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Saudi Governor: Illicit Weapons Plentiful
Weapons smuggling from Yemen to Saudi Arabia is so commonplace that border police seize smuggled guns nearly every hour, the governor of a Saudi border province was quoted as saying Thursday.
Smuggling? SMUGGLING? I’m shocked, I tell you.
Saudi Arabia has often complained about smuggling from Yemen, a tribal country where illegal weapons trading is rampant and government crackdowns have had limited success.
"Hey, you there, what’s in the trunk of your limo car?"
"Umm, just some RPGs, five thousand rounds of ammo and a dozen land mines, effendi."
"AHA! Caught you! Don’t you know that the limit on land mines is six? Abdul, arrest this man!"
"We intercept, on an average of every hour, weapons smuggling operation at the Yemeni border," Prince Mohammed bin Nasser, Jazan governor, told the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat. "This is an alarming phenomenon."
Especially, these days, if you’re a prince.
Yemen, a hotbed for nutters militancy and the ancestral home of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, has seen several terrorist attacks, including the USS Cole bombing in 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. It has since joined the U.S.-led war on terror after being threatened with the consequences. Last week, Saudi police arrested at least 11 suspected militants and seized a large weapons cache in Jazan, Saudi dailies reported. The two countries signed an agreement on June to coordinate border surveillance.
"I’m tellin’ ya, Mahmoud, you guys have to get better with this border stuff. Last month we caught 5% of your smugglers. Now are you going to get the remedial education going for these guys, or do we have to take the gloves off?"
Posted by: Steve White 2003-08-22
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=17875