After a swift and unexpectedly successful march on the capital city Sanaa early last year, Houthis emerged as the new predominant force in Yemen, creating serious security concerns in neighbouring countries, particularly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the UAE and Oman. Tremors were so powerful as to force an unusual scramble by the KSA and UAE to invoke GCC defence pact provisions and send out frantic appeals to Pakistan and other countries to dispatch troops to help them fight in Yemen. This was an extraordinary panic call, as Pakistan’s armed forces have never fought a friendly country’s war in another friendly country. Pakistan considered the Houthi uprising a local rebellion unworthy of its military intervention. Prudently, Pakistan decided to help through diplomatic efforts, while assuring Saudi Arabia, a long time ally, a guaranteed defensive intervention should her integrity be threatened. Even this declaration was quite out of the ordinary under the circumstances and could be stressful for Pakistan as things are evolving ominously in the Middle East. Resorting to diplomacy was a sensible move. Pakistan’s remarkable composure incensed the UAE whose irate foreign minister had implied ‘dire consequences’.
Houthis posed a direct and immediate threat to Saudi Arabia’s stability, delicate ethno-tribal balance and her critical naval vulnerability at the Bab al Mandab Straits, therefore had to be dealt with resolutely and vigorously. Aden had to be the next whose fall could effectively jeopardise international shipping and intern good part of the Saudi navy in the Red Sea. Saudi Naval fleet is effectively split into two and is anchored in inland naval bases in Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Both these narrow bodies of water have their bottlenecks respectively at Bab al Mandab and Hormuz. It has no serious blue waters naval deployment capability even if her navy was able to break out into the open. Houthis had created a real crisis and it should have been anticipated by Saudi defence experts.
However, insufficient strategic calibre and absence of a proper sense of what-could-happen prevented them from a resolute scramble to make a short shift of the puny threat posed by the ragtag Houthi militia. It wasn’t difficult but they were short of the needful military and political acumen. In modern history Saudi wars have been fought by the US and Europeans while Saudis have proverbially sat back and drawn deep on their shisha and sipped long their bitter cups of coffee. To begin with, Houthis had overstretched themselves militarily by capturing Sanaa without the ability to sustain their victory or beat back a determined counter attack. The action was basically meant to intimidate sitting government into coming to terms with them. Had the Saudi forces moved with speed in time, in a double pincer manoeuvre from the sea and the direction of Najran-Sharoura , converged on Sanaa and blocked Houthi escape eastward before the pincers closed, they could have eventually boxed them into northwestern Yemen with nowhere to go except the negotiations table. They did not heed this friendly advice and are now paying the price. The ISIL and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have moved into the void left by disintegrating Yemeni state.
The fundamentally flawed Saudi military doctrine combined with inexperienced defence and foreign affairs leadership created an unfavourable decision-making environment at a moment of grave national crisis. As a result, despite overwhelming military superiority and availability of a strategic window of opportunity, Saudi and allied forces completely bungled their Yemeni campaign. They had the opportunity to cordon off and eventually surround the Houthis in under two weeks and then bring them to negotiating table for a political settlement from a position of strength. They also would have prevented spaces abandoned by the Yemeni state and left by the Houthis from being occupied by the ISIL and AQAP fighters, as also effectively prevent external intervention or reinforcements from reaching Houthis. They could do none of these nor make their national territory any safer from the mounting Houthi threat. Their spluttering air campaign and disjointed attempts at para-drops and limited offensives have not paid off. In fact their pussyfooted military reaction emboldened the Houthis so much that recently the latter shelled Najran and Jizan, two major Saudi border towns, setting up a panic displacement of Asir region population inwards.
There is an eager anticipation in the air that Sanaa might fall soon to the GCC coalition forces. Fall of the capital city will be like the fall of Grozny or Kabul. Like the Chechen and Taliban fighters it will free Houthi rebels to resort to bush warfare all over the countryside, and that is their strong point. The war in Yemen will invariably be prolonged and complicated.
Houthis are not alone in keeping Saudis sleepless at night. Their economy is melting down. Iran has just been unshackled and KSA’s eastern provinces are in sectarian ferment. The ISIL in the neighbouring Syria and Iraq are aggressively pursuing their murderous agenda, and are no friends of Saudis. Dreaded Saudi internal security steel mesh is not as effective as it used to be. There are big holes where sharks have started to slip in and out. They have a huge expatriate work force, which has seeped into all walks of Saudi life, fully aware that they are indispensible to the Saudi state and society. By the same token they are also aware of the chinks in the lumbering state apparatus. Up to now they were kept under check by a combination of coercive police power, highly restrictive inter-city movement and severe penalties for jumping an employer. Expats had some of their basic civil liberties denied like the right to assembly, speech and affiliation whose breach could result in jail, deportation and monetary penalties. In all it was a system devised to exploit and keep this rootless working mass bonded.
This dragnet is about to shatter. It is evident that due to stuttering Saudi military strategy and inability to assess the real dimensions of dangers to the state security including an inexplicable precaution to appear politically correct in dealing with the Yemeni crisis they have lost the initiative to Houthis decisively. The Yemeni president had made a written request to Saudi Arabia to help repel the Houthi attack. Following Houthis is a much greater menace: the ISIL and the AQAP. Considering Iran’s newly gained liberty of action in the region, the overall scenario is becoming bleaker, and eventually will be beyond the compass of Saudis to handle. Yemen is to the KSA what Afghanistan is to Pakistan.
Initiative is still with the Houthis, which is what matters in war and should worry the Saudi strategists. Rebels have been proactive since quite some time, and next lot might start raiding deep inside Saudi territories. This will cause two different but mutually reinforcing effects. Militarily it will tend to partially reverse the front on the fixed Saudi forces slicing it dangerously at different places. Socially it would be even more unsettling. It can force population in bordering areas to shift helter-skelter inwards in larger numbers. A major displacement can seriously jeopardise Saudi Arabia’s internal security system resulting in breakdown of law and order. Uncommitted locals, disaffected expats and proxies might take advantage of the slipping grip of the police and intelligence agencies. If such a thing happens, that will be the beginning of the end of an otherwise composed and apparently stable Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ensuing anarchy can be anybody’s guess, and its ramifications for the region could be really devastating.
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at [email protected]