“Houthi fighters in Yemen have fired artillery shells into the port city of Aden.The latest casualty count in the shelling is more than 40 dead and over 100 injured. The attacks come just two days after Yemen’s government-in-exile declared that Aden had been recaptured from Houthi forces.Much of the fighting has now switched to Taiz, Yemen’s third largest province and a key strategic region. In the latest clashes in the city 28 Houthi fighters were killed. Al Jazeera’s Natasha Ghoneim reports.”

Aljazeera English: “Rival sides fight for Yemeni city of Taiz”

The intrepid Liz Sly of the Washington Post gets the story of the attempt of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their Arab allies, the Euphrates Volcano, to cut Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) off and kill it. Sly’s insightful report is buttressed by one from Ahmad al-Sakhani at the Dubai-based al-An TV.

Daesh holds Raqqah Province in Syria, up to the small town of Tel Abyad on the Syrian-Turkish border, through which it receives weapons, ammunition and volunteers smuggled through Turkey. On either side of Daesh territory in northern Raqqah Province are two cantons of the Kurdish belt known as Rojava. The two are Kobane and Jazira. Jazira is much bigger and abuts the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq. Altogether there are probably about 2.2 million Kurds in Syria (a country of 22 million), though it may be less since several hundred thousand were forced to flee to Turkey from Raqqah.

The YPG, the paramilitary of the far-left Democratic Union Party, and its Arab allies have taken 12 villages near to Tal Abyad away from Daesh in recent fighting. An important point: According to al-An TV, this advance has only been possible because of close coordination between the ground forces and the US Air Force, which is bombing Daesh targets once they are identified by the rebel fighters. In other words, this fight looks a little like the battle for Mt. Sinjar in Iraq, where Kurdish fighters got practical air support from the US and its coalition partners, which intensively bombed Daesh positions and equipment on their behalf. At Mt. Sinjar, YPG units played an important role, but the major push came from the Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraqi Kurdistan, who knew how to call in US air strikes.

Some 12,000 residents of the latter town have fled, expecting that a battle royale in the center of the town is in the offing between Daesh on the one hand and the YPG alongside the Free Syrian Army units calling themselves Euphrates Volcano on the other. Some 5,000 refugees are huddling along the border with Syria.

If the Kurds can take the northern Raqqa corridor along the Turkish border, including Tel Abyad, they can link two of their scattered cantons and can cut Daesh off from resupply routes in Turkey.

Abu Isa, the leader of the 2,000 Arab fighters of the Arab side of the Euphrates Volcano joint operations room, called on villagers to remain in their homes, promising them they would be safe. His demi-brigade seems to be well armed, having medium and light weaponry, suggesting that the US is provisioning them.

Al-An maintains that a lot of Daesh fighters have pulled back from the north to the capital city of Raqqah, and that the remaining fighters have warned local inhabitants to stay inside on threat of condign punishment.

There is a saying in the military that everyone wants to do strategy, but real men do logistics. That is, the supply train for the army is often more crucial than the big concept plan of battle. Liz Sly showed that she is the ‘real man’ of this somewhat sexist saying.

There has been a lot of back and forth between Daesh and the Kurds in the northeastern Jazira region, especially at the city of Hasaka. What is promising here is that the anti-Daesh forces appear to be getting good air support from the American-led coalition. It helps that Euphrates Volcano has not gone jihadi and is what is left of the Free Syrian Army.

David Speedie of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs interviewed me in New York on Monday. Below is an excerpt of the transcript, but the whole thing is at their web site. Also below is the video of the interview.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Juan, you have written so prolifically and so expertly on a range of interconnected topics. We have put up here “The Crisis of Europe’s Muslims” [as the title of the talk]. I do want to cover that in our opening 20 or 25 minutes before we go to the audience. But I also want to perhaps to start with the question of schisms within the Muslim world, which are, I think, imperfectly understood by an American audience, and especially with reference to the recent agreed framework with Iran and the P5 + 1 on April 2.

You wrote recently a thought-provokingly titled article, “Can the Arab World Live with the Iran Nuclear Deal?” I throw the question back to you in welcoming you. Can the Arab world live with the Iran nuclear deal?

