Sratfor
Summary
Kuwait’s State Security Service announced Aug. 12 that a group of militants was planning to attack the Shuaiba oil refinery some 30 miles south of the capital, Kuwait City. The announcement came a day after authorities said they had arrested six Kuwaiti citizens for allegedly plotting to attack a U.S. military base and a Kuwaiti State Security building using trucks rigged with explosives. Details released so far indicate that the plot did not necessarily pose an imminent threat to the intended targets.
Analysis
Kuwaiti security officials released more details Aug. 12 about a militant group’s plot targeting U.S. and Kuwaiti interests in the country. After the militants were arrested Aug. 11, police announced that the Camp Arifjan U.S. military base and a Kuwaiti State Security building were targeted in the plot. On Aug. 12, police added the Shuaiba oil refinery to the list of targets the cell had conducted surveillance on and planned to attack.
According to the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry, the captured militant cell consisted of six Kuwaiti citizens with links to al Qaeda. They allegedly confessed to purchasing a truck with the intention of using it to deliver improvised explosive devices (composed of fertilizer, chemicals and gas canisters) in attacks on the military base, State Security Service building and oil refinery. It appears the group had not yet obtained the materials needed to construct the devices. The group allegedly had downloaded images of the targets from Google Earth and made video recordings of the targets. The militants also allegedly confessed they intended to carry out the attacks during Ramadan, which begins in late August.
According to the suspects’ attorney, five of the six people arrested had also been involved in a 2002 ambush on Failaka Island in Kuwait in which one U.S. Marine was killed. The group does appear to have some kind of connection to Bahrain, however, because the tip-off about the group’s existence, which led Kuwaiti authorities to begin surveillance of the group, reportedly came from sources in Bahrain. It is unclear where the men have been during the nearly seven years since the Failaka attack and, because of the outflow of militants from Iraq and Saudi Arabia and the long-standing jihadist presence in Kuwait, neither the Failaka or Bahrain link necessarily points to affiliation with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in Iraq or another al Qaeda-linked cell. Nonetheless, the plot shows that al Qaeda-linked and al Qaeda-motivated groups are still active in the Middle East.
Jihadists were most active in Kuwait from 2002 to 2005, often targeting U.S. soldiers, but Kuwaiti security force largely have kept the threat in check. As a result, attacks in Kuwait have been small and isolated. Had this plot been carried out successfully, it would have been by far the most ambitious attack in Kuwait’s recent history.
However, there are significant problems with the plot. First, the group reportedly had purchased one truck for use in their attacks; but obtaining the explosive materials for a large vehicle and then assembling a viable device requires much more tradecraft and technical proficiency than obtaining a truck. The cell accomplished the easy part but had yet to carry out the most important steps — obtaining the components for explosive devices and actually building the devices.
In places like Iraq, explosive materials are relatively easy to obtain. Large caches of explosive ordnance can be found all over the country, which makes it easier to gather material and rig up improvised explosive devices. Kuwait, however, is a different story. The country has much tighter control over its security environment, and explosive ordnance is much harder to come by there. This explains why the cell reportedly was planning to use improvised explosive mixtures fabricated from things like fertilizers, chemicals and gas canisters. But even these materials are not necessarily easy to come by in Kuwait. For example, since the country has no significant agriculture industry, a large fertilizer purchase would raise some eyebrows.
Furthermore, constructing a viable explosive device using these materials is more difficult than working with military-grade ordnance and would require great technical skill on the part of the group’s bomb maker. According to reports, one cell member said the group was using instructions from the Internet to construct the devices. Tradecraft is an often overlooked yet crucial aspect of carrying out a successful attack, and such tradecraft cannot be learned from the Web. As seen in some previous attacks, like the attempted car-bomb attack on the Glasgow airport, even if a militant cell has the right materials, poor tradecraft can drastically reduce the potency of the threat.
Another problem with the Kuwait plot is that the sites allegedly selected by the cell are hardened targets, and security would be on the watch for attacks. Kuwait has been increasing security around its energy infrastructure since 2005 and is in the process of adding explosive ordnance disposal teams, more secure entrances and more fences around refineries like Shuaiba. Currently, concrete barriers that likely would stop or disable a truck are in position behind the fence surrounding Shuaiba. There is not much standoff distance between the refinery and the main road running next to it, so detonating a truck full of explosives outside the fence could still cause some damage. However, refineries like Shuaiba are expansive facilities spreading out over a square mile of space. Even the detonation of a relatively large device (like the 1-ton truck bomb used in the Islamabad Marriott attack) could only affect a small area of the facility. Refineries often experience accidental fires or explosions that might disrupt part of the operations but very rarely affect the whole facility. At a refinery like Shuaiba, there is no single critical node that would cripple the entire facility with a single attack using the kind of explosive devices this cell would have had access to.
The U.S. base would be even more difficult to attack, as it would have even more obstacles to entry than the refinery. Multiple checkpoints, armed guards, perimeter patrols and reinforced barriers would all make an attack on the base very difficult and unlikely to cause extensive damage. This is likely why attacks against U.S. forces in Kuwait thus far have been limited to attacking soldiers when they are off base, when they are more vulnerable.
While this plot indicates that militant groups in Kuwait continue to operate and have great aspirations, it does not show that these groups have the capability to seriously damage targets in Kuwait.
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