Yemen Crisis/Conflict & the "Decisive Storm" Coalition

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Around 1/3 of Yemen is Houthis.

Saudi has made a big mistake this is not winnable

Plus they have just annoyed the Iranians which is never a good idea

I Believe this will cost the Arab coalition Yemen has some really tough terrain
This means that 2/3rd are not...and with the size of forces the Saudis are willing to commit (150,000) and Egypt now also talking about a sizable land force, I believe the rebel forces will be defeated soundly.

Then if there is an insurgency, it will depend on how the Coalition deals with it.

With that size of force, and a willingness to apply serious COIN tactics, I believe they can and will be successful there too if they are not interfered with.

But all of this is yet to be seen. Time will tell.

it is interesting to note that one of the nine countries indicating that they will provide vessels and aircraft in support is Pakistan.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
The Iranians are fighting across a huge swath. Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and then in that far outlying Yemen.

then factor in the support agent. the Operation Decisive storm Coalition reported to be the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, and Sudan. Pakistan and Egypt. Also look at the map and consider the naval blockade options. Iran has capasity to continue supporting but they are not as free now remember unlike Syria or Iraq Yemen is not on the Iranian boarder.

Land routes are out as it would have to cut through Saudi Arabia and that would slow arms and support to a trickle at best

That means either naval reinforcement which can be cut off by the Saudi and Egyptian and even Pakistani naval forces as well as potentially running a gauntlet of fighters from Bahrain, Qatar, The UAE and the Saudi's. They could Try Submarine support but that has never succeeded as it would eat up the entire Iranian sub fleet and all that would be needed to close that off is the threat of well placed ASW

Finally air support which is limited as to tonnage and also would face potential air threat. Oman is the the only Question mark. The Iranians could conceivably run supplied across the gulf to Oman and then cut across the country, but I wouldn't bet on it being any more successful.

Remember a Army marches on it's stomach with out the bullets and beans or capital to buy such armies start to fall apart. the Saudi boarder is a direct line into Yemen and the Saudi military is well armed. as are many other nations who are on the list.

So then the question is what is the next step in this fight? Ground troops are the only way to take and hold territory. The Yemeni military has to a good degree bugged out. The Saudis and the Coalition have support of some of the most respected of the Arab armies so the Question is do they push the boarder or do they try and find some group to support form the air?

Removed political aspects
 
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Dizasta1

Senior Member
What Iran needs to do now is create a vietnam for the saudis, bleed them dry, waste their resources and rile the yemenis, who already despise saudi against them.
Saudi arabia was **** to send in troops, now theyre gonna regret it.

Other than sending advisors, trainers and weapons, Iran doesnt need to do much.. Due to the bombings and killings the saudis will always now have an enemy bordering them. We have to remember that yemenis all have guns and they can cause havoc in saudi arabia if they want to.:cool:

Look my friend, I can identify your sentiments toward the saudi regime. However, this is a defence forum, so I would suggest that you keep your views as objective as possible.

Everyone can have a political opinion, but that is not what this forum is about. If you have a perspective or analysis of the military strategies applied in this operation. Then you are most welcome to air them.

No one is good or bad here, however, what would be bad is if there are any civilian casualties. Lets hope that the matter is resolved peacefully and that there is no loss of innocent civilian life.
 

ShahryarHedayat

Junior Member
Home Province of Yemen's Houthis Bombarded by Warplanes



The home province of Yemen's rebel Houthi movement has reportedly been attacked by warplanes.
Combat aircraft have attacked two districts in the home province of Yemen's rebel Houthi movement in northern Yemen, according to tribal sources.

The attacks came as a Saudi-led coalition continued to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen in support of Yemen President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

During the second night of raids, warplanes again targeted rebel positions in Yemen's capital Sanaa and an air base near the southern port city of Aden. A total of 15 people were reportedly killed or wounded in the strikes.


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ShahryarHedayat

Junior Member
Intense Explosions Shake Yemeni Capital, Houthis Fight Back

The strongest explosions in the past 24 hours shook the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Friday, after a Saudi Arabia-led coalition intensified airstrikes on Houthi rebels' positions, a Sputnik correspondent reported Friday citing military sources.



