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RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA Although the government has spent at least $200 billion on defense in the last decade, within hours after Iraq invaded Kuwait it became clear that Saudi Arabia`s armed forces could not handle their basic mission: to defend their desert kingdom`s borders against hostile neighbors.
As a result, one of the 20th Century`s most xenophobic regimes was forced to turn over its national security to foreigners.
This came as a rude awakening to most Saudis, who wondered-some even asked aloud-``Where did all the money go?``
The arms business is big business in Saudi Arabia. Quite a few Saudis, including members of the royal family, have made considerable fortunes serving as middlemen in the defense of the kingdom.
Analysts say reforms introduced in the mid-1980s largely eliminated the once-standard multimillion-dollar bribes and commissions. Middlemen were replaced by joint ventures between foreign defense contractors and Saudi businessmen.
The idea was to put some of the money back into the Saudi economy, and to give enterprising Saudis a shot at the action. So far that hasn`t happened.
The arms trade is still the province of a closed circle of individuals, banks and investment companies, most of them with close links to the royal family.
``It`s not a healthy situation,`` said one diplomat. ``Some princes are better than others.``
But the problem is more basic and deep-rooted than that. The main inhibition to an effective national defense is the royal family`s abiding fear of an independent military establishment.
``In this part of the world, the military often does things other than defend the external boundaries,`` said the diplomat.
``The Saudi royal family looks at what happened in Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria-and it`s a disconcerting set of history.``
In each of those nations, the monarchy was toppled by a military coup.
The Saudi royal family has tried to keep a tight rein on the military by limiting its size, placing trusted family members in key command positions and carefully balancing each branch of the armed forces against another.
The 40,000-man army, equipped with the latest U.S. and British weapons systems, is commanded by Prince Sultan, the defense minister and brother of King Fahd. It is counterbalanced by the paramilitary National Guard, with 10,000 active members and some 45,000 reservists, all drawn from tribal levies.
The guard is controlled by Crown Prince Abdullah, the king`s half-brother.
Similarly, the 18,000-man air force is offset by the 4,000-member Royal Air Defense Force, which is under the ruling family`s command and, if necessary, could shoot down the air force.
``The primary objective (of defense spending) is not national defense but maintenance of the regime,`` said a Saudi political scientist who requested anonymity.
``The regime perceives the real threat beyond the borders to be ideological, not military,`` he said. ``The royal family has always been a lot more afraid of the ideas of a Nasser or a Khomeini then they ever were of Iraq`s army.``
Historically, Saudi leaders have blamed geography and demography for the kingdom`s weak military establishment.
Saudi Arabia is a huge, lightly populated territory-nearly 1/2 times the size of Texas but with only about 7 million citizens and 5 million foreign workers. It is surrounded by potentially dangerous neighbors.
But a look at those neighbors is instructive: Iraq has twice the population of Saudi Arabia, but its army is 30 times bigger. Israel with only 4 million Jewish citizens, has a standing army of 104,000 and a well-trained reserve of about 494,000.
In the past, King Fahd has talked about broader participation in the military, even proposing compulsory service for all male secondary school graduates.
``If these 50,000 to 100,000 students serve their country for two years and then are replaced by others, this means that within a few years there will be no fewer than 400,000 to 500,000 who can easily serve the country any moment they are needed,`` he said in 1988.
That hasn`t happened. The regime has always pulled back from conscription, and even in times of national crisis, ordinary Saudis have shown little inclination to volunteer their services.
This was evident on a recent visit to the modernistic $4 billion campus of King Saud University, where 30,000 draft-age men serenely went about their business as if the threat of war were a million miles away.
One 18-year-old student said he had no opinion on the Persian Gulf crisis because ``such matters are too difficult for ordinary people to understand.``
Asked if he would join the army to defend his country, the young man seemed genuinely bewildered. His friend, 21, helped him out. ``The Americans will solve our problems,`` he said.
In other Arab countries, the military has always been an important social leveler. This isn`t the case in Saudi Arabia, where the military is considered a dead-end career without the proper tribal affiliations.
The regime has tried to compensate for the lack of manpower by the conspicuous, multibillion-dollar acquisition of the most sophisticated weapons systems.
The U.S. recently agreed to sell the Saudis at least $10 billion worth of hardware over three years.
