Eurasia Security Watch: No. 208

IN SAUDI ARABIA, NEAR MISS BY AL QAEDA
Saudi Arabia’s antiterrorism chief has barely evaded an assassination attempt by an Islamist assassin suspected of ties to al Qaeda. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s deputy interior minister, had perhaps inadvertently exposed himself to the assassin. The prince was known to allow repentant former militants to approach him freely to seek his forgiveness. However this was the first time one used to the offer to launch a suicide attack. And had the assailant not tripped and fallen, detonating the bomb inside the security gates at the prince’s, house he likely would have succeeded. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which Jamal A. Khashoggi, editor of Saudi Arabia’s Al Watan newspaper, worries “will be transformed into an assassins group.” (New York Times August 28, 2009)

SINOPEC FINDS A DIFFERENT WAY TO IRAQI OIL
Asia’s largest oil refiner, Chinese state-owned Sinopec Group, had come into disfavor with the Iraqi government for its attempts to strike oil deals with the Kurdish Autonomous Region in Iraq’s north. Baghdad has continuously disputed the Kurdish region’s right to offer contracts to international oil companies to operate in its territory, insisting that only the central government has the authority to conclude such deals. Bagdhad had even threatened to blacklist Sinopec for trying to cut such a deal. How did Sinopec respond? By buying Swiss oil giant Addax Petroleum, which already owns the rights to the Taq Taq Kurdish oil field, in an old deal actually recognized by Baghdad. The $7.2 billion acquisition is China’s largest-ever overseas acquisition. Addax is one of the world’s largest independent oil producers, and also owns fields in Nigeria. Iraq, meanwhile, has insisted that that Sinopec’s purchase of Addax could exclude it from future oil deals with Baghdad. (Agence France-Presse, August 27, 2009)

SAUDIS AND RUSSIANS NEAR MASSIVE ARMS DEAL…
Saudi Arabia and Russia are nearing agreement on a blockbuster $2 billion arms deal. Reportedly included in the deal are “up to 150 helicopters – 30 Mi-35 attack helicopters and up to 120 Mi-17 transport helicopters – more than 150 T90S tanks, around 250 BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles and ‘several dozen’ air defense systems.” If completed, the deal would follow a military cooperation treaty signed with Russia in 2008 and a shift by Saudi Arabia away from purchasing arms exclusively from the United States and Europe. Some contracts could be signed as early as this year. (Khaleej Times, August 30, 2009)

…AS MIDEAST TAKES TOP SPOT IN ARMS PURCHASES
If the global economic crisis was supposed to slow international trade and curb government spending, someone forgot to tell Middle East governments hungry for arms deals. A new study by Frost & Sullivan predicts the region will spend more than $100 billion on defense spending in the next five years – about 11 percent of the global total. Security concerns beginning with a potentially nuclear Iran and the threat various non-state fundamentalist groups appear to be driving the spending spree. Last year alone, the UAE spent $4 billion on its military, though it was dwarfed by Israel’s $13 billion. “The ratio of their defense spending to that of their total GDP is the highest in the world,” says the report, which projects Saudi Arabia to spend more than $36 billion to 2014. (UPI August 27, 2009)

PROGRESS FOR TURKEY AND ARMENIA?
[Editor’s Note: Modern Turkish-Armenian hostilities date back at least to the traumatic expulsion of Armenians from Anatolia during World War I, an act several government and historians have deemed a “genocide.” More recently, the Turkish-Armenian border was closed in 1993 – and remains so – after armed conflict broke out between Armenia and Turkish ally Azerbaijan. International efforts to mediate have been underway ever since, with very little to show.]

A meeting on August 31 between Armenia, Turkey, and Switzerland (serving as a mediator) has generated a potential breakthrough in the long-stalled Turkish-Armenian normalization process. The meeting produced two protocols which must be submitted to the two countries’ respective parliaments for approval. The protocols – which would reopen the closed border two months after their signing – look set to face stiff domestic opposition in both countries. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, has been adamant that ally Turkey withhold normalization with Armenia until itself and Armenia resolve the “frozen” conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a strip of land claimed by Azerbaijan but occupied by Armenia since their 1988-94 war. It called any Turkish-Armenian agreement that circumvents Nagorno-Karabakh “against [its] interests.” (Eurasianet.org September 4, 2009)