Has Saudi Arabia ever gone to war against any of its Arab neighbors?

[The Backlash Cometh]

In recent times, that is.

Currently it seems apparent that the U.S. is being used to fight Saudi Arabia's enemies. There they sit from a safe distance and watch the rest of the Arab world get angry at America as one by one, America takes on Arab countries to "stabilize" the area; but, in reality, if we ever do get into Iran-Syria, the American name will be so hated that when we're done, S.A. will probably just tell us it's time to leave, don't let the door hitcha on the way out.


So, has S.A. ever taken care of its own continental problems without America doing the fighting for them?

[400Years]

1. S.A. was created in the early 1900's

A good book on this subject is A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin.

[TX-RAT]

2. Iraq

It was a Saudi pilot who shot down the first Iraqi plane.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Never doubted that there was a Saudi presence embedded with

our military, the question is, has S.A. been using Americans to fight their wars for them? We attract the acrimony to us, while they get to appear objective.

[onager]

4. Yes, but not recently

The "Saudis" attacked their neighbors frequently throughout the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

This certainly wasn't about the Saudis defending themselves, though; it was about spreading their fanatical brand of Wahhabi Islam. This creed originated in Arabia in the early 18th century.

By the early 19th century, the Wahhabist armies were pushing out from Arabia in every direction with a fiery hatred for any Muslims who did not agree with them. The Wahhabists even considered Shi'ites and more moderate Sunnis as "polytheists" and "blasphemers."

When the Wahhabis attacked the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala in 1802, witnesses said they slaughtered everyone in the city--men, women and children. That was not an isolated incident. Like the Taliban a century later, they also destroyed Muslim religious shrines they regarded as "blasphemous." When the Wahhabis took Mecca, they even destroyed the ancient mosque built around Mohammed's tomb.

In the early 20th century the Wahhabi tribal armies mutated into the Ikhwan Army, known as the "White Terror" for their white turbans. They proved just as insanely fanatical and bloodthirsty as their ancestors.

The first King Ibn Saud used them as a handy tool for conquest, but finally turned on them when they got out of hand and started posing a threat to his rule.

By that time, the Saud family dreamed of ruling an Arab state stretching from Mediterranean Palestine to Pakistan, and from Yemen in the south up to the Russian Islamic "republics" in the north.

Recognizing that, the British colonial rulers of the time basically boxed the Sauds into the central Arabian Peninsula. The Brits did this by establishing the "Trucial States" in Eastern Arabia (Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, etc.) and Aden in the south; with the creation of the Transjordan (later Jordan) in the west; by defining a new border for Iraq in the north, and in the east, keeping a close watch on their Indo-Muslim possession of Peshawar (later Pakistan).

In the modern Arab-Israeli wars since 1948, the Saudis have only provided small, token, ineffective and mostly symbolic military help. In the '67 Six-Day War and the '73 Yom Kippur War, the Saudis provided a single brigade. By way of contrast, in 1973 even the Iraqis sent 3 armored divisions to Syria. (An Iraqi division was about 3 or 4 times the size of a Saudi brigade.)

The descendants of the Wahhabi, of course, are still with us in the form of the Taliban, Al-Queda and similar groups.

A great book on this subject is "Hatred's Kingdom" by Dore Gold.