For the past eight months, a Saudi Arabia-led coalition has been waging a military campaign in Yemen against the Shia Houthi militant group and forces loyal to Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The coalition is trying to prop-up the government of the country’s current president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
Since the campaign began on 26 March, coalition forces have managed to retake five of Yemen’s southern provinces captured by the Houthis, neutralise most of the air-defence systems that the group had seized from the Yemeni government, and destroy more than 80 per cent of the militants’ arms depots. Recent setbacks sustained by the Houthis and their allies have prompted them to agree to participate in planned peace talks later this month, which will probably take place in either Geneva or the Omani capital Muscat.
On 28 October, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said that the campaign in Yemen is likely to wind down soon. He noted that the Houthis and Saleh had both accepted UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which will form the basis of the upcoming talks. Despite Al-Jubeir’s assertions, however, clashes have continued in several parts of Yemen and the planned peace talks may still easily be derailed.
With the scheduled negotiations around the corner, it is worth trying to shed light on the Saudi-led campaign, including its objectives, results and primary participants. The latter include the current Yemeni government, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan.
The campaign has been waged in two stages, the first of which was “Operation Decisive Storm” (26 March to 21 April), which involved the imposition of a naval blockade on Yemen and intensive airstrikes on Houthi positions. The second stage was “Operation Restoring Hope”; it started on 13 September and has involved the deployment of ground troops in the war-torn country. With the launch of this phase, Senegal and Malaysia joined the coalition, which has managed to retake Yemen’s Aden, Lahij, Abya, Ad Dali and Shabwah provinces from the Houthis and pro-Saleh forces.
According to Anadolu news agency, the coalition forces have lost 154 military personnel, including 84 Saudis, 63 Emiratis, five Bahrainis, one Qatari soldier and one Moroccan pilot, along with 20 civilians of various nationalities.
Although the campaign was launched ostensibly to “protect Yemen and its people from the Houthi militias”, there were actually a number of reasons. For a start, there was a lack of trust in the Houthi leadership, which had rejected the results of a national dialogue held in January last year. This distrust was compounded by the Houthis’ forcible takeover of state institutions in the Yemeni capital Sanaa last year and an attempt to force President Hadi to resign, a move that was rejected by the Gulf States and a number of other Arab and Western countries.
Furthermore, fear of extremist groups, including Daesh/ISIS, was engendered by memories of the situation in Yemen following Saleh’s ouster in 2011, when Al-Qaeda stepped up attacks on the Yemeni army and bolstered its influence in the southern provinces.
There was also mounting concern in the Gulf States — which largely regard the Houthis as an Iranian proxy — regarding the potential spread of Iranian and Shia influence in the region. Such fears surrounded airlifts conducted earlier this year from Tehran to Sanaa, for “commercial purposes”, which might also have been used to transfer weapons and fighters from Iran to Yemen.
The Gulf States were also alarmed in March when the Houthis staged a series of military manoeuvres in Yemen’s northern Saada province, which borders Saudi Arabia. The Houthis took control of Yemen’s strategic Aden province on 19 March, to which Hadi had fled from Sanaa six months earlier. In the same month, Houthi leader Mohamed Al-Bekhiti warned Riyadh that Saudi military intervention in Yemen, with the aim of propping up Hadi, who had fled to Riyadh along with his government, would result in the “overthrow” of Saudi Arabia’s ruling dynasty.
Legal basis
The Saudi-led campaign claims as its legal basis Article 51 of the UN Charter, which guarantees the right of collective self-defence. This was referred to in a 24 March statement by Hadi, in which he formally requested military intervention by the Gulf States “to protect Yemen and its people from Houthi aggression.”
On 14 April, the UN Security Council endorsed Resolution 2216, which imposed sanctions on the Houthis and banned the provision of weapons to the militant group and its allies.
The resolution further called on the Houthis and pro-Saleh forces to withdraw from cities under their control — most importantly the capital Sanaa — and lay down their arms before taking part in peace talks.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.