As has happened repeatedly since 9/11, the US and countries like Britain fail to combat terrorism because they give priority to retaining their alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies
Supporters of Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh climb pillars of the Unknown Soldier Monument during a rally marking one year of Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen's capital Sanaa
They have done it again. The US, Britain and regional allies led by Saudi Arabia have come together to intervene in another country with calamitous results. Instead of achieving their aims, they have produced chaos, ruining the lives of millions of people and creating ideal conditions for salafi-jihadi movements like al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
The latest self-inflicted failure in the “war on terror” is in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Sunni states intervened on one side in a civil war in March 2015. Their aim was to defeat the Houthis - labelled somewhat inaccurately as Shia and pro-Iranian - who had seized most of the country in alliance with the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who retained the loyalty of much of the Yemeni army. Yemeni politics is exceptionally complicated and often violent, but violence has traditionally been followed by compromise between warring parties.
The Saudi intervention, supported in practice
by the US and Britain, has made a bad situation far worse. A year-long campaign of air strikes was supposed to re-impose the rule of former president
Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi,whose dysfunctional and unelecte government had fled to Saudi Arabia. Relentless bombing had some success
and the forces fighting in President Hadi’s name advanced north,
but were unable to retake the capital Sanaa. Over the last week
there has been a shaky truce.
The real winners in this war are al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP) which has taken advantage of the collapse of central
government to create its own mini-state. This now stretches for
340 miles – longer than the distance from London to Edinburgh
– along the south coast of Yemen. AQAP, which the CIA once
described as the most dangerous protagonist of “global jihad”
in the world, today has an organised administration with
its own tax revenues.
(AQAP) which has taken advantage of the collapse of central
government to create its own mini-state. This now stretches for
340 miles – longer than the distance from London to Edinburgh
– along the south coast of Yemen. AQAP, which the CIA once
described as the most dangerous protagonist of “global jihad”
in the world, today has an organised administration with
its own tax revenues.
Unnoticed by the outside world, AQAP has been swiftly expanding
its own statelet in Yemen in 2015/16, just as Isis did in western
Iraq and eastern in Syria in 2013/14. Early last year, President
Obama contemptuously described Isis as being like a junior
basketball team that would never play in the big leagues. Likewise
in Yemen, the American and British governments misjudged the
degree to which AQAP would benefit from Operation Decisive
Storm, the ill-chosen Saudi name for its military intervention that has
proved predictably indecisive.
its own statelet in Yemen in 2015/16, just as Isis did in western
Iraq and eastern in Syria in 2013/14. Early last year, President
Obama contemptuously described Isis as being like a junior
basketball team that would never play in the big leagues. Likewise
in Yemen, the American and British governments misjudged the
degree to which AQAP would benefit from Operation Decisive
Storm, the ill-chosen Saudi name for its military intervention that has
proved predictably indecisive.
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