Get Out of Jihad Free

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is today an unremarkable Middle Eastern port city, with unremarkable problems. The largest safety concern is traffic; Saudi men tend to drive recklessly down the wide streets. But Jeddah’s problems have not always been so quotidian. Until recently, the city was an epicenter of the jihadist violence that racked Saudi Arabia for much of the past decade. Terrorists connected to al-Qaeda started attacking foreigners in the kingdom in 1995, but by 2003, the attacks had become more indiscriminate, sometimes targeting the Al Saud regime directly, and often killing Saudis. In Jeddah, militants battled police in the streets, bombed two banks, stormed the United States consulate, and shot Westerners in broad daylight. During 2003 and 2004 throughout Saudi Arabia, 22 terrorist attacks killed 90 civilians and wounded many more.

Yet today, this insurgency has virtually disappeared. The kingdom saw no comparable attacks in 2005 and ...