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Saudi Testing that Nuke?

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Saudi Political Analyst Dahham Al-‘Anzi: KSA Has Obtained Nuclear Bomb. Test May Be Held Soon

Saudi political analyst Dahham Al-‘Anzi spoke on Russia Today Arabic TV channel on February 15 and claimed that Saudi Arabia has obtained a nuclear bomb. Al-‘Anzi said that the Saudis have acquired the bomb two years ago and that a nuclear test is expected soon. “The superpowers know about this,” he added.

TribuneIndia: SAUDI ARABIA’S foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir faced some difficult questions in Washington on January 20, following a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry. The visit to Washington took place amidst reports that the desert kingdom was set to acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan, in response to perceived threats from Iran. Just a day earlier, Kerry had warned both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia against partnering in any transfer or deployment of Pakistani nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia. He bluntly stated that there would be “all kinds of NPT consequences” if any such transfer took place. Responding to queries on Kerry’s comments, Jubeir retorted: “I will not discuss these things in a public forum, certainly not on television.” While not ruling out a Pakistani nuclear umbrella to guarantee his country’s security, Jubeir averred: “Saudi Arabia is committed to two things. I always say two things we do not negotiate over — our faith and our security. Saudi Arabia will do what it takes in order to protect its security.”  Referring to his discussions with Kerry, Jubeir said: “I discussed the bilateral relationship with Pakistan, which is a strategic one. We discussed the regional situation and ways to promote security and stability in the region.

We discussed the negative and aggressive Iranian interference and the affairs of the region.” He predictably lashed out at Iran, saying: “Iran should cease support for terrorism. Iran should cease to assassinate diplomats and blow up embassies.” (This was perceived as a condemnation of alleged Iranian attacks on Israeli diplomatic missions.) For good measure, Jubeir added: “Iran should cease its negative propaganda in the region,” while adding that the nuclear deal with Iran would “release billions of dollars” for funding its “nefarious activities”.The concerns expressed by Kerry came after meetings that Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince and defence minister Mohammad bin Sultan had with General Raheel Sharif and Prime Minister Nawaz on January 10. After meeting Prince Salman in his office in Rawalpindi, Raheel Sharif warned that any threat to Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity would evoke a strong response from Pakistan. Raheel Sharif’s nominal boss, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was more circumspect, telling Prince Salman that the “people of Pakistan will always stand by the people of Saudi Arabia”, while holding that defence ties with Saudi Arabia were held in “high esteem”.

Saudi Arabia has, however, rejected a Pakistani offer to promote dialogue with Iran, though the Pakistani offer has been welcomed in Washington and Moscow. Saudi Arabia has been assiduously wooing Pakistan, ever since it found out that it had landed itself in a military quagmire in Yemen, where its relentless bombing campaign has led to the displacement of 2.5 million Yemenis. About 78 per cent of the Yemeni population is today in desperate need of water, food and medical assistance. Despite the fierce and unrelenting bombing, the resistance to the Saudis, spearheaded by the Shia Houthi population and former President Abdullah Saleh is resolute in preventing Yemen’s takeover by a Saudi nominee, like former President Mansur Hadi. Saudi diplomatic woes have been compounded by the US led deal to end global sanctions on Iran and stern warning by President Putin that “Saudi Arabia will be utterly destroyed and annihilated” if it falls out of line, with military intervention in Syria. Shortly after the Saudi intervention in Yemen commenced, Nawaz Sharif was welcomed personally at the Riyadh Airport on March 3, 2015, by King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, together with Crown Prince Mukri and the entire Saudi cabinet. This was rare honour, especially for a country, which has depended for decades on Saudi doles and handouts. But the Saudis obviously had high expectations from Nawaz Sharif, whom they saved from possible execution and sheltered, after the Musharraf coup, in October 1999.

