The fear is realistic.
The Economist, June 14, 2014, Two Arab countries fall apart
Sheiks in Anbar Province are reported to have pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader.
The web has few images of Anbar Province hat are not of war. Here are three.
The Iraqi army, which manned posts on the Saudi border, are reported to have withdrawn to Bagdad. The Shiite government of Iraq has little interest in defending Sunni Arabia against a Sunni ISIS which Arabia created.
The Saudi army is ineffective. For years it has tried to defeat the Shiite Houthi tribe in northern Yemen, right next to the richest of the Saud oil fields, and have lost each engagement.
he combined Pakistan Saudi army
The undefeated Houthi
There is little chance that the Saudi army could defeat ISIS if it were to invade.
The kingdom's fear is reflected in its call on Pakistan and Egypt to provide it with an army to defend it.And see here and here. It has recently spent billions (1.5 Billion in Pakistan recently) in each country and feels that they are indebted to the Saudi.
The Business Insider, a reputable business-oriented blog, posted in NYC, observes:
The reason for Saudi Arabia's support of rebel groups is in opposition to Iran, which backs al-Assad. But now it appears — much like U.S. support in the 1980s for mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan — that decision may come back to bite them.
Pakistan has denied that its army is in Arabis and has not denied that a request for armed intervention has been made. Egypt an the kingdom have remained silent about the demand for aid. Pakistan will heed the call if demanded; Egypt will not.
Nothing but sand and the cowardly Saudi army separates Anbar from Mecca.
There is much to fear. Saudi hubris - excessive pride or self-confidence - leads, or should lead, to NEMESIS, the goddess of indignation against, and retribution for, evil deeds and undeserved good fortune.
I would like to see the Saud Monarchy fall. It punishes minorities and any citizen who violates a rule of Wahhabism, the form of the Muslim religion practiced by the Saudi and few others; it has spent billions setting up and running Madrases in South Asia and Indonesia in a failed effort to win converts to Wahhabism, and to preach hatred toward the West; it is fueling the murderous ISIS, who shares its mythology; it is two-faced in dealing with Israel; it should fall.
Nothing in the Middle East is as brutal as ISIS is today. Images abound on the Web of its brutality. See here if you are interested in seeing how awful our kind of animal can be, when fueled by fervent religious belief, or by any other consuming belief.
And it would be interesting to see how a world dependent, still, on Saudi oil, would deal with ISIS, if it came to power in Arabia. See the Wikipedia article after the jump.
This post does not address ISIS and the Kurds, Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, or Iran, all interesting subjects.
See Wikipedia after the jump.
