Unfortunately, global guerrillas are on the right track in Iraq. Infrastructure disruption strikes at core layers of the newly emerging state's legitimacy. It also acts synergistically with terror attacks. Terror attacks impact the psychological perception of a citizen's physical security, the state's primary responsibility (state's claim a monopoly on violence). However, terror attacks don't directly impact the vast majority of people. In contrast, global guerrilla infrastructure attacks directly impact the lives of average citizens and reinforces the psychological trauma of terrorism. Picture this: terror attacks occur in your city and then your lights are cut off. This turns anxiety into anger against those in charge. Additionally, infrastructure disruption robs the state of the revenues it needs to fight the guerrillas it faces.
Robert Kaplan, the author of many great articles on the developing global turmoil, has some comments relevant to this based on his recent visit to Iraq (Iraq is the test bed of global guerrilla strategies):
The Iraqis I met while I was with the Marines were angry about the lack of basic utilities... Iraqis can't understand how a country can overthrow their hated dictator, but can't get the water running.
This combo is going to be much more effective in Saudi Arabia given 1) the lack of a nation-state identity, 2) its legitimacy is strongly tied to continued tranquility, and 3) its reliance on highly paid western experts, 4) almost all of its income is tied to a highly leveraged, tightly coupled infrastructure, and 5) there is already signficant dissatisfaction with the quality of services supplied by the government. Counter-intuitively, the death of al-Muqrin may force al Qaeda's Saudi Arabian cells to adopt global guerrilla strategies.