More important, was a low-key visit to Riyadh, a few weeks earlier, by Pakistan’s seniormost military officer, who oversees the Strategic (Nuclear) Forces Command — the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee, General Rashad Mahmoud. Subsequent developments have made it clear that Pakistan will be unable to commit forces for backing the Saudi military misadventure in Yemen. But nuclear ties between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia go back decades, commencing with the Saudi financing of Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions in the 1970s. Saudi defence minister Prince Salman was given unprecedented access to the Kahuta uranium enrichment and missile facilities headed by Dr AQ Khan, popularly described as the chairman of “Pakistan’s nuclear Walmart”, just prior to Pakistan’s nuclear tests. Khan thereafter paid visits to Saudi Arabia. Significantly, just after the visits of General Mahmud and Nawaz Sharif to Riyadh, Pakistan tested its 2,750-km  range Shaheen 3 missile, which could well replace the obsolescent CSS 2 missiles supplied by Beijing to Riyadh, in the 1980s. The Chinese missiles have an adequate range to target Tehran. Pakistan’s Shaheen missiles are originally of Chinese design. The visits of President Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia and Tehran clearly demonstrate the dexterity of Chinese diplomacy in the oil-rich Gulf region.

Saudi insecurities resulting from the virtual U-turn in American policies following the nuclear deal with Iran are being addressed by China, with Beijing’s “all-weather friend” Pakistan, signaling that it has missiles that can replace the obsolescent Chinese missiles. Differences between Iran and Pakistan over Afghanistan will likely continue, as a Wahhabi oriented, Taliban dominated, Pakistan sponsored regime in Kabul will be seen as threatening in Iran and neigbouring Central Asian republics. It remains to be seen if the Saudis return to their earlier policies of support for a Pakistan sponsored, Taliban dominated setup in Kabul. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have pledged to treat China as their “most favoured customer” for oil supplies. This should not cause undue concern in India, given the global glut in oil supplies and the reemergence of Iraq, as a growingly significant player in world energy markets. India will, however, have to move much faster in dealing with crucial projects like the development of the Chabahar Port in Iran, and in the development of undersea gas pipelines. We have to recognise that the inexcusable delays in the implementation of projects abroad, like the Kaladan Corridor in Myanmar and the Parliament building in Kabul have tarnished our image and reputation.

***

2013 ~ BBC: Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.

While the kingdom’s quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran’s atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.

Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery.

Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, “the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.”

Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, “we will get nuclear weapons”, the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions.

Beyond the Bluster, Obama Missed a Major Deadline

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But Obama did play golf last weekend and it appears he is missing the funeral of Supreme Court Justice Antoine Scalia to play golf?

Last year, the White House held a summit on the matter, any achievements? Nah.

 

It appears that perhaps Obama and his national security team has left the matter up the Tony Blinken at the State Department and the Brookings Institute.

The United States has mobilized countries around the world to disrupt and defeat these threats to our common security—starting with Daesh and al-Qaeda and including Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, AQAP, and a number of other groups. Now, the most visible part of this effort is the battlefield and our increasingly successful effort to destroy Daesh at its core in Iraq and Syria. Working by, with, and through local partners, we have taken back 40 percent of the territory Daesh controlled a year ago in Iraq and 10 percent in Syria—killing senior leaders, destroying thousands of pieces of equipment, all the while applying simultaneous pressure against key chock points and isolating its bases in Mosul and Raqqa. In fact, we assess Daesh’s numbers are the lowest they’ve been since we began monitoring their manpower in 2014.

We have a comprehensive strategy includes training, equipping, and advising our local partners; stabilizing and rebuilding liberated areas; stopping the flow of foreign fighters into and out of Iraq and Syria; cutting off Daesh’s financing and countering its propaganda; providing life-saving humanitarians assistance; and promoting political accommodations so that our military success is sustainable.

In each of these areas, we are making real progress. These hard-fought victories undermine more than Daesh’s fighting force. They erode the narrative it has built of its own success—the perception of which remains one of Daesh’s most effective recruiting tools. For the danger from violent extremism has slipped past war’s frontlines and into the computers and onto the phones of citizens in every corner of the world. Destined to outlive Daesh, this pernicious threat is transforming our security landscape, as individuals are inspired to violent acts from Paris to San Bernardino to Jakarta.

So even as we advance our efforts to defeat Daesh on the frontlines, we know that to be fully effective, we must work to prevent the spread of violent extremism in the first place—to stop the recruitment, radicalization, and mobilization of people, especially young people, to engage in terrorist activities. Read all the comments and remarks here.

White House Misses Deadline to Deliver ISIS Strategy to Congress

Brown: (CNSNews.com) – The House Armed Services Committee noted Tuesday that the Obama administration missed their February 15 deadline to deliver a strategy to counter violent extremist groups in the Middle East, such as ISIS and al Qaeda, as required by the National Defense Authorization Act.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, harshly criticized  President Obama’s failure to meet the deadline.