JUAN COLE: I think the answer is that some parts of it can live with that deal very handily; others have some problems with it. When we think of the Arab world in the United States, we tend to think of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, the Gulf oil monarchies, who are often neighbors of Iran or just across the Gulf from them, and who have been more cautious—sometimes vocal—in being critical of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. But if you take the 22 states of the Arab League, it becomes clear that the Arab world is quite divided on these issues.

First of all—we don’t think of it this way—there are several countries in the Arab world that are allied with Iran. This is true of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, all of whom expressed delight at the program. I figure you are talking about on the order of 60 million people in the Arab world right there. Then the independent nationalist Arab states, ones who are not close to Saudi Arabia—sometimes they have a leftist Arab nationalist background—Algeria, for example, was optimistic, as was Tunisia, the only of the Arab Spring states that has had a relatively successful democratic transition.

If one means, “Can Saudi Arabia live with this deal?”—that is a very different question than the Arab world in general.

So I think the attitudes are quite diverse, even within the Gulf Cooperation Council. One of the major members of the six is Oman, which has played a role in mediating between the United States and Iran, and which expressed itself very positively about this deal.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, some others issued communiqués saying that they welcomed that there was this framework and they are hopeful where it would go and so forth. They are obviously hedging their bets. But in the region in general—I think what Tunisia said was that any framework that allows for peace rather than war would be a great good thing for the Middle East.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Iran, of course, is the major Shia Muslim state in the extended region. Again, in terms of imperfect awareness of what exactly is going on, when one looks at what is happening in Yemen and with ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] and so on, there is this sense that we are in some sort of existential struggle between Shia and Sunni Islam—Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on the one hand and the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Sunni coalition, on the other.

I think you have a somewhat more nuanced and qualified view of that as a defining theory.

JUAN COLE: I agree that from 30,000 feet, it looks as though Iran has put together a bloc of countries with significant Shiite populations and is using the Shiite form of Islam as a kind of soft-power wedge to establish a kind of bloc. But if you go down on the ground, then that way of looking at it becomes difficult to maintain.

Syria, for example, where Iran is supporting the government of Bashar al-Assad, is a Baathist state, which is irreligious. They actually persecuted religion. It is true that the upper echelons of the Baath Party in Syria are staffed by members of the Alawite minority, who are technically—at least scholars would consider them a form of Shiite Islam. But Alawite Islam is barely Islam. They don’t have mosques. They don’t pray five times a day. They have Neoplatonic and Gnostic philosophies coming from the pre-Islamic Greek world. There is a kind of mythology there that is very important in their thinking.

I went to Antakya one time, which is an Alawite city, and I asked someone—I was eager to meet an Alawite—I asked someone local, “Are you an Alawite?” He said, “No. Praise be to God, I’m a Muslim.”

The idea that Iran is supporting Syria because orthodox Twelver Shiite Islam feels any kind of kinship with the Alawites is crazy. The ayatollahs would issue fatwas of excommunication and heresy and so forth against Alawites.

Then the Alawites are only one part of a coalition of Syrians that involves Christians, Druze, and very substantial numbers of Sunnis. The regime still has about two-thirds of the country, which it cannot have unless a large number of Sunnis in Damascus continue to support it, because the business class has benefited from that regime and so forth.

So, yes, Iran is supporting the Alawites of Syria, but you have to have an extremely narrow lens to make this look as though it’s about Shias.

DAVID SPEEDIE: The other, perhaps even more contemporary context in which this being played out in the minds of some Western commentators, of course, is in Yemen, which is a very, very perilous situation, it seems to many of us. Obviously, al-Qaeda in Yemen claimed responsibility for many terror attacks, including Charlie Hebdo at one point. It is regarded as one of the most virulent and violent of the extremist movements. They, of course, are extremist Sunni. Then this dichotomy, Shia-Sunni, comes into play with, “Oh, Iran is supporting”—now, I read somewhere that they should not technically to be called Houthi, but Ansarullah, the Shia insurgent forces in Yemen.

