Yemen Civil War

[Heathen Hammer]

Apparently the Saudi puppet "president" Saleh has been successfully eliminated by the rebels. No longer under unified leadership, it is likely that remaining pro-Saudi collaborator forces will now either fall apart or become much less effective. How will Saleh's death play out in the long term?

[Anna_Gein]

Apparently the Saudi puppet "president" Saleh has been successfully eliminated by the rebels.

Saudi puppet ? You mean the guy who allied with his former enemy to fight against Yemeni rivals supported by Saudi Arabia and UAE since 2014 ?

No longer under unified leadership, it is likely that remaining pro-Saudi collaborator forces will now either fall apart or become much less effective. How will Saleh's death play out in the long term?

It seems you got Yemen wrong. Saleh was allied with Ansar Allah (aka the Houthis).

Pro and not so pro Hadi forces remain roughly same. Rumors say the eldest son of Saleh was released from his house of arrest in UAE and is now heading to Yemen to fight against Ansar Allah.

[Abdülmecid I]

Apparently the Saudi puppet "president" Saleh has been successfully eliminated by the rebels. No longer under unified leadership, it is likely that remaining pro-Saudi collaborator forces will now either fall apart or become much less effective. How will Saleh's death play out in the long term?

Haha, Saleh a puppet of Saudi Arabia? In what universe? He had been fighting the Saudi-led intervention since 2014, after he was forced to resign from the presidency due to the pressure of the Gulf monarchies (including, of course, Saudi Arabia). By that partisan logic, Donald is also an underling of the Saudis, for having strengthened considerably the ties of the United States with the Salafist kingdom. Meanwhile, in reality, Saleh was simply a Yemeni strongman, with very fluid loyalties, depending on what side might serve his interests better. He maintained the alliance of Yemen with her northern neighbor for more than three decades, because Saudi help was essential for him remaining in power. He opposed the reconciliation initiative of the Saudis in 2011, because accepting it would mean abandoning the presidency. When he was forced to quit, following a brutal assassination attempt, whose perpetrator is still unknown, he didn't hesitate to cooperate with the Houthis, to claim back a portion of his former power. After four bloody years, he changed sides again, due to disagreements with the Houthi leadership over sharing the political power and the financial resources and the ongoing military stalemate. Probably, he was also enticed by an irresistible offer from the Saudis (or actually the United Arab Emirates, which are now in the process of de facto annexing the Socotra islands), promising to replace the actual president of Yemen, Hadi (under house arrest since November), with him. Basically, a return to status quo. Therefore, describing Saleh as a perpetual servant of Saudi interests is, from a factual perspective, utterly stupid.

Many predict that the downfall of the Houthis is now inevitable, as the enraged partisans of Saleh will ally themselves with the rest of the opposition, but I'm not so sure. Saleh's forces collapsed suspiciously easily in Sanaa, a spectacularly quick defeat which led to Saleh's unexpected death. In my opinion, Saleh's fatal mistake was to blindly trust the loyalty of his own forces. Apparently, a part of the leadership was either frustrated by Saleh's recent initiatives or was persuaded by the Houthis to betray the master. Yemeni society is of course divided along tribal lines, but the importance of family feuds in politics is frankly over-emphasized. People care more about their interests than avenging their fallen, so a future war between the Houthis and their allies is far from certain, if negotiations prove successful. After all, in 2004, the Yemeni army had killed the leader of the Houthis (Hussein, the older brother of their current leader, Abdul-Malik), but that supposedly embarrassing event hardly prevented the cooperation of the two sides in 2014. In conclusion, apart from rejecting any dumb conspiracy theories about Saleh (blaming Zionism for his death or considering him as an agent of Saudi Arabia), it's still too early to accurately estimate the consequences.

The complexity of Yemen's domestic affairs is best characterized by this tragicomic episode: In 2011, when the army supported the Arab Spring* against Saleh, because the latter planned to transform his military dictatorship into a hereditary one, the cunning Yemeni president intentionally gave false coordinates to the Saudis, regarding the alleged location of a Houthi camp. In reality, he had tried to manipulate the Saudi air-force to bomb the headquarters of an elite armoured Yemeni division, commanded by his biggest critic, Mohsen al-Ahmar.
*By the way, if Saleh was a Saudi puppet and the Arab Spring was just a Saudi-Israeli-Obama plot, how can we explain Saleh's abdication in 2011, because of the demonstrations?

