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Creative Destruction Intensifies in Yemen, as Saudi-Led Campaign Starts in Assistance to President Hadi

March 27, 2015

For a background, read:

Creative Destruction: The Name of the Game in the Middle East 

 

Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman receives Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in Riyadh on Thursday, March 26, 2015 (SPA)	Yemeni vehicle hit in a Saudi Air Strike on March 26, 2015

Houthis hit hard

Arab News, March 27, 2015

Saudi Arabia waged early Thursday “Operation Decisive Storm” against the Houthi coup in Yemen and in support of legitimate President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The Saudi-led military coalition declared Yemen’s airspace as a “restricted area” after Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman ordered the airstrikes on Thursday at 12 a.m. The campaign has already resulted in the elimination of several Houthi leaders.

Yemen air space is currently under full control of the Saudi Royal Air Force. As the operation continues, a coalition of all GCC countries, barring Oman, is taking part in the campaign, including Sudan, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Pakistan.

Saudi Arabia has deployed 100 fighter jets, 150,000 soldiers and other navy units, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.

Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Washington Adel Al-Jubeir told reporters that a 10-country coalition had joined the campaign in a bid “to protect and defend the legitimate government” of Hadi.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia halted flights to seven airports south of the Kingdom, Reuters reported.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Riad Yassine said the operations would continue until the Houthis agreed to join peace talks and backtrack on all measures taken by them.
The coalition warplanes carried out fresh strikes in the evening on Thursday, targeting a rebel-held military base in third city Taiz, local officials said. The attack hit the Al-Tariq airbase in Taiz, located in southwestern Yemen, they said.

Operation to continue till goals achieved

In a late-night press conference on Thursday, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Assiri, consultant in the Office of the Minister of Defense, said: “The military operations will continue till all objectives are achieved. The main aim of the first stage of the military operations was to destroy rebel warplanes. A number of rebels, who were heading toward the Saudi borders, were killed in the raids. The ultimate aim is to restore the legitimate government of Yemen to power.”

He said there would be no negative impact on domestic airlines in the Kingdom. “The flights were suspended to the southern cities for security reasons. It was temporary.”

He said the Yemeni airspace was in Saudi control “within 15 minutes of the airstrikes.” All Saudi aircraft returned to the base safely after hitting their targets.

Massive support for KSA campaign to save Yemen

Five Gulf states said Thursday that they will protect Yemen’s embattled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi against Shiite rebels.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE said they “have decided to answer the call of President Hadi to protect Yemen and his people from the aggression of the (Shiite) Houthi militia.”

Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby declared his full support for the airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. “I affirm complete support” for the campaign, he said at a meeting of Arab foreign ministers. “It is an operation against targets belonging to the Houthis who committed a coup.”

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman will lead the Saudi delegation to the 26th Arab League Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh.
Hadi who arrived in Riyadh on Thursday will also attend the summit.

The US is coordinating closely with Saudi Arabia and regional allies in the military action, including providing intelligence and logistical support, the White House said.

US forces were not taking direct military action in Yemen, she stressed, but were “establishing a Joint Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate US military and intelligence support.”

“We strongly urge the Houthis to halt immediately their destabilizing military actions and return to negotiations as part of the political dialogue,” added Meehan.
“The international community has spoken clearly through the UN Security Council and in other fora that the violent takeover of Yemen by an armed faction is unacceptable and that a legitimate political transition can be accomplished only through political negotiations and a consensus agreement among all of the parties.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a phone call on Thursday that “other countries” should not be supporting Houthi militants in Yemen, Cameron’s spokeswoman said, something Tehran is already doing.

“In order to restore stability what we need is a political process and ... as part of that other countries should not be supporting the Houthi rebels and instead be encouraging all the different parties in Yemen with different interests to come together in a political process,” the spokeswoman said.

Pakistan’s government said Thursday it will dispatch a top civil-military delegation to Saudi Arabia following Riyadh’s request that it join the coalition.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided to send the group to Saudi Arabia on Friday after meeting with top defense and military officials in Islamabad late Thursday, his office said in a statement.

“The meeting concluded that any threat to Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity would evoke a strong response from Pakistan,” it said, adding that Pakistan’s defense minister and Sharif’s national security adviser would travel to the country, along with top military figures.

Sharif told the meeting: “Pakistan enjoys close and brotherly relations with Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries and attaches great importance to their security.”
Morocco also joined the coalition, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.Rabat has “put at the disposition” of the coalition Moroccan warplanes already based in the UAE, a statement said. Morocco had “decided to provide all forms of support to the coalition to sustain legitimacy in Yemen through the political, intelligence, logistical and military dimensions,” the statement added.

The objective was to help “remove Yemen from the crisis in which it is mired,” as well as to “stand up to all foreign conspiracies woven against the country, and against Gulf and Arab security.”

Turkey said it supports the operation and called on the militia group and its “foreign supporters” to abandon acts which threaten peace and security in the region.
President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted on Thursday as saying Turkey may consider providing logisitical support to the Saudi-led mission and called on Iran and “terrorist groups” to withdraw from the country.

“Turkey may consider providing logistical support based on the evolution of the situation,” Erdogan told France 24 in an interview, extracts of which were published on its website and by Turkish broadcasters.

“Iran and the terrorist groups must withdraw,” he said.