“I fear the President’s failure to deliver this report says far more about the state of his strategy to defeat terrorists than any empty reassurance he may offer from the podium,” Thornberry said in a statement.

“Unsurprisingly, the Administration cannot articulate a strategy for countering violent extremists in the Middle East. Time and again, the President has told us his strategy to defeat extremist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda is well underway,” Thornberry said, “yet, months after the legal requirement was established, his Administration cannot deliver that strategy to Congress.”

Thornberry also outlined the consequences of the administration’s failure, calling it “a lost opportunity” for Congress and the administration to come together for a common approach to respond to the threat.

“The Committee is working now to shape the FY17 National Defense Authorization Act and the Pentagon has already begun requesting authorities our troops need to defeat this enemy. Without a strategy, this amounts to leaving our troops in the wilderness with a compass, but no map,” he wrote.

“Failing to comply with the report deadline represents more than a failure of strategic vision for the White House,” Thornberry emphasized. “It is a lost opportunity for the Administration and Congress to work together on a common approach to face this threat.”

Section 1222 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY16, signed by President Obama in November, “requires the Secretaries of State and Defense to deliver a strategy for the Middle East and countering violent extremism no later than February 15, 2016” according to Thornberry’s statement.

It also requires the Administration to “lay out a number of elements needed to defeat terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda, including a description of the role the U.S. military will play in such a strategy, a description of the coalition needed to carry out the strategy, and an assessment of efforts to disrupt foreign fighters traveling to Syria and Iraq.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) sent the White House a reminder of the deadline on February 10, citing a recent testimony by Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, that ISIS “will probably attempt to conduct additional attacks in Europe, and attempt to direct attacks on the U.S. homeland in 2016.”

“We are aware of the report and are actively working with multiple interagency offices to complete this legal requirement per the NDAA and look forward to submitting the completed report to Congress in the near-term,” Army Lt. Col. Joe Sowers, a Department of Defense spokesman, told The Hill on Friday.

*** Just one reason why Obama being tardy is an issue:

The intercontinental nuclear missile threat arrives in America.

 

Americans have been focused on New Hampshire and Iowa, but spare a thought for Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago. Those are among the cities within range of the intercontinental ballistic missile tested Sunday by North Korea. Toledo and Pittsburgh are still slightly out of range, but at least 120 million Americans with the wrong zip codes could soon be targets of Kim Jong Un…

***

“We assess that they have the capability to reach the [U.S.] homeland with a nuclear weapon from a rocket,” U.S. Admiral Bill Gortney of the North American Aerospace Defense Command said in October, echoing warnings from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. commander in South Korea…

All of this vindicates the long campaign for missile defense. Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative helped win the Cold War, and North Korea is precisely the threat that continued to justify the cause after the Soviet Union’s collapse… 

You can thank the George W. Bush Administration for the defenses that exist, including long-range missile interceptors in Alaska and California, Aegis systems aboard U.S. Navy warships and a diverse network of radar and satellite sensors. The U.S. was due to place interceptors in Poland and X-Band radar in the Czech Republic, but in 2009 President Obama and Hillary Clinton scrapped those plans as a “reset” gift to Vladimir Putin.

Team Obama also cut 14 of the 44 interceptors planned for Alaska and Hawaii, ceased development of the Multiple Kill Vehicle… and defunded the two systems focused on destroying missiles in their early “boost” phase… By 2013 even Mr. Obama partially realized his error, so the Administration expanded radar and short-range interceptors in Asia and recommitted to the 14 interceptors for the U.S. West Coast. It now appears poised to install sophisticated Thaad antimissile batteries in South Korea.

ISIS is losing territory, hardly….

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We keep hearing that Islamic State is losing territory. But where exactly? Iraq? Perhaps but ISIS has 7000 fighters in Libya where some are leaving for countries deeper into Africa.

Groups of Islamic State fighters are quitting their bases in Libya fearing Western air strikes and heading south, posing a new threat to countries in Africa’s Sahel region including Nigeria, Niger and Chad, officials and intelligence sources said.

The ultra-hardline movement that has seized large areas of Syria and neighbouring Iraq has also amassed thousands of fighters along a coastal strip in Libya, where it has taken the city of Sirte and attacked oil infrastructure.