Pro and not so pro Hadi forces remain roughly same. Rumors say the eldest son of Saleh was released from his house of arrest in UAE and is now heading to Yemen to fight against Ansar Allah.

The most pressing problem the Saudi-led intervention faces is that many of its Yemeni soldiers are not very willing to risk their lives fighting in the north, as they are more interested in safely guarding the prosperity of the south. That lack of commitment becomes even more worrying, when the Sudanese "mercenary" units began to distance themselves from Saudi Arabia. An alliance with the tribal warlords formerly backing Saleh not only would undermine the position of the Houthis, but it could also provide the coalition with an invaluable number of foot-soldiers determined to fight the Houthis and capture Sanaa.

[RandomPerson2000]

The most pressing problem the Saudi-led intervention faces is that many of its Yemeni soldiers are not very willing to risk their lives fighting in the north, as they are more interested in safely guarding the prosperity of the south. That lack of commitment becomes even more worrying, when the Sudanese "mercenary" units began to distance themselves from Saudi Arabia. An alliance with the tribal warlords formerly backing Saleh not only would undermine the position of the Houthis, but it could also provide the coalition with an invaluable number of foot-soldiers determined to fight the Houthis and capture Sanaa.

While that option may have been previously viable, I do think the tribal warlords formerly loyal to Saleh have more or less messed up really badly right now in the Houthi controlled areas given that the Houthis have managed to quickly retake most of Sana'a and that their former Saleh has been killed as stated in previous posts above. Also there are now some reports that claim that Salehs son Khaled has been injured during the battle of Sana'a and was captured by the Houthis and that Assistant Secretary of Yemen's General People's Congress Yasser Al-Awadi was also killed in the battle although I not sure how reliable these reports are.

While I'm more than willing to redraw any artificial former colonial borders, I do think strongly that Yemeni unification was a catastrophic mistake. the border between the former North and South Yemen had existed for centuries. Tensions between the North and South were present in Yemen right from the very start of its unification 1990, just four years after unifcation a civil war had broken out in Yemen between the Yemeni government led by Saleh and the secessionist Democratic Republic of Yemen in the Southern part of the country led by Ali Salem al Beidh although unlike the civil war that is ongoing now, this secessionist rebellion was completely quashed by Saleh's forces in about 3 months.

[RandomPerson2000]

In the 31st of January 2018, after several days of fighting starting on the 27th, the Southern Transitional Council, a separatist organisation that is supported by the UAE had taken control over most of the city of Aden from Hadi's government. As of right now the Presidential Palace has been surrounded by forces loyal to Southern Transitional Council trapping several ministers of Hadi's government including the Yemeni prime minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-y...-idUSKBN1FM1S3
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...aden-1.3373652
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...67e_story.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42858270
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/0...062745716.html

[Abdülmecid I]

That winter was not very healthy for alliances in Yemen. Some dubious sources report that the cause was a disagreement between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the natural resources of the region bordering Oman, but I doubt it was the main factor. The problem with the civil war in Yemen is that due to the scarcity of professional reporting, we are dependent on shady sources (like the self-proclaimed expert Nadwa Dawsari) with an obvious agenda, so discovering the truth can be particularly difficult, with information being monopolized by think tanks financially controlled by Washington or the Gulf monarchies. In my opinion, the problem with coalitions is that they never operate completely harmoniously, so frictions tend to appear regularly. In this case, the separatists probably thought (quite accurately judging by their success in Aden) that they are not compensated appropriately, in accordance to their military contributions. Superficially this new development may look like it will prolong the stalemate even further, but personally I am moderately optimist. The unification of Yemen always remained fragile, based on the tribal alliance between an army dictator and regional warlords. Even the map of the current conflict shows that the Houthi dominated forces control the northern part and their enemies the south. Perhaps the future elimination of the Hadi faction could gradually lead to a diplomatic negotiation, where the country is divided between the two sides, along the pre-1990 borders. After all, it's clear that neither the Houthis nor the Southern Movement are able or willing to advance to the south and the north respectively.

