MOSCOW, September 7 (RIA Novosti) - Abdullah ibn Abdilaziz, the king of Saudi Arabia, has inaugurated a new multilayered fence along its 560-mile border with Iraq that is part of the larger project aimed at boosting the kingdom’s security and protecting the nation from “infiltrators, drug traffickers, weapon and cattle smugglers”, state news agency SPA reports.
Besides the border fence, the project includes eight command and control centers, 32 rapid response centers, three rapid intervention squads, 78 monitoring towers, 10 monitoring and surveillance vehicles, 1,450,000 meters of fiber optics networks and 50 radars.
In mid-July, it was reported that Saudi Arabia sent additional troops, presumably as many as 30,000, to guard the border against the rapidly advancing ISIS militants and Shia militia from Iraq. However, the kingdom perceived the latter as a bigger threat.
Faleh al-Subai'i, commander of Saudi border guards in the area, even went as far as saying that the radical Sunni group is not important. “It’s a basic terrorist group without any military capability or suchlike. The most important one is the Shi’ite militia, which is organised with planning behind it,” he said, as quoted by AFP.
For his part, Nuri al-Maliki accused Saudi Arabia of not helping Iraq, a country where Shia make up 65 percent of the population, tackle ISIS and supporting other radical Sunni groups.
