- NOVEMBER 20, 2009
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This Week at War: The Upside of the Proxy War in Yemen
What the four-stars are reading -- a weekly column from Small Wars Journal.
BY ROBERT HADDICK | NOVEMBER 13, 2009
The Saudi-Iranian proxy war escalates: good news for the U.S.
A sectarian rebellion in northern Yemen has now become an open contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran for influence over Yemen and the Gulf of Aden region. This week the Saudis brought their air and naval power to bear against Yemen's Houthi rebels -- Shiite insurgents very likely supported by Iran - after a Houthi incursion into Saudi territory. Iran responded by warning Saudi Arabia to stay out of the conflict. What remains to be seen is whether this conflict will create and harden a Sunni-Arab alliance that might someday effectively contain Iran.
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According to the New York Times, the Houthis captured a strategic mountain near the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border and clashed with a Saudi border patrol on Nov. 3. The Saudi response was a sustained air and artillery campaign against Houthi positions inside Yemen. On Nov 10 Saudi naval forces began a blockade of Yemen's coast in order to cut the Houthis off from resupply.
The Saudi and Yemeni governments believe that Iran is supplying the rebels with weapons, though Tehran denies it.
Why has Saudi Arabia felt the need to overtly intervene in what was previously an internal Yemeni dispute? According to the United Nations, the latest flare-up in the Houthi insurrection has created 175,000 refugees. Breaking the insurgency might curtail the refugee crisis and prevent it from spilling over into Saudi Arabia.
At the geostrategic level, Saudi leaders might fear the creation of a pro-Iranian Shiite enclave adjacent to the Red Sea shipping lane, similar to what Iran has achieved with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. From the Saudi perspective, it would be best to strangle that possibility immediately.
Other players are taking note of the escalation in the Houthi conflict and making their own arrangements. On Nov. 11 Yemen disclosed that it had signed a military cooperation deal with the United States; the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Separately, the growing friction between Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-Arab states in the Gulf region on the other seems to be good news for arms exporters. According to Bloomberg News, major U.S. and European defense contractors expect $40 billion in sales over the next five years to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to upgrade aircraft, missile, and naval systems.
U.S. officials should be pleased by this reaction. Any real challenge Iranian ambitions will require Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states to balance Iranian power. Accomplishing that will require more resolve and teamwork than the Sunni Arab states have demonstrated so far. If the proxy war generated by the Houthi rebellion achieves this response from the gulf countries, it would greatly serve U.S. interests in the region.
On Yemen we should be careful. While it is useful to have nations to counter an opposing nation we can't directly attack, we have to remember the matter of nuclear weapons. The only guarantee we have that Iran won't use them offensively is the fact that radiation and dust would devastate Iran as well. I'm not willing to trust that Iran (or any other nation for that matter) won't decide to use them if it's on the losing side of a war that threatens Iranian land, especially with the fragility* of the current government.
For Sri Lanka, this seems to me to be a war that will return. It won't happen soon, but it will be in less than twenty years. The only way to avoid it is to seriously move towards normal relations with the Tamilese, and the current government's character doesn't suggest that.
*By fragility I don't mean that it will collapse soon, but rather that the government is like glass, a hard thing that can last for a long time but will fracture and shatter if it is dealt a serious blow. The only way to change that is to get the economy on a better track than it was prior to the recession, and to last more than ten years after the post-election crackdown.
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