Kuwait Times

Published Date: November 11, 2009
By Paul Handley

Saudi Arabia's assault on rebels in northwest Yemen is a warning to Iran against meddling and to embattled Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh to get his house in order, analysts said on Monday. Riyadh has resorted to overt air and artillery shelling and deployed ground troops against the Huthi rebels inside Yemen's borders during the past week after the rebels killed a Saudi border guard and occupied two small villages in a relatively minor cross-border incursion.

It marked a sharp change to Saudi Arabia's low-key and non-interventionist foreign policy and was undertaken with deliberation to deal with a local problem that Riyadh felt might take on regional dimensions, analysts said. Riyadh "has lived with instability on the border in Yemen for quite a while," said University of Vermont professor Gregory Gause, a specialist in Gulf security issues. "The Saudis are sending a signal.... My sense is that they have decided that this is part of the Iranian effort to incre
ase their influence in the region,"he said.

Riyadh had quietly assisted Yemen forces in their three-month old "Scorched Earth" campaign against the Shiite Zaidis, known as Houthis, according to security experts. But the launch of F-15 sorties and artillery barrages targetting Huthi camps in Yemen's northwest Saada province showed Saudi concerns that Saleh's weakening government is leaving a gap for his other challengers, secessionists in the south and a potent local branch of Al-Qaeda. "Yemen is Saudi Arabia's primary security concern," said Chris B
oucek of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank. "The rapidly deteriorating security and stability situation in the country threatens Saudi Arabia first and foremost. The longer the war in Saada goes on, the greater the risks," he said.

The lengthy, porous border between the two countries is a regular headache for Saudi Arabia. It regularly seizes large amounts of drugs, illicit alcohol, and weapons being smuggled into the country. There is also a huge and easy flow of people across the frontier, mostly seeking work but also, as shown in recent months, by Yemen-based Qaeda operatives plotting attacks in Saudi Arabia.

On Oct 13 Saudi security officials killed two wanted militants in Jizan who had smuggled a load of weapons, explosives and suicide vests in from Yemen. Saudis have been disappointed in the Saleh's inability to neutralise the Houthis after five years of conflict. According to the respected security report Gulf States Newsletter (GSN), Riyadh has been contributing 1.2 million dollars a month as well as field intelligence to Operation Scorched Earth.

GSN said that on Oct 19 Saudi artillery and helicopter gunships were used for the first time to strike at Houthis on the border. "Our feeling is that they are not hugely powerful," Jon Marks, GSN editorial director, said of the rebels. "They have managed to keep the war going. They more reflect Saleh's weakness." Marks told AFP Riyadh's launch of air attacks this week "might be an over-reaction to one episode, but it is a clear signal from Saudi Arabia that they have had enough." "There has been a growing
amount of disillusion on Saleh's ability to govern," he added.

But it is also a part of a bigger picture of "a shift to a new Cold War" between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Iran, he said. Saudi Arabia and some Gulf states fear Iran will use the Huthi situation to stir up more trouble, Marks said. Sanaa has accused Iran of supporting the Houthis, and in October announced it had captured five Iranians attempting to smuggle a boatload of weapons to them.

In recent months Saudi media with close government ties have warned that Tehran is trying to make inroads into Riyadh's backyard in the Arabian peninsula. "Iran is poised on the southern border of the Arabian Gulf countries after having swallowed Lebanon to the north and settled in the veins of the wounded Iraqi state," wrote Mshari Al-Zaydi in Al Sharq Al-Awsat, which has close links to the Saudi government. But while Iranian media has regularly shown sympathy for the Houthis, evidence of direct support f
rom Tehran is very thin, analysts say. "They maybe give some money. But the Iranians know their limitations," said a Saudi government advisor. - AFP