ISIS in the North and Houthis in the South

There is a fierce war being fought in the north and south of the Arabian Peninsula. Islamic State (ISIS) fighters are in Syria and Iraq, while in Yemen the Houthis have taken control of the government after a bitter armed struggle.

More than 50 countries are participating in the ground and air war, ostensibly against ISIS but they are targeting Sunni Muslims. The ISIS fighters are masked and their faces are known only to their “Caliph”. They are committing crimes against humanity that are prohibited by Islam. This brutal organisation is fighting those who are fighting the regimes in Iraq and Syria; it is as if they are regime tools. Their battlefields are the areas with high Sunni Muslim populations and international coalition forces are using their weapons against the Sunnis under the pretext of fighting ISIS and terrorism.

At the same time, we find that the “popular masses”, made up largely of Shia Muslims, are committing the most heinous crimes against innocent people in Anbar, Salah Al-Din, and other areas in Iraq and the Levant, helped by the airstrikes provided by the coalition forces and Iran. No one is talking about these crimes and the Arab and Western media outlets are not reporting them. The truth is that ISIS, the “popular masses” and the Houthis are the true terrorists.

Iran is using its political, religious and military weight to support the Syrian and Iraqi regimes; it supplies them with everything they need to impose their control, not only in their own countries, but also in the aforementioned areas, including Lebanon and Jordan. All indicators suggest that ISIS will continue to receive support from Iran as long as the war in the region is waged against the Sunni Muslims and as long as the sectarian “masses” are trained to use live ammunition to kill and destroy the Sunnis. This is despite the fact that Iran is also helping the international coalition to fight against ISIS.

The coalition has been tasked with destroying ISIS and its supporters, and that is what it is doing. However, the signs are that this war will last long and will exhaust its backers financially. It will also have many victims, with killing, displacement, siege, starvation, humiliation, violations of human dignity and the mass destruction of infrastructure taking their toll. Public and private properties are being targeted primarily because the international community is not trying to eliminate the underlying causes of the bloody savagery to which the people in the region are being subjected.

I believe that the ultimate solution for this issue is the ousting of the Assad regime in Damascus and the removal of the Da’wa Party and all other sectarian parties from authority in Iraq. This must be followed up by the imposition of social justice, equality and freedom. A government achieving the legitimate ambitions of the people must also be established.

In the south of the peninsula, last Friday saw the Houthi rebels in Sana’a announcing their complete control over the branches of the Yemeni state by dissolving the House of Representatives and replacing it with a council they called the “National Transitional Council”; it is made up of 551 people from the membership of the Houthis’ “rebel councils”. They also cancelled the country’s constitution before they took control of the country and issued a “constitutional declaration” while forming a five-member presidential committee to manage state affairs. This will remain until a temporary government is formed, as long as it is made up of “revolutionary council” members; they will make the decisions and act as the main reference in the country. In other words, the Houthis will dominate. They are also Shia Muslims backed by Iran.

The fight for power in Yemen may yet lead to a vicious war. If so, the losers will be ordinary Yemenis and the state, and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries will be affected as well.

What is the solution for Yemen? Some say that the Houthis should remain in power and that the international community should impose a blockade on their main territory, North Yemen, declaring the group to be terrorists. This should be made clear, they believe, by a UN Security Council resolution; Yemen’s membership of the Arab League should be suspended. Following this, a southern state should be declared in Yemen and its membership in the UN should be restored, just as Syria’s was in the early 1960s when it broke away from the United Arab Republic. According to such views, no government formed by the revolutionary councils or Houthis should be recognised and control must be imposed on Bab Al-Mandab and the islands in the Red Sea by the proposed southern government based in Aden. The Gulf States must also support this government.

In conclusion, following this political shift in Sana’a, the GCC is in danger. Its slowness in resolving the matter in favour of the Yemeni people will lead to consequences we may regret and Iran will triumph yet again. What is it about this that we do not understand?

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadid, 9 February, 2015