Saudi Arabia builds 600-mile border wall equipped with Airbus radar and helipads
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
Jordan's military leadership is surprisingly competent, with lots of forward thinking, preparations and plans for eventualities.
This statement seems backward to me. Isn't ISIS supported by the Saudis to overthrow the Shiite government of Iraq?
I doubt either side understood a temporary alignment of interests to be anything more than that. Perhaps not entirely unlike what you saw in the eighties with the U.S. and the Mujahideen. There's probably even more appropriate examples from the same conflict with Russia, Turkey, U.S. et al supporting various factions.
The sooner we divest from oil reliance the better; hopefully this awful Trump presidency will give the left a mandate to do this in 4 years.
In addition, they are permitting the pipelines from the Canadian tar sands, which will increase Gulf of Mexico refinery output.
The slight rise of international crude prices combined with an energy-friendly Administration has spurred domestic producers, especially frackers, to increase production.
The likelihood of continued war in the Middle East, sanctions on Russia, and economic turmoil in Venezuela all are causing a big push to move away from these foreign energy sources. It's quite likely that over the next twenty years, the U.S. will emerge as the world's top energy producer and also the top exporter of raw oil and gas and energy products.
De-carbonising the US economy to achieve energy-self-reliance through locally produced renewables through policy (as opposed to eg solar being market-competitive and taking over at scale through market processes) will take decades and be way out of reach for any one president to see through -- it will require a much deeper (in practise, bipartisan congressional) commitment. Also, anyway, these are not exclusive options. It's not materially different to decarbonise from domestically produced oil than from Saudi produced oil -- indeed, it might be easier, as domestic oil is fairly expensive and Saudi is pretty cheap.
1: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/15/politics/congress-releases...
We love selling them cluster bombs.
I actually think we're on the same page here - a government can publicly have one position, while it's people have another.
Are you implying that government officials are funding ISIS? Or do you mean "government" as in "the country is governed by its people"?
If it's the former, please provide evidence. If it's the latter, recall that KSA is a full-blown monarchy, so the people != the ruling elite.
My point is that a government can have a public position, even actively fight for it - however at the same time, it's private citizens (both in the gov and not) can have another position.
This is a larger topic than HN can and should be host to ... thanks for the debate.
Perhaps, but when you make such statements, the burden of proof is on you.
> My point is that a government can have a public position, even actively fight for it
I'm sure that there probably are ISIS apologists among Saudis - I'd argue that they are few in number - but it's nonetheless important to make the distinction between the government and regular citizens. Furthermore, you seem to be ignoring the fact that such activity is outright illegal, so it's not as if the government is OK with Saudi ISIS supporters.
The narrative pushed by many journalists that ISIS is a Saudi ally is a complete fiction and big slander against the Saudis, who are very aggressive against ISIS.. The two have been at war since ISIS began.
I've lived in the UAE, and I can tell you that they have a very hard stance on terrorism, both domestic and international. For example, the UAE has been bombing ISIS from the start. The same applies for Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.
I think it's fair to say that "the Saudis" isn't exactly a monolith in this regard. There's an uneasy alliance between the Wahabi clerisy (who in turn keep the people relatively content) and the house of Saud, who again aren't exactly monolithic, but some of whom have something that at times could be said to approach a reasonably liberal worldview (they, for sure, aren't devout Wahabis).
It would not be terribly surprising if some of the more Wahabi-aligned elements are involved in channeling funds and different kinds of support to ISIS (and the Taleban and Al Qaida, for that matter) while the other end knows that if ISIS gets free reign in Saudi Arabia, the foundation under their government can crumble very quickly.
Saudi Arabia has frustrated American policy makers for years. Ostensibly a critical ally, sheltered from its enemies by American arms and aid, the kingdom has spent untold millions promoting Wahhabism, the radical form of Sunni Islam that inspired the 9/11 hijackers and that now inflames the Islamic State.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/opinion/the-world-reaps-w...
The reason for this, and the mechanism by which it happens, is indeed very complicated.
In this context, it's interesting to consider the growth of US Shale Oil and the lifting of sanctions on Iran, who apparently have made an agreement with OPEC, on which the Saudis took a production hit just to get it over the line (iron clad, because it's not like anyone has ever defected from an OPEC cartel agreement...)
War Tard is a great read on this: http://wartard.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/the-geopolitics-of-20... . It's a shame he seems to be posting at a rate of about once a year now...
In an openness spectrum, Saudi is a zero, and Isis is in the negatives. But they all look like they're a lower number to us so people just lumped them together. But even the saudis say ISIS are extremists.
It should be noted that al-Qaeda, while being an outgrowth of the Wahhabism that Saudi Arabia nurtures, has targeted Saudi Arabia ever since the Gulf War due to American-Saudi cooperation back then. All of the Middle Eastern regimes are considered desirable targets to al-Qaeda--this is the distinction between the "near enemy" and the "far enemy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove
Which references this:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/daily-c...
This is helpful as I assume this means that they'll be able to take in large numbers of refugees. It seems like Saudi Arabia is very intent on keeping themselves safe from attack, so it seems a geographically close safe-haven is an ideal situation for those that would otherwise have to brave trips to Europe or the Americas.
Sounds like this is would just be a simple action of politics to extend those visas or just waive the need to wait for access -- that's what is expected of nations when talking about refugees. This sounds like a great cultural fit as well, which is important for refugees trying to adjust to a new country.