[Vanoi]

Yep it's looking like a stalemate between the two. However parts of the country are controlled by Al-Qaeda. If they can't take on each they'll be next.

[RandomPerson2000]

As of right now, the Civil War is still a stalemate with the Saudi-Coalition offensive on Hodeidah in an attempt to cut off Houthi supply lines has pretty much stalled for a number of reasons such as concerns that the offensive might significantly worsen the humanitarian situation in Yemen and possibly the Houthi force in the city was stronger than expected.

I think the conflict overall has been a bit of a disaster for Saudi foreign policy given that notnonly their intervention had failed to stop a stalemate from happening in Yemen and the Houthis had actually managed to capture and hold a few border towns in Saudi Arabia for a couple of years up to today and launched a few missiles at several Saudi cities. I also think that there is a strong parallel between this conflict and the North Yemen Civil War (1962-1970) where from 1962, Egypt then led by Gamal Abdel Nassar sent about 70,000 soldiers to North Yemen to support the fledgling Republic government which had been established after a military coup overthrew the monarchy againstst forces ironically supported by Saudi Arabia. Even though a republican government was eventually formed in 1970 incorporating members from the royalist forces, the intervention was a disaster for Egypt with it having more than 10'000 of it's soldiers killed in the conflict and was withdrew in 1967, as a result of it going bankrupt after the Six Day War.

[Papay]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-y...-idUSKBN1KW06E

There is talk about possible transition and forming a new government. Lets hope that something will come from this. I have higher hopes for peace in Yemen than Iraq or Syria

[NorseThing]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-y...-idUSKBN1KW06E

There is talk about possible transition and forming a new government. Lets hope that something will come from this. I have higher hopes for peace in Yemen than Iraq or Syria

From your linked article:

Previous U.N.-sponsored peace talks have failed to end the conflict, widely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and regional foe Shi’ite Muslim Iran.

The religion splits 1/3 Shia and 2/3 Sunni. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen#Religion) If this proxy war is to end, then both regional foes need to be in on any deal.

The US Should Push for Peace in Yemen | Small Wars …

Small Wars Journal
2 days ago · The US Should Push for Peace in Yemen Alexandra Stark In early July, the Saudi Arabian-led coalition halted its siege of the Yemeni port of Hodeidah to allow space for UN efforts to negotiate a political settlement.

The problem is mainly that any influence the USA has is only on one side of the conflict. Iran will not be swayed by any USA desires of peace. This means that any hopes for peace should sit squarely on the Iranian shoulders at the moment.

[Chukada1]

MSNBC spent 30 seconds on Yemen last week saying US might maybe sortof by accident kind of a little bit been a tiny part of the accidental murder of the intended school bus that happened to contain upwards to 56 maybe children could be not be maybe could not be innocent people.

[RandomPerson2000]

As of right now, things are not looking good for the Saudi led intervention in Yemen as fighting has recently restarted between the separatist Southern Transitional Council and Hadi loyalists with the former managing to seize control of several government camps and the Presidential Palace in Aden, the former capital of South Yemen following. This comes just weeks after the UAE began to partially withdraw some of its military assets from Yemen.

Also estimates for the death toll of the Yemen Civil War has dramatically increased since the past year, jumping from 10,000 to at least 91,600 deaths due to violence alone in the conflict. The number of deaths from the current famine caused by the civil war could be even higher with as much as 85,000 children under the age of five alone could have died of starvation according to some estimates. According to a recent UN report, by the end of this year, the number of people killed in the civil war may surpass 230,000.

[RandomPerson2000]

So apparently the UAE has now done a couple of airstrikes against forces loyal to Hadi near Aden and Abyan killing and wounding at least 300 soldiers and the STC has said its arrested dozens of Hadi supporters. I think we're beginning to see the Saudi led coalition just falling apart.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-y...-idUSKCN1VL0AW
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...f68_story.html
https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/08...ith-yemen-govt