Daily Times

Conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa are showing no signs of leading to any peaceful conclusion. Conflicts have variously been called existential and generational. By any name the present situation has caused immense human misery, mass killings, destruction of cities and a tragic Syrian refugee problem: four million Syrian refugees, left mostly to etch out an existence on meagre resources. Added to this long list is the civil war in Yemen, with Houthi tribesmen fighting the government of Yemen, occupying the capital of Sanaa in February. Houthis insist that their struggle is for economic betterment, a corruption-free government and a right to live peacefully according to their aspirations.
The Arab League met on March 29 in Egypt to discuss the current situation. It has been proposed to set up a joint Arab force to face the crisis. Arab countries have felt the need to organise their own defence at a belated stage. This implies that decades of dependence upon US and NATO troops will hopefully come to an end. The Arab League authorised aerial bombings on Houthi positions in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is heading this aerial mission, codenamed Operation Decisive Storm, by committing 150 of its aircraft. Other important member countries participating in the aerial campaign are the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. The sense of urgency to the Yemen crisis is rather exaggerated and raises many questions with regards to circumstances and time of launch of the aerial bombing. Houthi tribesmen certainly do not have the necessary capacity or wherewithal to cause any security situation for Saudi Arabia.
Houthi tribes inhabit Sadah province in North Yemen adjoining the Yemen Saudi border. Yemen has been a strife-ridden area with a history of foreign interventions. In 1960, President Gemal Nasser sent in Egyptian troops to overthrow the 1,000-year-old Zaydi dynasty, which came down in 1962. At that time, Saudi Arabia and Jordan supported the monarchy. The Houthi tribesmen, themselves Zaydis, started a rebellion against the new republican government. The insurgency was to last till 1970 during which Egypt lost 10,000 of its troops in Yemen. The Egyptian experience is an indicator of what the present civil war holds for interventionist countries.
Since mid-2004 to 2010, there have been six Houthi uprisings, also called the Sadah rebellions. The most intense was the rebellion of August 2009 to February 2010. The government of Yemen used aircraft and tanks in its operation, codenamed Scorched Earth. The Houthis alleged that Saudi ground forces were used against them. They further alleged that US fighter aircraft carried out 22 airstrikes. In spite of full state might, there were no significant victories for the Yemen government. The Arab Spring 2011 only brought broken promises for the Houthis, who sided with the pro-democratic demonstrators for the overthrow of President Saleh. The elections of February 2012 brought in President Abed Mansoor Hadi. The Houthis did not get any fair deal from the elected government of President Hadi. Instead they had to face resistance from Sunni militant groups. The Houthi insurgency is tied to history and political culture, their sense of persecution at the hands of their fellow Sunni tribes and political deprivation when their rule ended in 1962. This problem can only be solved through dialogue and the recognition of the Houthis’ existence.
The army of the Yemen government, like the armies of some other countries in the Middle East, is incapable of standing up and fighting. This is symptomatic and surely many of the rulers in the Middle East must know of the poor capabilities of their armies. To make good the deficiency of their failing armies, governments have started creating proxies and non-state actors in the Middle East to further their national agendas. The Arab Spring of 2011 saw a rise of these armed bodies, especially in Syria and Libya. The use of non-state actors and proxies by governments themselves has caused immense and irreversible damage in the Middle East. The rise of non-state actors is certainly to be discouraged. The Middle East mostly lacks pluralism, democracy and fair economic development. These conditions give rise to non-state actors, instability and extreme militarism. Under these circumstances, peace in the Middle East is a far cry. The Middle East is entangled in its past and recent history is a history of clashes, repression and foreign interventions.
The manner of rule of the later Ottoman rulers left an impact upon present day Middle Eastern political culture. The end of the Ottoman Empire saw a rise of new colonial powers, UK and France in the post-World War One era. Both these colonial powers encouraged a non-democratic political culture. The legacy and many actors of this non-democratic colonial political culture live on today. During this era, when the world was making vast gains from the Industrial Revolution, the Ottoman Middle East was mired by an unresponsive bureaucracy and revenue collection from non-industrial sources. The Middle East in the mid-18th century unfortunately missed the opportunity to enter the global Industrial Age. This missed opportunity still dominates the Middle East, which has hardly any industrial manufacturing base. This historically missed opportunity for industrialisation has vastly impacted adversely the political, social, cultural and economic set up of the Middle East.
The real challenge to the Middle East is of militant extremism that threatens the existence of states like Libya, Iraq and Syria, and challenges Algeria, Somalia and Egypt in the Sinai. Dislodging Islamic State (IS) from the occupied territories in Iraq and Syria is proving a rather difficult task, or may be impossible under the present circumstances. The Iraqi army and militias, many backed by Iran, and support from the US air force have, with great difficulty, managed to reoccupy Tikrit in Iraq in March this year. Many such victories will be required to reoccupy the territories. Even then the appeal and ideology of IS will live. The coming events in the Middle East will certainly not favour the established order.
Recently, IS captured most parts of the Palestinian refugee camp in Yarmouk, Syria. Yarmouk is just 15 kilometres from downtown Damascus. It is a major strategic victory for IS. Dislodging IS from there will be a rather impossible task. Over 18,000 Palestinians are still besieged in the camp. Apparently, the Arab League does not have any urgency, strategy or will to counter the threat from IS. It would be appropriate for their own survival that the Arab world for once organise itself and make efforts to contain IS. With the passage of time the options left for the Arab world are narrowing.
On examining the Middle East’s recent past, military interventions only gave a legacy of violence. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 at a cost of some two trillion dollars, the Saudi arming and financing of rebels in Syria against President Bashar al-Assad since 2011 and the US air force’s action in Libya to oust Colonel Gaddafi resulted in destroying the Libyan state, and a resultant civil war. The Houthi problem cannot be solved by military action alone; it has historical, political and social aspects. The intervention of the Arab League in Yemen is going to be prolonged with high economic costs. This will further destabilise the region and strengthen al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and IS can take advantage of the situation. The present intervention in Yemen by Arab League nations is only going to give results similar to those in countries like Syria, Iraq and Libya. Recent events in the Middle East have shown that armed interventions alone cannot produce results; army action against insurgents and terrorists succeed in countries that have democratic, sincere, credible and honest governments. A government having these attributes is difficult to find in the present day Middle East. Apparently, like most of the conflicts in the Middle East, the solution to the Yemen issue seems to be far away, a real generational war.

The writer is a former member of the police service of Pakistan. He can be reached at humayunshafi@gmail.com