What’s going on there? What should our response be, for example, to the Saudi-led military action? Is this offering comfort and succor to the extremist elements in Yemen? Or is that again too simplistic?

JUAN COLE: In my own view, Yemen is, of course, a complete mess. It is an ecological mess above all. It is running out of water. The capital may go dry within five years. We can expect vast displacement of people just on, surely, ecological grounds. For it to be bombed is the last thing that it needed. This is a humanitarian catastrophe.

The United States has joined in this effort and is giving logistical support, it says, to the Saudis and others who are engaged in this bombing campaign. The bombing campaign is being conducted against a grassroots tribal movement and seems very unsuited to produce a military victory of any sort. I think it can succeed in knocking out electricity and making it difficult to distribute petroleum and, again, making people’s lives miserable. I’m not sure it can succeed in changing the politics simply by bombing from a distance.

I really think the United States is poorly advised to get involved in this thing. I don’t think that the lines are at all clear. The Houthi movement is named for the family that led it. Of course, it is not what it calls itself. (The Quakers don’t call themselves that either. It’s the Society of Friends. People don’t get to choose.) But they have become known as the Houthis.

They are a movement of the Zaidi Shiite community in Northern Yemen. The Zaidis are known as a form of Shi’ism, again, very unlike what is in Iran and Iraq what is in Iran and Iraq, what Americans are more used to, as being quite close to the Sunnis. They don’t, for instance, curse the Sunni caliphs. They don’t have that kind of animosity towards Sunnism. And they don’t have ayatollahs. They shade over at some level into Sunnism. They are not that different. People in Yemen, anyway, make alliances by clan and tribe, and not so much by which sect the clan or tribe belongs to. There are substantial Sunni tribes that are allied with the Houthis.

Seeing this as Shiite or Iran—maybe it looks like that from a very great distance, but down on the ground, it is a real exaggeration.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Again, it is superficial to see this as strictly a religious divide. Many of the tribal entities are probably not that religious at all.

JUAN COLE: Many of the tribal entities are not religious at all, and then the ones that are can be united. For instance, most Sunnis in Yemen, in North Yemen at least, are Shafi’i Sunnis, who differ dramatically with the Sunni Wahabi branch of Islam and might well make common cause with Zaidis against the Wahabis.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Thank you for clearing this up. [Laughter] It obviously is a fraught and complex thing.

Let’s move to Europe, if we may, just a couple of questions there. On Europe, specifically in France, you use a very interesting term, a phenomenon you called “sharpening the contradictions,” saying that attacks such as Charlie Hebdo—and presumably, later the incident in Belgium and then in Copenhagen—are actually contrived by al-Qaeda to create a backlash that will bring politically unengaged Muslims into the fold. Explain that a little bit.

JUAN COLE: I see evidence of al-Qaeda thinkers, like Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was the number-two man for a long time, before bin Laden was killed, being influenced by Marxist thought, and radical Marxism. This is very clear in the technical terms that the Muslim far-right uses. They talk about a vanguard. This was a Leninist term. In some radical forms of Marxism, activists were impatient with the working class, which seemed not to want to fulfill its historical duty by rising up against the business classes, and so it engaged in sabotage—not everywhere all the time, but there were some groups that did that kind of thing in hopes of provoking a class war, because they knew the business classes would call upon their agents, the police, to crack down hard on sabotage and workers’ activism and so forth.

I think that al-Qaeda picked up this kind of thinking from the Marxist fringe in places like Egypt and so forth. I think that it is a deliberate strategy on their part, the sharpening of contradictions, or the heightening of contradictions, as it’s called. I think it explains everything that happened in Iraq.

I remember reading a New York Times piece in 2005 or so that al-Qaeda in Iraq had blown up a pet shop. There were pieces of rabbits and snakes wiggling on the ground. This author in The New York Times expressed himself with amazement. He said, “We should get out of Iraq now, because we can’t understand why you would do that. And if you don’t understand what your enemy is doing, then you should not be there.”

