Summary
The mysterious death of a Saudi jihadist leader in Beirut is raising questions about Riyadh's increasingly convoluted militant proxy network in the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia are locked in a battle for influence in the Levant, and groups like the Abdullah Azzam Brigades are eager to exploit this dynamic. Saudi Arabia's strategy of selectively supporting jihadists in this active battle zone will come with costs, however.
Analysis
Majid al-Majid, a Saudi national, earned a spot on both the U.S. and Saudi lists of most-wanted terrorists in 2012 when he was revealed in jihadist forums as the new emir of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades came on the jihadist militant scene around 2004 as an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq. The group has been responsible for attacks across the region, including rocket attacks against Israel from Lebanon and an attack on a Japanese oil tanker off the coast of Oman. When al-Majid took command, he emphasized the battle in Syria and the need to avoid alienating Sunni locals in Syria through excessively deadly attacks in densely populated areas.
As the Syrian civil war intensified over the past two years, al-Majid also became more active. He was particularly well known for his ability to restructure jihadists into decentralized subunits as he built out a regional network. Notably, al-Majid was known to have operated out of the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon in 2012 before relocating to Syria, where he worked with Jabhat al-Nusra. Ain al-Hilweh is an active recruiting ground for Sunni militant leaders and regional intelligence agencies alike. Saudi Arabia, in particular, keeps close tabs on groups operating out of Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.
The last major claim by the Abdullah Azzam Brigades was the Nov. 19 double suicide bombing on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut's southern suburbs, a clear signal that jihadists operating in Lebanon were ready to escalate their sectarian campaign against Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Shortly after the attack, al-Majid, who had been suffering from kidney failure, returned to Lebanon and evidently felt secure enough to undergo dialysis at a military hospital in west Beirut before heading back to the Bekaa Valley toward Syria. While en route, Lebanese army intelligence officials picked him up and officially announced his arrest on Jan. 1.
At this point, al-Majid's case rapidly evolved into a tussle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Lebanon standing helplessly in the middle. Saudi Arabia made it clear it had every intention of having al-Majid extradited, given that he was a Saudi national and officially wanted by Riyadh. But Iran, having been targeted by al-Majid's group just a few weeks prior, claimed the right to interrogate him first. Saudi Arabia refused Iran's request, but Iran reportedly sent a delegation anyway to question him. Lebanese officials tried to avoid taking a side by claiming al-Majid was too sick for questioning. By Jan. 4, al-Majid was reported dead in the Beirut hospital where he was being treated.
Al-Majid was sick, but the circumstances surrounding his death are highly suspect. Iran has already expressed its suspicions that Saudi Arabia played a hand in al-Majid's death. Stratfor also had received indications prior to al-Majid's death that Lebanese officials were under pressure to refuse him medical treatment so that the problem, so to speak, could take care of itself.
The question we are left with is why al-Majid would be too dangerous to keep alive. Saudi Arabia sponsors an elaborate web of Sunni militants who are particularly active at the moment in the Levant, especially Syria and Lebanon, where Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an intensifying proxy battle. Saudi support for militant factions can vary from direct financial aid, weapons and able-bodied fighters to simply turning a blind eye to activities where it serves a broader sectarian interest. It is unclear what level of support al-Majid's group may have received from Riyadh, but it is telling that the Saudis were eager to have him silenced.
The obvious and historical problem with Saudi Arabia's strategy is that many of the jihadist factions gaining ground in the region are just as likely to turn on the House of Saud once the current battlefield loses its appeal. Saudi policy in the region is therefore necessarily fraught with contradictions, since Riyadh on occasion finds the need to facilitate the activities of its adversary, so long as their militant focus is not -- for the moment -- focused on the Arabian Peninsula. Realizing the inherent risks of this policy, the Saudis have tried to be selective in which militant factions they back. In Syria, for example, Saudi Arabia makes it a point to publicize its support for the Islamic Front coalition and its active support against such groups as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and Jabhat al-Nusra. Part of this is for public relations purposes, but Saudi militant selectivity also serves a strategic purpose by mitigating militant backlash at home.
Of course, this is an imperfect strategy at best. Saudi Arabia still faces very real limits on its ability to control the intent and targeting of the militant factions it supports in what is evolving into a highly fluid jihadist network spanning the Levant and Mesopotamia. However, increasingly unnerved by the developing rapprochement between its regional adversary and its only meaningful external sponsor, Riyadh will continue to use militant proxies as its foreign policy tool of choice. This is a strategy that carries risk, and as in the case of al-Majid, those risks occasionally need to be eliminated.
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