SANAA (Sputnik) — The sources said Houthi-controlled Yemeni air defense troops have been forced to return fire to "repel" the jets carrying out airstrikes on Houthi positions in Sanaa.

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— Luay لؤي الخطيب (@AL_Khatteeb)
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Local sources in Saada province told Sputnik the coalition is conducting strong airstrikes on the province, the Houthis' stronghold.

Houthi militias attacked Saudi positions in on the border with Yemen on Friday night, a source among Houthis in Saada told RIA Novosti.

Earlier on Friday, Al Jazeera reported that armed forces loyal to the deposed Yemeni president had captured parts of Houthi-held oil-producing province of Marib in central Yemen. A fierce fighting between pro-Hadi forces and Houthis in the province is under way, the news outlet said.

Shiite rebels hold up their weapons during a rally against Saudi air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen.
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— David Furst (@DavidFurstNYT)
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"They carried out small attacks and returned, now they are under attack," — the source said.

A Saudi-led coalition of Arab states continued a military operation Thursday night against Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen; the "Ansarullah" movement currently controls the majority of the country.



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The operation, codenamed "Decisive Storm," is aimed at "the protection of the legitimate government in Yemen," and was requested by the country's elected president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.


The coalition launched a second round of airstrikes on Houthi positions early Friday, including on the international airport in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, as well as a number of military bases and airfields. It left military infrastructure, equipment and aircraft destroyed, as well as civilians in shock.

Ousted President Abd Mansour Hadi had officially asked the UN Security Council to take action to "stop the Houthis' aggression," in accordance with Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. He also addressed the Arab League, urging them to send "Peninsula Shield" troops — Persian Gulf states' military units — and to declare a no-fly zone over airspace controlled by the Houthis.
Meanwhile, any attempt to establish a national dialogue has failed, and parties to the conflict blame one another for the conflict.


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ShahryarHedayat

Junior Member
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Arab Foreign Ministers Form Unified Military Force in Wake of Yemen Strikes

Foreign ministers from 22 Arab states meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh agreed to a draft resolution Thursday to create a unified military force to counter regional security threats.



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The move comes the same day that Saudi and allied war planes struck at Houthi rebel targets in Yemen.


"The Arab… ministers agreed on adopting an important principle, which is forming the unified Arab military force," Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby told reporters following the meeting.

"The task of the force will be rapid military intervention to deal with security threats to Arab nations.”

The draft resolution will be discussed by Arab leaders during their March 28-29 summit in Egypt.

The Arab league chief described the resolution as "historic."



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Some good background on the modern history of Yemen and all its conflicts.

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How Yemen became the front line of a Mideast-wide war
By Mohamad Bazzi March 27, 2015

In the early morning of March 26, Saudi Arabia went to war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. In doing so, Saudi leaders opened the latest chapter in a long history of meddling and influence over their southern neighbor.

Since Saudi Arabia was founded in the 1930s, its leaders have tried to keep a friendly regime in power in Yemen and to prevent it from posing a threat to Saudi interests. That often meant meddling in Yemen’s internal politics, keeping populist movements in check, using guest workers as leverage, buying off tribal leaders, and occasional military interventions.

This time, the stakes are higher for both Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Saudi leaders claim that, along with a coalition of nine other countries, they launched airstrikes and are blockading the Yemeni coast to drive back the Houthis and their allies in the Yemeni military, who have taken over much of the country in recent months. The Saudis and their Gulf Arab allies want to restore Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.

The conflict in Yemen is complex, with a shifting set of alliances. Hadi and his supporters, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, are backed by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The Houthis, who belong to a sect of Shi’ite Islam called Zaydis, are allies of Shi’ite-led Iran, the regional rival of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states. While the Saudis are quick to label the Houthis as Iranian proxies, it’s unclear how much support they actually receive from Tehran.

The Houthis are allied with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a longtime dictator who was ousted from power after the Arab uprisings of 2011 spread to Yemen. Once a Saudi ally, Saleh was replaced by Hadi in 2012 under a deal brokered by Riyadh. But Saleh still retains support among large segments of the Yemeni security forces, and those troops helped the Houthis capture the capital, Sanaa, and move south toward Hadi’s stronghold of Aden.