I understood exactly what they were doing. They were hitting soft targets. They were hitting businesses. It was a Shiite-owned pet shop. What they were trying to do was to get the Shiites’ goat in Iraq. They were trying to provoke a civil war, because they hoped that the Shiite clans who were being hit would go and attack Sunnis, and if they went and attacked the Sunnis, then al-Qaeda could go to the Sunnis and say, “Gee, you seem to be being attacked. We could protect you.”

So by provoking attacks on their own community, they actually could parlay that into power.

At the time, I was skeptical that they could succeed in this, but you come to last June, and they took over Mosul, the second-largest city in the country, in exactly this way—by continually provoking the Shia, getting reprisals going, and then going to the Sunnis against whom the reprisals were waged and saying, “You need protection.” By that time, the Mosulites said, “Yes, we do. Would you please come in,” even though Mosulites are cosmopolitan, secular-minded people. But they were willing to bring in this radical fundamentalist group just because they were tired of being targeted by the Shiite government.

Read the whole thing

Ustream Video of interview:

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

——

“Houthi forces fought battles street by street with local militia in Aden as aid workers say the city faces a humanitarian catastrophe. Mana Rabiee reports.”

Reuters: “Yemen’s Houthis battle over central Aden, first medical aid arrives”

“Yemen’s being torn apart in a struggle for power. The stakes are high, with many different groups involved in the current chaos. We’ve narrowed down the key players you should know about.”

AJ+: “4 Key Players In Yemen’s Chaos”

Since it was first announced, the Saudi Arabia-led war in Yemen has developed very rapidly. Air strikes have already hit numerous targets, resulting in many civilian deaths.

Clearly, the Saudis are not prepared to watch Yemen’s long-running domestic turmoil become a full-blown collapse. Ever since a rebellion led by the Shia Houthi faction has chased the Saudi-backed president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, out of the country, its leaders have been battling domestic and foreign forces loyal to him in a country long rent by civil conflict and terrorism.

Saudi Arabia has responded by wrangling a massive assembly of forces from across the Middle East – and this is just the beginning of a region-wide deployment of airpower. On March 29, Arab League heads meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh agreed to an Egyptian-led plan to establish an intervention force that would eventually comprise 40,000 troops as well as aircraft and warships.

The full force will take months to muster, but it’s quickly becoming clear that there had already been a remarkable degree of joint planning and co-ordination to establish a powerful regional air force to intervene in Yemen.

In it together

At the core of the 10-nation operation is the Royal Saudi Air Force’s F-15S strike aircraft, supported by interceptors and transport planes. There is also informal support from the United States, in that it was UN Navy warships that rescued two Saudi F-15S crew members when their jet crashed.

The Saudis have committed around 100 aircraft to Operation Decisive Storm – but the really decisive variable will be the extent of actual military support from other states right across the region.

This is very clearly a Saudi-led operation with minimal direct involvement from the US, even if American and British private military contractors may well be engaged behind the scenes.

As the Houthis attempt to take over the key southern port of Aden, we can expect to see the Egyptians getting more directly involved in naval bombardments.

Oman, which borders Yemen, has not made any commitment, but most other Middle Eastern states have. The United Arab Emirates has deployed 30 aircraft and Kuwait has sent 15 F/A-18 Hornets. Bahrain has sent at least eight F-16s, Qatar has contributed ten of its French Mirage 2000s and even Jordan, embroiled in the air war over Syria and Iraq, has contributed six F-16s. Egypt is heavily involved too, though mainly with naval forces.

There are some real surprises, though. One is Morocco, from well outside the region, which has sent F-16s; another is Pakistan, which is apparently weighing how involved it wants to be. And Sudan, meanwhile, is sending three ageing Soviet-era Sukhoi Su-24 fencers.

The Sudanese contribution makes little military sense given that almost all of the communications and other systems involved are incompatible with the state-of-the-art Western-built planes the other countries are deploying. Instead, this is pure symbolism: it speaks volumes about the seriousness of the plan that a state normally rather outside the Arab fold is so anxious to be involved.