``We`ve poured a lot of money into the defense establishment, and some people are asking, `Where`s the beef?` `` said Abdullah Kabbaa, a national security expert at King Saud University. ``But you have to realize that we are starting from scratch.``
Unlike Jordan or Egypt, whose military infrastructures were inherited from colonial powers, Saudi Arabia was never truly colonized by any Western country, and it did not begin building a modern army until the mid-1960s.
It scarcely needed one. Prior to the oil boom, Saudi Arabia was a wretchedly poor country with little in the way of assets to defend. When that changed, the Saudis had to spend billions just to catch up.
By some estimates, less than 13 percent of total Saudi defense spending actually bought weapons. Instead, the Saudis had to build schools and training academies, so soldiers could learn to read and write, and highways, so military personnel and equipment could move about.
Some experts argue that the acquisition of highly sophisticated weapons systems has actually hindered the development of the Saudi armed forces by overwhelming their capacity to absorb new technologies and forcing the Saudis to rely on a small army of foreign technicians.
Meanwhile, basic problems, such as a high absentee rate among enlisted men, go unresolved. It took only a whiff of war to expose these shortcomings. ``You are not talking about a lean, mean fighting machine,`` said one U.S. officer who has worked with Saudi military personnel. ``They are trying hard, but they`ve got a long ways to go.``
The Saudi infantry is now deployed in forward positions along the border, but military sources said it is a token presence and mostly likely would be withdrawn in the event of war.
Royal Fears Keep Saudi Military Weak - Page 2 - Chicago Tribune
Why the Saudi Air Force Will Still Suck
Saudi Arabia is out shopping for new warplanes. Since Saudi Arabia has the money to buy the best stuff out there, warplane manufacturers are swarming to the scene. The only aircraft the Saudis won't be able to get is the U.S. F-22. Too much top secret tech in that puppy. But there's plenty of other hot iron out there. However, there's one problem the Saudis are not discussing; training and leadership. The Royal Saudi Air Force has long been something of a very expensive joke to the thousands of Western technicians and managers who keep it running. The Saudis buy the best, but have consistently fallen down when it comes to getting capable and motivated Saudis to run the air force. Pilots are selected more for political and family connections, and loyalty to the monarchy, than ability, as are many of the support staff. As a result, the pilots have never developed much skill, and the ground crews are backed up (replaced, for all practical purposes), by thousands of expatriates from the United States, Britain and other countries. These foreigners are generally former military, and make big bucks keeping the Saudi aircraft airworthy. But the Saudi generals have not been willing to go the extra mile to recruit and train the most qualified Saudis to run the air force. The loyalty angle is important, especially in that part of the world. But they could at least screen for loyalty first, then ability, and leave family connections out. That, however, is not easy, as the Saudi royal family keeps it all together largely via good relationships with the more powerful clans and tribes in the kingdom. Giving up control over all those sexy air force jobs is asking a lot for a royal family that is locked in a death struggle with popular Islamic fanatics (who want to oust the royal family.) So the Saudis may get their hot new warplanes, but they will still have a third rate air force.
Leadership: Why the Saudi Air Force Will Still Suck
What is the Saudi military weakness?
Saudi Arabia's main military weakness is that they don't actually have an army.
They have a group of people who call themselves an army, but most of the people in it are rich men's sons who found out shooting automatic weapons is fun--which it is. But cleaning them is no fun at all, so every Saudi unit has a troupe of hired foreign nationals who do things like clean guns and grease vehicles. As a result, the things that actually keep you alive in war, like maintenance, are things Saudi soldiers don't really know how to do.
What is the Saudi military weakness
Future Of Saudi Arabia From Prophet Muhammad SAW hadist :
عن رسول الله (ص
:
(يحكم الحجاز رجل اسمه اسم حيوان ، إذا رأيته حسبت في عينه الحول من البعيد ، وإذا اقتربت منه لاترى في عينه شيئاً ، يخلفه أخ له اسمه عبدالله. ويل لشيعتنا منه ، أعادها ثلاثاً ؛ بشروني بموته أبشركم بظهور الحجة )
مئتان وخمسون علامة: 122
Hijaz (Saudi Arabia) will be ruled by a man whose name is the name of an animal, when you see him from a distance, you would think he has a lazy eye, and if you get close to him, you do not see anything (wrong) in his eyes. He will be succeeded by a brother of his, named Abdullah. Woe to our followers from him! Woe to our followers from him! Woe to our followers from him! - he repeated it three times - Give me the good news of his death, and I shall give you the good news of the appearance of the hujjah
Hijaz (Saudi Arabia) will be ruled by a man whose name is the name of an animal
The king with the name of animal - is King Fahad (Cheetah/Leopard).
when you see him from a distance, you would think he has a lazy eye, and if you get close to him, you do not see anything (wrong) in his eyes.
