Tag Archives: Saada

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Operation Failed Storm: Frustrated Saudis Seek to Flatten Saada………..

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“Saudi-led forces warned civilians that Yemen’s Saada province would be a military target as of Friday evening, Saudi state television Al Ekhbariya reported. The leadership of the coalition asked all civilians to leave the province, a stronghold of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, by 7 pm local time, the station said. Saudi Arabia said Thursday it would respond forcefully to cross-border Houthi attacks that started on Tuesday, and has targeted the province with air strikes since then………….”

The Saudi princes have declared all of Saada a target, all of the region a free-fire zone. They’ve asked the residents of the region to leave, go elsewhere, but not to Saudi Arabia. Expect missiles, bombs, and Western cluster munitions to carpet the region. That is the home region of the Houthis who seem to be giving the princes another bloody nose. A clear sign of deep frustration by the planners of Operation Failed Storm.

It looks like Yemenis are neither shocked nor awed with the most advanced most-expensive Western weapons thrown at them by the Saudis. Weeks into the bombing campaign, with the threat of a land invasion by hired African mercenaries (from Senegal, Sudan, and Egypt), the lightly-armed Houthis have had enough. They struck at Najran, a north Yemeni area occupied by Saudi Arabia during the last century. It shows how vulnerable the border region is that the Saudis were forced to close schools and airports in the area. Almost a replay o the 2009 war when the Saudis thought they had a cakewalk into Northern Yemen and were disappointed.

Now, in princely frustration, they are having a royal fit, they are seeking to flatten the Saada homeland of the pesky Houthis. They have said as much. The problem with such saturation bombing is that the  marginal effect declines as the bombing continues (we call it diminishing marginal return in economics) . It is the (North) Vietnam syndrome: the more they were bombed, the less likely they were to give up. It is unlikely the Houthis will travel to Riyadh any time soon to kiss and make up with their attackers.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy, Yemen

WTF? UN to Sanction Yemen Opposition Leaders, Charles and Hollande in Saada………

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“Lithuanian U.N. Ambassador Raimonda Murmokaite, chair of the council’s Yemen sanctions committee, said all 15 members had agreed to blacklist Saleh and Houthi rebel military leaders Abd al-Khaliq al-Huthi and Abdullah Yahya al Hakim. The three men are now subject to a global travel ban and asset freeze. Saleh has denied seeking to destabilize Yemen and his party warned after a meeting on Thursday that any sanctions on the former president or “even waving such a threat would have negative consequences on the political process.”…….. The United States submitted a formal request to the Yemen sanctions committee a week ago for Saleh and the Houthi leaders to be the first people designated…………”

Years ago some politicians in the United States often warned of “world government” encroaching on national sovereignty. They were usually conservative Republicans who were terrified of a UN-type world regime that would interfere in domestic US affairs. Some of them opined that it was part of an international conspiracy to dominate the world. They were considered ‘the crazies‘ in mainstream US media in those days. Now some of them run the asylum show.

Isn’t this exactly what the UN and the USA are doing now in places like Yemen? And can the UN really force various opposed Yemeni factions to follow international dictate on internal matters? And why does the UN and world powers not try to solve other ‘domestic’ problems with sanctions, as in Egypt and Bahrain? 

I have posted here before that sanctioning the Houthis is a meaningless  gesture. Unless it is a prelude to a more muscular intervention against them. As far as I know the Houthis don’t own properties in Europe or New York; they don’t shop in Paris and London, and they don’t spend their vacations in Nice or Geneva. They certainly don’t purchase their weapons from the West; otherwise Mr. Cameron and Prince Chuck Al Windsor and M. Hollande would be as regular visitors to Saada as they are to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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