Washington ? The blood that the bombers of al-Qaida shed in the Saudi capital of Riyadh belonged primarily to Lebanese, Egyptian and other Arab families observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. They were victims of a well-planned mass murder that has brought al-Qaida’s war home, where it will be won or lost.

The U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have put a misleading veneer on the overlapping political and civil wars that have roiled the Persian Gulf region for three decades. These conflicts swirl within Islam and within individual nations of the greater Middle East, which must finally come to terms with the direct dangers posed by al-Qaida and its loose network of nihilistic terrorists.

As grim news continues to pour in from what amounts to a Ramadan Offensive by opposition forces in Iraq and by the murderous dissidents now directly attacking the Saudi royal family’s rule, Americans must keep sight of the true nature of the region’s conflicts and the catalytic geopolitical effects of the greatly expanded U.S. military presence in the Gulf.

Arab survivors of the Nov. 9 carnage at Riyadh’s Muhaya housing compound expressed disbelief that they had been targeted during Ramadan — or at all. Some told reporters they had moved away from areas inhabited by Americans and other Western residents of the kingdom precisely to avoid this kind of attack, which killed at least 17 and maimed 120 others.

They gained no more respite than did their legendary predecessor, the Arab servant who, on seeing Death in the marketplace in Baghdad, flees to the seeming safety of Samarra — ignorant that Death has already set their final appointment for that evening in that Mesopotamian city.

However linked they are, the killers in Iraq and Saudi Arabia — and in the Arab countries that are probably next in line for the expanding attacks — clearly see Ramadan as an important psychological moment to intensify operations. They are throwing all they have into spreading insurgency and shaking the resolve of those who stand in the way of their taking control of Islam and of the region’s politics.

King Fahd has responded to these bloodstained fantasies by vowing that Saudi Arabia will now wield “an iron fist” against terrorists. One royal family member, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, urged Saudis last week to abandon “stupid conspiracy theories” blaming Israel’s Mossad or the CIA for all the ills that befall the Arabs. The kingdom has yet to ask itself honestly why 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 were Saudis, he said bluntly.

The savage attacks in May and more particularly of last weekend on a foreign work force that is vital to the Saudi economy seem to mark a change for al-Qaida’s assassins. The graduates of al-Qaida’s training camps initially directed their attacks against global targets and Western nations, not their own homelands of Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Algeria. Their goals were to renew Islam’s westward march of conquest and establish a global caliphate rather than pursue nationalist struggles.

The jihadists are now either compelled or tempted to make their stand more on their home turf — and to target their Sunni co-religionists and fellow Arabs more directly. This suggests the insurrectionists see the weeks or perhaps few months immediately ahead as decisive in ways they did not see before.

U.S. occupation forces have lost valuable months in what is essentially an intelligence war. This failure has emboldened the symbiotically linked insurgents to press their advantage now. But the Ramadan Offensive could backfire.

It just may expose the true nature and purposes of the killers of both jihadist and Baathist ilk to Arab citizens and rulers who have let their resentments against the West and Israel blind them for too long to the price they too pay for letting terrorism take root in their midst, as Prince Alwaleed suggested.

American forces have by and large stumbled into this set of conflicts that pit Sunni Muslims against each other and against the Shiites of Iraq and Iran, Saudi revolutionaries against the royal family, Israelis against Palestinians and die-hard Baathists against everybody.

But all war is local at the point of the blast or the gun barrel. The side that best understands this reality will prevail in the turmoil of the Gulf and its surrounding areas.

Jim Hoagland is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.