"... Saudi Arabia needs a policy that is neither “throwing money” at the problem nor military intervention"

Roula Khalaf, In the FT, here

"It was a distinctly un-Saudi affair. The traditionally cautious kingdom, careful to the point where its diplomatic initiatives must be guaranteed to succeed before they are even launched, found itself militarily thrown into the internal conflict in neighbouring Yemen. In the past two weeks Saudi warplanes have bombed border positions of Houthi rebels battling the Yemeni government. It marks the sixth round of on-and-off fighting that has erupted since 2004.

The Saudis have every reason to be fed up with Yemen, a lawless country of 23m people on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula beset by deep poverty and dysfunctional politics that regularly exports its troubles. Governments far beyond Yemen’s borders should also be alarmed at the deteriorating security in a country that has long been a breeding ground for the religious extremists of al-Qaeda.

The rebellion of the Houthis, members of the Zaydi Shia sect that is, however, closer in its practices to a branch of Sunni Islam than to mainstream Shia Islam, is just one of a series of economic and political problems facing the government, including a secessionist movement in the south (north and south Yemen were only united in 1990) and the persistent al-Qaeda presence........ running out of water as well as oil – it is reasonable to predict worsening instability. Yemen is not Afghanistan or Somalia, but there are real fears among western officials that it is on its way to becoming a failed and regionally destabilising state. Over the past year, Yemen’s accumulating mess has looked threatening for Saudi Arabia: the merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of al-Qaeda has provided a new base for Saudi fanatics chased away from the kingdom by a security crackdown.

There is, however, a potentially more dangerous dimension to this conflict. The Saudis see the Houthis as a tool in the hands of Iran as the Islamic Republic attempts to widen its influence in the region... not unlike the internal political fight in Lebanon, where Saudi Arabia has long backed a Sunni-led coalition and Iran the Hizbollah-led opposition.

No doubt it seemed an opportune time to stand up to Iran as the regime has looked vulnerable since the rigging of the June presidential election and its violent aftermath. (If you read the Saudi press at that time you would think the Iranian regime had in fact collapsed.).... The irony is that no one outside the Middle East believes that Iran has much to do with the Houthis. Officials in the west argue that although Iran sympathises with the rebels, there is no evidence of military or financial support. Maybe these outsiders are talking nonsense. But maybe Saudi Arabia is allowing its resentment of Iran to cloud its judgment over Yemen. The Houthi rebellion is, above all, a reflection of social, religious and political grievances by a group that feels marginalised and considers that the state has succumbed to radical Sunni Salafi ideology.....

The even greater irony in this conflict is that Saudi involvement is certain to aggravate the grievances and possibly prolong the fighting. The rising destruction, casualties and displacement of the population have fed the rebellion, widening its territorial scope and winning the rebels thousands of new recruits. “The ultimate travesty is there is no way to militarily solve the problem – you need a humanitarian ceasefire and mediation,” says Christopher Boucek, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East programme. If stability is the aim in Yemen, then, as Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, argues, Saudi Arabia needs a policy that is neither “throwing money” at the problem nor military intervention....

By the Middle East’s standards of violence, the Yemen conflict is a small war – and so can be easily ignored. But as the ICG warned: “In duration and intensity, destruction, casualties, sectarian stigmatisation and regional dimension, [it] stands apart from other violent episodes in Yemen. It will need more than run-of-the-mill domestic and international efforts to end it.”