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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (224772)	3/20/2007 2:21:02 AM
From: kumar	Respond to of 281500

not just population - the Saudis have tons of money - can buy what they need....

To: Elroy who wrote (224772)	3/20/2007 2:13:33 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

CIA World Factbook says 27M Saudis, but 5.5M are non-nationals. I knew they brought in slaves by the 747 load, but this is bigger than expected. There are 3 classes in that country: Saudis, educated Arabs from other countries and Westerners, and the slaves, who are Muslims brought in from all over the world for menial and manual labor. Saudis don't work; they "oversee" and "manage". When they run out of oil, they'd better be able to eat sand. More Saudis than I had thought. cia.gov CIA World Factbook days 27M Iraqis. About the same, unless you say there are really only 22.5M Saudis because of the non-nationals. And at most only about 10M of the Iraqis will support the Saudis- -the Sunnis. cia.gov It's worse though. Let's forget Turkey- -they will only want a small strip of the north where the Kurds are. This is so an independent Kurdistan does not ignite the Turkish Kurds and cost Turkey maybe a third of the eastern part of the country (20% of the population is Kurdish, but the east is thinly populated compared to the west). cia.gov The REAL problems will be Syria and Iran. If Saudi intervenes on the side of the Sunnis (and it has said it will if the US pulls out), Iran and Syria will support the Shia. They are already doing so according to the US. Iran has 69M people with 9% Sunnis. cia.gov Syria has 19M with 74% Sunni. Now why they have aided Iran is beyond me- -anti-US, I guess. They might switch if the US is gone. But war there is likely to be regional rather than one country, although it is possible all the fighting will be in and for control of Iraq. Nevertheless, it promises to be quite a brawl. The US is likely to have the same problem it had in the 1980's in the war between Iraq and Iran with picking a side to cheer for- -you'd like BOTH to lose.