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It was a distinctly un-Saudi affair. The
traditionally cautious kingdom, careful to the point where its
diplomatic initiatives must be guaranteed to succeed before they are
even launched, found itself militarily thrown into the internal
conflict in neighbouring Yemen.
In the past two weeks Saudi
warplanes have bombed border positions of Houthi rebels battling
the Yemeni government. It marks the sixth round of on-and-off fighting
that has erupted since 2004.
The Saudis have every reason to be
fed up with Yemen, a lawless country of 23m people on the tip of the
Arabian Peninsula beset by deep poverty and dysfunctional politics that
regularly exports its troubles.
Governments far beyond Yemen’s
borders should also be alarmed at the deteriorating security in a
country that has long been a breeding ground for the religious
extremists of al-Qaeda.
The rebellion of the Houthis, members of
the Zaydi Shia sect that is, however, closer in its practices to a
branch of Sunni Islam than to mainstream Shia Islam, is just one of a
series of economic and political problems facing the government,
including a secessionist movement in the south (north and south Yemen
were only united in 1990) and the persistent al-Qaeda presence.
With
population growth among the highest in the world and resources
dwindling – Yemen is running out of water as well as oil – it is
reasonable to predict worsening instability. Yemen is not Afghanistan or
Somalia, but there are real fears among western officials that it is on
its way to becoming a failed and regionally destabilising state. Over
the past year, Yemen’s accumulating mess has looked threatening for
Saudi Arabia: the merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of al-Qaeda
has provided a new base for Saudi fanatics chased away from the kingdom
by a security crackdown.
How the Saudis, supporters and generous
financial backers to the government, became embroiled in a conflict with
complex historic, religious and social roots depends on whose version
you believe. The Saudis say they have been trying to clean up a long,
porous border and push the Houthis away after a rebel infiltration
killed a Saudi border guard. The Houthis tell us, through their website,
that the Saudis have been in this war for a while, allowing Yemeni
troops to use their territory to encircle the rebels.
There is,
however, a potentially more dangerous dimension to this conflict. The
Saudis see the Houthis as a tool in the hands of Iran as the Islamic
Republic attempts to widen its influence in the region. In official
circles, the conflict in Yemen is portrayed as a struggle between a Shia
sect and a Sunni-dominated government, not unlike the internal
political fight in Lebanon, where Saudi Arabia has long backed a
Sunni-led coalition and Iran the Hizbollah-led opposition.
No
doubt it seemed an opportune time to stand up to Iran as the regime has
looked vulnerable since the rigging of the June presidential election
and its violent aftermath. (If you read the Saudi press at that time you
would think the Iranian regime had in fact collapsed.)
The
Saudis and Iranians – the Gulf’s two major powers – have been battling
it out through their media for months. Iran has accused Riyadh of
involvement in the disappearance of a nuclear scientist and has been
enraged by the Saudi move to fingerprint Iranians travelling to Mecca to
perform the Haj pilgrimage.
The Saudi bombing of Houthi positions
is adding fuel to the fire. This week, Iran’s joint chief of staff
Hassan Firouzabadi called Saudi attacks “state terrorism” and Saudi
Arabia’s grand mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh accused Iran of
“collusion in sin and aggression”. A group of Saudi clerics lambasted
Iran for allegedly “financing and arming” agents to spread Shia Islam
across Sunni lands.
The irony is that no one outside the Middle
East believes that Iran has much to do with the Houthis. Officials in
the west argue that although Iran sympathises with the rebels, there is
no evidence of military or financial support.
Maybe these
outsiders are talking nonsense. But maybe Saudi Arabia is allowing its
resentment of Iran to cloud its judgment over Yemen. The Houthi
rebellion is, above all, a reflection of social, religious and political
grievances by a group that feels marginalised and considers that the
state has succumbed to radical Sunni Salafi ideology. The Houthis are
not moderate – their commander says their “cultural” platform is based
on the slogans of “God is Great, Death to America and Death to Israel”.
But in an interview with a Lebanese newspaper, he also says that the
rebels want an end to discrimination and government military action and
not, as is often assumed, the reimposition of a Zaydi state (an imamate
that ruled the capital Sana’a until a coup in 1962).
The even
greater irony in this conflict is that Saudi involvement is certain to
aggravate the grievances and possibly prolong the fighting. The rising
destruction, casualties and displacement of the population have fed the
rebellion, widening its territorial scope and winning the rebels
thousands of new recruits. “The ultimate travesty is there is no way to
militarily solve the problem – you need a humanitarian ceasefire and
mediation,” says Christopher Boucek, an associate at the Carnegie
Endowment’s Middle East programme. If stability is the aim in Yemen,
then, as Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at
Princeton University, argues, Saudi Arabia needs a policy that is
neither “throwing money” at the problem nor military intervention.
Back
in May, a few months before the latest round of fighting, a sensible
report by the International
Crisis Group recommended that Yemen use its traditional instruments
of co-option and social and religious tolerance to create a more
inclusive state, reducing sectarian discrimination and bringing in the
Houthis. It called on Gulf states and western governments to exercise
their leverage and the promise of reconstruction aid to nudge the
government and the rebels towards compromise.
By the Middle
East’s standards of violence, the Yemen conflict is a small war – and so
can be easily ignored. But as the ICG warned: “In duration and
intensity, destruction, casualties, sectarian stigmatisation and
regional dimension, [it] stands apart from other violent episodes in
Yemen. It will need more than run-of-the-mill domestic and international
efforts to end it.”
roula.khalaf@ft.com