With direct Saudi military intervention, Yemen has now been dragged into a regional proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. This series of battles in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain have defined the Middle East since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Over the past decade, the traditional centers of power in the Arab world — Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states — grew nervous about the risng influence of Iran: its nuclear ambitions, its sway over the Iraqi government, its support for the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, and its alliance with Syria.

yemencoalition

The proxy war is drawing in more regional actors. For example, Egypt’s security interests are not directly affected by Yemen, unlike Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states. But Egypt’s military rulers are now highly dependent on funding from the Saudis and their Gulf allies. Hours after the start of the Saudi-led bombing campaign, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said in a statement that Egypt’s navy and air force would soon join the fight, and that its army was ready to send ground troops to Yemen “if necessary.”

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia increasingly see their rivalry as a winner-take-all conflict: if the Shiite Hezbollah gains an upper hand in Lebanon, then the Sunnis of Lebanon — and by extension, their Saudi patrons — lose a round to Iran. If a Shiite-led government solidifies its control of Iraq, then Iran will have won another round. So the House of Saud rushes to shore up its allies in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and wherever else it fears Iran’s influence.

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Yemen’s geography and web of tribal, regional and sectarian alliances make it a difficult and costly exploit for foreign invaders. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt suffered significant losses during past military adventures in Yemen.

For centuries, Yemen was an autonomous province in the Ottoman Empire. With the empire’s collapse at the end of World War I, Yemen secured its independence as a kingdom in 1918 and its first ruler was Imam Yahya, who was head of the Zaydi sect. (The Zaydis have always been a minority in Yemen, and today they comprise about a third of a total population of 24 million). In the 1920s and 30s, Yahya extend his rule over tribal lands across northern Yemen, which was then mostly inhabited by Sunnis.

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But Yahya, who kept Yemen isolated and had virtually no outside allies, faced pressure from Saudi Arabia throughout his rule. In 1934, two years after Ibn Saud established the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he fought a short war against his southern neighbor. The Saudis seized the provinces of Asir and Najran from what Yahya and other Zaydis considered “historic Yemen.” That set the roots of a territorial dispute along the coast of the Red Sea and conflicts over border demarcation that would last until 2000.

Yahya and the Zaydis also skirmished with the British in the south, who had established a colony in the port city of Aden and its hinterlands since the 1830s. After Yahya died in 1948, his son and successor, Imam Ahmad, ended the kingdom’s isolation. He established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and China, hoping to secure military and development aid. This caused new tensions with the House of Saud, which feared Communist influence at its southern border.

In the 1950s and early 60s, the Arab world struggled to rid itself of the vestiges of colonial rule and hereditary monarchies. A group of Egyptian military officers, led by the charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, overthrew the British-backed King Farouk in 1952, and kindled the hope of Arab unity. Nasser used his populist appeal, powerful military and rousing speeches (broadcast over the newly invented transistor radio in a popular program called “Voice of the Arabs”) to influence events in other Arab countries, including Yemen. But the Arab liberation movements would end in great disappointment — a politics of betrayal, exile and carnage.

When Yemen’s Ahmad died in September 1962, his son and successor, Imam Badr, was overthrown within a week in a coup led by army officers. Inspired by Egypt’s Nasser, the officers declared the Yemen Arab Republic. The royal family resisted the coup and sought support from the House of Saud, which did not want a successful military-led republican regime next door.

The Yemeni revolution quickly devolved into a civil war, and Yemen became the scene of a proxy battle between Egypt and Saudi Arabia — a struggle for the future of the Arab world, between the so-called “progressive” republican regimes and the “conservative” monarchies. Nasser decided to throw his weight behind the new military regime and flooded Yemen with Egyptian troops. At the end of 1963, there were 30,000 Egyptian soldiers in Yemen; by 1965, that number rose to nearly half of the Egyptian army — 70,000 troops.

The Egyptian army was bogged down fighting tribal guerrillas on their home terrain. Over the five-year war, more than 10,000 Egyptian troops were killed and the Egyptians still failed to advance far beyond the capital city, Sanaa. Blinded by his fervor to promote revolution in the Arab world, the Yemen war became Nasser’s Vietnam.

