Saudi Arabia is determined to teach the Al-Houthi rebels along its border with Yemen a lesson they will not forget, writes Hassan Abu Taleb Wars always have a definitive beginning; you can pinpoint the day, sometimes the hour, they broke out. The ending is another matter. Saudi Arabia and the Al-Houthi insurgents from Yemen opened fire on each other on 4 November. Predicting when hostilities in the Yemeni province of Saada, and along an 800 kilometre-long stretch of border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, will end, however, is far from easy. The signs, at present, point to a number of possibilities. The arena of battle and the number of combatants could expand, transforming a border clash between one country and an insurgent movement in another into a regional conflict. Reports have emerged of a training camp for Al-Houthi insurgents in Eritrea. Others point to the movement of Iranian naval units to the Gulf of Aden, purportedly to protect Iranian ships from Somali pirates but also, perhaps, to prevent the Saudi coast guard from intercepting ships passing through the southern Red Sea and suspected of smuggling arms to the Al-Houthis. The most optimistic scenario is that Saudi forces succeed in creating a buffer zone 10 kilometres deep in both Yemeni and Saudi territory, preventing both the movement of Al-Houthi insurgents along the corridor and the smuggling of arms. The rebels will then be caught in a vice, between Saudi forces in the north and Yemeni forces in the south. While such an operation might destroy the military capability of the Al-Houthis it is unlikely to end a movement whose ideas have spread throughout the whole of Saada in the last decade. Between these two scenarios lies the most likely -- protracted skirmishes with guerrilla-like forces, especially if the Al-Houthi rebels strike up an alliance with Al-Qaeda's elements in Yemen. Both groups seek to overthrow the republican regime in Yemen and subject Saudi Arabia to constant security and propaganda pressures. Such a development would lure in outside parties, a prospect hinted at by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki when he cautioned against "foreign intervention" in Yemen. Mottaki warned that recourse to armed force would only complicate the crisis, adding that Iran was ready to be part of a diplomatic solution though without indicating what shape such a solution might take. Sanaa, in turn, rejected the Iranian position as a veiled mandate while Riyadh maintained that it was evidence of Iranian plans to destabilise Saudi Arabia by encouraging affiliates of Zaidi Islam, a form of Shia Islam, to engage in acts of sabotage and terrorism inside Saudi Arabia. The war in the northern Yemeni province of Saada pits an official standing army, trained in open combat on a clearly designated battlefield, against an enemy with no identifiable leadership or command centre, operating over a vast expanse of territory and organised into small guerrilla units whose preferred tactic is to hit and run. The Al-Houthis also have an active propaganda machine, producing a flow of statements presenting a very different picture of events on the ground than the official one and constantly hammering home the message that the Al-Houthi movement is fighting to secure the rights of a religious minority persecuted by an oppressive regime. In contrast to the Al-Houthi line, which denies any Iranian support for what it claims is a purely Yemeni movement striving to reinstate Islamic principles of government, official Yemeni propaganda brands the Al-Houthis as an extremist offshoot of the Zaidi sect to which 40 per cent of the population of Yemen belongs. The aim of the extremists, the government claims, is to overthrow the republican order in Yemen and replace it with a form of "rule by the clergy", modelled on the system of government set up by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979. The actions of the Al-Houthi movement over the past year suggest that its aims extend well beyond the fight against persecution. It has seized control of several departments in Saada, imposing its own laws and behavioural codes. It has taken over schools and police stations and set up military training camps, all of which point to ambitions to set up its own mini state in Saada, perhaps as a bridgehead to press for the partition of Yemen. It is not hard to envision the Al-Houthis joining forces with the southern Yemeni protest movement, a portion of which has begun to press for secession. The Al-Houthi movement, seeking a sectarian division in Yemen with an Islamic imamate in the north, poses a grave strategic and security threat not only to Yemen but also to next-door Saudi Arabia. When Al-Houthi rebels infiltrated the mountainous Jabal Al-Dukhan region in Saudi Arabia on 5 November and opened fire on small Saudi villages near the Yemeni border, Riyadh had no choice but to respond to the aggression. Events over the past two weeks have reflected Saudi resolve to defeat the Al-Houthis, clip their military wings and teach them never again to contemplate crossing the border into Saudi territory. The Saudi army's determined land and air offensive is intended to sweep Al-Houthi infiltrators out of the country, secure its borders, especially in the rugged mountain region that has a long history of infiltration and smuggling, and establish the buffer zone mentioned above. In a pincer movement, the Saudi navy has laid a blockade in the Red Sea near Saudi's maritime border with Yemen to prevent the smuggling of arms and personnel. The action has so far led to the capture of around 500 Al-Houthi rebels. The Al-Houthi movement is in a very precarious military situation. Most of its hideouts and positions, prepared long ago, have been destroyed. Many of its members have been killed or apprehended. In addition, the heavy presence of Yemeni forces in various parts of Saada has begun to turn popular sympathy in the province, once a bastion of support and a source for militant recruits, away from the Al-Houthis. It is the Al-Houthis military predicament that accounts for rebel leader Abdel-Malik Al-Houthi's appeal to the Arab League to form a fact-finding commission and bring a halt to Saudi Arabia's "unjustifiable aggression" against a movement which, he claims, has no other aim but to protect the many affiliates of Zaidi Islam in northern Yemen. The Arab League will not be able to take his appeal seriously. Not only does it come from an individual with no recognised official capacity, it was issued on behalf of an insurrectionist movement that has violated the law, the constitution, and the public order of Yemen. (see p.6)