African and Western governments fear that the vast, lawless Sahel band to the south will become its next target, and say any large regional presence could be used as a springboard for wider attacks.

“ISIS (Islamic State) are moving towards southern Libya to avoid the likely air strikes from the European coalition,” said Colonel Mahamane Laminou Sani, director of documentation and military intelligence for Niger’s armed forces. More here.

Then there is Indonesia…..

February 15, 2016: Indonesia is the latest nation to learn that sending Islamic terrorists to regular prisons and allowing them to mix with non-terrorist criminals simply results in many of common criminals being radicalized and turned into Islamic terrorists. This was discovered as information Indonesian counter-terrorism forces obtained from captured Islamic terrorists was added to what was discovered then the backgrounds of dead Islamic terrorists were investigated and added to a database. It was found that a growing number of new recruits were coming from prisons where men with obvious criminal tendencies were often easily influenced by imprisoned Islamic terrorists and radicalized by that experience. Since 2001 most Islamic terrorist organizations have not only recognized this form of recruiting but encouraged it.

For a long time it was thought that this was mainly a phenomenon in Western nations where Moslems were a minority. But now Moslem majority nations are also finding prisons are increasingly effective for radicalizing Moslem criminals and turning them into Islamic terrorists. Prison officials in Moslem nations tend to be more corrupt than elsewhere and Islamic terror groups found that it paid to bribe prison guards to get recruiting materials into prisons.

Another problem is the growing number of new converts to Islam who encountered Islam while in prison and were radicalized there as well but when released did not become Islamic terrorists. Instead these Western recruits were employed to radicalize civilians and passing them on to Islamic terrorist organizations for further training. The best tactic here was detecting and monitoring radicalized prisoners after release and going after those found to have turned into Islamic terrorist recruiters.

Meanwhile all nations with Moslem inmates are seeking a fix for this problem. One solution that works is to isolate imprisoned Islamic terrorists from non-radicalized prisoners and each other. This is expensive in the short term but pays off in fewer Islamic terrorists in the long term.

Prisons have become a major source of new Islamic terrorist recruits and this method, along with greater use of the Islamic terrorists to recruit is replacing more traditional sources. For long time the Islamic boarding schools were the prime training ground for potential terrorists. It was difficult to deal with this problem in Moslem countries because most students of these schools do not become radicalized. The police found that an effective technique was to monitor these schools more carefully and then only raiding the ones where there was clear evidence of Islamic terrorist recruiting and training. In colleges Islamic radicals were succeeding in radicalizing college students and this was handled by infiltrating Islamic radical college student organizations and then going after the leaders and the advanced radicalized students who were heading for active Islamic terror activities.

Whatever solutions are developed to cripple efforts to radicalize Moslems the Islamic terror organizations have, so far, proved effective at coming up with new recruiting methods.

****  Indonesian military are on high alert after reports emerged of ISIS attempts to acquire cyanide in the country 

Indonesian military are on high alert after reports emerged of ISIS attempts to acquire cyanide in the country

 

ISIS are threatening a mass murder using cyanide to poison food supplies, warns Indonesia’s security minister 

  • Minister Luhut Pandjaitan claimed ISIS was seeking stocks of cyanide 
  • He suggested police and military were at particular risk of ISIS attack 
  • Indonesia has arrested some 20 suspected ISIS terrorists in recent weeks
  • ISIS is attempting to recruit new Jihadis from Indonesia’s prison population

DailyMail: ISIS terrorists in Indonesia are planning to target the nation’s food and water supplies with cyanide according to the country’s security chief.

Minster Luhut Pandjaitan warned that Islamic terrorists were especially keen on targeting the supplies of the police and army in an effort to destabilise the state.

Speaking to reporters, Pandjaitan claimed: ‘IS is now using cyanide to terrorise. They are using cyanide to poison food.’

He continued: ‘We have considered various forms of threats and we are prepared to face such a possibility (of cyanide poisoning).’

Indonesia is trying to crackdown on Islamic fanatics, including terrorists who have aligned themselves with ISIS. According to IBT.com, Indonesia’s police chief General Badrodin Haiti claimed ISIS had taken the idea from a recent murder in Jakarta where the victim drank coffee laced with cyanide.

In recent weeks, Indonesian police have arrested 20 suspected terrorists linked to ISIS. Many of those who were detained had close links to three leading Indonesian members of the terror group who are currently in Syria.