Four Egyptian naval vessels have crossed the Suez Canal en route to Yemen to secure the Gulf of Aden, maritime sources at the Suez Canal said on Thursday.
“It was necessary for Egypt to assume its responsibility... through the participation of elements of the Egyptian armed forces from the air force and Navy,” the presidency said in a statement. It said the action came in response to “demands by the Yemeni nation for the return of stability and to preserve its Arab identity.”
Former Lebanese Premier Saad Al-Hariri praised King Salman’s decision to launch an attack. “Iranian intervention in domestic affairs in Yemen requires an urgent Arab reaction.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said his country stands behind the Arab coalition. “The military operation which has been launched by Saudi Arabia and some GCC countries is necessary to support the legitimacy in Yemen,” Reynders said.

Saudi Arabia has planned to beef up security at its borders and around oil and industrial facilities, SPA said Thursday, citing a statement by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif.

Prince Mohammed, who is also the interior minister, stressed “strengthening all security measures on the borders of the Kingdom and in all public utilities and around the oil and industrial facilities,” at a meeting to review security developments in Yemen, SPA said.

Kuwait said earlier on Thursday it had raised security around its oil facilities inside and outside the country. 

 

With Yemen strikes, Saudis show growing independence from U.S.

World | Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:25pm EDT

WASHINGTON | By Matt Spetalnick, Warren Strobel and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

Saudi Arabia kept some key details of its military action in Yemen from Washington until the last moment, U.S. officials said, as the kingdom takes a more assertive regional role to compensate for perceived U.S. disengagement.

The Middle East's top oil power told the United States weeks ago it was weighing action in Yemen but only informed Washington of the exact details just before Thursday's unprecedented air strikes against Iran-allied Houthi rebels, the officials said.

U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy increasingly relies on surrogates rather than direct U.S. military involvement. He is training Syrian rebels to take on the government of President Bashar Assad and this week launched air strikes to back up Iraqi forces trying to retain the city of Tikrit.

To Obama's Republican critics, he is ceding the traditional U.S. leadership role. The White House denies it is disengaging from the region and says it has been in close contact with the Saudis over their plans in recent days.     

Although the Saudis spoke with top U.S. officials as they debated an air assault in support of embattled Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, U.S. officials acknowledged gaps in their knowledge of the kingdom’s battle plans and objectives.

Asked when he was told by Saudi Arabia that it would take military action in Yemen, General Lloyd Austin, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, told a Senate hearing on Thursday he spoke with Saudi Arabia’s chief of defense "right before they took action."

He added that he couldn't assess the likelihood of the campaign succeeding because he didn't know the "specific goals and objectives."

Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, said Riyadh consulted closely with Washington on Yemen - but ultimately decided it had to act quickly as Houthi rebels moved toward Hadi's last redoubt in the southern city of Aden.

"The concern was, if Aden falls, then what do you do?" al-Jubeir told a small group of reporters on Thursday. "The concern was that the situation was so dire you had to move."

Saudi Arabia's air strikes point toward an aspiration to defend its regional interests with less reliance on the U.S. security umbrella that has long been the main thrust of Washington’s relations with the oil-rich kingdom.   

MORE ASSERTIVE

Riyadh has been growing increasingly assertive since early 2011, when Washington's reluctance to back former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak in the face of mass protests led the Saudis to doubt its commitment to traditional Arab allies.

Obama's decision in summer 2013 not to bomb Syria after the use of poison gas there, coupled with its sudden announcement it had conducted secret nuclear talks with Riyadh's nemesis Iran, further alarmed the Saudis.

"If the operation is successful, I think we will see a major turn in Saudi foreign policy. It's going to be assertive, become more aggressive in dealing with the Iranian expansionism,” said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security analyst with ties to the Saudi Interior Ministry.

The Obama administration is reluctant to get drawn into direct military action in another Arab conflict when it is already facing daunting challenges in Syria and Iraq.

The worsening Yemen conflict forced Washington to evacuate all remaining U.S. special forces from the country, further undermining the U.S. campaign of drone strikes against the most lethal branch of al Qaeda based there.

Sunni Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen is the latest front in a growing regional contest for power with Iran that is also playing out in Syria, where Tehran backs Assad’s government, and Iraq, where Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias are playing a major role in fighting.

While U.S. officials have downplayed the scope of the relationship between Iran and Yemen’s Houthis, al-Jubeir said that members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian-backed Hezbollah are on the ground advising the Houthis.

One senior U.S. official described Riyadh's operation as a "panic response" to the fast-deteriorating situation in Yemen that the Saudis feared could spill over its border.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested that the 10-nation Saudi-led coalition had been patched together so quickly that its effectiveness was in doubt.

The White House says it will not join directly in military operations in Yemen, but has set up a cell to coordinate U.S. military and intelligence support to the operation. But U.S. officials said they were sharing intelligence information on a limited basis so far.

U.S. officials said they discussed the deteriorating situation in Yemen with Saudi Arabia over the course of recent weeks.

Secretary of State John Kerry discussed Yemen at length during a March 5 visit to Riyadh, but it was "not clear (the Saudis) had made any decisions about potential action at that point," said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

"We had been talking with the Saudis throughout the course of the last several days about what they were thinking and what type of support we could render with regards to their actions in Yemen," U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Angus McDowall in Riyadh. Editing by XXX)

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