He will be succeeded by a brother of his, named Abdullah.
Give me the good news of his death, and I shall give you the good news of the appearance of the hujjah (Imam Mehdi)
This is a Sunni narration. The author of the book copied it from Musnad Ahmad Ibn Hanbal - but now it cannot be found in Musnad Ahmad.
Some have argued that since the author of the 250 Signs book is a very reliable scholar, then the hadith must have been dropped from the new prints of Musnad Ahmad due to influence from the Saudis.
Now Saudis made a new Sahih Bukhari and call it SAHIH SAHIH BUKHARI (TWO SAHIH)
Hadith 2
سمعت أبا عبدالله (ع ، يقول : من يضمن لي موت عبدالله أضمن له القائم ، ثم قال : إذا مات عبدالله لم يجتمع الناس بعده على أحد ، ولم يتناه هذا الأمر دون صاحبكم إن شاء الله ، ويذهب ملك السنين ، ويصير ملك الشهور والأيام، فقلت : يطول ذلك ؟ قال : كلا
بحار الأنوار- ج 52: 21
From Abi Baseer who heard from Imam Sadiq (pbuhaf):
Whoever guarantees for me the death of Abdullah, I will guarantee for him the Qa'im (Imam Mahdi).
When Abdullah dies, then people will not gather/agree on anyone after him, and this matter will not except for your companion (Imam Mahdi) inshallah, and the kingdom of years will be over, and it will become the kingdom of months and days.
So I asked: Will that be prolonged? He said: No.
عن الإمام الباقر (ع
إذا ظهر السفياني على الأبقع وعلى المنصور والكندي والترك والروم ، خرج و صار الى العراق ، ثم يطلع القرن ذو الشفا ، فعند ذلك هلاك عبدالله
المعجم الموضوعي لأحاديث الإمام المهدي ع الكوراني553
From Imam Baqir (pbuhaf):
When the Sufyani rises against Al-Abqa', and Al-Mansour, and Al-Kindy, and the Turks, and the Romans, he will leave and go to Iraq, then the horn of (or the century of) healing will come out, and at that point will be the death of Abdullah.
Today Middle East is Khawarij Country........
As a result, one of the 20th Century`s most xenophobic regimes was forced to turn over its national security to foreigners.
This came as a rude awakening to most Saudis, who wondered-some even asked aloud-``Where did all the money go?``
The arms business is big business in Saudi Arabia. Quite a few Saudis, including members of the royal family, have made considerable fortunes serving as middlemen in the defense of the kingdom.
Analysts say reforms introduced in the mid-1980s largely eliminated the once-standard multimillion-dollar bribes and commissions. Middlemen were replaced by joint ventures between foreign defense contractors and Saudi businessmen.
The idea was to put some of the money back into the Saudi economy, and to give enterprising Saudis a shot at the action. So far that hasn`t happened.
The arms trade is still the province of a closed circle of individuals, banks and investment companies, most of them with close links to the royal family.
``It`s not a healthy situation,`` said one diplomat. ``Some princes are better than others.``
But the problem is more basic and deep-rooted than that. The main inhibition to an effective national defense is the royal family`s abiding fear of an independent military establishment.
``In this part of the world, the military often does things other than defend the external boundaries,`` said the diplomat.
``The Saudi royal family looks at what happened in Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria-and it`s a disconcerting set of history.``
In each of those nations, the monarchy was toppled by a military coup.
The Saudi royal family has tried to keep a tight rein on the military by limiting its size, placing trusted family members in key command positions and carefully balancing each branch of the armed forces against another.
The 40,000-man army, equipped with the latest U.S. and British weapons systems, is commanded by Prince Sultan, the defense minister and brother of King Fahd. It is counterbalanced by the paramilitary National Guard, with 10,000 active members and some 45,000 reservists, all drawn from tribal levies.
The guard is controlled by Crown Prince Abdullah, the king`s half-brother.
Similarly, the 18,000-man air force is offset by the 4,000-member Royal Air Defense Force, which is under the ruling family`s command and, if necessary, could shoot down the air force.
``The primary objective (of defense spending) is not national defense but maintenance of the regime,`` said a Saudi political scientist who requested anonymity.
