In Yemen, foreign intervention is futile
Foreign meddling is nothing new for the war-torn country
Yemen has been subjected to foreign meddling for centuries. The British occupied Aden in 1839 and didn’t leave until over a century later. The Ottomans launched two campaigns in Yemen in the 16th and 17th centuries, both of which failed. The Egyptians fought a bloody war there between 1962 and 1967 before pulling out of the country.
And in 2015, the Saudis launched Operation Firmness Storm to try to wrestle the country away from the Houthi rebels.
But what all these external players have come to realize is that foreign military intervention in Yemen is futile. Its mountains are impregnable and its people are battle-tested. Still, that hasn’t stopped many from trying.
Saudi Incursions
Of all the foreign actors that have injected themselves in Yemen’s internal affairs, perhaps none has been more influential than Saudi Arabia.
During Ibn Saud’s establishment of the Saudi kingdom in the early 20th century, he realized that, to secure the new country, he needed to secure its border with Yemen. This was particularly so after the Saudis seized Jizan and Najran with the signing of the
Treaty of Taif, which ended the 1934 SaudiYemeni war.
After Yemen’s republican coup in 1962, which began the North Yemen Civil War, Saudi attention focused on containing the communist south and controlling the north. The government’s tight grip kept the Saudis out of the south, but thanks to generous financial support, they won the backing of northern tribes, keeping the central government in Sanaa politically weak. The Saudis failed to prevent a Marxist paramilitary group called the National Liberation Front from seizing power in the south after the British pulled out in 1967, leading to the establishment of the Arab world’s only Marxist country, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, also known as South Yemen.
North Yemen’s president, Ibrahim alHamdi, tried to unite the north with the south and to curb Saudi influence but was assassinated in 1977. The circumstances of his death were never investigated and remain a mystery to this day.
Fast-forward four decades and the Saudis are again trying to impose their will on Yemen. They launched Operation Firmness Storm in 2015, aimed at recapturing the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, from the Houthis and reinstating the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Hadi was vice president during the 2011 uprising that led to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s resignation. Saudi Arabia helped to put down the uprising, thereby blocking a political transition from taking shape.