The ground incursion joins with the ongoing air offensive against the Shia Houthi. It also raises the stakes in the rhetorical fusillades exchanged between Tehran and Riyadh.
The UN, or at least one small component thereof, has entered the fray as well. Richard Barrett, Coordinator of the al-Qaeda-Taliban Sanctions Monitoring Committee and a former UK counter terrorism expert, has warned that the game in Yemen has a crucial ramification. In his view the Saudi effort is a "must win" given that the al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) is harbored in the unstable Houthi dominated region and is very, very focused on toppling the House of Sand.
Barrett uses as support of his contention both the close association between the local leaders of AQAP and Osama bin Laden and the attack last August by a suicide bomber directed against the anti-terrorism capo of the Kingdom, Prince Mohammad bin Nayef. This attack came not that long after the Saudis announced with a globe wide blare that their security forces had busted hundreds of AQAP and related terrorist wannabes and thereby broken up a series of plots directed against the oil infrastructure of the country.
Barrett is right, of course. Yemen has long been a safe haven for al-Qaeda and similar Islamist jihadist groups. It is a state where government is minimal, feuds maximal, insurgencies endemic, and the call of Islamist jihadism loud. Overall Yemen is one very small step from being Somalia.
The Saudis have been aware of this unpleasant reality for quite a few years now. Long before 9/11, antedating the bombing of the USS Cole, prior even to the embassy bombings a decade back, the Saudi intelligence and security agencies have been well aware of goings on in Yemen. They have also been quite well aware of the role their own brand of Islam--Wahhibism--has played in the growth of Islamist jihadist sentiment and its expressions.
It has been knowledge of the latter which in large measure explains the strangely supine behavior exhibited by the Kingdom until recent weeks. As the ancient cliche has it, they have been hoisted by their own petard.
Looping into this inhibition is the Saudi fear of violence. The Kingdom has never (well, at least since the late 1920s) shown any real appetite for war, real war that is rather than the pretense of war, the war of boast, threat, bravado. They have preferred to spend money, pay bribes, cut deals, anything other than put faith in the gods of battle.
Buying weapons, polishing tanks, buffing up the jet fighters, looking good on parade, hiring the supernumerary members of the royal house as officers and gentlemen is one thing. Actually shooting, facing risks, perhaps even (Oh! Horrors!) getting hurt is another thing all together.
Not until the Houthi, having been bought, refused to stay bought, did the Kingdom remember what the guns, the bullets and the (purported) trigger pullers existed to do. Not until the Houthi committed the sin of lese majeste by both openly crossing the Saudi border and humiliating the local army detachment did the Kingdom find the political will to actually do something.
Of course the "something" was both more symbolic than militarily effective, more to its detriment than its benefit--the use of aircraft against remote villages in which genuine civilians were intermixed with Houthi combatants. Not surprisingly this effort even when coupled with Yemeni air strikes and artillery stonks might have produced the odd dead body or two but failed to quash the Houthis. Indeed, as as typically been the case in insurgencies ever since Ogg invented fire, the insurgents were strengthened in both political will and (probably but not verifiably) numbers.
The open and high visibility entrance of the Kingdom into the nasty little war also served to invite international interest. Highest on the list of those interested was and is Iran. While the role of the mullahocracy in the Houthi insurgency is not clear and may be quite limited to words and the occasional arms shipment, the Saudi action raised the ante. The Iranians called and raised in their turn.
Whether or not the Houthi insurgency was actually an Iranian proxy effort a month ago is still open to debate, but not so now. The Saudi high profile, self-defeating action of too much, too late has assured that the conflict now has a strong Iranian component.
The Iranian Deep Thinkers may have been deluded by their success to date with Hezbollah and Hamas or not, but they have now grabbed the Houthi tarbaby with both hands. The situation in Yemen is not akin to that which allowed the creation of Hezbollah as an effective Iranian tool over the past couple of decades. Nor is it akin to the political and religious broth of Gaza which facilitated the rise and continued dominance of Hamas.
Superficially there are similarities between Yemen today and Lebanon of thirty or twenty years ago. Lebanon then and Yemen today defined multi-party armed anarchy.
But the differences are critical.
Lebanon's version of shoot-your-way-to-power was essentially sectarian with the tipping point coming only after the interjection of Fatah fugitives from Jordan. The collapse came against the background of a relatively stable political system which had functioned reasonably well for the years following WW II.
Yemen has not been an organized polity since the overthrow of the Emirate nearly a half century ago. Since then it has been a pastiche of temporary alliances between tribes with an overlay of sectarian rivalry between the Shia leaning folks in the north and the Wahhibist influenced Sunni of the south. The Somali refugees have not and cannot play the destructive role of Fatah in Lebanon.
Another, very important factor is the absence of Syria in the Yemen conflict. Syria played the critical role in Lebanon. While American administrations from Reagan to W. Bush may not have liked nor accepted Syria's dominant place in Lebanon, there is no denying the fact that Assad (the father) imposed both stability and prevented the Iranian presence. While this did not please the Israel Lobby or Israel at the time, the stability provided by Assad's policies did the region more than a little good.
Back to the main point: There is no Syria conveniently adjacent to and involved in stabilizing Yemen and excluding Iran. Herein lies the difference for both policy makers in Tehran and Washington.
Both must make a calculation about the will and capacity of the Kingdom to play the part of Syria in Yemen. Of course, this means deciding whether or not the King has both the mental horsepower and the testicular fortitude of Assad Sr. To date there is no indication that the current incumbent or any likely successor is up to the task.
Actions of the boldness and resolve which characterized Assad pere throughout his rule do not seem to come naturally or easily to the House of Saud. The pervasive belief that money and deal making are always possible is not overcome with rapidity or facility,
The House of Saud always looks to someone else to do the heavy lifting on its behalf. The Saudis depend on the magic of their oil reserves to provide the necessary leverage on the US in particular to assure the lifting is done without pain to the House of Saud.
If this is the ultimate game plan of the Kingdom this time, they are barking up the wrong sand dune. The Obama administration is not casting about looking for one more armpit into which American troops might be inserted. The US currently has neither the political will nor the material capacity to wage one more stinking little war.
There is one caveat to this assertion. Should the Kingdom do something even more impossible to conceive of than putting its troops in harm's way--say, sign a peace treaty with Israel which included a statement of Israel's right to exist with current "settlements" intact and no Palestinian "right of return," all bets are off. The Obama administration would be willing to think the unthinkable and send the Marines in return for "peace in the Mideast."
Short of a miracle on this level, the Saudis are on their little old lonesome in the Houthi insurgency. A miscalculation or two and AQAP will let the House of Sand know all about it. The noise of bombs and smell of oil smoke will make sleep difficult even in the hermetically sealed, air conditioned tents of the House.
This outcome implies that the House and its current King will have to find a bit of old man Assad in the saddle bags of their camels. They will have to do more--a lot more--than drop some bombs and send a few humvees full of troops across the border.
Maybe there is a British archeologist out there somewhere studying some Crusader castle or another in Syria or Israel or Jordan who can channel the spirit of his long dead predecessor and become Lawrence of Arabia, the sequel. If he exists, and if he can dial spiritland, boy does he have an employment opportunity!
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