Authorities also believe ISIS sympathisers have infiltrated the nation’s prison system where they are seeking to recruit hardened criminals to their cause.

One cell busted south of Jakarta had recruited an inmate trusted by jail wardens to steal guns and ammunition from the police armoury behind bars. A police source said his girlfriend hid the weapons in an insulated lunchbox and smuggled them to militants on the outside.

 

 

Syria: 11.5% have been either killed or injured

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11.5 percent of the population have been either killed or injured, 45 percent of the population is displaced and no end in sight.

Syria death toll almost twice as high as previously thought: Report

Over 470,000 Syrians are alleged to have died as a result of the war and collapse of infrastructure

A new report suggests that the death toll in Syria’s long-running civil war may be much higher than previous estimates.

The Syrian Centre for Policy Research (SCPR) reports that around 470,000 people have been killed in the conflict as opposed to the figure of 250,000 cited by the UN. Around 11.5 percent of the population have been either killed or injured, according to the report.

Many of the deaths, previously unreported, are caused by the collapse of infrastructure caused by the devastating conflict.

“We use very rigorous research methods and we are sure of this figure. Indirect deaths will be greater in the future, though most NGOs and the UN ignore them,” the report’s author, Rabie Nasser, told the Guardian.

Forty-five percent of the population is displaced and life expectancy in the country had dropped from 70 in 2010 to 55.4 in 2015, the report said. Nearly 14 million Syrians have lost their source of livelihood.

The report also warned that different armed players in the Syrian war had begun carving the country to suit their proxies.

“During 2015, the Syrian economy became more shattered and fragmented, mainly dominated by the fighting subjugating powers,” the report said.

“Each of these powers is rebuilding its own independent economic entities and foundations in which resources are being reallocated to serving its objectives and creating incentives and drawing loyalty among their narrow group of followers against people’s needs and aspirations.

“The absence of a framework for national dialogue which brings together the Syrian parties, which can represent and unify Syrians to create an inclusive process to overcome the conflict, has aggravated the state of socioeconomic fragmentation and enhanced the conflict economy.”

SCPR’s research was carried out from inside Syria, until recently based in Damascus.

Based on SCPR’s estimates, Syria’s death toll now exceeds the mortality for the US-led war in Iraq, which according to a 2013 study totaled 461,000.

Russian bombers and Iranian troops have helped the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad besiege the key city Aleppo, partially held by rebel forces since 2012, over the past fortnight, derailing peace talks in Geneva and threatening Europe with another huge influx of refugees.

Tens of thousands of Syrians are stranded on the Turkish border north of Aleppo, where observers say 500 fighters and civilians have been killed since the bombing started on 1 February.

In Munich on Thursday, US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov will host foreign ministers from the 17-nation Syria contact group, in a meeting billed by Kerry as a moment of truth for the floundering peace process.

Washington wants a ceasefire and humanitarian access to besieged rebel cities but has threatened an unspecified “Plan B” if talks fail, as tension mounts with Moscow over its air campaign.

“There is no question… that Russia’s activities in Aleppo and in the region right now are making it much more difficult to be able to come to the table and to be able to have a serious conversation,” Kerry said this week.

America’s special envoy for the fight against the Islamic State group (IS), Brett McGurk, said Russia’s bombing campaign was “directly enabling” the jihadists.

While Moscow has promised to bring “new ideas” for kick-starting the peace process to Munich, Russia and Iran are adamant the rebels in Aleppo are just as much “terrorists” as IS and there can be no settlement until they have been militarily defeated.

The rebels say they will not return to talks in Geneva, pencilled in for 25 February, unless government sieges and air strikes end.

Read more:

Leaders agree to ‘full cessation of hostilities’ in Syria within 1 week: Kerry #SyriaWar

The Next Border Fence

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Apparently, they do work and have some significant value, in Europe that is. With the constant flow of migrants, several major problems have literally cracked the security of countries.  Further, there are no signs that migrants flowing into Europe will wane or stop at all, so the true costs in 2016 or beyond. The immigration flood in Europe is a clarion call to the United States as the issues are virtually the same. Not only is the United States taking in Middle Eastern refugees, but we have been taking in Cubans, Mexicans, as well as Central and South Americans. For America is goes much further that a trifecta and costs and security.