> There's not much infrastructure there aside from very ritzy / high end hotels that've been being built at Mecca as well, so it'd be a bit tougher to take refugees.
If it's very ritzy hotels, then Saudi Arabia is very financially capable of organizing buses and transport to either temporary accommodations or the facilities that would need to exist for pilgrimages. Of course, these accommodations wouldn't have to be _in_ Mecca, so this isn't really a reason to turn refugees away.
> Getting them from their origin points to Jeddah as well would be difficult - by sea that's 1080km or so, assuming they're coming out of Jordan's tiny sliver of gulf access (which getting to is pretty rough on its own).
I'm sure Saudi Arabia has a naval presence and can organize mass immigration by plane. Refugees are trying to make it to Europe by raft, so it seems as if Saudi Arabia could very easily afford to help bridge this distance.
The Haj visa are just for the Haj, during the Haj period (last week of the lunar year), for the Haj, i.e. to go from the airport to Mecca and Medina and back. You could do the pilgrimage outside the Haj season (that's called Umrah), but it's rare. (Well, "you" can only if you're a Muslim, otherwise you can't even enter Mecca, and of course if you're female you need to come with your male guardian, unless you're over 45 yrs old).
> There's not much infrastructure there
You have 2 million people passing through within one week. There is a huge infrastructure there, busses, tents, monorail, dedicated airport terminals, massive crowd control measures (every now and then you have a panic where several hundreds of people get crushed). I wouldn't call that "no infrastructure".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj#Modern_crowd-control_prob...
You might have meant infrastructure for refugees, and that's true.
Refugees and Haj are totally orthogonal topics. Saudi Arabia has little interest in refugees, or tourists: they did not even issue tourist visa until 2014. This is changing ever so slowly as the end of the flow of oil money is coming into sight.
A visa is just a political device -- we're talking about refugees.
> You have 2 million people passing through within one week. There is a huge infrastructure there, busses, tents, monorail, dedicated airport terminals, massive crowd control measures (every now and then you have a panic where several hundreds of people get crushed). I wouldn't call that "no infrastructure".
Wow, moving 2 million people to accommodations in a week should be massively helpful!
> Saudi Arabia has little interest in refugees, or tourists: they did not even issue tourist visa until 2014. This is changing ever so slowly as the end of the flow of oil money is coming into sight.
No country has interest in refugees, but modern nations have an implicit obligation to minimize human suffering.
Based on what you've taught me, I'm curious about the absence of political pressure on Saudi Arabia -- it seems to me that they could greatly help.
Well, yes. But Saudi Arabia is not a modern, moral nation. It is a monarchy, a totalitarian autocracy, a hereditary dictatorship, with an abysmal human rights record promoting a particularly toxic version of Islam (Wahabism), which in turn legitimises the Saud dynasty's hold on power. They execute more people than the USA (though less than China and Iran).
(Note that I'm saying that it's a terrible political system - many Saudi individuals are fine people and suffering under their regime; just as can be said about North Korea, Iran, etc.)
The reason they get away with it is their oil wealth.
At any rate, they don't give a rat's ass about refugees, and used to have enough money that they didn't need to care much about anyone's opinion. That is slowly changing, and I hope the country will open up and modernise, but I wouldn't hold my breath for any substantial contribution to the refugee crisis.
http://www.bricoleurbanism.org/beautiful-urban-moments/mina-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mina,_Saudi_Arabia
Despite the facility to do so, they take in no refugees. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/12/facts-figures...
That's really shocking to me as these countries are rich in resources. Further, AFAIK, the majority of the populations share a religion/culture and these countries are very close (comparative to Europe/US) to the current middle east struggles, so why would they turn away refugees? I'm surprised there's not more political discussion happening to pressure stable, neighboring countries to help in this global challenge.
Up to this point, I thought SA was refusing to take any refugees from Syria. Has this changed recently?
http://time.com/4025187/arab-states-syrian-refugees/
According to a report by Amnesty International, the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council offered zero formal resettlement slots to Syrians by the end of 2014.
Rights groups point out that those countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — with wealth amassed from oil, gas, and finance, collectively have far more resources than the two Arab states that have taken in the most Syrians: Jordan and Lebanon
Faced with long borders and limited manpower, agencies have increasingly turned to technology to detect unauthorized intrusions. They include long-range fiber-optic sensor systems such as Senstar’s FiberPatrol system. These sensors can be deployed on a fence with just a single optical cable stretched up to 10 miles.
Buried RF cable sensors operate very much like radar and offer the advantage of being both out of sight and protected from the elements.
“People don’t know that it’s there,” says Dewar. “So they may know a system is there, but they don’t know exactly where it is and that makes it hard to defeat. It’s very tolerant to vegetation, so it works very well for borders.”
Both of these systems are able to pinpoint intrusions to within meters. If the system also is integrated with CCTV, central station monitors can point cameras in the right direction for further investigation. Border Patrol agents can then be dispatched quickly.
src: https://us.sourcesecurity.com/news/articles/border-security-...
One of the lesser-known but technically-impressive border fences was the Cordon Sanitaire ( Corsan ) built by Rhodesia in the 1970s along the border with Mozambique.
The idea of relying solely on sensors was rejected because even heliborne troops were inadequately slow when intruders could disappear into the African bush. Instead the Corsan consisted of two fences bracketing a minefield and much Israeli monitoring equipment, ran for 180 km along incredibly hostile African territory.
Eventually the cost proved prohibitve and the next 800km of border had to be secured with only a minefield and a homeward-side fence.