At the same time, the Saudis were funding the royalist opposition, providing arms and hiring foreign mercenaries. But the Saudis did not make the same mistake as Nasser of committing thousands of their own troops to the fight. Nasser finally withdrew the last Egyptian forces from Yemen after the humiliating Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel.

When the civil war ended, northern Yemen remained a republic. The Saudis were not able to restore the monarchy, but Egypt had suffered such a defeat that it no longer had much sway over Yemeni politics. Around the same time, in the southern provinces that had been colonized by the British, a Marxist-ruled state was established in late 1967 with Aden as its capital. South Yemen — officially known as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen — soon became a Soviet satellite state.

In May 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, South Yemen united with northern Yemen (which had been ruled by Ali Abdullah Saleh since 1978) to form a single state, the Republic of Yemen. By that point, northern Yemen was heavily dependent on Saudi aid — which was intended to balance Soviet assistance to South Yemen — and remittances from several hundred thousand Yemenis working in the kingdom.

Saleh became president of the newly unified state, and he soon faced a severe test that would strain his relationship with the Saudis. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, prompting the United States to send hundreds of thousands of troops to protect Saudi Arabia. Saleh was allied with Hussein, who had the support of most Arab countries and Western powers during his eight-year war against Iran.

Saleh was reluctant to tow the Saudi line and cut off all relations with Iraq, which was an important trading partner and oil supplier for Yemen. At the time of the Kuwait crisis, Yemen also held the rotating Arab League seat on the United Nations Security Council. After Yemen voted against the Security Council resolution that authorized the use of force against Iraq, the United States and Saudi Arabia cut off all aid. The Saudis also expelled nearly 750,000 people — Yemeni workers and their families, some of whom had lived in the kingdom for decades. The expulsions cut off the majority of remittances and devastated Yemen’s economy.

The expulsions and their aftermath offer an instructive lesson for Saudi leaders who today are waging war against the Houthis, hoping to turn Yemenis against them. In 1991, Saudis hoped that Yemenis would blame Saleh’s government for instigating the expulsions and the subsequent economic collapse. But instead, Yemenis rallied around their leader, disdained the Saudis and expressed open admiration for Saddam Hussein.

In 1994, leaders of southern Yemen tried to secede after years of frustration with the north. A war broke out between the north and south, but Saleh’s forces defeated the southern rebels within a few weeks. The Saudis, still angry at Saleh for his no vote at the United Nations, had supported the southern rebels with arms and funding. But once again the Saudis backed the wrong side, and the Sanaa government reimposed unity by force.

Saleh’s relationship with the Saudis remained tense until the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. At that point, Saleh maneuvered himself as an ally of both the Saudis and Washington in fighting Al Qaeda. From 2004 until late 2009, Saleh’s government waged a series of six wars against the Houthi rebels based in the northern provinces of Yemen, near the Saudi border. The Saudis supported Saleh through all of these wars, and the Saudi military was directly drawn into the last of these conflicts in 2009. Saudi forces suffered about 200 casualties over several months of fighting.

Today, Saudi Arabia has intervened more directly in Yemen than it ever has in the past. In light of this history, the Saudis are reluctant to send ground troops to fight the Houthis on Yemeni soil. But recent conflicts — in Iraq, Syria and Libya — show that air power alone is not enough to win a decisive victory. And the longer this conflict drags on, the more likely that the Houthis will gain wide popular support as the defenders of Yemen’s independence against an aggressive and meddling neighbor.
 
Morocco RSVP'ed, Pakistan not exactly, Saudi and company ground war not just yet.
Conflicting signs as to what degree the Saudi intervention will be, merely maintaining a no-winner situation in Yemen or attempting to directly or have another faction defeat the Houthis?

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Saudi-led campaign strikes Yemen's Sanaa, Morocco joins alliance
ADEN | BY MOHAMMED MUKHASHEF

(Reuters) - Yemen's beleaguered government said Saudi-led airstrikes against its Houthi militia opponents would not last long on the second day of a Gulf Arab-led campaign against the Iranian-allied militia that could escalate a proxy conflict spreading through the region.

Warplanes targeted Houthi forces controlling Yemen's capital and their northern heartland on Friday and, in a boost for Riyadh, fellow monarchy Morocco said it would join the rapidly-assembled Sunni Muslim coalition against the Shi'ite Muslim group.