Much of the current air activity is centred on the King Khalid Air Base, to the east of Khamis Mushait in south west Saudi Arabia. Barely 120 miles from the border with Yemen, the base has clearly been constructed with Yemen in mind, and with the facilities to operate many, many more aircraft than would normally be deployed there – including at least 20 large aircraft shelters.

That the base is located where it is shouldn’t be surprising, given that Saudi Arabia has staged small-scale air interventions in Yemen several times in recent years. What is a shock is the speed with which the current multilateral force was assembled there.

Maximum impact

Put bluntly, this could not have been done overnight. Extensive planning must have been done for an assault of this size, and it must date back to long before the recent Arab League meeting.

Much of the widespread Arab military support for Decisive Storm will be motivated by a deep fear of Iran’s growing influence. Tehran is making a show of muscle in Iraq, and US-Iranian relations have been showing signs of a thaw. Fears of direct Iranian influence over the Houthis may be seriously overblown, but Saudi Arabia and its partners are clearly taking no chances.

The sheer size and composition of the air power now being arraigned against the Houthis is quite shocking. It has already far exceeded the expectations of most Western military analysts, and with the Saudis insisting that their aim is to reinstall the Yemeni government-in-exile of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, a ground intervention may well follow.

The risk, though, is that this will seriously inflame regional tensions while also diverting attention away from the conflict with Islamic State – something which that group would no doubt welcome.

This is still only a very early phase of what may be a long and vastly expensive war – one which already involves almost every state in the region, and a good few beyond it besides.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article at the Conversation.

—-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

45 people were killed and another 65 injured in an airstrike by a Saudi-led coalition at a refugee camp in Houthi-controlled northern Yemen on Monday, the International Organization for Migration (IMO) said.

The bombardment took place in the vicinity of the Mazraq refugee
camp, Joel Millman, IMO spokesman told Reuters, citing the
organization’s staff on the ground.

It was not immediately clear how many of the casualties were
civilians and how many were armed personnel, he added.

Earlier, a humanitarian official told the agency that the
airstrike had targeted a military installation not far from the
camp.

“(@elbahkali) March
30, 2015

Yemen’s Defense Ministry, which is controlled by the Houthis,
said on its website that 40 people, including women and children,
were killed and another 250 people received injuries.

“Saudi warplanes targeted one of four refugee camps in the Harad
district, which led to the death and injury of several of its
residents,” the ministry said. The airstrike targeted camp 1 in
the Mazraq region, which houses around 4,000 refugees, leaving
over 40 people dead, including women and children“ and over 250
others injured.

Yemen’s exiled foreign minister, Riyadh Yaseen, has blamed the
Houthis for the deaths of people at the Mazraq refugee camp.

The blast was not caused by the coalition, but by “artillery
strikes,” which the rebels are responsible for, Yaseen told
journalists in Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The Mazraq region, near the Saudi border, hosts a cluster of
camps, in which thousands of displaced Yemenis and East African
migrants reside. Around 750 families have been forced to flee to
the camps from the Houthi heartland region of Saada in northern
Yemen since the Saudi-led operation began.

A girl fetches household water at the al-Mazraq camp for
displaced persons in northern #Yemen@UNICEF_Yemen#waterispic.twitter.com/1kQaaRN2cR

”UNICEF (@UNICEF) March
24, 2015

The air strikes also have targeted the Houthi forces advancing on
the port city of Aden, the last bastion of the Saudi-backed
president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Witnesses told Daily Sabah paper that the coalition bombarded
rebel-controlled military sites near Mount Nuqum in eastern part
of capital Sanaa, with the Houthis replied with anti-aircraft
fire.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Saudi-led operation, Ahmed
Asiri, said that the coalition naval forces have besieged Yemen’s
ports, AP reported.

Naval forces are blocking the movement of ships to prevent
weapons and fighters from entering or leaving the country, Asiri
explained.

Monday saw the fifth day of Yemen being subjected to airstrikes
by the Saudi-led coalition, aiming to weaken the Shia Houthi
militia, which took control of the country after the resignation
of president Hadi in January.

