by Hilal Kashan
Saudi Arabia seems to have bitten off more than it can chew
Originally published under the title "Saudi Arabia Makes a Strategic Miscalculation."
Saudi Arabia is embroiled in a war in Yemen that it can't win.
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Saudi
Arabia seems to have bitten off more than it can chew in Yemen. On
March 26, 2015, the kingdom launched Operation Decisive Storm, a broad
Arab-Islamic initiative ostensibly aimed at reinstating the government
of Yemeni President Abd Rabboh Mansour Hadi, whom insurgents had forced
from the capital, Sanaa, a month earlier. More than two and a half years
on, Saudi Arabia is no closer to its goal, embroiled in a war that it
can't win.
How
did the country wind up making such a strategic blunder? Going into the
conflict, its leaders were well aware of the steep odds against the
operation's success — of Yemen's unconquerable terrain and intractable
tribal machinations. The Saudis tend to equivocate in their explanations
of what drove them to intervene in the war-torn country in the first
place. But a look at the kingdom's history and founding ideology offers
insight into Riyadh's dilemma in Yemen.
A Legacy of Conquest in the Arabian Peninsula
Saudi
Arabia's history is one of bloodshed. The alliance that Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Wahhab formed in the mid-18th century with the founder of the
first Saudi state, Muhammad ibn Saud, established the kingdom's policy
to pursue its objectives by force rather than diplomacy. By the end of
the 1700s, Wahhab's followers would put that policy into action. They
invaded Kuwait in 1793, laid siege to Ras al-Khaima (now part of the
United Arab Emirates) in 1799, entered Bahrain in 1801, attacked
Karbala, in modern-day Iraq, in 1802, and briefly took Basra and Jeddah
the next year. In 1818, the Egyptian army destroyed the Saudi state, but
the country emerged in its modern incarnation at the turn of the 20th
century.
And
like its predecessors (including the second Saudi state, which lasted
from 1824 to 1891), the new kingdom had a penchant for war. The Saudis
brought the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz to its demise in the 1920s
through a series of gruesome massacres, and the next decade, they took
on Yemen. During the war of 1934, Saudi Arabia seized Asir, Jizan and
Najran from its southwestern neighbor, driving a permanent wedge between
the two countries. Abdulaziz ibn Saud, founder of the modern Saudi
state, reportedly told his sons on his deathbed nearly 20 years later that to maintain their country's strength, they must keep Yemen weak.
Origins of a Conflict
When
a group of revolutionaries deposed Yemen's monarch in 1962, a civil war
broke out between Yemeni royalists and advocates of a republican system
of government. Saudi Arabia's leaders, worried that the political
upheaval could seep into their territory, sided with the royalists in
the eight-year conflict.
Saudi-backed royalists in Yemen, 1962.
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After
the two sides reached a compromise to end the war, Riyadh's military
involvement in Yemen gave way to a subtler intervention. Saudi Arabia
worked to buy influence with the country's various tribes and in the
1990s threw its weight behind Islah, an Islamist party with ties to the
Muslim Brotherhood, to counter President Ali Abdullah Saleh's General
People's Congress.
Around
the same time, the Houthi movement emerged among Yemen's Zaidi Shiite
population, preaching peace, tolerance and cultural openness. The
movement had evolved into an insurgency by the early 2000s, despite its
pacifist claims, and in November 2009, the Houthis seized a mountainous
section of Saudi Arabia's Jizan province, near the border. From Saudi
Arabia's perspective, the incursion — retaliation against Riyadh for
allegedly allowing Yemeni army units onto Saudi territory to carry out
strikes against the Houthis — violated the tacit conditions of the truce
it made with Yemen after the 1934 war. And so, it struck back,
launching its first military offensive in nearly two decades. Though the
brief conflict highlighted the limitations of their military
capabilities, the Saudis nevertheless felt certain that a full-blown war
was inevitable.
The
alliance between Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the founder of the
first Saudi state established the kingdom's policy to pursue its
objectives by force.
Houthi fighters in Sanaa, shortly after their capture of the Yemeni capital in September 2014.
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The
Yemeni Revolution of 2011 laid the groundwork for the next clash. The
uprising, during which Saleh stepped down from power, filled many
Yemenis with hope that their country would establish a modern,
independent political system. But the transition fell short of the
population's expectations: The new president, Hadi, encountered numerous
challenges to his rule, and Yemen soon descended into chaos. A few
years later in September 2014, the Houthis took control of Sanaa, and in
February 2015, they unveiled a constitutional declaration to transform
the country's political system.
For
the Saudi government — which views the monarchy's continuity as the key
to the kingdom's security — the Houthis' revolution hit too close to
home. Riyadh worried that the Houthi takeover in Sanaa would galvanize
Saudi Arabia's Zaidi and Ismaili Shiite population near the Yemeni
border. In addition, the Houthis' long-standing ties with Iran
heightened the kingdom's concerns over Tehran's expanding influence in
the region. Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, including the
United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco,
Jordan and Pakistan, began their operation against the Houthis the
following month. If air power could achieve spectacular victories in the
Six-Day War of 1967 and in Desert Storm in 1991, the Saudis reasoned,
an air campaign would work in Yemen, as well.
A Coalition of Uncommon Interests
Compared
with the coalition's leader, however, its other members had less at
stake in Yemen. Most of Saudi Arabia's partners, in fact, were reluctant
to join the operation at all. Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco
limited their involvement in the war against the Houthis. Egypt and
Pakistan refused to send ground troops to the fight. Sudan, by contrast,
sent thousands of troops to Yemen, if only so that Riyadh would
intercede on its behalf and persuade Washington to suspend the sanctions
against it. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the only
states in the coalition invested in the war.
But
even they had different reasons for entering the conflict. Saudi
Arabia's aims for Operation Decisive Storm and its successor, Operation
Restoring Hope, were to crush the Houthis, sever their ties to Iran and
secure the Saudi-Yemeni border in Jizan and Najran. The United Arab
Emirates, on the other hand, had its own priorities in mind. Abu Dhabi,
unlike Riyadh, isn't interested in driving the Houthis out of the Yemeni
capital. Emirati leaders fear that doing so could give Islah — which
they view as a threat to their own stability — a place in Yemen's
political future. After making a perfunctory bid to train Yemeni troops
for an offensive to retake Sanaa, Emirati forces turned their attention
instead to southern Yemen. There, they worked to secure control of the
Arabian coast and the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, a critical conduit
for international trade. The United Arab Emirates is also keen on
preventing the Yemeni port of Aden from competing with the Jebel Ali
port, near Dubai.
The War That Cannot Be Won
Because
of their diverging interests in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates have differing levels of commitment to the conflict, too.
Saudi Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman
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Abu
Dhabi's crown prince announced on Twitter in June 2016 that his country
would end its military involvement in Yemen, though it would continue
"monitoring political arrangements" and "empowering Yemenis in liberated
areas." Saudi troops, meanwhile, have continued their fight in the
state, pursuing goals that seem more distant by the day.
Saudi
Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman knows the kingdom will probably
never defeat the Houthis in Yemen. Saleh tried and failed to rout the
movement six times between 2004 and 2010. And despite adamant
declarations to the contrary, bin Salman wants to end Operation
Restoring Hope. The young crown prince already has undertaken
unprecedented reforms to modernize the Saudi economy, empower the
country's women, and combat corruption and nepotism. But he has yet to
overcome the legacy of blood and iron on which Saudi Arabia was built.
Hilal Khashan is a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Source: http://www.meforum.org/7008/saudi-arabia-makes-strategic-miscalculation
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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