SAUDI-YEMENI BORDER, 15 February 2003 — Smugglers operating along the Saudi-Yemeni border are constantly coming up with new methods to bring contraband into Saudi Arabia. Their latest trick is to recruit unemployed Saudis to help.
The southern part of Saudi Arabia is the most rugged and inaccessible in the Kingdom. It is treated as little more than a huge door by many people from Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, who sneak into Saudi Arabia from the south, sometimes on their way to the UAE.
Drugs, weapons, liquor and ammunitions are the goods most frequently smuggled into the Kingdom via hard-to-reach roads. “It is very easy to cross the border, you just need to pick the right time,” said Ahmad Mualamy, a Yemeni overstayer who has illegally been working in Jizan for three years.
“When we reach an area called Abo Areesh — a mountain village in a rugged area — we monitor police stationed on top of the mountain, and then we call Mafia smugglers to come and pick us up and smuggle us into any Saudi town. These smugglers are very easy to find on the Yemeni side of the border.”
“These smugglers are very clever, they always come up with new ways to smuggle their products,” said Muhsin M., a former border officer. “Once I was on duty when I noticed a herd of donkeys running through the border. I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t. So I ran after them. I caught one of them, but the rest disappeared. We found out they were smuggling qat, a common drug in Yemen, on their backs. Smugglers put hot spices in their bottom and they keep running because of the pain.”
Another common trick smugglers use is to wear women’s clothes to conceal their identity. Police in Jizan have arrested several drug dealers disguised as women, some accompanied by their families so as to guarantee minimum-security checks.
Gangsters also use young children to distribute drugs in the cities.
Abo Layla, an arms dealer, says that smuggling arms — especially big guns like Kalashnikovs — has become difficult in large quantities. Arms dealers prefer to negotiate with their buyers in Yemen, so it is the buyers who have become responsible for the smuggling operation.
According to a study by border guards in southern Saudi Arabia last year, more than 330,000 people were arrested while attempting to cross the border.
More than 4,000 smugglers were caught trying to bring animals into the Kingdom illegally.
Drugs seized by police included more than 2,321 kilos of hashish, more than 400,000 pills, more than 3,000 grams of marijuana, more than 14,000 bottles of liquor and more than 34,000 animals. Police also intercepted more than 176,171 sticks of dynamite and 4,102,194 rounds of ammunition.
There is also a growing demand for dynamite in the Saudi market. Farmers use it to level the ground or to dig irrigation channels in the hard ground of the southern region.
The legal price of a stick of dynamite is between SR15 and SR25, but it jumps to SR70 for contraband.
Border police forces in the south are at great risk of attacks from gangsters. For example, a police officer was recently killed in a gun battle with drug smugglers. Such operations have several times delayed a border agreement between the Saudi Arabian Yemeni governments.
Smuggling can result in explosions, killings and economic losses. Examples include:
The killing of seven border guards in Jizan in an area known as a prime smuggling route.
An explosion in Al-Baha district 10 years ago which caused 10 deaths, when a bomb was thrown into a mosque during Friday prayers.
When police surrounded the perpetrator, he blew himself up. It was discovered later that the bombs had been brought in from Yemen.
The explosion in Olaya in Riyadh in 1995 in a US compound, which killed nine people. Explosives used in the attack were smuggled from Yemen.
The outbreak of diseases in the south has so far killed more than 120 people. Officials said the diseases were transmitted by animals smuggled from Yemen.