Anti-migrant force builds in Europe, hurting Merkel’s quest

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — So where should the next impenetrable razor-wire border fence in Europe be built?

Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban thinks he knows the best place – on Macedonia’s and Bulgaria’s borders with Greece – smack along the main immigration route from the Middle East to Western Europe. He says it’s necessary because “Greece can’t defend Europe from the south” against the large numbers of Muslim refugees pouring in, mainly from Syria and Iraq.

The plan is especially controversial because it effectively means eliminating Greece from the Schengen zone, Europe’s 26-nation passport-free travel region that is considered one of the European Union’s most cherished achievements.

Orban’s plan will feature prominently Monday at a meeting in Prague of leaders from four nations in an informal gathering known as the Visegrad group: Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Visegrad group, formed 25 years ago to further the nations’ European integration, is marking that anniversary Monday. Still, it has only recently found a common purpose in its unified opposition to accepting any significant number of migrants.

This determination has emboldened the group, one of the new mini-blocs emerging lately in Europe due to the continent’s chaotic, inadequate response to its largest migration crisis since World War II. The Visegrad group is also becoming a force that threatens the plans of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who wants to resettle newcomers across the continent while also slowing down the influx.

“The plan to build a new “European defense line” along the border of Bulgaria and Macedonia with Greece is a major foreign policy initiative for the Visegrad Four and an attempt to re-establish itself as a notable political force within the EU,” said Vit Dostal, an analyst with the Association for International Affairs, a Prague based think tank.

At Monday’s meeting, leaders from the four nations will be joined by Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov so they can push for the reinforcements along Greece’s northern border. Macedonia began putting up a first fence in November, and is now constructing a second, parallel, fence.

“If it were up only to us Central Europeans, that region would have been closed off long ago,” Orban said at a press conference recently with Poland’s prime minister. “Not for the first time in history we see that Europe is defenseless from the south … that is where we must ensure the safety of the continent.”

Poland has indicated a willingness to send dozens of police to Macedonia to secure the border, something to be decided at Monday’s meeting.

“If the EU is not active, the Visegrad Four have to be,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said recently. “We have to find effective ways of protecting the border.”

The leaders will try to hash out a unified position ahead of an important EU meeting Thursday and Friday in Brussels that will take up both migration and Britain’s efforts to renegotiate a looser union with the EU. The Visegrad countries have also recently united against British attempts to limit the welfare rights of European workers, something that would affect the hundreds of thousands of their citizens who now live and work in Britain.

The anti-migrant message resonates with the ex-communist EU member states, countries that have benefited greatly from EU subsidies and freedom of movement for their own citizens but which now balk at requests to accept even small numbers of refugees. The Visegrad nations maintain it is impossible to integrate Muslims into their societies, often describing them as security threats. So far the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks have only accepted small numbers, primarily Christians from Syria.

Many officials in the West are frustrated with what they see as xenophobia and hypocrisy, given that huge numbers of Poles, Hungarians and other Eastern Europeans have received refuge and economic opportunity in the West for decades.

Indeed there are plenty of signs that the countries are squandering a lot of the good will that they once enjoyed in the West for their sacrifices in throwing off communism and establishing democracies.

Orban’s ambitions for Europe got a big boost with the rise to power last year in Poland of the right-wing Law and Justice party, which is deeply anti-migrant and sees greater regional cooperation as one of its foreign policy priorities. Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo’s government says it wants to do more to help Syrian refugees at camps in Turkey and elsewhere while blocking their entry into Europe.

Although Orban is alienating Greek authorities, who are staggering under the sheer numbers of asylum-seekers crossing the sea from Turkey in smugglers’ boars, he insists he must act as a counterweight to Western leaders, whom he accuses of creating the crisis with their welcoming attitude to refugees.

“The very serious phenomenon endangering the security of everyday life which we call migration did not break into Western Europe violently,” he said. “The doors were opened. And what is more, in certain periods, they deliberately invited and even transported these people into Western Europe without control, filtering or security screening.”

Dariusz Kalan, an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said he doesn’t believe that the Visegrad group on its own can destroy European unity but says Orban’s vision is winning adherents across the continent in far-right movements and even among mainstream political parties.

“It’s hard to ignore Orban,” Kalan said. “People in Western Europe are starting to adopt the language of Orban. None are equally tough and yet the language is still quite similar.”