Yesterday in Politico, Adam Baron, who knows a thing or two about Yemen, wrote this:
The truth is far more complex, and the solution right now should be more along the lines of: Just stay out of it. While the chief combatants in the civil war are certainly playing the sectarian card to some degree, there is reason to think that Yemen will not necessarily become part of some regional sectarian conflict. Regardless of their foreign ties, both the Shiite Houthis and their Sunni opponents are deeply rooted in Yemen, and they are motivated primarily by local issues.
The main danger now is that the Western powers, Saudi Arabia or Egypt will overreact and seek to intervene, ostensibly to counter Iranian influence or to quash the efforts of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to gain territory. Yet foreign intervention could very well be the worst approach now—further regionalizing what is still a local fight, injecting a stronger sectarian tone into the conflict while threatening to push Yemen closer to implosion.
Luckily for the rest of the Middle East and the world, yesterday a bit before 7 PM east coast time the Saudis (plus the rest of the GCC) and Egyptians, with US support, um, overreacted and intervened. The Saudi Ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, announced the start of airstrikes against targets around Sanaa affiliated with the Houthis andwith forces loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh has been collaborating with his fellow Zaydi (though far more religiously-driven) Houthis, either to engineer his own political comeback or, more likely (given his age), to set his son, Ahmed Ali Saleh, up as the Houthis’ partner in government.
Leaving aside all the added human suffering this intervention is sure to cause, you have to be impressed at the chutzpah on display among the intervening parties. The Saudis are of course very worried about restoring the “legitimate” government of Yemen, which means the presidency of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who traces his legitimacy to a 2012 “election” in which his was the only name on the ballot, he won 99.8% of the vote, and he promised to only serve two years. Single-candidate elections where virtually 100% of the votes go for the guy on the ballot, who later breaks his pledge to leave office, are, as anyone knows, hallmarks of a legitimate government. Meanwhile, Egypt, whose current government came to power after a coup overthrew a government that really was democratically elected, has decided that it simply can’t abide things like the “violation of legitimacy” and the act of “imposing realities by force”:
https://twitter.com/abuaardvark/status/581073019969413120
In reality, Yemen is at a point where virtually nobody has a defensible claim on running the country, hence the civil war, and this seemingly hastily thrown together intervention is only going to make the problem worse. The Saudi endgame might be bombing the Houthis until they agree to negotiations toward a power-sharing arrangement in Sanaa, but power-sharing with whom? Saleh or his son would seem to be non-starters; they might be the only faction in Yemen less acceptable to the Saudis than the Houthi. Do the Saudis really expect to reinstall Hadi, whose already minimal legitimacy will be further compromised if he’s placed back in charge by a foreign power? On the other hand, what if the Houthi position is strong enough that ground forces are necessary to roll back their gains and really force them to the table, which appears to be what the Egyptians are on about? The Saudis have had a rough history when it comes to intervening in Yemen; their soldiers have been bested by Houthi fighters in border clashes in the past, and the 1962-1970 North Yemen Civil War didn’t exactly break their way either.
For the Saudis, this is a move made in fear over the growing power of an Iranian client (the Houthis) on their southern border, or anyway that’s the official story (really, shutting down the Houthis, whose success might inconveniently start giving Saudi Arabia’s own Shiʿa some funny ideas, would be important to them regardless of the Iran factor). As for the rest of the coalition, which includes Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, the Hadi government, and maybe Pakistan, Iran’s regional profile might be part of the calculus, but the fact is that as the Saudis go, so go most of these other nations if they know what’s good for them. Egypt may have its own reasons for wanting to stop the Houthis, but the fact that their budget is currently being underwritten from Riyadh certainly orients their decision-making process in a particular direction. The same holds true for Morocco, Jordan, and Pakistan.
Then there’s the American decision to assist the Saudi-Egyptian coalition. The US has two interests in Yemen: containing and degrading Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (and ISIS, now, I guess) and, to a much lesser extent, making sure that nobody mucks up the shipping lanes in and out of the Red Sea. A stable government in Sanaa, even one as corrupt and authoritarian as Hadi’s (or Saleh’s before it), is the most expedient way to advance both of those interests in the short-term (which is the only term that ever matters when it comes to US foreign policy). The Houthis cannot offer that (it’s impossible to envision a scenario where the Houthis and the Salehs really control the entire country), but Hadi kind of did (at least for a little while) and a negotiated governing arrangement might.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 