Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File
AT: Saudi Arabian Instability
Download 2.71 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- AT: Saudi Arabian Prolif
AT: Saudi Arabian Instability1. Instability looms in Saudi Arabia, several reasons AEI June 17, 2008 http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.28153/pub_detail.asp Whoever succeeds Abdullah in Saudi Arabia will face myriad problems. Saudi oil wealth has inhibited the advance of meaningful reform by cushioning the consequences of corrupt and inefficient governance. Even with oil prices near an all-time high, a population growth rate of 2.06 percent has left authorities in Riyadh scrambling to address an unemployment rate unofficially recorded at 30 percent.[24] As Saudi princes conspicuously siphon the kingdom's oil revenue, Saudis see the royal family's religious rhetoric as being at odds with its conduct. The sight of Saudi princes gambling, drinking alcohol, and cavorting with prostitutes aggravates popular resentment and the widening socioeconomic divide. After years of resistance, King Abdullah has acknowledged that Saudi Arabia has a terror problem.[25] Al-Qaeda struck at the kingdom and at foreigners it hosted in the years after 9-11. On May 12, 2003, suicide bombers killed thirty-four at a foreign national housing compound in Riyadh, and over subsequent months, there were nine attacks that took twenty-one lives.[26] In the face of such a terror campaign, the Saudi leadership enacted reforms to dampen Islamist fervor and became more aggressive in rooting out homegrown terrorists. The Saudi government began to arrest clerics who supported terrorism. Younger clerics remain undeterred, however, and continue to preach anti-Americanism and to incite violence. Saudi authorities tolerate many such clerics on the condition that they do not condone terrorist attacks against Saudi targets.[27] Many wealthy Saudis--including some in the royal family--donate money to charities or other organizations that support religious extremism abroad, leading Saudi Arabia to become an epicenter of the financing of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.[28] While Saudi authorities claim to have prosecuted individuals for terror financing and have frozen the assets of a number of other such malefactors,[29] such sanctions remain limited. Still, the Saudi government has created a number of laws to gain greater oversight of money transfers and charity expenditures such as limiting charitable organizations to the use of a single bank account and prohibiting such organizations from making or receiving cash payments.[30] Still, problems remain: Significant oil revenues are controlled by independent interests within the royal family, which do not necessarily lend themselves to monitoring by an incestuous Saudi government.[31] Saudi succession will come at a delicate time, both internally and externally. Saudi reforms are inchoate, succession unclear, and interest groups many. Any new Saudi leader will also face external challenges: The Iranian nuclear program has bolstered Iranian confidence and prestige, and Iranian authorities have agitated Saudi Arabia's large Shi‘i population, forcing Riyadh to worry about internal order. Primitive Wahhabi, anti-Shi‘i attitudes only exacerbate the internal challenges, despite recent moves to build a Saudi identity that transcends sect and regional origin. Saudi authorities often cite the 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers U.S. military facility that killed nineteen U.S. servicemen and injured more than 350 as evidence of the Iranian threat: While the perpetrators were Saudi, Iran's Revolutionary Guards organized the attack and trained many of the terrorists who executed it. 2. Saudi Arabia has been hit with a campaign of violence from Al-Qaida, reducing stability M&C News June 18, 2008 http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1411885.php/Saudi_minister_Al-Qaeda_changing_style_we_are_expecting_the_worst Saudi Arabia is expecting the worst from the al- Qaeda terror network because the group is changing its style and techniques but the kingdom is uncovering more details about its sources of funding, the Saudi Minister of Interior said in remarks published Wednesday. Saudi Arabia's war on terrorism is going ahead steadily but not without difficulty, which is caused by the fact that al-Qaeda is changing its techniques, Prince Nayyif bin Abdel-Aziz told the pan- Arab daily Alsahrq al-Awsat. This is why the Saudi security bodies are expecting the worst from al-Qaeda, the minister added. 'Investigation into sources that may be funding the network in the kingdom is making progress. But the information we have gathered has to be completed,' the minister said. The kingdom has been engulfed in recent years in a campaign of violence carried out by al-Qaeda, targeting foreigners working in the country's oil industry and security forces. The leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is a Saudi national, who was incensed by the US military presence in the kingdom and his fight against the Saudi royal family initially focused on ousting Americans from the country. Saudi Arabia came under increasing international pressure to crack down on religious intolerance in the country after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Out of the 19 hijackers involved in the attacks, 15 were from Saudi Arabia. 'Some people belonging to al-Qaeda may be in Iran,' the minister said. But he ruled out the presence of Saudi detainees in Iran. AT: Saudi Arabian ProlifSaudi Arabia can’t and has no incentive to proliferate Lippman ‘8 /Thomas, former Middle East correspondent and a diplomatic and national security reporter for The Washington Post/ It is far from certain, however, that Saudi Arabia would wish to acquire its own nuclear arsenal or that it is capable of doing so. There are compelling reasons why Saudi Arabia would not undertake an effort to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, even in the unlikely event that Iran achieves a stockpile and uses this arsenal to threaten the Kingdom. Money is not an issue — if destitute North Korea can develop nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia surely has the resources to pursue such a program. In the fall of 2007, the Saudis reported a budget surplus of $77 billion, and with oil prices above $90 a barrel, Riyadh is flush with cash. But the acquisition or development of nuclear weapons would be provocative, destabilizing, controversial and extremely difficult for Saudi Arabia, and ultimately would likely weaken the kingdom rather than strengthen it. Such a course would be directly contrary to the Kingdom’s longstanding stated goal of making the entire Middle East a nuclear weapons free zone. According to Sultan bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, the Defense Minister and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons by their nature contravene the tenets of Islam. Pursuing nuclear weapons would be a flagrant violation of Saudi Arabia’s commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and would surely cause a serious breach with the United States. Saudi Arabia lacks the industrial and technological base to develop such weapons on its own. An attempt to acquire nuclear weapons by purchasing them, perhaps from Pakistan, would launch Saudi Arabia on a dangerously inflammatory trajectory that could destabilize the entire region, which Saudi Arabia’s leaders know would not be in their country’s best interests. The Saudis always prefer stability to turmoil. Saudi Arabia and the NPT Saudi Arabia, like Iran, is a signatory to the NPT and participates in the safeguard regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It signed the treaty only under duress, but its reluctance was not based on a desire to develop nuclear wepons. The Kingdom’s position was that it would be happy to join the NPT system when Israel did so. But then in 1988 it was virtually forced to sign the NPT because of intense pressure from the United States. Directory: files -> documents documents -> North Mankato Taylor Library documents -> In the Red and Brown Water documents -> - documents -> I. Disaster Summary Sheet II. Tropical Cyclones documents -> Cbp and Trade Automated Interface Requirements Appendix: pga december 22, 2015 documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Mobile audio/video recording systems documents -> Cartographic Concepts for Realizing a Location Based umts service documents -> 1/ Background Statistics Human development index rank Download 2.71 Mb. Share with your friends:
|