June 2025

Civil wars are messy things. Unlike most conflicts, which are usually between two state actors with some defined national identity or political structure over some geopolitical goal, civil wars are, at their very core, a battle over the identity of the nation. They are aspirational in that way--a war over what the country ought to be like. And in that sense, they are far more political. This makes stable alliances within civil wars something of a rarity, as differing political ideologies, the idiosyncrasies of members of leadership, and disparate visions--all exacerbated by facts on the ground and the tides of war--lead groups to float between factions.

Part of what made the Council for Islamic Revival in the Arabian Peninsula so successful in the opening stages of the Saudi Arabian Civil War was their extremely broad tent. While their leadership is drawn primarily from the Saudi Arabia's hardline Salafist/Wahhabi clergy, with its primary leader being the former Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh, CIRAP itself is home to dozens of different protest groups, Sunni religious organizations, clerical associations, religious tribal militias, military and national guard units, and even a few liberal-minded organizations. Just about the only thing holding them all together is their opposition to the government.

Of course, what was once a strength could now, we hope, be turned into a weakness. We believe CIRAP has cast its net too wide. Following a series of negotiations in Pakistan, the three main anti-government factions in the war—CIRAP, Al Qaeda, and the Western PDF—announced that they would be joining forces to form a united front against the government.

To say this caught us by surprise would be something of an understatement. These groups have almost nothing in common. The leadership of CIRAP were largely hardline Salafist and Wahhabis, yes, but that was a far cry from the Salafi-Jihadist religious beliefs of Al Qaeda. And just because the leadership of CIRAP was hardline didn’t mean that its membership was. CIRAP’s membership consisted of several much more moderate groups, all of whom were now expected to sit silent and make common cause with Al Qaeda, the international terror syndicate that is viewed unfavorably even in much of the Arab World. We expect that this news has gone over poorly with some of the National Guard and Army units within the CIRAP umbrella, too, as many of them once upon a time were fighting Al Qaeda, either in Yemen or in cells hidden in communities throughout Saudi Arabia.

But even more bizarre to us was the alliance between the Popular Defense Forces, a group of loosely-affiliated Shi’a militias, and Al Qaeda and CIRAP. There is no love lost between the hardline leadership of CIRAP and the Shi’a community of southern Saudi Arabia. Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh has previously [stated that Iranians, predominantly Shi’a, are “not Muslim” and that they are “children of Magi (Zoroastrians)” with a “hostility towards Islam.” Other CIRAP leadership, in their time as official clerics of the Saudi government, regularly called for violence against the Shi’a community of Saudi Arabia through religious fatwas and other forms of hate speech, accusing the Shi’a of being non-Muslims, polytheists, and rafidhah (“rejectionists,” a slur referring to the fact that Shi’a Muslims do not recognize the first three Caliphs as legitimate successors of the Prophet Muhammed). One hardline cleric, a member of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars (the conservative religious institution from which eight members resigned during the first wave of conservative backlash against MbS), has gone so far as to say of the Shi’a community in Saudi Arabia: “they are not our brothers ... rather they are brothers of Satan…”. To hardline Wahhabis like those who constituted much of Saudi Arabia’s religious leadership (and now, by extension, constitute most of CIRAP’s leadership), the Shi’a are “the archenemies of Islam”--a threat against which all true Muslims must rally.

Al Qaeda’s relationship with the Shi’a community is even worse, if that can be possible. During the War in Iraq throughout the 2000s, Al Qaeda systematically targeted Shi’a communities with suicide attacks--a trend which has since continued in places like Yemen and, until the Pakistani-brokered deal, Saudi Arabia.

Emirati Intelligence hopes it can use the massive differences of opinions in this “big tent” alliance to collapse not just the alliance, but to pull apart CIRAP itself, making the Islamist resistance in the Civil War all the easier to crush. Using its connections in and control over various Arab media outlets, (including, we hope, the state-run media of the other GCC member states and the United States, like Al Arabiya and Alhurra, Emirati intelligence will start a concerted media campaign to sow discord and division between the various groups of CIRAP, as well as the various factions in the Turbat Three (what I’m now, I’ve decided, calling the alliance of the Western PDF, CIRAP, and AQAP). These outlets will run numerous news stories from independent contributors highlighting previous (and current) conflicts between the different groups like, among other things, Al Qaeda attacks on Shi’a communities; previous statements of CIRAP leadership about the Shi’a and their role in suppressing previous liberal protests.

The traditional media campaign will only be one part of a broader multimedia propaganda campaign, which seeks to precisely saturate specific demographics with content that will appeal to them the most--or rather, will make them angriest at the current state of affairs. By partnering with western intelligence agencies and independent data analytics firms, this campaign will craft targeted content to ensure it creates the greatest possible outrage. Old, conservative Saudis in CIRAP-territory that fit a “hardline Wahhabist” profile will see content from high-ranking Salafi clerics that lampoons CIRAP’s leadership for making common cause with the Shi’a. Saudi Shi’a will see content recalling all of the grave atrocities perpetrated against their communities by both Al Qaeda and CIRAP’s leadership. Young, liberal-minded Saudis and moderate Muslims will see content reminding them of CIRAP’s new alliance with Al Qaeda, showing them that maybe CIRAP can’t be reformed or persuaded into supporting democracy after all. Saudi soldiers and National Guardsmen will see content that seeks to tap into their rage against Al Qaeda, like comrades from Yemen lying in body bags. You get the picture.

All in all, the primary goal of this campaign is to shatter CIRAP’s ability to lead its heterogeneous alliance, but if we are only able to sow discord in the group or break up its alliance with the PDF and Al Qaeda, that’ll be victory enough for us.