Saudi Arabia has launched a bombing campaign against the state on its border. Why? And what will the fallout be for the region – and for the West? Simon Wilson reports.
What’s happened?
Yemen, a poor and chronically unstable Middle Eastern country of 25 million people, has been plagued by years of worsening civil conflict. Now it’s on the brink of complete disintegration.
A coalition led by Saudi Arabia, its giant neighbour to the north, has started bombing areas held by the Houthi rebel group that has taken over part of western Yemen, including the capital Sana’a.
The Saudis’ motivation is to restore order to the failed state, with whom it shares a porous 1,770km border, and to check the influence of Iran, its great rival for regional influence. As usual, the conflict is divided on sectarian lines: Yemen is a Sunni-majority country, as is Saudi Arabia; the Houthis are Shia, as is Iran.
Who are the rebels?
The Houthis come from northern Yemen, with religious roots in Zaydism, a sect of Shia Islam. The group takes its name from its founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, who was killed in fighting with the government in 2004. His brothers still lead the movement, which grew into a substantial army while battling Sana’a between 2004 and 2010 – helped by backing from Iran.
Infighting between factions of the Yemeni government – and the ousting of president Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011 – created a security vacuum that allowed the Houthis to consolidate control over Sa’dah, their stronghold in the northern highlands. In 2013 they moved out of their strongholds into the south of the country. Last September they took de-facto control of Sana’a.
Is this a proxy war between Iran and the Saudis?
It’s true that the background to the Saudi-led action in Yemen is one of growing fears over the power of Iran. And certainly the Houthi movement is supported by Iran. However, talk of a proxy war “risks overestimating the level of power Saudi Arabia and Iran wield, and overlooking the local actors who truly shape the conflicts in question”, argues Nussaibah Younis, of the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy.
Hence the Houthis’ success in recent months is not thanks to the Iranians, but rather to an unlikely marriage of convenience with the old regime of ex-president Saleh (out for revenge for his 2011 ousting) and to disillusionment with the poor performance of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Saleh’s successor, who has fled the country for Riyadh.
Why are the Saudis so worried?
Although Iran’s role in instigating the Houthis’ power grab may have been limited, the rebels’ success in taking control of much of Yemen is a boost to Iranian strategic interests. What’s more, militant group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most active al-Qaeda “branch”, is based in Yemen and a collapse of the country will allow it free movement. So whatever happens south of the border is a matter of national security for Saudi Arabia.
What about Iran?
For Tehran, the future of Yemen is less of a vital national interest, and more a welcome opportunity to foster a Shia client movement, much like Hezbollah in Lebanon. In reality, Iraq and Syria matter much more, says security analyst Martin Reardon on aljazeera.com: both those countries “serve as buffers between Iran and the Sunni Middle East, so having stable and dependable Shia-led governments in each serves as a strategic objective that is non-negotiable”.
But that makes Yemen a “strategic bargaining chip that Iran may now be holding vis-à-vis the sudden rise of the Houthis and anticipated domestic chaos that is sure to plague the country for the foreseeable future”. According to this analysis, Iran is using the chaos in Yemen, and the Houthis, to pressure the Saudis to tread lightly in Iran and Syria.
How much does this matter?
The prospect of an ungoverned space in Yemen is a grave one for the region and the West, given the country’s status as a base for both AQAP and the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State. Moreover, the fact that the Saudis gave their allies in Washington only one hour’s notice of bombing operations in Yemen – a country that has long been the recipient of US aid and military support – is a sign of how global relations are shifting.
In a week when Iran stood on the brink of an agreement with the West on the nuclear/sanctions issue, the Saudis’ decision to ignore Washington and build a broad coalition (which may yet encompass non-Arab nations, including Turkey and Pakistan) reflects the view among Arab nations that the US is abandoning any attempt to counter the rise of Iranian power in the Middle East. The danger for the Saudis is that bombing Yemen will do little to foil Iran, but do much to plunge the failed state on its doorstep into further chaos.
What does the future hold for Yemen?
Diplomats have all but given up hope of sorting out the mess peacefully in Yemen, reckons The Economist. Yet fighting may not do the trick either. Egypt, which intervened in Yemen’s troubles in the 1960s, “still remembers the venture as a sort of Vietnam War”, while the Saudis suffered casualties during an incursion in 2009. The Houthis are unlikely to be able to impose order over their new territory and are also unlikely to share power with Saleh.
Reinstating Hadi is no solution; he will even have trouble meeting the demands of his supposed allies, who tolerated him rather than providing support. “ The creation of a power-sharing scheme and loose federation is a possibility, but not before more blood is shed.”