Civilians, as could have been predicted, are paying the price for the mayhem now unfolding in Yemen. What is often euphemistically described as “collateral damage” came early in the Saudi-led military intervention launched last week against the Houthi rebels who threaten to overrun the country. On Monday, fighter jets, presumably Saudi, struck a camp housing thousands of displaced Yemeni civilians outside the capital, Sana’a, killing over 40 people. The UN high commissioner for human rights has warned that Yemen is a country “on the verge of collapse”. War crimes have been reported on all sides of the conflict. Houthi insurgents have targeted hospitals in recent days.
The situation in Yemen, a country with a deeply fragmented history, cannot be reduced to a chess board on which regional powers vie for influence and embroil locals in their disputes. Yemen’s internationally recognised president has fled to Saudi Arabia after being chased out of his palace by an uprising of the Houthi minority, an indigenous Shia-affiliated group. Yet the sectarian divide cannot in itself explain all of Yemen’s problems. It is a country of immense poverty and numerous armed groups. The Arab spring of 2011 brought a popular revolt which led to the overthrow of then president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had ruled since 1978.
But in a Middle East which is rapidly descending into a spiral of multiple confrontations, it is also true that Yemen has become the new flashpoint where Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran measure their respective might. Yemen is the most recent demonstration of a regional rivalry that has gone on for years in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The religious dimension of Middle Eastern woes - Sunni versus Shia - is becoming an ever more important lens through which to view events. The potential participation of Pakistan in the Arab coalition active in Yemen is a reminder of how far-reaching these intertwined religious and political powerplays have become.
The US, which remains the dominant external player in the region, finds itself caught up in Yemen, but not openly involved - at least not through heavy military deployment. Washington has provided intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition. In recent years, its drones have targeted the Yemeni branch of al-Qaida. If the US is exercising relative discretion in Yemen now, it is the understandable result of strategic choices, including the Obama administration’s decision to limit direct US military engagement to striking Isis and to rely on regional actors for ground operations, while Washington pursues high-stakes diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear programme.
There is not much doubt that Sunni anxiety over the possibility of an Iran-US rapprochement has prompted the new Saudi king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud- whose dynasty casts itself as the historic protector of Sunni faith - to assert greater regional clout, through military action in Yemen. Riyadh’s particular obsession is to prevent Iran from gaining any foothold on the Arabian peninsula. In 2011, the same logic applied to Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain, which aimed at crushing a Shia-dominated uprising there.
The overall strategic picture is not a stable one, so the consequences are hard to predict. On the one hand, America cooperates with Iran in Iraq against Isis (providing air support to Iran-dominated militias). It has steered clear of outright confrontation with Iran’s ally in Syria, the Assad regime. In parallel, the Obama administration has made historic overtures to Iran on the nuclear question. On the other hand, the US has come out in support of the military offensive against Iran’s perceived influence in Yemen. Those who fail to see much coherence in US strategies can be forgiven.
The now highly militarised rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia is likely to continue to escalate in the absence of any effort to reach a regional security arrangement. Much may now hang on how the US will manage its Arab allies’ concerns in the event of a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. Whack-a-mole policies cannot be a sustainable solution. It can never be too early to try to get regional actors around a larger negotiating table. The alternative is to see more bloodshed among civilians - always the first victims of confused or improvised strategies.
TWEET YOUR COMMENT