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“These days, drone strikes that kill al-Qaida chieftains, along with civilians, are rarely questioned by the U.S. political establishment. The new UAV bases are reportedly in the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off East Africa; Ethiopia, a U.S. ally that sent troops into Somalia in December 2006 to crush an Islamist regime; and on the Arabian Peninsula. French intelligence sources cite Saudi Arabia as the host country. The United States withdrew its forces from the kingdom shortly before the Iraq invasion in 2003 because their presence triggered al-Qaida attacks on the monarchy. For that reason, it would seem unlikely that Saudis would permit even small U.S. units to deploy there again. But Riyadh’s extremely concerned that neighboring Yemen, where al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is making big gains while the country’s torn by political upheaval, will become a springboard for renewed jihadist attacks on the kingdom. So helping the Americans by providing a Reaper base to hammer al-Qaida in Yemen makes some sense. Washington suspects AQAP is moving toward an operational alliance with the al-Shabaab Islamist group in Somalia and it seems prepared to pull out a lot of stops to prevent that………………”

They make it sound like the Red Sea is about to become a Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) of the Salafi terrorists. Just like the Mediterranean was called “Mare Nostrum” by the Romans after the defeat of Carthage.
Yemen is truly a failed state now. The Saudis have no choice now but to try and block any cross-border influence, which sounds ironic since Salafi terrorism has its roots in Saudi Arabia from whence it spread to Yemen and Iraq and other places. Yemen can be as destabilizing to the Saudis and possibly to Oman (again) as Afghanistan has been to Pakistan, and ironically the Pakistani ISI was also responsible for the growth of the Taliban, as were the Saudis themselves. The best outcome for Yemen may be to split again into two states, whereby the South with its capital at Aden would regain the independence it lost in 1990. That would still leave al-Qaeda and other extremist Salafi groups to deal with. But it is interesting that after the semi-public fanfare of expelling the U.S. Central Command from Saudi Arabia some years ago, the American military/intelligence are back. Maybe that indicates the Saudis are not as worried about their local al-Qaeda branch as they used to be.
On the other hand, fear of instability from Yemen is an old historic thing for the Arabian peninsula and precedes the Saudi rule. The expansionist Saudis did bite off a large chunk of Yemen after a war in the 1930s, as they did bite chunks off other GCC states. They have worried since about Yemeni claims to their lost territories, which partly explains their mistake in interfering in the last Huthi War tow years ago, an intervention that apparently cost them dearly.
Cheers
mhg


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