The rebels in Yemen are supported by Iran, but the Houthis have
denied that they are receiving weapons from Tehran.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is set to join the Saudi-led coalition of
several Gulf States, Sudan, Egypt and Morocco in their fight
against the Yemen rebels, a senior Pakistani government official
said.

“We have already pledged full support to Saudi Arabia in its
operation against rebels and will join the coalition,” the
official said, as cited by Reuters.

The situation in Yemen was previously very fraught, but the
Saudi-led airstrikes have contributed to turning the country into
“something of a humanitarian catastrophe,” Joe Stork,
deputy director for Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North
Africa Division, told RT.

It’s really hard to see what good can possibly come out of
this campaign. I think, frankly, this is a political question,
not a human rights question, but it’s really difficult to see how
the government of Hadi could possibly be restored under this
circumstances,” he said.

Stork believes that there’s “little indication that there’s a
Plan which has been developed by the coalition, and it
still seems unclear what the endgame might be for the Yemen
campaign.

In August 2014, Houthi rebels swept down from their stronghold in
the mountains, demanding economic and political reforms.

In the following months, they seized key state installations in
capital Sanaa and forced both the president and PM to resign.

After announcing their grasp of power in Yemen, the Houthis
continued advancing to the south of the country, seizing cities
one after the other.

Via RT

====

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Euronews: “Yemen: Air strike kills at least 40 people at camp, say aid workers”

The United States is now involved in two air wars in the Middle East, not to mention more widespread drone actions.

US fighter jets have, at the request of the Iraqi government of Haydar al-Abadi, begun bombing Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) positions in Tikrit, according to al-Hayat (Life).

Initially, the US sat out the Tikrit campaign north of the capital of Baghdad because it was a largely Iran-directed operation. Only 3,000 of the troops were regular Iraqi army. Some 30,000 members of the Shiite militias in Iraq joined in– they are better fighters with more esprit de corps than the Iraqi army. Some of them, like the Badr Corps of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, have strong ties to Iran. The special ops unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Jerusalem Brigade, provided tactical and strategic advice, commanded by Qasem Solaimani.

The campaign deployed tanks and artillery against Daesh in Tikrit, but those aren’t all that useful in counter-insurgency, because they cannot do precise targeting and fighting is in back alleys and booby-trapped buildings where infantry and militiamen are vulnerable.

The campaign stalled out. The Shiite militias didn’t want the US coming in, but have been overruled by al-Abadi. US aircraft can precisely target Daesh units and pave the way for an Iraqi advance against the minions of the notorious beheader “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi” (the nom de guerre of Ibrahim al-Samarrai, who is apparently wounded and holed up in Syria).

US air intervention on behalf of the Jerusalem Brigades of the IRGC is ironic in the extreme, since the two have been at daggers drawn for decades. Likewise, militias like Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Peace Brigades” (formerly Mahdi Army) and League of the Righteous (Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq) targeted US troops during Washington’s occupation of Iraq. But the fight against the so-called “Islamic State group” or Daesh has made for very strange bedfellows. Another irony is that apparently the US doesn’t mind essentially tactically allying with Iran this way– the reluctance came from the Shiite militias.

Not only US planes but also those of Jordan and some Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Saudi Arabia? the UAE? Qatar?) will join the bombing of Daesh at Tikrit, since these are also afraid of radical, populist political Islam. But why would they agree to be on the same side as Iran? Actually, this air action is an announcement that Iraq needs the US and the GCC, i.e. it is a political defeat for Iranian unilateralism. The US and Saudi Arabia are pleased with their new moxie in Baghdad.

Then in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has begun bombing the positions of the Shiite Houthi movement that has taken over northern and central Yemen and is marching south. One target was an alleged Iranian-supplied missile launcher in Sanaa to which Saudi Arabia felt vulnerable. That isn’t a huge surprise. The Saudis have bombed before, though not in a while. The big surprise is that they have put together an Arab League anti-Houthi coalition, including Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, and the GCC. Even Pakistan has joined in. (Sudan and Pakistan are a surprise, since they had tilted toward Iran or at least had correct relations with it formerly). The US State Department expressed support for this action and pledged US logistical and military support. It remains to be seen if this coalition can intervene effectively. Air power is unlikely to turn the tide against a grassroots movement.

