Yemen by Asher Orkaby

Author:Asher Orkaby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

When did Saudi Arabia become involved in the Houthi wars?

Saudi Arabia did not become directly involved in the Houthi wars until November 2009 when the Saudi air force conducted its own air campaign in support of Saudi ground forces against Houthi sites along the border. Conflicts in Yemen have long threatened to spill over the Saudi border, much as they did during the 1960s civil war, when Imam al-Badr’s royalist tribesmen used Saudi territory as a staging ground for a guerilla war against Egypt. Once Houthi tribesmen began infiltrating Saudi territory at Jabal Dukhan, it became clear that Saleh’s forces had lost control of the northern territory. Saudi Border Guards were first called upon to combat these border incursions, but eventually the Saudi air force needed to intervene with targeted airstrikes and the establishment of a buffer zone between the two countries. The Royal Saudi Navy also began a naval blockade of the North Yemeni port of Midi in order to intercept arms shipments. Both the aerial campaign and the blockade of November 2009 were precursors of Saudi Arabia’s 2015 Operation Decisive Storm.

Houthi incursions continued unabated as Saudi Border Guards proved insufficient and ineffectual in actual combat, suffering dozens of casualties, and leading to a public relations disaster that continues to deter a Saudi ground invasion of northern Yemen in the current conflict. In 2009, an estimated 15,000 Saudi residents along the border were forcibly evacuated as the Kingdom launched its largest land invasion force since the First Gulf War. Jordan sent several hundred troops in defense of Saudi Arabia from the “Shi’i threat” in Yemen. While Saudi intervention certainly pressured Abdul Malek al-Houthi to seek a political solution rather than be forced to contend with a two-front war, it also spurred Iran to reconsider its low level of interest in the Houthi movement, thereby escalating a border security concern into a regional conflagration.

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