First, U.S. policy indirectly stoked the current militant activity in Saudi Arabia. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington deemed Saudi efforts against al Qaeda insufficient. The reasoning for the Saudi tentativeness up to that point was obvious: Al Qaeda’s ideological home is rooted in the Wahhabi Islam that dominates the kingdom. For al Qaeda, the royal family’s affiliation with Western interests is a betrayal of Islam and the Sauds are guilty of apostasy. Historically, the royals have dealt with this by providing the country’s militants with an out: Go fight infidels elsewhere. This strategy worked well, and Saudi Arabia exported its militants to places such as Afghanistan and Chechnya. After Sept. 11 -- when several of these "exports" attacked New York City and Washington -- the United States confronted Riyadh over the practice. Stripped of the ability to simply send the militants elsewhere, Riyadh was forced -- by U.S. design -- to deal with the militants within the kingdom. More militants at home mean more militant activity at home -- which means more problems for Western guests.

The second problem Westerners in Saudi Arabia face is that the militants have adjusted their operational methods. The Yanbu attacks were not only the first attacks in that city, or even in the Hijaz region; they were also the first attacks in which the militants infiltrated the company employing the victims, even obtaining valid company identification cards. Such sophistication is not only frightening, considering the local nature of the militants, but nearly impossible to defend against.

Third, the Saudis are still on the learning curve. The intricacies of tribal loyalties -- and the unique role of religious go-betweens with a leg on each side of the fence -- always have complicated the process of gathering actionable intelligence. But in the aftermath of the November bombings of housing compounds in Riyadh, local Muslims were so outraged that the militants would attack other Muslims that many -- even in the Najd region, from which many militants hail -- were willing to cooperate with Saudi authorities to root out militant cells. That resulted in a quantum leap in Saudi intelligence capabilities. But the effort remains in its infancy; Saudi domestic intelligence efforts were never robust -- and they still are not. After all, the emphasis before Sept. 11 was on getting the militants out of country, not into Saudi prisons.