REFUGEE

Saudi Arabia said on Saturday four pilgrims had died of the new H1N1 flu virus three days before the massive Muslim haj is due to begin, al-Hayat newspaper said.

The Health Ministry said the deaths were among pilgrims who came from outside Saudi Arabia, al-Hayat online news said.

Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Mirghalani could not be immediately reached for comment.

Some 3 million Muslim pilgrims take part in the haj in the holy city of Mecca every year, including up to 2 million who travel from abroad. Haj rituals this year start on Wednesday.

Disease experts from the United States and Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, say that waves of H1N1 flu virus spread by pilgrims travelling to and from Mecca for this year's haj threaten to put pressure on healthcare systems around the world.

The pilgrimage provides perfect conditions for the spread of the H1N1 flu virus, which is transmitted by sneezing and physical contact. (Writing by Souhail Karam

The Saudi-Iranian proxy war escalates: good news for the U.S.

A sectarian rebellion in northern Yemen has now become an open contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran for influence over Yemen and the Gulf of Aden region. This week the Saudis brought their air and naval power to bear against Yemen's Houthi rebels -- Shiite insurgents very likely supported by Iran - after a Houthi incursion into Saudi territory. Iran responded by warning Saudi Arabia to stay out of the conflict. What remains to be seen is whether this conflict will create and harden a Sunni-Arab alliance that might someday effectively contain IranAccording to the New York Times, the Houthis captured a strategic mountain near the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border and clashed with a Saudi border patrol on Nov. 3. The Saudi response was a sustained air and artillery campaign against Houthi positions inside Yemen. On Nov 10 Saudi naval forces began a blockade of Yemen's coast in order to cut the Houthis off from resupply.

The Saudi and Yemeni governments believe that Iran is supplying the rebels with weapons, though Tehran denies it.

Why has Saudi Arabia felt the need to overtly intervene in what was previously an internal Yemeni dispute? According to the United Nations, the latest flare-up in the Houthi insurrection has created 175,000 refugees. Breaking the insurgency might curtail the refugee crisis and prevent it from spilling over into Saudi Arabia.

At the geostrategic level, Saudi leaders might fear the creation of a pro-Iranian Shiite enclave adjacent to the Red Sea shipping lane, similar to what Iran has achieved with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. From the Saudi perspective, it would be best to strangle that possibility immediately.

Other players are taking note of the escalation in the Houthi conflict and making their own arrangements. On Nov. 11 Yemen disclosed that it had signed a military cooperation deal with the United States; the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Separately, the growing friction between Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-Arab states in the Gulf region on the other seems to be good news for arms exporters. According to Bloomberg News, major U.S. and European defense contractors expect $40 billion in sales over the next five years to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to upgrade aircraft, missile, and naval systems.

U.S. officials should be pleased by this reaction. Any real challenge Iranian ambitions will require Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states to balance Iranian power. Accomplishing that will require more resolve and teamwork than the Sunni Arab states have demonstrated so far. If the proxy war generated by the Houthi rebellion achieves this response from the gulf countries, it would greatly serve U.S. interests in the region.

Sri Lanka's civil war is not really over

When does a war really end? Last May, the Sri Lankan army overran the last holdout of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the insurgent group that for 26 years had battled for a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka's north. The final, bloody battle seemed decisive - the Tigers' founder Vellupillai Prabhakaran, his son, and many other top leaders of the LTTE were killed. The Tigers' sanctuary was vanquished. The army herded the LTTE's remaining foot-soldiers, along with the population that supported them, into razor-wire encampments.

Six months later, the guarded refugee camps remain. Might the embryo of a new Tamil insurgency be growing inside the camps? On the one hand, Sri Lanka's leaders likely understand that the longer the refugee situation remains unresolved, the higher the probability rises for another Tamil insurgency. On the other hand, after experiencing a long, bitter, and extremely violent civil war, these leaders are in no mind to gamble with their recent victory.

In The Utility of Force, his brilliant analysis of modern war, Rupert Smith asserted that today's conflicts, especially the ethnic variety, are never actually resolved. The best a policymaker can hope for, wrote Smith, is to contain over time their intensity and consequences. This is exactly the situation Sri Lanka now faces.

Sri Lanka's leaders are apparently hoping to prove Smith wrong. According to a recent Washington Post story, the government is using its lock-down of the Tamils to sift through the population of military-aged males in search of suspected Tiger sympathizers. By separating possible insurgent organizers from the rest of the Tamil population, the government hopes to permanently end Tamil resistance.

The Sri Lankan government may need to hurry up its search for potential troublemakers. It faces the possibility of a United Nations war crimes investigation and is under increasing pressure from the European Union and the United States to explain its resettlement policies.

Sri Lanka's leaders are likely counting on diplomatic contact with the West, combined with some well-publicized initial resettlement efforts, to remove the internment camp story from the news. This would provide the Sri Lanka security services with more time to track down and isolate potential insurgents who might be lurking in the camps.

Will Sri Lanka's government show how to permanently resolve a stubborn ethnic conflict? As Smith explained, modern history provides no good examples. We should bet that the Sri Lankan Way will be no different.

Two suspected al-Qaeda militants and a police officer have been killed in a clash at a checkpoint in Saudi Arabia, near the Yemeni border, officials say.
Shots were fired after a female police officer approached a car to check the identities of the three people inside - two of whom were disguised as women.
The two dead men were wearing explosive vests. A third man was arrested.
It was the first known armed clash between suspected al-Qaeda militants and troops in the kingdom since August.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is said to have been behind the suicide bombing in the port of Jeddah at the end of the month which injured Assistant Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.
The attack came weeks after the arrest in Saudi Arabia of 44 suspected members of the group, which is aligned with Osama Bin Laden's international network and led by a former associate.
Re-emergence
Tuesday's clash happened at a police checkpoint about 120km (75 miles) from the city of Jizan, on the road to Asir province, the interior ministry said.
Ministry spokesman Brig Gen Mansour al-Turki said the vehicle in which the three suspected militants were travelling had been about to undergo a security check on the basis of "information on the planning of terrorist acts by the deviant minority" when started shooting at the security forces.
He said the subsequent exchange of fire resulted in "the deaths of two passengers in the vehicle and the arrest of a third".
The two men wearing women's clothing had explosive vests and grenades underneath, and "more grenades, automatic weapons and bomb-making materials" were found inside their car, he added.
Gen Turki said one police officer was killed and another wounded in the incident. It is not known if the policewoman was one of them.
The Saudi Arabian government is concerned about the resurgence of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, where the authorities have been ineffective in cracking down on the group, focusing instead on fighting Shia rebels.
Last month, the director of the US National Counter-terrorism Centre, Michael Leiter, told a Senate hearing that the group had gained a dangerous foothold across the border.
"We have witnessed the re-emergence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, with Yemen as a key battleground and potential regional base of operations from which al-Qaeda can plan attacks, train recruits and facilitate the movement of operatives," he said.