http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5251989/site/newsweek/The images of a beheaded Paul Johnson are gruesome, but for Saudi Arabia, it has been more than a year of grim images. It started on May 12, 2003, when three cars packed with bombs exploded in a residential compound in Riyadh, killing 35 people and wounding 200. Since then, there have been at least 20 terror attacks or clashes between Saudi police and Islamic militants. Most brazenly, four gunmen entered a residential compound for oil-industryworkers in Khobar last month and killed 22 people. Does this turmoil mark the beginning of a civil war in Saudi Arabia? Could jihadis get control of the most powerful oil-producing nation and use its vital resource as a weapon against the modern world they so despise?
In search of answers, I traveled through Saudi Arabia last month, talking to princes, preachers, businessmen and dissidents. Many of the Saudis I met were defensive about the country’s problems, angry with American foreign policy and enraged about the “demonizing” of Saudi Arabia. “Let me be honest: 9/11 meant nothing in Saudi Arabia,” a young writer, Mshari Al-Thaydi, told me. “Some didn’t believe that any Saudis were involved in it; others thought it was a conspiracy or was deserved because of America’s support for Israel or whatever.” But the more recent attacks