``The regime perceives the real threat beyond the borders to be ideological, not military,`` he said. ``The royal family has always been a lot more afraid of the ideas of a Nasser or a Khomeini then they ever were of Iraq`s army.``
Historically, Saudi leaders have blamed geography and demography for the kingdom`s weak military establishment.
Saudi Arabia is a huge, lightly populated territory-nearly 1/2 times the size of Texas but with only about 7 million citizens and 5 million foreign workers. It is surrounded by potentially dangerous neighbors.
But a look at those neighbors is instructive: Iraq has twice the population of Saudi Arabia, but its army is 30 times bigger. Israel with only 4 million Jewish citizens, has a standing army of 104,000 and a well-trained reserve of about 494,000.
In the past, King Fahd has talked about broader participation in the military, even proposing compulsory service for all male secondary school graduates.
``If these 50,000 to 100,000 students serve their country for two years and then are replaced by others, this means that within a few years there will be no fewer than 400,000 to 500,000 who can easily serve the country any moment they are needed,`` he said in 1988.
That hasn`t happened. The regime has always pulled back from conscription, and even in times of national crisis, ordinary Saudis have shown little inclination to volunteer their services.
This was evident on a recent visit to the modernistic $4 billion campus of King Saud University, where 30,000 draft-age men serenely went about their business as if the threat of war were a million miles away.
One 18-year-old student said he had no opinion on the Persian Gulf crisis because ``such matters are too difficult for ordinary people to understand.``
Asked if he would join the army to defend his country, the young man seemed genuinely bewildered. His friend, 21, helped him out. ``The Americans will solve our problems,`` he said.
In other Arab countries, the military has always been an important social leveler. This isn`t the case in Saudi Arabia, where the military is considered a dead-end career without the proper tribal affiliations.
The regime has tried to compensate for the lack of manpower by the conspicuous, multibillion-dollar acquisition of the most sophisticated weapons systems.
The U.S. recently agreed to sell the Saudis at least $10 billion worth of hardware over three years.
``We`ve poured a lot of money into the defense establishment, and some people are asking, `Where`s the beef?` `` said Abdullah Kabbaa, a national security expert at King Saud University. ``But you have to realize that we are starting from scratch.``
Unlike Jordan or Egypt, whose military infrastructures were inherited from colonial powers, Saudi Arabia was never truly colonized by any Western country, and it did not begin building a modern army until the mid-1960s.
It scarcely needed one. Prior to the oil boom, Saudi Arabia was a wretchedly poor country with little in the way of assets to defend. When that changed, the Saudis had to spend billions just to catch up.
By some estimates, less than 13 percent of total Saudi defense spending actually bought weapons. Instead, the Saudis had to build schools and training academies, so soldiers could learn to read and write, and highways, so military personnel and equipment could move about.
Some experts argue that the acquisition of highly sophisticated weapons systems has actually hindered the development of the Saudi armed forces by overwhelming their capacity to absorb new technologies and forcing the Saudis to rely on a small army of foreign technicians.
Meanwhile, basic problems, such as a high absentee rate among enlisted men, go unresolved. It took only a whiff of war to expose these shortcomings. ``You are not talking about a lean, mean fighting machine,`` said one U.S. officer who has worked with Saudi military personnel. ``They are trying hard, but they`ve got a long ways to go.``
The Saudi infantry is now deployed in forward positions along the border, but military sources said it is a token presence and mostly likely would be withdrawn in the event of war.
Royal Fears Keep Saudi Military Weak - Page 2 - Chicago Tribune
Why the Saudi Air Force Will Still Suck
Saudi Arabia is out shopping for new warplanes. Since Saudi Arabia has the money to buy the best stuff out there, warplane manufacturers are swarming to the scene. The only aircraft the Saudis won't be able to get is the U.S. F-22. Too much top secret tech in that puppy. But there's plenty of other hot iron out there. However, there's one problem the Saudis are not discussing; training and leadership. The Royal Saudi Air Force has long been something of a very expensive joke to the thousands of Western technicians and managers who keep it running. The Saudis buy the best, but have consistently fallen down when it comes to getting capable and motivated Saudis to run the air force. Pilots are selected more for political and family connections, and loyalty to the monarchy, than ability, as are many of the support staff. As a result, the pilots have never developed much skill, and the ground crews are backed up (replaced, for all practical purposes), by thousands of expatriates from the United States, Britain and other countries. These foreigners are generally former military, and make big bucks keeping the Saudi aircraft airworthy. But the Saudi generals have not been willing to go the extra mile to recruit and train the most qualified Saudis to run the air force. The loyalty angle is important, especially in that part of the world. But they could at least screen for loyalty first, then ability, and leave family connections out. That, however, is not easy, as the Saudi royal family keeps it all together largely via good relationships with the more powerful clans and tribes in the kingdom. Giving up control over all those sexy air force jobs is asking a lot for a royal family that is locked in a death struggle with popular Islamic fanatics (who want to oust the royal family.) So the Saudis may get their hot new warplanes, but they will still have a third rate air force.
