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Arabia
Crown prince’s Damascus ties leading to open Saudi-Syrian alliance
2003-11-26
From Geostrategy-Direct
When is GW gonna admit that SA is a real enemy? What’s the deal here?
A new report says Saudi Arabia has been a major contributor to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. This includes Saudi investment in Syria and in Syrian-controlled Lebanon.
RB link here.
In return, Syria has prepared special forces that could be called upon to back up unreliable Saudi security forces and ultimately replace U.S. troops in the kingdom. "This open alliance between an Arab nationalist Saudi monarch and a terror-sponsoring Damascus regime — a marriage of money and muscle cemented by family ties — is likely to endure for the foreseeable future," a report by the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin stated. "Tested by near-continuous engagement in several Arab-Israeli wars, vigorous internal policing, and action in Lebanon, Syrian troops contrast sharply with the inexperienced and largely inefficient Saudi military," the report stated.
When you hire other people to fight your wars for you, you never learn how to do it yourself. Soldiering's hard and often undignified work — which I'd guess is by now beneath the dignity of a nation of "managers"...
"This battle-hardened Arab-Muslim force is a low-premium insurance against a day that the Americans decide to leave the Saudis to defend themselves against external threat."
It's the direct descendent of the battle-hardened Arab-Muslim force the Israelis kicked the bejabbers out of in 1967 and 1973...
Syrian troops have remained longer than most other U.S.-led coalition members in the 1991 war against Iraq, said the report, "The Syrian-Saudi Arabian Nexus." The report also said the Saudi royal family, particularly Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, has relied on Syrian intelligence agencies to battle internal threats to Riyad.
Is there anything that the Saudis do themselves?
I think they beat their own servants...
Saudi reliance on Syrian intelligence dates from the mid-1990s, when Abdullah brought in Syrian officers trained in East Germany to help train the crown prince’s National Guard. "Nominally there to help train the praetorian National Guard that Abdullah commands, the Syrian intelligence network in the Kingdom soon became identified as a weapon in his arsenal if and when sibling rivalry broke out in earnest for the throne, which is still held tenuously by the ailing King Fahd," the report said.
"Nurse! He's doing it again!"
"Abdullah’s gambit also gave an opportunity to Syria to solidify its presence in what is presumably the most important American ally in the region." The report said Syrian intelligence officers played a key role in the 1996 bombing of the U.S. military base in Khobar, which killed 19 people.
Where the Saudis dished up a few "guilty" chaps in a vain attempt to pacify the US.
Saudi Arabia refused to cooperate with an FBI investigation of Khobar. "Known as a pan-Arabist nationalist and markedly less fond of the West than his half-brothers, Crown Prince Abdullah may well draw ever closer to his wife’s Syrian family as king," the report said. "Under Saudi succession rules, King Abdullah will have exclusive rights to name a successor and it is not unlikely that he may pick his Syrian-Saudi son rather than the presumed third in line, Prince Sultan."
The Saudis go down and 60% of the funding is dried up.
Posted by:Alaska Paul

#3  BTW - I like the numbering of comments - I hit the "end" button and when it gets in the 30's and 40's I know Murat, NMM, or stevey trolled commented
Posted by: Frank G   2003-11-26 9:07:58 PM  

#2  That's the other end of the deal.
Posted by: Fred   2003-11-26 9:03:29 PM  

#1  Whatever happened to the Pakastanis giving nuclear cover to the Saudis for $$$? Now it is the Syrians providing muscle (ala gangsters). And Iran brings in the Hezbella to keep their own population under control. None of these governments dictatorships seems to have any faith in their own people.
Posted by: SamIII   2003-11-26 5:55:17 PM  

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