On one screen, a radar sweeps a green and yellow path, highlighting about 30 white dots, moving objects which could be suspicious.
An adjacent camera image, either infrared or daylight, helps the operator decide whether the objects are innocent or an “enemy” to be marked in red.
Then a message is relayed to the laptops of troopers at Rapid Response Stations in the field.
“When we have an incident we send six men, two cars,” at least, Rashidi said. They are armed with Heckler & Koch G3 rifles and machineguns.
Rashidi’s command centre and others already online have combined to create what officers call an “almost finished” northern network.
It replaces traditional patrolling on the ground to guard against smugglers and other infiltrators.
In November, the kingdom expanded a no-go zone 10-20 kilometres south of the border.
“It’s very difficult” for anybody to cross the border now, Rashidi said.
The only people allowed into the restricted zone are border guards, other government employees, and foreign labourers working with them.
Nobody else really lives in the region of yellowed, barren earth.
The paved road leading north to Iraq through the Suwayf area is flanked by barbed wire fencing and blockaded.
It once brought travellers to a sprawling walled Saudi customs compound. That was the only official crossing point but it has been closed for more than two decades.
IS does not control territory in southernmost Iraq but it was from there that the four attackers, all Saudis, came in January.
Cameras spotted them but when border guards went to investigate they came under fire, security officers said.
The battle ended down a bumpy track that leads from the fence to a wide, bowl-like depression in the hard ground and thorny scrub.
Here, officers say, an attacker blew himself up, killing Balawi and his driver.
The weeks since have not erased the blood which has darkened the ground in a rough circle the size of a dinner plate. Spent cartridge cases and an unfired bullet lie in the nearby dirt.
