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Conley
10-05-2011, 11:28 AM
Pro-democracy protests which swept the Arab world earlier in the year have erupted in eastern Saudi Arabia over the past three days, with police opening fire with live rounds and many people injured, opposition activists say.

Saudi Arabia last night confirmed there had been fighting in the region and that 11 security personnel and three civilians had been injured in al-Qatif, a large Shia city on the coast of Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province. The opposition say that 24 men and three women were wounded on Monday night and taken to al-Qatif hospital.

The Independent has been given exclusive details of how the protests developed by local activists. They say unrest began on Sunday in al-Awamiyah, a Shia town of about 25,000 people, when Saudi security forces arrested a 60-year-old man to force his son – an activist – to give himself up.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-police-open-fire-on-civilians-as-protests-gain-momentum-2365614.html

Police firing on civilians, unrest...this has all the makings of another protracted uprising. It will be interesting to see what comments Obama and our elected officials make after their bungling of Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

Mister D
10-05-2011, 11:49 AM
Good grief...

Mister D
10-05-2011, 11:50 AM
This manis in over his head. Elections have consequences.

Conley
10-05-2011, 11:53 AM
Considering how cozy our politicians are with Saudi Arabia, it wouldn't surprise me if they try to sweep it all under the rug. The protests are small right now, but it seems whenever governments try to squash them with moderate levels of violence it's just fuel to the fire. The only ways of stopping it to me see like getting medieval or making some minor concessions and letting the movement run out of steam. Egypt could well be an example for the Saudis of what not to do.

Mister D
10-05-2011, 12:09 PM
Considering how cozy our politicians are with Saudi Arabia, it wouldn't surprise me if they try to sweep it all under the rug. The protests are small right now, but it seems whenever governments try to squash them with moderate levels of violence it's just fuel to the fire. The only ways of stopping it to me see like getting medieval or making some minor concessions and letting the movement run out of steam. Egypt could well be an example for the Saudis of what not to do.


Exactly. Hopefully it's an example for BO as well. I'd be more than happy to see him sweep it under the rug as well as he can. Please...no phone calls to the Sauds telling them to abdicate.

waltky
07-06-2016, 07:23 AM
Back-to-Back Suicide Strikes in the Saudi kingdom...
http://www.politicalforum.com/images/smilies/icon_omg.gif
Bombers Raise Saudi Stakes With Back-to-Back Suicide Strikes
6 July`16 - Kingdom has experience crushing a militant insurgency; Escalated violence seen triggering tough government response


Militants escalated their campaign against Saudi Arabia’s ruling Al Saud family with three suicide attacks in a single day, in the biggest challenge to the kingdom’s internal security since it crushed an al-Qaeda insurgency a decade ago. With no claims of responsibility, suspicion has fallen on Islamic State, which has vowed to overthrow Gulf rulers they see as betraying Islam. One of the bombings on Monday, near the Prophet’s Mosque in the holy city of Medina, targeted the heart of the Al Saud family’s legitimacy -- its custodianship of Islam’s two holiest shrines. “The Saudis are likely to react firmly, if not harshly, to the attacks,” James Dorsey, a senior fellow in international studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said in response to e-mailed questions. If coordinated, the bombings “would demonstrate the ability of IS to strike multiple times in the kingdom within a 24-hour framework and as such suggest that the kingdom has a real problem.”

The violence began in Jeddah, a commercial center, where a man identified by the government as Pakistani-born blew himself up near the U.S. consulate. Hours later on the opposite side of the country, two bombers struck a Shiite mosque in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province. In Medina, Islam’s second-holiest city after Mecca, four security personnel were killed outside the Prophet’s Mosque. The attacks extended a two-week terrorism spree that has killed dozens in Iraq, Turkey and Bangladesh. Kuwait bolstered its security around oil installations on Monday after breaking up a network allegedly planning to assault the Shiite community and a state facility. Saudi Arabia is determined to fight terrorism “with an iron fist,” King Salman said Tuesday in a speech commemorating the start of the Muslim Eid holiday. The biggest challenge for the Muslim community is protecting its youth from “the dangers of extremism,” he said.

Al-Qaeda Precedent

The kingdom’s rulers faced a similar insurgency a decade ago when al-Qaeda militants returning from battling U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq redirected their fire against Saudi government targets and foreign workers. Authorities crushed that threat by 2007, jailing many al-Qaeda supporters and forcing others to flee to neighboring Yemen. Today, militants inspired by Islamic State, an al-Qaeda breakaway, are waging a low-level campaign against police and other symbols of power. They’ve also mounted assaults along the country’s religious fault lines with attacks on minority Shiites. “The group is experimenting and trying to learn about the state’s weaknesses to exploit them,” Firas Abi Ali, principal analyst at IHS Country Risk, said in an e-mailed report. “It also suggests that the group’s ideology is sufficiently popular in Saudi Arabia to obtain individuals eager to take their own lives.”

Economic Shakeup (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-05/militants-raise-stakes-in-saudi-arabia-with-back-to-back-attacks)