The Yemen imbroglio

Saudi Arabia launched air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen after rebel forces closed in on Aden in March this year. A coalition consisting of the Gulf States, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Sudan led by Saudi Arabia was formed; the coalition aims at restoring ousted president Abdu Rabbu Mansoor Hadi’s government.
The conflict exists mainly between forces loyal to the ousted president Hadi and those allied to Zaidi Shia rebels known as Houthis. Some units in Yemen’s security forces are loyal to Hadi who is popular in the predominantly Sunni southern part of Yemen. The rest of the Yemeni forces support the Houthis and Hadi’s predecessor Abdullah Saleh. Interestingly, both these factions are faced by another enemy in the form of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP.
The scenario further becomes bleak with the emergence of the Yemeni affiliate of the Islamic State. AQAP is considered to be the most dangerous Al-Qaeda affiliate. The US has previously been carrying out drone strikes in Yemen against AQAP; the strikes have been suspended since the Saudi invasion. This cauldron of converging interests of Houthi rebels, Sunni tribesmen, Saudi Arabia and its coalition, Iran, AQAP and the Islamic State is ready to spill over to an already volatile region rife with the Syrian war – with no signs of ending and the Islamic State in the Middle East on the rise.
The Houthis are Zaidi Shias opposed by the former Yemeni government and have a stronghold in the north of the country. Sunni tribes, AQAP jihadists and the Islamic State consider Shias as heretics. The Houthis are named after their leader Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi who led them in the 2004 uprising for greater autonomy and to protect the Zaidis.
Zaidi Shias compose one-third of the population and ruled North Yemen for a 1000 years till 1962. North and South Yemen were united in 1990 followed by a brief civil war in 1994. Fighting in north-west Yemen is not a new phenomenon; it broke out between the Houthis and the government in 2004 and resulted in six rounds of fighting that finally ended in 2010.
Questions concerning the reasons for this sudden escalation arise. Most important is the timing of this war – only a few months after King Salman of Saudi Arabia was sworn in as the new king. Some Middle East analysts consider it as a punitive action against Yemen, while others regard this as a message to Iran which is alleged to be providing support to Houthi rebels who are considered to be an Iranian proxy.
Yemen, though the least developed and impoverished country in the Middle East, is strategically important not only due to its proximity to Saudi Arabia but it’s location on the Bab al-Mandab Strait which links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and joins the trade routes of Asia with the rest of the world. A Houthi takeover could jeopardise free passage of this important trade route. The conflict is often viewed as a component of a regional power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iran has been accused of supporting the Houthis militarily and financially, an accusation Iran denies.
The ongoing Saudi campaign has been continuing for almost five months now but has failed to obtain the desired goals in terms of gaining control of Sanaa and reinstating President Hadi. The main reason is the reliance on air strikes, a strategy that often fails to bring desired results when faced with an enemy hiding in small groups in mountains and towns, the way a guerrilla war is often fought.
If the air strikes fail to achieve anything then sooner or later Saudi and coalition forces would have to send ground troops on Yemeni soil. As Foreign Policy magazine points out, the Houthis are trying to lure the Saudis into a ground war to engage them in a long bloody conflict. Drawing parallels from the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006, the magazine points out the failure of air power against a guerrilla battle ground when Israel failed to terminate the firing power of Hezbollah in Lebanon of firing rockets in northern Israel.
It is also believed that the two Iran-backed movements share operational military links. Financial Times quoted a Hezbollah commander in Beirut as saying that Houthi fighters had “trained with us in Iran, then we trained them here and in Yemen.” A second Hezbollah source told the newspaper that while Iran was “probably” supplying weapons to the Houthis, “We are the guerrilla experts, so we give advice about the best timings to strike back, when to hold back.”
While coalition airstrikes are the biggest killer of civilians so far, civilians also find themselves trapped in the crossfire between Houthi and anti-Houthi armed groups, with each side supported by units of the now-divided armed forces. The main reason for the Saudi intervention seemed to be the fear that the Houthis would control too much of Yemen, which Riyadh perceived as a threat to its influence. Five months later, the entire exercise seems an emulation of the US’ worst military adventures – an emulation that would lead to disastrous results if replicated by other regional powers. It seems the Saudis launched the campaign impulsively, not anticipating the costs and difficulties. They aligned themselves with an exiled leader with little domestic support and local forces whose goals are often divergent from theirs.
The US is not part of the Saudi coalition, but is assisting with intelligence and logistical support to the Saudi forces. This makes the US partially responsible for the civilian casualties in Yemen. Furthermore, the US has also been the major supplier of military hardware to Saudi Arabia and its partners, which are now being used in the invasion with disastrous effects. Despite US involvement, the conflict in Yemen has received occasional media coverage in the west, whereas the Yemenis are only too aware of US support for the campaign that has devastated their country.
Yemen has not stabilised after months of reckless bombardment on civilian targets, which has pushed this Middle East’s poorest country further down the road of political and humanitarian crises. More than half of the country’s population required humanitarian assistance before the war but now this number has increased to more than 80 percent. This deterioration is due to the bombardment of civilian targets, including mosques, schools and houses, as well as the blockade on commercial imports and hindrance in the working of international aid agencies.
The effects of this reckless intervention have lead to the empowerment of jihadist groups in Yemen, increased resentment regarding US interference in the region’s affairs, political instability and tremendous loss of life from famine and disease. A peaceful settlement of this destructive war still seems elusive and if the international community does not pay heed to the starvation and famine then a bigger disaster is inevitable in the coming months.
The writer is a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh.