ali_raza
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اهلين يا طيبهلا والله.
Operation 'Decisive Storm' | Saudi lead coalition operations in Yemen - Updates & Discussions.
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Majesty
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Simply, when you accuse someone and go to court the first thing you will be asked by the judge is to provide evidence. Do you have an evidence to your claim? No? then take the back seat. Yes? Do show us.
Topic: This the brief of today. Skip to 5:48 and enjoy.
Gasoline
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Rakan.SA
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الله يسلمك يا غالي... كان في مؤامره صهيونيه غاشمه. لكن هين صبرجميل هههههلا ريكو
وش عندك من جديد اشتقنا لك وحشتنا
مبروك فك الباند
Gasoline
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هههههههه
قد انهم اكلوها صفعه بننننننت كللب ماعاد تفرق لا تبنيد ولاغيره ^_^
اهم شي انك رجعت لنا
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Red Wolf
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How does any of your deflections and aimless rhetoric change the fact that Houthis are forcing themselves on Yemen with AK47s much like al-Qaeda and Da'ish?
Decisive Storm
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Yemeni Islah Party, biggest political Party in Yemen declares its absolute support for Decisive Storm Op.
Frogman
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@raptor22
Except they were Iranian made weapons of course. MANPADs are not effective against high altitude flying aircraft using precision guided munitions because they're out of their operational range, nor are they effective against aircraft such as the Apache due to its sophisticated electronic warfare suite.
Have Hamas ever downed an Israeli aircraft with a MANPAD? No. Same here.
Well done! It's only the eighth day of what is reportedly going to be a six month or more campaign that may involve ground troops, how long do you think the Houthis can take airstrikes without logistical resupply and the ability to effectively deploy their men on operations in different areas?
Err do you you announce that you're sending intelligence personnel in Iran? No.
Look you may not like it you may deny it but Iran did make an investment in Yemen. It may be insignificant in the grand scheme of things but one was absolutely made, whether it was political, financial, or with arms is beside the point really. What is relevant is that any further investment in KSAs backyard has been put to a halt whether it will continue like this we will see.
Cry me a river.
Hadi if he becomes even more of a liability will be hung out to dry. The GCC narrative of rescue is merely that, a narrative.
Whether it's internal or external is irrelevant. What is relevant is the potential consequences of a movement hostile to the KSA, USA, and its allies plus the potential movement of IRGC in KSAs backyard.
Bahrain isn't fertile soil for training or arming a militia, a relative state of chaos is required for that, which is how Iran was able to create miltias in Lebanon, and Iraq.
Except they were Iranian made weapons of course. MANPADs are not effective against high altitude flying aircraft using precision guided munitions because they're out of their operational range, nor are they effective against aircraft such as the Apache due to its sophisticated electronic warfare suite.
Have Hamas ever downed an Israeli aircraft with a MANPAD? No. Same here.
Well done! It's only the eighth day of what is reportedly going to be a six month or more campaign that may involve ground troops, how long do you think the Houthis can take airstrikes without logistical resupply and the ability to effectively deploy their men on operations in different areas?
Err do you you announce that you're sending intelligence personnel in Iran? No.
Look you may not like it you may deny it but Iran did make an investment in Yemen. It may be insignificant in the grand scheme of things but one was absolutely made, whether it was political, financial, or with arms is beside the point really. What is relevant is that any further investment in KSAs backyard has been put to a halt whether it will continue like this we will see.
Cry me a river.
Hadi if he becomes even more of a liability will be hung out to dry. The GCC narrative of rescue is merely that, a narrative.
Whether it's internal or external is irrelevant. What is relevant is the potential consequences of a movement hostile to the KSA, USA, and its allies plus the potential movement of IRGC in KSAs backyard.
Bahrain isn't fertile soil for training or arming a militia, a relative state of chaos is required for that, which is how Iran was able to create miltias in Lebanon, and Iraq.
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Daneshmand
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Saudi-Backed Forces Set Back in Yemen - WSJ
A Yemeni man inspects a house destroyed by a recent airstrike. Saudi-backed government forces are fighting an uprising by Iranian-linked Houthi rebels. PHOTO:YAHYA ARHAB/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen suffered twin setbacks on Thursday as Iran-linked Houthi rebels seized a strategic hilltop compound in Aden and lost control of another port city to Al Qaeda militants who freed one of their leaders and scores of other inmates from a prison.
By evening, the rebels had taken most of Aden, Yemen’s second-largest city, despite a weeklong Saudi military offensive against them. They held the city center as well as a hilltop military base and cluster of villas overlooking the port—the last stronghold of Yemen’s president before he fled the country on March 25.
The government losses pointed to deepening turmoil in a country that is central to U.S. counterterrorism operations in the region. A Saudi-led coalition, which includes the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf and is backed by the U.S., has declared an open-ended operation to defeat the Houthi rebels and restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.
The U.S. deepened its role in the conflict on Thursday by agreeing to allow American military planes to start refueling Saudi jets bombing Houthi fighters. American surveillance planes over Yemen are already providing the Saudi-led coalition with intelligence to help carry out airstrikes and try to minimize civilian casualties, U.S. officials said.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed or wounded in the fighting between the Houthis and forces loyal to Mr. Hadi.
Al Qaeda’s predawn storming of al Mukalla, a port city east of Aden, was the latest sign that the extremist group is using the sectarian strife to expand its foothold in the country.
Abdullah al Sharafi, a Yemeni defense ministry official, said about one-third of those freed in Thursday’s prison break were militants of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. Among them, he said, was Khaled Batarfi, who was AQAP’s emir in the southern province of Abyan until his arrest in 2011 and served in the organization’s Shariah council, which provides religious direction.
Extremist groups such as AQAP and Afghanistan’s Taliban have typically used prison breaks to free their own foot soldiers and force more secular inmates, detained for petty crimes, to join their ranks.
“Al Qaeda needs to recruit and [there’s] no better way to recruit from prison,” Mr. Sharafi said. “A few of the escapees were senior al Qaeda leaders, but among those who escaped were dozens of al Qaeda fighters and loyalists.”
As people leave San’a, Yemen, al Qaeda militants stormed the coastal city of al Mukalla early Thursday, seizing government buildings and freeing hundreds of inmates from a prison. MOHAMED AL-SAYAGHI/REUTERS
In addition to the prison, AQAP overran key government offices, including the central bank, plundering its cash reserves in the poor country before burning down the building, officials said. At least a dozen government soldiers were reported killed as fighting continued into the night.
Yemen’s chaos has split the armed forces, with some units backing the Houthi uprising and distracting attention from the fight against AQAP.
“The military is divided and fighting one another instead of fighting al Qaeda,” said Mr. Sharafi.
The Houthis’ monthslong advance from its northern strongholds into southern Yemen prompted the U.S. last month to withdraw its special counterterrorism forces from al Anad air base, where they trained their Yemeni counterparts and conducted airstrikes from drones against AQAP targets throughout Yemen.
U.S. officials said that one unexpected result of the fighting in Yemen has been to disrupt AQAP’s efforts to plan attacks on U.S. targets around the world.
“The initial evidence is actually that the Houthi advance has caused [AQAP’s] external plotting to be sidelined while they figure out how they’re going to deal with the internal vestiges of what appears to be an emerging civil war,” one American official said. “Although our capability is diminished, I wouldn’t suggest it puts us at greater risk right now.”
Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmed bin Hasan Asiri, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, saw another result of the fighting. The Houthis have “weakened the Yemeni state and kept it busy from performing its duty against terrorist groups,” he said, adding “militant groups like al Qaeda prefer to operate in what we call ungoverned space.”
Until Thursday, al Makalla had been one of the few large Yemeni cities still controlled by government and tribal forces supportive of Mr. Hadi.
The Saudi-led coalition, aided by U.S. intelligence and logistical support, has cut off Yemen by air and blocked its ports. On Wednesday, Saudi naval vessels began bombarding Houthi positions in Yemen’s seaports. Saudi officials say the Houthis, who last year took over San’a, the capital, are acting as a proxy for Iran. The Houthis say they are allied with Iran but are acting on their own.
Saudia Arabia on Thursday reported its first casualties since the start of the operation, saying Houthi fire from inside in Yemen had killed a Saudi border guard and wounded 10 others in the kingdom’s Asir region. The Houthis said their forces had opened fire at Saudi forces trying to breach the Yemeni border.
The rebels have been fighting for control of Aden since last month. They had taken the hilltop presidential compound and much of the city last week before Saudi airstrikes drove them back.
“The Houthis don’t care much about ruling Aden but they want to ensure it does not become a hub for foreign deployment and interference,” said Ali al Qubaisi, a government security official in Aden.
At least 21 people, eight of them Houthis, were killed in fighting there Thursday, local officials said.
Mr. Qubaisi said the Houthi fighters had split into small groups, spread through the city and blended with the civilian population, making it hard for Saudis to target them with airstrikes. The bombing has already hit factories, a refugee camp, medical facilities and civilian vehicles, international aid workers say. The United Nations on Wednesday put the death toll at 93 dead and 364 wounded since the Saudi-led campaign began last week.
Gen. Asiri, the Saudi spokesman, denied again Thursday that coalition airstrikes were hitting civilians.
Gulf states are urging the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the Houthis. Jordan’s ambassador, Dina Kawar, the council president for April, said Thursday that negotiations on a proposed resolution were stalled. Two Security Council diplomats said Russia was demanding that any embargo be extended to all parties, including forces loyal to the ousted president.
Russia’s U.N. mission didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A Yemeni man inspects a house destroyed by a recent airstrike. Saudi-backed government forces are fighting an uprising by Iranian-linked Houthi rebels. PHOTO:YAHYA ARHAB/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen suffered twin setbacks on Thursday as Iran-linked Houthi rebels seized a strategic hilltop compound in Aden and lost control of another port city to Al Qaeda militants who freed one of their leaders and scores of other inmates from a prison.
By evening, the rebels had taken most of Aden, Yemen’s second-largest city, despite a weeklong Saudi military offensive against them. They held the city center as well as a hilltop military base and cluster of villas overlooking the port—the last stronghold of Yemen’s president before he fled the country on March 25.
The government losses pointed to deepening turmoil in a country that is central to U.S. counterterrorism operations in the region. A Saudi-led coalition, which includes the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf and is backed by the U.S., has declared an open-ended operation to defeat the Houthi rebels and restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.
The U.S. deepened its role in the conflict on Thursday by agreeing to allow American military planes to start refueling Saudi jets bombing Houthi fighters. American surveillance planes over Yemen are already providing the Saudi-led coalition with intelligence to help carry out airstrikes and try to minimize civilian casualties, U.S. officials said.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed or wounded in the fighting between the Houthis and forces loyal to Mr. Hadi.
Al Qaeda’s predawn storming of al Mukalla, a port city east of Aden, was the latest sign that the extremist group is using the sectarian strife to expand its foothold in the country.
Abdullah al Sharafi, a Yemeni defense ministry official, said about one-third of those freed in Thursday’s prison break were militants of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. Among them, he said, was Khaled Batarfi, who was AQAP’s emir in the southern province of Abyan until his arrest in 2011 and served in the organization’s Shariah council, which provides religious direction.
Extremist groups such as AQAP and Afghanistan’s Taliban have typically used prison breaks to free their own foot soldiers and force more secular inmates, detained for petty crimes, to join their ranks.
“Al Qaeda needs to recruit and [there’s] no better way to recruit from prison,” Mr. Sharafi said. “A few of the escapees were senior al Qaeda leaders, but among those who escaped were dozens of al Qaeda fighters and loyalists.”
As people leave San’a, Yemen, al Qaeda militants stormed the coastal city of al Mukalla early Thursday, seizing government buildings and freeing hundreds of inmates from a prison. MOHAMED AL-SAYAGHI/REUTERS
In addition to the prison, AQAP overran key government offices, including the central bank, plundering its cash reserves in the poor country before burning down the building, officials said. At least a dozen government soldiers were reported killed as fighting continued into the night.
Yemen’s chaos has split the armed forces, with some units backing the Houthi uprising and distracting attention from the fight against AQAP.
“The military is divided and fighting one another instead of fighting al Qaeda,” said Mr. Sharafi.
The Houthis’ monthslong advance from its northern strongholds into southern Yemen prompted the U.S. last month to withdraw its special counterterrorism forces from al Anad air base, where they trained their Yemeni counterparts and conducted airstrikes from drones against AQAP targets throughout Yemen.
U.S. officials said that one unexpected result of the fighting in Yemen has been to disrupt AQAP’s efforts to plan attacks on U.S. targets around the world.
“The initial evidence is actually that the Houthi advance has caused [AQAP’s] external plotting to be sidelined while they figure out how they’re going to deal with the internal vestiges of what appears to be an emerging civil war,” one American official said. “Although our capability is diminished, I wouldn’t suggest it puts us at greater risk right now.”
Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmed bin Hasan Asiri, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, saw another result of the fighting. The Houthis have “weakened the Yemeni state and kept it busy from performing its duty against terrorist groups,” he said, adding “militant groups like al Qaeda prefer to operate in what we call ungoverned space.”
Until Thursday, al Makalla had been one of the few large Yemeni cities still controlled by government and tribal forces supportive of Mr. Hadi.
The Saudi-led coalition, aided by U.S. intelligence and logistical support, has cut off Yemen by air and blocked its ports. On Wednesday, Saudi naval vessels began bombarding Houthi positions in Yemen’s seaports. Saudi officials say the Houthis, who last year took over San’a, the capital, are acting as a proxy for Iran. The Houthis say they are allied with Iran but are acting on their own.
Saudia Arabia on Thursday reported its first casualties since the start of the operation, saying Houthi fire from inside in Yemen had killed a Saudi border guard and wounded 10 others in the kingdom’s Asir region. The Houthis said their forces had opened fire at Saudi forces trying to breach the Yemeni border.
The rebels have been fighting for control of Aden since last month. They had taken the hilltop presidential compound and much of the city last week before Saudi airstrikes drove them back.
“The Houthis don’t care much about ruling Aden but they want to ensure it does not become a hub for foreign deployment and interference,” said Ali al Qubaisi, a government security official in Aden.
At least 21 people, eight of them Houthis, were killed in fighting there Thursday, local officials said.
Mr. Qubaisi said the Houthi fighters had split into small groups, spread through the city and blended with the civilian population, making it hard for Saudis to target them with airstrikes. The bombing has already hit factories, a refugee camp, medical facilities and civilian vehicles, international aid workers say. The United Nations on Wednesday put the death toll at 93 dead and 364 wounded since the Saudi-led campaign began last week.
Gen. Asiri, the Saudi spokesman, denied again Thursday that coalition airstrikes were hitting civilians.
Gulf states are urging the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the Houthis. Jordan’s ambassador, Dina Kawar, the council president for April, said Thursday that negotiations on a proposed resolution were stalled. Two Security Council diplomats said Russia was demanding that any embargo be extended to all parties, including forces loyal to the ousted president.
Russia’s U.N. mission didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Majesty
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Aden is under the government and local armed groups control. Houthi and Saleh loyalists are concentrated in two areas in Aden trying to push the fight to the center of the city but failed.
Daneshmand
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/world/middleeast/yemen-al-qaeda-attack.html?_r=0
New Saudi Leadership Betting on Airstrikes in Yemen to Bolster Image
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIMAPRIL 2, 2015
CAIRO — Two months after ascending to the throne, King Salman of Saudi Arabia bet his prestige as a new leader on rallying his Arab allies for a military campaign to save Yemen from an Iranian takeover — all under the direction of his son, the new defense minister and chief of the royal court.
The results a week later showed just how large of a risk they took.
The Houthi movement, portrayed as Iranian proxies by the Saudis but few others, has continued its advances despite nine nights of Saudi-led airstrikes. On Thursday, Houthi fighters captured a presidential palace in the Southern port of Aden, killed a Saudi soldier in a skirmish at the border and wounded five others.
Islamist militants, meanwhile, capitalized on the chaos caused by the airstrikes to break out of prison an Al Qaeda leader and hundreds of others and to partially seize control of a crucial city in the south.
Regional militias are battling each other with little thought of the exiled president whom the Saudis had hoped to restore. A week of clashes in Aden have left bodies lying in the streets. The state has collapsed, and aid groups warn of an escalating humanitarian crisis as the military campaign has shut down airport and seaports; worsened shortages of food, water and medicine; and killed scores of unarmed civilians, including internal refugees.
For Washington, which has provided logistical and intelligence support for the Saudi offensive, the widening civil war is already strengthening the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, a prime target of its counterterrorism strategy. But analysts say it also risks destabilizing Saudi Arabia, a crucial ally in the region, and increasing the Houthis’ reliance on Iran.
“I don’t think they have thought through how to solve the problems inYemen, or even how to manage it,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. “I don’t know how the Saudis can insulate themselves from Yemen and the violence that will come out of it.”
For some who had opposed the Houthis, the bombing campaign seems to be turning their anger against Saudi Arabia, instead.
“A real enemy would never do what Saudi Arabia is doing. Let alone a neighboring Muslim country,” said Mohamed Saleh al-Humidi, an opponent of the Houthis in Sana, the capital and a city of 2 million hit by Saudi airstrikes every night for more than a week.
The stakes may be highest for the Saudi king’s son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the king named both defense minister and chief of the royal court. The Saudi government has not disclosed Prince Mohammed’s precise age, but he is believed to be around 30. He was one of the only men in his generation of the royal family to be educated entirely in Saudi Arabia, without schooling abroad.
Photo
A Yemeni man inspecting his house, which was destroyed by an airstrike, on Thursday in Sana. CreditYahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency
The Saudi Arabian news media has played up Prince Mohammed’s role as the architect and overseer of the Yemen campaign, turning it into a pivotal test.
“There is a huge public relations campaign about how wonderful and brilliant the son is, and if the war were to stop now, he would come out looking great, but not if they start taking casualties,” Mr. Haykel said.
“There is some competition within the royal family,” he added, noting that the prince “has amassed an enormous amount of power, and a lot of people are very jealous.”
Madawi al-Rasheed, a Saudi professor who teaches at the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics, wrote last week in the online magazine Al-Monitor that the king and his son were “determined to establish Saudi Arabia as the policing agency of the Arabian Peninsula.” “Mohammed’s credentials are yet to be established in an external war that is still ambiguous, dangerous and perhaps catastrophic for both Yemen and Riyadh,” she wrote.
American officials said they supported the Saudi campaign mainly because of a lack of alternatives.
“If you ask why we’re backing this, beyond the fact that the Saudis are allies and have been allies for a long time, the answer you’d going to get from most people — if they were being honest — is that we weren’t going to be able to stop it,” said an American defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal government deliberations.
“If the Saudis were willing to step in, the thinking was that they should be encouraged,” the official said. “We were not going to send our military, that’s for certain.”
Robert Jordan, a former American ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said, “The Saudis run a risk of alienating much of the Yemeni population because of these airstrikes.”
Analysts close to the Saudi government defended what they called the necessity of the intervention to stop Iran from establishing a beachhead on the Arabian Peninsula. In Saudi Arabia, there is a widespread sense that the monarchy had failed to confront Iranian intervention in Syria and Iraq or done enough to defend Sunni Muslims around the region.
“This war could last for a long time, yes,” said Mustafa Alani, a scholar at the Gulf Research Center who is close to the kingdom’s rulers. “The Saudis consider the risk of not doing anything far greater than the risk of taking action,” he said, adding, “It is not a pleasant experience, but it would be worse if you did nothing.”
Photo
A member of Yemen’s Southern Separatist Movement on a tank in Aden as the group fought the Houthi advance on Thursday.CreditSaleh Al-Obeidi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But he also acknowledged that the end game remained difficult to predict. Saudi Arabia has said it is seeking to preserve President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi as Yemen’s legitimate leader, but Mr. Alani acknowledged there now appeared to be little chance that Mr. Hadi, believed to be in Saudi Arabia, could return to rule Yemen alone. “He does not have charisma, and he does not have a power base,” Mr. Alani said.
The Saudi reasoning behind the campaign rests on what most analysts outside the kingdom say are flawed assumptions about the nature of the Houthi movement.
An indigenous group based in North Yemen, the Houthis practice a variety of Shiite Islam and have received financial support from Shiite-led Iran. But many Yemenis and Western diplomats say the Houthis are independent of Tehran. They have fought six conflicts against the Yemeni government since 2004, and scholars say they began receiving Iranian support only in the past few years, since about 2010.
The Houthis owe their recent military successes to considerable battlefield experience, and to their alliance with units of the military and security forces still loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s former autocratic leader who was forced from power by the Arab uprisings but remains a power broker in the country.
The Saudi intervention may bolster the Houthis by shielding them from criticism that they have become too domineering in Yemen, said April Longley Alley, a Yemen researcher at the International Crisis Group.
The Geography of Chaos in Yemen
Annotated maps showing the Houthi rebels’ drive south, U.S. airstrikes and historical divisions.
OPEN MAP
“There was domestic resistance forming that was going to be part of the solution,” said Ms. Alley, adding that no one faction — including the Houthis — would have been able to govern Yemen on their own.
But the entrance of the Saudis layered additional regional dynamics, sectarian rhetoric and domestic Saudi considerations onto the conflict, “prolonging and complicating the struggle inside the country,” she said.
As a result of the Saudi offensive, the Houthis had become more determined to advance militarily while solidifying their alliance with Mr. Saleh, Ms. Alley said. The Saudi role has also further divided northern and southern Yemen, as public opinion has hardened against Saudi intervention in the north while the south has favored more Saudi airstrikes.
Fighting in Aden over the past few weeks has provided a glimpse of a pitiless war ahead. The city has been ravaged by urban fighting between the Houthis and local militias, leaving dozens of civilians dead. Residents were bracing for intensifying strikes by the Saudis and their allies, after the Houthis seized control of more territory on Thursday.
Seizing on the chaos, Al Qaeda on Thursday mounted its first large-scale operation since the Saudi airstrikes got underway.
In a coordinated attack on Al Mukalla, the capital of the oil-rich Hadhramaut Province, the militants seized government buildings, including the central bank, and stormed the central prison, freeing Khaled Batarfi, a senior regional Al Qaeda leader and other operatives of the group, according to witnesses and local news reports.
By nightfall, Al Qaeda had set up checkpoints at the entrances to Al Mukalla, with local military units powerless to stop them. Al Qaeda’s strongest opponents — the Houthis and Yemen’s American-trained counterterrorism troops — have been busy fending off attacks from the Saudi military.
Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists stood to “benefit from prolonged instability and conflict,” Ms. Alley said. “What we see in Al Mukalla is a harbinger of more to come.”
New Saudi Leadership Betting on Airstrikes in Yemen to Bolster Image
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIMAPRIL 2, 2015
CAIRO — Two months after ascending to the throne, King Salman of Saudi Arabia bet his prestige as a new leader on rallying his Arab allies for a military campaign to save Yemen from an Iranian takeover — all under the direction of his son, the new defense minister and chief of the royal court.
The results a week later showed just how large of a risk they took.
The Houthi movement, portrayed as Iranian proxies by the Saudis but few others, has continued its advances despite nine nights of Saudi-led airstrikes. On Thursday, Houthi fighters captured a presidential palace in the Southern port of Aden, killed a Saudi soldier in a skirmish at the border and wounded five others.
Islamist militants, meanwhile, capitalized on the chaos caused by the airstrikes to break out of prison an Al Qaeda leader and hundreds of others and to partially seize control of a crucial city in the south.
Regional militias are battling each other with little thought of the exiled president whom the Saudis had hoped to restore. A week of clashes in Aden have left bodies lying in the streets. The state has collapsed, and aid groups warn of an escalating humanitarian crisis as the military campaign has shut down airport and seaports; worsened shortages of food, water and medicine; and killed scores of unarmed civilians, including internal refugees.
For Washington, which has provided logistical and intelligence support for the Saudi offensive, the widening civil war is already strengthening the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, a prime target of its counterterrorism strategy. But analysts say it also risks destabilizing Saudi Arabia, a crucial ally in the region, and increasing the Houthis’ reliance on Iran.
“I don’t think they have thought through how to solve the problems inYemen, or even how to manage it,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. “I don’t know how the Saudis can insulate themselves from Yemen and the violence that will come out of it.”
For some who had opposed the Houthis, the bombing campaign seems to be turning their anger against Saudi Arabia, instead.
“A real enemy would never do what Saudi Arabia is doing. Let alone a neighboring Muslim country,” said Mohamed Saleh al-Humidi, an opponent of the Houthis in Sana, the capital and a city of 2 million hit by Saudi airstrikes every night for more than a week.
The stakes may be highest for the Saudi king’s son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the king named both defense minister and chief of the royal court. The Saudi government has not disclosed Prince Mohammed’s precise age, but he is believed to be around 30. He was one of the only men in his generation of the royal family to be educated entirely in Saudi Arabia, without schooling abroad.
Photo
A Yemeni man inspecting his house, which was destroyed by an airstrike, on Thursday in Sana. CreditYahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency
The Saudi Arabian news media has played up Prince Mohammed’s role as the architect and overseer of the Yemen campaign, turning it into a pivotal test.
“There is a huge public relations campaign about how wonderful and brilliant the son is, and if the war were to stop now, he would come out looking great, but not if they start taking casualties,” Mr. Haykel said.
“There is some competition within the royal family,” he added, noting that the prince “has amassed an enormous amount of power, and a lot of people are very jealous.”
Madawi al-Rasheed, a Saudi professor who teaches at the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics, wrote last week in the online magazine Al-Monitor that the king and his son were “determined to establish Saudi Arabia as the policing agency of the Arabian Peninsula.” “Mohammed’s credentials are yet to be established in an external war that is still ambiguous, dangerous and perhaps catastrophic for both Yemen and Riyadh,” she wrote.
American officials said they supported the Saudi campaign mainly because of a lack of alternatives.
“If you ask why we’re backing this, beyond the fact that the Saudis are allies and have been allies for a long time, the answer you’d going to get from most people — if they were being honest — is that we weren’t going to be able to stop it,” said an American defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal government deliberations.
“If the Saudis were willing to step in, the thinking was that they should be encouraged,” the official said. “We were not going to send our military, that’s for certain.”
Robert Jordan, a former American ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said, “The Saudis run a risk of alienating much of the Yemeni population because of these airstrikes.”
Analysts close to the Saudi government defended what they called the necessity of the intervention to stop Iran from establishing a beachhead on the Arabian Peninsula. In Saudi Arabia, there is a widespread sense that the monarchy had failed to confront Iranian intervention in Syria and Iraq or done enough to defend Sunni Muslims around the region.
“This war could last for a long time, yes,” said Mustafa Alani, a scholar at the Gulf Research Center who is close to the kingdom’s rulers. “The Saudis consider the risk of not doing anything far greater than the risk of taking action,” he said, adding, “It is not a pleasant experience, but it would be worse if you did nothing.”
Photo
A member of Yemen’s Southern Separatist Movement on a tank in Aden as the group fought the Houthi advance on Thursday.CreditSaleh Al-Obeidi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But he also acknowledged that the end game remained difficult to predict. Saudi Arabia has said it is seeking to preserve President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi as Yemen’s legitimate leader, but Mr. Alani acknowledged there now appeared to be little chance that Mr. Hadi, believed to be in Saudi Arabia, could return to rule Yemen alone. “He does not have charisma, and he does not have a power base,” Mr. Alani said.
The Saudi reasoning behind the campaign rests on what most analysts outside the kingdom say are flawed assumptions about the nature of the Houthi movement.
An indigenous group based in North Yemen, the Houthis practice a variety of Shiite Islam and have received financial support from Shiite-led Iran. But many Yemenis and Western diplomats say the Houthis are independent of Tehran. They have fought six conflicts against the Yemeni government since 2004, and scholars say they began receiving Iranian support only in the past few years, since about 2010.
The Houthis owe their recent military successes to considerable battlefield experience, and to their alliance with units of the military and security forces still loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s former autocratic leader who was forced from power by the Arab uprisings but remains a power broker in the country.
The Saudi intervention may bolster the Houthis by shielding them from criticism that they have become too domineering in Yemen, said April Longley Alley, a Yemen researcher at the International Crisis Group.
The Geography of Chaos in Yemen
Annotated maps showing the Houthi rebels’ drive south, U.S. airstrikes and historical divisions.
OPEN MAP
“There was domestic resistance forming that was going to be part of the solution,” said Ms. Alley, adding that no one faction — including the Houthis — would have been able to govern Yemen on their own.
But the entrance of the Saudis layered additional regional dynamics, sectarian rhetoric and domestic Saudi considerations onto the conflict, “prolonging and complicating the struggle inside the country,” she said.
As a result of the Saudi offensive, the Houthis had become more determined to advance militarily while solidifying their alliance with Mr. Saleh, Ms. Alley said. The Saudi role has also further divided northern and southern Yemen, as public opinion has hardened against Saudi intervention in the north while the south has favored more Saudi airstrikes.
Fighting in Aden over the past few weeks has provided a glimpse of a pitiless war ahead. The city has been ravaged by urban fighting between the Houthis and local militias, leaving dozens of civilians dead. Residents were bracing for intensifying strikes by the Saudis and their allies, after the Houthis seized control of more territory on Thursday.
Seizing on the chaos, Al Qaeda on Thursday mounted its first large-scale operation since the Saudi airstrikes got underway.
In a coordinated attack on Al Mukalla, the capital of the oil-rich Hadhramaut Province, the militants seized government buildings, including the central bank, and stormed the central prison, freeing Khaled Batarfi, a senior regional Al Qaeda leader and other operatives of the group, according to witnesses and local news reports.
By nightfall, Al Qaeda had set up checkpoints at the entrances to Al Mukalla, with local military units powerless to stop them. Al Qaeda’s strongest opponents — the Houthis and Yemen’s American-trained counterterrorism troops — have been busy fending off attacks from the Saudi military.
Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists stood to “benefit from prolonged instability and conflict,” Ms. Alley said. “What we see in Al Mukalla is a harbinger of more to come.”
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I said I am a Sunni, not a Wahabi. Once you learn the difference, you can get back here.
KSA didn't attack Israel because KSA lacks the capability to defeat Israel.Actually many idiots are barking.. " Why KSA doesn't attack Israel " ?!
While if we will look at their panties we will find " Made in Israel "
Death to America
Death to Israel
I personally believe that if Aden does not receive Saudi reinforcements soon, then the city shall eventually fall to the Houthis. The fact that Saleh loyalists decided to side with the Houthis has been a decisive factor in the Houthi advance into Aden. The forces loyal to the President of Yemen are outnumbered and I am quite sure they don't have a Napoleon in their ranks who could save them.
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