Saudi Arabia Builds a Wall

Posted on October 4, 2006

The Saudis have decided that Iraq is such a disaster that they are building a 550 mile wall along the Iraq-Saudi Arabia border. No expense is being spared to keep the civil war from spilling over the border in Saudi Arabia: from the illustration showing the wall, this thing makes the Berlin Wall look like a picket fence.

Security in Iraq has collapsed so dramatically that Saudi Arabia has ordered the construction of a 550-mile high-tech fence to seal off its troubled northern neighbour. The huge project to build the barrier, which will be equipped with ultraviolet night-vision cameras, buried sensor cables and thousands of miles of barbed wire, will snake across the vast and remote desert frontier between the countries.
The fence will be built despite the hundreds of millions of pounds that the Saudi kingdom has spent in the past two years to beef up patrols on its border with Iraq, with officials saying the crisis in Iraq is now so dangerous it must be physically shut out.... "But the feeling in Saudi is that Iraq is way out of control with no possibility of stability. The urgency now is to get that border sealed: physically sealed."..... "Everyone you speak to in Saudi Arabia says it is now desperately urgent," said Anthony Forester-Bennett, from Westminster International, a British company bidding to help build the fence. "They say there's a real danger of very nasty people coming across from Iraq."
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Outwardly it will appear mundane, with two metal barriers running 100 yards apart, lined with barbed wire at the base and top. On the Iraqi side, alarms will notify patrols if an intruder attempts to scale or cut through the fence. Between the two fences will be yet more barbed wire, piled in a tall pyramid. But its effectiveness will rely on its more sophisticated or hidden counter-measures. Under the baking sand will be buried sensor cables relaying a silent alarm to monitoring posts at regular intervals along the border. At the posts, face-recognition software will process pictures relayed from cameras, which will also be able to operate at night.
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Despite the details emerging about the fence, Saudi Arabia's military is keeping some aspects under wraps. According to one source, the project is being kept so secret that military officials from Centcom, America's central command responsible for Iraq, have been told they cannot inspect the site on "national security" grounds. Even spy satellites will not be able to unravel the fence's secrets. The source speculated that the reason for the secrecy might be automated weapons systems attached to the fence that could fire on suspected smugglers or intruders. "It's being done in true Saudi style," the source said. "State-of-the-art equipment and no expense spared."

The fence will cost over $500 million and contractors who are bidding on the project have to promise that it will be finished within one year -- no delays allowed. No expense will be spared, and the wall's defenses are cloaked in secrecy. American commanders in Iraq are very unhappy that they won't be allowed to tour the facility or learn about its secrets.

Apparently, we are now living in the Year of the Wall. We're supposedly building a big wall to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexico. Israel is still working on its wall to keep out the Palestinian suicide bombers. And now the Saudis are building their own Berlin Wall to keep the Iraq Civil War from spilling over its borders. Come to think of it, the Berlin Wall was pretty effective really. But it certainly was an eyesore.