There are two early 20th-century tunes that mark foreign attempts to occupy and “pacify” Yemen. The Scottish tune “The barren rocks of Aden” marks the mobilisation of Highland soldiers, enlisted to be deployed to the Yemeni port of Aden, which in 1837 became the last colony to be incorporated into the British Empire. The tune talks of the harshness of the terrain, but is celebratory. It was even played as a farewell tune to Sir William Luce at the parade in Sharjah celebrating his end as “British Viceroy” in the Middle East in 1966.
The second tune is an Anatolian lament. As İlker Sezer reminded us this weekend, in his weekly feature on “Turkiye Today”, it “mourns the tragic fate of Ottoman soldiers dispatched to the harsh, remote deserts of Yemen during the fall of the empire, young men who marched away from their villages and never returned home. Most of their names, and numbers, were never recorded. Yet, their fate left a mark on the Turkish psyche.”
As the Anatolian lament goes like this:
“There are no clouds in the sky, what is this smoke?
There is no death in the neighborhood, what is this cry?
These lands of Yemen are so ruthless.
Oh, it is Yemen, its rose is but a meadow.”
The Ottomans were unceremoniously expelled from Yemen in 1918. The British, despite their bravado, were expelled even more unceremoniously from Aden in 1967.
Subsequent invaders have discovered that Yemen is a grave that cannot be overcome by the strength of modern technology, and that whilst Yemeni society is splintered and divided, building a reliable alliance with Yemeni factions is difficult.
These are the harsh lessons facing Saudi Arabia, as the Kingdom faces its biggest challenge in its modern history.
Since its founding in 1932, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has had to deal with its poor, populous, and unruly neighbour: Yemen. It has done so through force – sometimes, and not very successfully, but more often through “traditional” diplomacy – ie bribes and gifts.
In 2016, the new Saudi strongman, Mohammed bin Salman, tried to solve the problem by force again, after the Houthi Movement, broke out from its stronghold in the North and swept over most of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, toppling the legitimate government. He failed, and an uneasy truce left the problem unresolved. Now the Houthis, emboldened by events in the Gulf, and the new assertiveness of their friends in Tehran, have decided to teach the Saudis a lesson. They attacked Saudi targets, including near the capital Riyadh; they closed the Bab el Mandeb Strait to Saudi shipping, and they overwhelmed the forces of the pro-Saudi Yemeni government, occupying the city of Mocha, the Island of Pemba, and other strategic points on the Red Sea.
The leadership of the Kingdom now has to respond decisively. At stake is their very credibility. They cannot do it on their own. They have been building a coalition – including the Pakistanis and Turks, co-signatories with Saudi Arabia of the recent Mecca Defence Pact. Others are said to be involved too, including the Egyptian, the Sudanese, ..... and the British. The Americans apparently declined to be involved overtly, although they are likely to provide intelligence and logistical support.
This is likely to be a long and messy conflict.
Saudi military objectives need to be focused: to box in the Houthis rather than destroy them. This is likely to include: (a) regaining territory lost on the Red Sea coast; (b) control over Bab el Mandeb Strait; (c) some kind of cordon sanitaire on the Saudi-Yemeni border; and, if things go well; (d) the capture of Sanaa. All this would not eliminate the Houthi problem, but it will contain it.
In the end, the Saudis will have to continue managing Yemen with a mixture of carrot and stick. For the moment the stick is likely, but the carrot cannot be forgotten either.