Tribes in Yemen's oil producing Marib region said they supported the air campaign, but Houthi forces advanced south despite the airstrikes and Pakistan, named by Saudi Arabia on Thursday as a partner, said it had made no decision on whether to contribute.

Riyadh’s move is the latest front in a growing regional contest for power with Iran that is also playing out in Syria, where Tehran backs Assad’s government against mainly Sunni rebels, and Iraq, where Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias are playing a major role in fighting.

Sunni monarchies in the Gulf are backing embattled Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his fellow Sunnis in the country's south against the Shi'ite advance.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Riyadh Yaseen, asked if the campaign would last days, weeks or more, told Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television: "I expect that this operation will not go on for long, I think it will be days."

He said the door was still open for dialogue with the Houthis, while in a Facebook posting, Hadi urged Yemenis to be patient, saying the "rebels", a reference to Houthis, would soon be gone.

But Houthi fighters and forces allied to Saleh entered the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa on Friday through the central province of Bayda, extending their reach into the south, according to tribal sources.

The fighters entered the city of Lodar in Abyan after clashes with tribal forces loyal to Hadi, and also took over Bayhan in Shabwa, where they faced less resistance.

Mosques in Riyadh on Friday preached fiery sermons against the Houthis and their Iranian allies, describing the fight as a religious duty. Saudi Arabia's top clerical council issued a fatwa on Thursday giving its blessing to the campaign.

In the Iranian capital Tehran, Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Kazem Sadeghi described the attacks as "an aggression and interference in Yemen’s internal affairs".

Residents said aircraft targeted bases around Sanaa of Republican Guards allied to the Houthis, including one near the presidential compound in a southern district, around dawn and also struck near a military installation that houses missiles.

OIL REGION HIT

The Republican Guards are loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Houthi's main ally who retains wide power despite having stepped down in 2011 after Arab Spring protests.

Earlier air strikes south of the city and in the oil-producing Marib region appeared to target military installations also affiliated with Saleh.

Yemeni oil flows through the Marib pipeline, its main export route, at a rate of around 70,000 barrels per day (bpd). The well-armed tribes are the de facto authority in the central province so their support for the air strikes was significant.

Warplanes also hit two districts in the Houthis' northerly home province of Saada, tribal sources said. The strikes hit a market in Kataf al-Bokaa in the north of Saada, killing or wounding 15 people, they said. Shada district was also struck.

The coalition began air strikes on Thursday to try to roll back Houthi gains in the Arabian Peninsula country and to shore up the authority of embattled President Hadi, who has been holed up in Aden after fleeing Sanaa in February.

Hadi left Aden on Thursday and is due to attend an Arab summit meeting in Egypt on Saturday, where he aims to build Arab support for the air strikes. He arrived in Saudi Arabia on Thursday by way of Oman, where a foreign ministry official said he had a medical check up before heading on to the kingdom.

The Saudi campaign raised morale among some Gulf Arabs who view Tehran's growing influence in the region with suspicion.

One of the region's top businessman, Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor of the United Arab Emirates, wrote on al Arabiya website in unusually frank terms that he was cheered by the Saudi move.

"There can be no meaningful dialogue with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a nation with ambitions of reinstating the Persian Empire and quashing Arabs under its boot, just as it has stamped upon Sunnis and ethnic/religious minorities in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq," he wrote.

In his first reaction to the attacks, Houthi leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi on Thursday called Saudi Arabia a bad neighbor and "Satan's horn", saying in a televised speech Yemenis would confront the "criminal, unjust and unjustified aggression".

Iran denounced the surprise assault on the Houthis and demanded an immediate halt to Saudi-led military operations and, on Friday, accused Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday of fomenting strife in the Middle East, rebuffing his accusation that Iran was trying to dominate the region.

While U.S. officials have downplayed the scope of the ties between Iran and the Houthis, Saudi ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubeir said members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Iranian-backed Hezbollah are on the ground advising the Houthis.

Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, spokesman for the operation, told a news conference there were no plans at this stage for ground force operations, but if the need arose, Saudi and allied ground forces would repel "any aggression."

(With additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari, Sami Aboudi, Maha El Dahan, Writing by William Maclean; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
 
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