patrol the street outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Amman, watching for a sudden burst of fire from the concrete jungle and ready for the roar of an engine accelerating as a vehicle packed with deadly explosives drives towards a targeted pleasure-ground of Western decadence.
Heavy security on the streets of Amman gives lie to the Hashemite kingdom's reputation as an oasis of safety and calm amid the tumult and terror that stains the Middle East. This was underlined just hours before the attacks on Monday night in the Saudi capital of Riyadh - when suicide bombers killed at least 34 people - as a Jordanian military prosecutor named nearly a dozen men as part of an al-Qaeda plot to kill a senior US official.
Jordan has taken its place among the top targets of al-Qaeda, its attempts to create and perpetuate an open, secular society and its close relationship with the US making it a "strategic priority" for the militant pedlars of hate. The pervasive presence on Amman's palm tree-lined streets of armoured Humvee vehicles is testimony to the nervous calm in which Middle Eastern cities now exist.
For the nations of the Middle East, it is the twin but opposite realities of their foreign workers (who bind them to the global economy) and their militants (who are waging a campaign against the infidel presence on holy ground) that have the state in the crosshairs.
"It is how governments deal with this double discomfort that will set the course for their survival," says a Western diplomat in Damascus.
Saudi Arabia has been forced, after Monday's attacks, to face the fact that it has become a target of home-grown fanaticism. Attempts to blame outsiders will only delay essential changes and increase the chance of further attacks.
The Saudi royal family has reportedly already received warnings from Islamic militants that more atrocities are in the pipeline, and influential commentators are calling on the state to regard Monday's attacks as the beginning of a new era, as Washington did with 9/11. This would mean, say analysts, intensifying a crackdown on the powerful, ultra-conservative Wahhabi clerics who preach xenophobia and hatred, and have been granted a free hand in return for their support for the Saudi royal family.
It means, also, dealing with entrenched social problems that are easily exploited by extremists, such as high unemployment (estimated at up to 30 per cent) and increased hostility towards the US over the war in Iraq and its support for Israel as the Palestinian intifada continues.
As warnings of more terrorist strikes rang out across the world yesterday, authorities throughout the Middle East were eager to establish their credentials for cracking down on militants on their own soil. But the attempts by some governments, notably Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to join the US-led efforts against terrorism and crack down on the militancy within their borders could, and probably would, draw further fire, analysts and diplomats say.
Al-Qaeda has made its intentions clear, telling the London-based Arabic magazine, Al-Majalla, that the Middle East is its new theatre of operations.
"Beside targeting the heart of America, among the strategic priorities now is to target and execute operations in the Gulf countries and allies of the United States, particularly Egypt and Jordan," alleged al-Qaeda commander Abu Mohammed Ablaj was quoted as telling Al-Majalla by e-mail a day before the Riyadh attacks.
"The list of assassinations, the raid teams, and the martyr operation squads are ready. The caches of weapons, ammunition, explosives, and bombs are plentiful, and the authorities cannot uncover them," he added.
The possibility that Jordan could become a centre of operations for terrorist networks was rammed home last October when an official of the US Agency for International Development, Laurence Foley (60), was shot dead outside his home in Amman.
The Jordanian government claimed that Foley's murder was an al-Qaeda operation masterminded by one of its own citizens, Ahmed al-Khalayleh. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State whose sweep through the Middle East this week coincided with a new wave of al-Qaeda activity, has named al- Khalayleh as an "associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden". Al-Khalayleh is still at large and will be tried in absentia.
The operation to hunt down Foley's assassins has a parallel in Saudi Arabia's claims to have identified a large cell of militants a week before Monday's tragedy, and to have seized large caches of arms and explosives.
The Lebanese army, working with Syrian intelligence, this week claimed success in crushing a nine-member terrorist cell that was said to be planning an attack on the US embassy in Beirut.
Anti-terrorism efforts in Amman have successfully thwarted plots to bomb and gas hotels and other places frequented by foreigners. Authorities have also uncovered links between al-Qaeda and militant groups such as the Islamist al-Ansar, which was based in the eastern mountains of Iraq.
Security operations can only go so far. Hatred of Americans and Israelis is pervasive and spreading, and foreign residents and diplomats across the region are becoming targets for anger. One reputed breeding-ground for that anger is the Abu Noor Mosque and Madrassa in the Syrian capital, Damascus. Its thousands of students include a few hundred Muslim foreigners studying classical Arabic, Islamic studies and the Koran. Abu Noor was described by one British student there as "notoriously extremist". Other students said that muftis encouraged students to travel to Iraq during the recent war to fight a jihad against American and British troops.
Western diplomats in Damascus said Abu Noor had links to radical mosques in London and possibly played a role in the recent attack in Tel Aviv carried out by a young British Muslim, Asif Mohammed Hanif (21). Hanif's family said that he had been studying Arabic at Damascus University, but sources in Syria said he was more likely to have been at Abu Noor and to have taken advantage of the ease of movement across Jordan's borders into Israel.
"Hundreds of Palestinians cross the Syria-Jordan border every day, and for anyone carrying a British passport it would be very simple, they wouldn't turn any heads at all. That's what makes Syria so dangerous," says one Western diplomat. "It's an Islamic trend that secular Syria does not like to encourage. But it could be possible that students who have come here to study Islam or Arabic are profoundly affected by the atmosphere, policies and events of the occupied territories."
A Syrian government source says that young men like Hanif could be absorbed by the militant Palestinian organisations that have long had offices in Damascus, and that this was behind Washington's insistence that the government close them down. "The Palestinians might have crossed a line or two. The government does not get involved in this sort of thing, but it is quite possible that recruits are coming in and being absorbed by the Palestinian groups," adds the source, who wishes to remain anonymous.
Palestinians in Damascus deny that their role in Syria includes recruitment of young men bent on martyrdom. But Abu Ahmed Foad, a member of the politburo and head of the political department of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, describes suicide bombings as "a legitimate right of people under occupation".