About a third of Yemenis are Zaidi Shiites, a form of Shiism that traditionally was closer to Sunni Islam than the more militant Iranian Twelver or Imami branch of Shiism. But Saudi proselytizing and strong-arming of Zaidis in the past few decades, attempting to convert them to militant Sunnism of the Salafi variety (i.e. close to Wahhabism, the intolerant state church of Saudi Arabia) produced the Houthi reaction, throwing up a form of militant, populist Zaidism that adopted elements of the Iranian ritual calendar and chants “Death to America.” The Saudis alleged that the Houthis are Iranian proxies, but this is not likely true. They are nativist Yemenis reacting against Saudi attempts at inroads. On the other hand, that Iran politically supports the Houthis and may provide them some arms, is likely true.

The Houthis marched into the capital, Sanaa, in September, and conducted a slow-motion coup against the Arab nationalist government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. He came to power in a referendum with 80% support in February, 2012, after dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh had been forced out by Yemen’s youth revolution of 2011-12. Hadi recently fled to the southern city of Aden and tried to reconstitute the nationalist government there, with support from 6 southern governors who, as Sunni Shafi’is, rejected dictatorial Houthi Zaidi rule (no one elected the Zaidis).

But the Houthis, seeking to squelch a challenge from the south, moved south themselves, taking the Sunni city of Taiz and attracting Sunni tribal allies (Yemeni tribes tend to support the victor and sectarian considerations are not always decisive). Then Houthi forces neared Aden and Mansour Hadi is said to have fled. The nationalist government appears to have collapsed.

The other wrinkle is that elements of the old nationalist Yemen military appear to be supporting the Houthis, possibly at the direction of deposed president Ali Abdallah Saleh. So in a way all this is a reaction against the youth revolution of 2011, which aimed at a more democratic nationalist government.

The US support for the Saudi air strikes and the new coalition makes the Yemen war now the second major air campaign supported by the US in the region. But the one in Iraq is in alliance with Iran. The one in Yemen is against a group supported in some measure by Iran. This latter consideration is probably not important to the US. Rather, the US is afraid that Houthi-generated chaos will create a vacuum in which al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula will gain a free hand. AQAP has repeatedly targeted the US. On the other hand, the Houthis are sworn enemies of al-Qaeda and have fought them militarily. The US also maintains that in each instance, it is supporting the legitimate, elected government of the country.

A lot of the online press in Yemen appears to have been knocked offline by the turmoil, by the way.

—-

Related video:

Reuters: “Saudi Arabia launches air strikes on Houthi fighters in Yemen – Saudi envoy”

SANA’A (IRIN) – Abdu Hasan Dabwan is not willing to let it happen again. Twice before, the 54 year-old says, he waited too long, refusing to flee in the hope that the tensions in his home country would not tip over into chaos. Twice he was wrong.

The first time was 1994. Four short years after North and South Yemen had unified, the initial optimism had faded and a civil war broke out in which president Ali Abdullah Saleh brutally crushed the southern leadership. Trapped in their houses, the Dabwans were forced to watch the three-months of carnage play out around them.

The second time was in 2011 when a wave of popular protests against Saleh began. While he eventually stepped down to be replaced by his deputy Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, it was not before months of intermittent clashes.

“We had terrible experiences [before] when we waited until the war broke out [and] were besieged for many days. Some of our neighbors were killed, and we [had to abandon] much of our furniture and properties.”

So, like many Yemenis, as the country looms ever closer to civil war again, Dabwan is packing his bags and leaving the capital, in his case for his birthplace in the Taiz governorate.

Others feel obliged to stay. Sami Ali, 27, has ordered his family to leave Sana’a as he expects a full-blown civil war, but can’t afford to leave his government job. “I sent them today in the morning because I do not want to wait till I hear the gunshot [that kills them],” he said. “I stayed here because of my job.”

