Reply #6: Siege of Mecca, November 1979...

[onager]

In November 1979, radical fundamentalists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca during the big annual pilgrimage.

The attackers burrowed into the labyrinth of ancient, forgotten tunnels and crypts under the mosque. The Saudi police and military, taking heavy casualties, tried everything to get them out. From blindly throwing in explosives to flooding the tunnels and tossing in live electrical cables.

Nothing worked...until they called in a detachment of French commandos.

Accounts of this are still murky, but according to one great story: no "infidels" are allowed into the city of Mecca at all, so the French troops had to go thru a special conversion ceremony before they attacked. The ceremony made them Official Temporary Muslims.

And they solved the terrorist problem pretty quickly.