President Barack Obama’s main ally in Yemen, the country that hosts al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), fled in a boat today to avoid capture by forces controlled by the strongman Washington helped to dislodge in 2012.
President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who is also backed by the Saudi and Gulf regimes, was holed up in Yemen’s strategic southern port city of Aden, his hometown. He fled after Yemeni military units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh captured a military base near Aden, occupied the international airport and bombed his residence. They also captured his defense Minister and other senior officials.
Earlier he fled from the presidential palace in Sana’a after that capital city fell to Houthi tribesmen from the north, who are longtime enemies of Saudi Arabia and receive support from Iran. The Houthis have recently become allies of Saleh, who hates Hadi, his former Vice President.
Hadi is seeking military and diplomatic help from the Saudis and Gulf Emirates, which meet tomorrow and might decide to intervene. Saudi troops and tanks have already moved close to Yemen’s northern frontiers but Saudi officials said the actions are purely defensive.
If the Saudis do enter militarily directly or using informal militias, Yemen could sink into the kind of sectarian Sunni-Shia chaos and civil war among tribal militias that has shredded Syria, Iraq and Libya.
Such a development would make tatters of Obama’s Mideast policies aimed at inclusive regimes that preferably provide democratic participation to all components of a country’s population.
It would also make it much harder to fight AQAP, a declared enemy of the US, which was also responsible for the January 2015 attack that killed 12 and injured 11 at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
The US gave Yemen some $500 million in military and other aid since 2010 and used the military base near Aden to conduct drone strikes against AQAP. It evacuated all Americans from the base earlier this month.
The Houthis and Saleh are enemies of AQAP, a Sunni terrorist group that has taken advantage of the chaos to grab more territories in the south in recent weeks. Some reports say that the Islamic State (ISIL), an AQAP rival, has also grabbed small territories in other parts of Yemen.
A Yemeni affiliate of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for killing more than 130 people at Friday prayers in suicide attacks on Shiite mosques on Friday last week (March 20).
The Saudis see the Saleh and the Houthis as proxies of Iran because both belong to small Shia Muslim sects. But Saleh, a tough authoritarian, was a longtime friend of Saudi Arabia and the US until both engineered his removal from power after massive street protests against him.
Washington was pleased at his peaceful departure and helped to replace him with Hadi, who was more pliable and less demanding as an American ally than Saleh.
The current upheavals will turn into a monstrous quagmire for Obama and his Gulf allies if Yemen sinks into sectarian and tribal chaos similar to Syria, and ISIL and AQAP grab territories.
So far, Al Qaeda and its affiliates have stuck to terrorist acts against the US and its allies without seeking to govern territories. But the rivalry with ISIL’s Caliphate, which depends on possessing and governing territories, has become so acute that AQAP may also try to physically control parts of Yemen.
Both Houthis and Saleh loathe extreme Sunni Islam so viscerally that they might turn to Iran for more help, as Iraqi Shias have done. (However, some reports suggest that they might even ally with AQAP, which has more native Yemenis than ISIL, to consolidate their power after Hadi’s final defeat.)
Iran may not be able to avoid more involvement in the conflict if the Saudis, which became the world’s largest weapons importer from the US in 2014, enter the conflict to crush Shia pretensions to power.
The Saudi regime might decide to do so because it fears the 20% Shia minority in Saudi Arabia and the disenfranchised Shia majority in Bahrain.
Both the Saudis and Washington have a serious problem because the devastation and disorder caused by Saudi intervention may allow ISIL and AQAP to consolidate their holds over territorial segments.
Both are enemies of the Saudi regime, which they see as corrupt and no longer a custodian of “true” Islam. Destroying them in Yemen may also bring international criticism because it would cost too many civilian deaths and the destruction of many towns and villages.
The US would be widely blamed because it supplies almost all Saudi and Gulf weapons and military training.
Saudi success in a prolonged tribal and sectarian war in Yemen’s difficult terrain is also doubtful since it have never fought or won a war, although it is armed to the teeth with some of the world’s most modern weapons. The US and Western troops have always done almost all the fighting to protect its interests.
Obama needs such developments like holes in the head but the tide of events may become irresistible.