Thursday 9 January 2014

Iraq Is New Schism for Saudis in Strained Alliance With West - Bloomberg

Iraq Is New Schism for Saudis in Strained Alliance With West - Bloomberg:

"Few goods transit the desert border between the Middle East’s two biggest oil producers, and Saudi authorities have built a fence to help ensure that political instability in Iraq doesn’t cross over either.

Dysfunctional ties between the countries have come into focus as a wave of violence sweeps Iraq, turning it into another arena where Saudi interests are diverging from those of the U.S. Fighting is centered in Anbar province, bordering Saudi Arabia, where Sunni fighters with ties to al-Qaeda are rebelling against the Shiite-led government of Nouri al-Maliki, which is supported by Iran.

The Saudi view is that Maliki is “aggravating the feelings of marginalization that some Iraqi Sunnis have long complained about, and that are at the root of the current violence,” said Fahad Nazer, a political analyst at Vienna, Virginia-based intelligence analyst JTG, and a former analyst for the Saudi embassy in Washington."

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