In The Days

• Source: Seattle Times
• Author: Jim Krane
• News Date: 9/28/2006

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with plans to build a fence to block terrorists from crossing its 560-mile border with Iraq — another sign of growing alarm that Sunni-Shiite strife could spill over and drag Iraq’s neighbors into its civil conflict.

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

The barrier, which hasn’t been started, is part of a $12 billion package of measures — including electronic sensors, security bases and physical barriers — to protect the oil-rich kingdom from external threats, said Nawaf Obaid, head of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an independent research institute that advises the Saudi government.

The ambitious project reflects not only concern over terrorism but also growing alarm over the situation in Iraq, where U.S. forces are struggling to prevent sectarian violence from escalating to full-scale civil war between that nation’s Shiite majority and Sunni minority.

Saudi leaders worry about Sunni extremists returning home to wage war on the U.S.-allied monarchy or Shiite militants trying to stir up trouble among the Shiite minority.

All of Iraq’s neighbors, including the Saudis, fear the violence could spill over the borders and threaten their own security.

The fence would do little to stop the flow of militants into Iraq because most are believed to cross from Syria, Jordan and Iran. U.S. and Iraqi officials have long complained about Saudi extremists joining insurgent groups in Iraq, but say they mostly go through Syria.

U.S. officials said in April that Saudis were among the top five nationalities among foreign fighters captured by coalition forces in Iraq. Twenty-three Saudis were arrested in Iraq between September 2005 and April, compared with 51 Syrians and 38 Egyptians, the officials said.

Obaid said the $1.8 billion spent since 2004 on shoring up Saudi border surveillance has sharply reduced the movement of militants heading into Iraq. He said the Saudi government is most concerned now with stopping infiltration into its own territory from Iraq.

In addition to political extremists, the Saudis want to prevent drug smugglers, weapons dealers and illegal migrants from using Iraq as an avenue into Saudi Arabia, he said.

The spokesman for Iraq’s Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said Iraqi officials had heard of the Saudi plans to improve border security “and we thank them for it.”

Obaid said contracts for building the fence, expected to cost about $500 million and take five to six years to finish, have not been awarded and work is not expected to begin before next year.

It is unclear whether the Saudis will actually in the end build a fence along the entire Iraqi border — virtually all barren desert — or simply at key crossing points.

The Middle East Economic Digest, a regional news magazine, reported this month that the barrier would have a double fence with 135 electronically controlled gates, fence-mounted movement detection sensors, buried radio detection sensors and razor wire.

In another sign of Saudi concern over sectarian tensions, the kingdom plans to host a meeting next month of top Iraqi Sunni and Shiite clerics in the holy city of Mecca in hopes of bridging differences between the sects.