Security forces raid Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province to stop anti-Yemen war protests
Source: Middle East Eye
At least 30 people were injured on Sunday in Saudi Arabias Eastern Province, as government forces clashed with locals, according to activists who said the assault was an attempt to quell calls for protests against military intervention in Yemen.
Residents of the oil rich but poverty stricken province told MEE hundreds of armoured security vehicles stormed Awamiyah village at 330pm (1230 GMT) on Sunday.
From 4pm until 9pm the gunfire didnt stop, a local activist and Awamiyah resident, who asked to remain anonymous, told MEE. Security forces shot randomly at peoples homes, arrested a lot of people, and closed all but one of the roads leading in and out of the village. It is like a war here we are under siege.
Gunfire seemingly from security forces could be heard amid shouts of Allahu Akbar (God is Great) shouted out of fear by locals - in footage sent to MEE, which also included images of cars and homes on fire across the village of some 25,500 people.
Read more: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/security-forces-raid-saudi-arabias-eastern-province-stop-anti-yemen-war-protests-451186533
https://twitter.com/search?q=Awamiyah
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)Purveyor
(29,876 posts)project_bluebook
(411 posts)Fat and happy doesn't make a strong rebellion. On the other hand, a quarter of Saudis live below the poverty line so they plus foreign workers who service the well to do population may try to stir something up.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)Same is true of Kuwait 70% of its residents aren't even Kuwaiti civilians (though US military is partly responsible for this but they got the idea from them. Qatar most of its residents are imported labor.
If you look up the man in my sig line is an example of this -- time-to-time Saudi Arabia has protests (there was a better word but I can't remember what it was) but a few beheadings which quiets them. I think most are trying to make it through alive by their numerous rules the #1 rule is don't criticize the Saudi royal family.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)by the Sunni monarchy.
From the article:
JCMach1
(27,556 posts)around the same time as the Bahrain invasion by Saudi forces.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)Saudi Arabia is a good customer for war profiteers.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)depending on what you know or don't know, of course but many US citizens don't
B. Military Privatization in the Persian Gulf
Military privatization, however, is not simply an abstract process that unfolds
in the same way across space and time. Crucial to understanding the rise of
TCN labor in particular was the post-Cold War militarys shift to a new center of
gravity: the Persian Gulf. The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait marked a major
shift in the global U.S. military posture, with the deployment of large ground
forces to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as a counterbalance to both Iraq and Iran.
Since then, U.S. bases in the Gulf have been key staging areas for operations in
Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Unlike the major overseas hubs of the Cold
War military in Western Europe and East Asia, the Gulf economies were built in
large part on foreign migrant labor. Large numbers of noncitizens reside in Qatar
(86.5 percent of the population), the U.A.E. (70 percent), Kuwait (68.8 percent),
Bahrain (39.1 percent), and Saudi Arabia (27.8 percent).40 Indeed, the military
and police services of the Arab Gulf states themselves also make extensive use of
foreign labor, at both the rank-and-file and officer levels. The U.A.E. and Qatari
militaries employ large numbers of contractors from Pakistan, Egypt, and other
countries.41 Bahrains extensive reliance on Pakistanis and other foreigners has
attracted considerable attention since the 2011 uprising.42
The Gulf states migrant-driven economy converged with the changes in
U.S. military logistics: Companies specializing in recruiting migrant labor for
construction, logistics, and security in the petroleum and related industries were
well-poised to lend their services to the U.S. military. Over preceding decades,
Gulf regimes crushed budding labor movements that emerged around the oil industry43
and replaced them with large numbers of migrants, all while extending
state largesse to pacify and co-opt the citizenry. In contrast, contractors at the
major U.S. airbase at İncirlik, Turkey, were forced into arbitration with local unions
after major strikes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One U.S. military contractor
complained of the Turkish workers having a home-field advantage;44 in
countries such as Kuwait, such concerns did not exist. As a result, large U.S. military
contractors such as KBR, DynCorp, and Fluor can draw from a variety of
smaller multinational companies to recruit and transfer workers through the
Gulf. One Dubai-based company operating on bases in Afghanistan, Ecolog,
was founded by an ethnic Albanian entrepreneur providing services to NATO
peacekeepers in Kosovo.45 One of the leading recruiters of Ugandan security
guards for the U.S. military, Dreshak Group, is also based in Dubai but was
founded in Pakistan.46
http://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/62-1-3.pdf
What the focus of the study had to the US DoD exploitation & abuse of imported labor but they got the idea & plus they were easily able such as Halliburton to subcontract it to the subcontractor who subcontracts it to a Saudi contractor.
You really wouldn't have to include the oil purchased in the last decade for the military uses to make the case most of defense budget went to Saudi Arabia private companies. "House of Saud" is basically the Saud family & the top 200 richest Saudi nationals. See, the imported labor does most of the work get slave wages not factoring in fees paid to bait & switch recruiters (which would make it worse, often time just breaking even at the end of the year, make just enough money back that they paid in fees but basically the lion's share of US defense spending goes into private defense contractors & private businesses (operating in an area with no labor laws & probably no regulations) hands