A recurring theme

Once again, Saleh is not far from the chaos. The former leader never quite accepted his loss of status and has allied with his erstwhile foes the Houthis – a Zaydi Shia Muslim group from the north of the country – to try to reclaim control of Yemen. Houthi forces have seized Sana’a and other northern cities and look set to try to take to the south.

Hadi has escaped to the Red Sea port city of Aden, where his presidential palace has been bombed – allegedly by forces loyal to the Houthis. The United Nations envoy to the country has warned that the country is on the “edge of a civil war.”

Calls for calm are falling on deaf ears. In an aggressive speech on Sunday night seen by many as a declaration of war, Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi lambasted Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, accusing them of undermining Yemen’s security in league the United States and Israel. He rejected all calls for political dialogue. Hadi has since called on Gulf States to intervene militarily.
Photo: Almigdad Mogali/IRIN
Shop keepers have reported slow business as Yemen’s economy has struggled

“This is the closest Yemen has been to a full on civil war in some time. Fighting is currently taking place on multiple fronts, while tensions between rival governments in Aden and Sana’a has never been higher,” said Adam Baron, a Yemen expert and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)

“There is still some possibility of some deal to prevent war – the fact is, some sort of consensus agreement remains in all parties’ interests as no one faction is likely to be able to able to decisively establish hegemony over the country. That being said, the distrust between factions runs deep and it would likely be difficult for anyone to take a step back at this point while still saving face.”

Protest and preparation

There was an eerie silence in Sana’a on Tuesday as residents stayed in their houses. Some streets, normally bustling, were almost deserted. In some areas, men piled into shops – grabbing as much food and water as they could, packing them into cars and heading home.

“When the Houthis entered and dominated Sana’a [in September] I came and bought YR220,000 ($1,000) of food, and now I am coming to buy more because no one knows what will happen tomorrow,” Hussein Nasser Ahmed, 45, said.

Ahmed Al-Werafi, 38, said he is responsible for 28 relatives, but doesn’t have enough money to get food for them all in the event of a lockdown. “We trust in Allah,; yes we fear the potential war but we have no money to buy food, so we can do nothing but to wait and see what will happen,” he said.

Despite some frantic shoppers, business is generally slow. Ameen Al-Ma’amari, a food wholesaler, explained that his sales had dropped 50 percent this year since the Houthis took over – partly because many companies and diplomatic missions have fled the city.

Protests in Taiz

The latest front for the conflict is the southern city of Taiz, where Houthi forces have seized the airport. In response, thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest, leading to violent repression. On Tuesday four people were allegedly killed when Houthi forces opened fire on protesters.

Photo: Almigdad Mogali/IRIN
Yemenis stock up on goods as the country appears to slide closer to civil war

Saeed Dabwan, 56, from Taiz, was one of thousands on the streets and he said he would never accept domination by the northern Houthis. “Taiz is [a] city of flowers, civilization and education and we cannot accept the reactionary forces at all,” he said.

An official security source in Taiz told IRIN that the city’s police and army had rejected the arrival of the Houthi forces. The source said a meeting had been held to discuss how to expel the Houthis. “The meeting stressed the necessity of not taking any instructions from [Sana’a], unless they are confirmed by directions from Taiz governor,” he said.

Adding to humanitarian toll

The violence is likely to increase suffering in the Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country. Over half of the country’s 24 million population lack access to safe water and sanitation, while 10 million do not have regular, reliable access to food.

Nasser Al-Jamali, 48, a day labourer, said he had only worked for 13 days in the past six months and has been forced to move his family from Sana’a to save money. “I do not know what to do or where to go. Even the merchants and businessmen complain [of] the miserable situation. People stopped building and companies dismissed many of their staff, so who will hire us?”

Jameel Al-Yafe’e, 34, said he had cut his daily labouring rates in half but still could not find work. “No one to hire us because companies have left the country and no roads [are being] paved, no buildings built. Even the farmers cannot find diesel to irrigate lands and, therefore to hire us.”

“The humanitarian situation in Yemen is still dire – a civil war will only make things worse, deepening an already acute crisis,” Baron said.

Via IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

France 24: ” Yemen “dangerously close to the edge of civil war” says UN envoy”