Leadership: Why the Saudi Air Force Will Still Suck
What is the Saudi military weakness?
Saudi Arabia's main military weakness is that they don't actually have an army.
They have a group of people who call themselves an army, but most of the people in it are rich men's sons who found out shooting automatic weapons is fun--which it is. But cleaning them is no fun at all, so every Saudi unit has a troupe of hired foreign nationals who do things like clean guns and grease vehicles. As a result, the things that actually keep you alive in war, like maintenance, are things Saudi soldiers don't really know how to do.
What is the Saudi military weakness
Future Of Saudi Arabia From Prophet Muhammad SAW hadist :
عن رسول الله (ص
:(يحكم الحجاز رجل اسمه اسم حيوان ، إذا رأيته حسبت في عينه الحول من البعيد ، وإذا اقتربت منه لاترى في عينه شيئاً ، يخلفه أخ له اسمه عبدالله. ويل لشيعتنا منه ، أعادها ثلاثاً ؛ بشروني بموته أبشركم بظهور الحجة )
مئتان وخمسون علامة: 122
Hijaz (Saudi Arabia) will be ruled by a man whose name is the name of an animal, when you see him from a distance, you would think he has a lazy eye, and if you get close to him, you do not see anything (wrong) in his eyes. He will be succeeded by a brother of his, named Abdullah. Woe to our followers from him! Woe to our followers from him! Woe to our followers from him! - he repeated it three times - Give me the good news of his death, and I shall give you the good news of the appearance of the hujjah
Hijaz (Saudi Arabia) will be ruled by a man whose name is the name of an animal
The king with the name of animal - is King Fahad (Cheetah/Leopard).
when you see him from a distance, you would think he has a lazy eye, and if you get close to him, you do not see anything (wrong) in his eyes.
He will be succeeded by a brother of his, named Abdullah.
Give me the good news of his death, and I shall give you the good news of the appearance of the hujjah (Imam Mehdi)
This is a Sunni narration. The author of the book copied it from Musnad Ahmad Ibn Hanbal - but now it cannot be found in Musnad Ahmad.
Some have argued that since the author of the 250 Signs book is a very reliable scholar, then the hadith must have been dropped from the new prints of Musnad Ahmad due to influence from the Saudis.
Now Saudis made a new Sahih Bukhari and call it SAHIH SAHIH BUKHARI (TWO SAHIH)
Hadith 2
سمعت أبا عبدالله (ع
، يقول : من يضمن لي موت عبدالله أضمن له القائم ، ثم قال : إذا مات عبدالله لم يجتمع الناس بعده على أحد ، ولم يتناه هذا الأمر دون صاحبكم إن شاء الله ، ويذهب ملك السنين ، ويصير ملك الشهور والأيام، فقلت : يطول ذلك ؟ قال : كلابحار الأنوار- ج 52: 21
From Abi Baseer who heard from Imam Sadiq (pbuhaf):
Whoever guarantees for me the death of Abdullah, I will guarantee for him the Qa'im (Imam Mahdi).
When Abdullah dies, then people will not gather/agree on anyone after him, and this matter will not except for your companion (Imam Mahdi) inshallah, and the kingdom of years will be over, and it will become the kingdom of months and days.
So I asked: Will that be prolonged? He said: No.
عن الإمام الباقر (ع
إذا ظهر السفياني على الأبقع وعلى المنصور والكندي والترك والروم ، خرج و صار الى العراق ، ثم يطلع القرن ذو الشفا ، فعند ذلك هلاك عبدالله
المعجم الموضوعي لأحاديث الإمام المهدي ع الكوراني553
From Imam Baqir (pbuhaf):
When the Sufyani rises against Al-Abqa', and Al-Mansour, and Al-Kindy, and the Turks, and the Romans, he will leave and go to Iraq, then the horn of (or the century of) healing will come out, and at that point will be the death of Abdullah.
Today Middle East is Khawarij Country........
