Kingdom’s unwavering support for Yemen

The operation launched by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen had, from the outset, one objective — to end insurgency and restore the legitimate government headed by Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. And that objective has partly been achieved. The first phase of the campaign in support of Hadi's legitimate government was Operation Decisive Storm. Now comes the second phase, Operation Restoring Hope.
However the end of the four-week air drive never meant that the Kingdom and its allies had sheathed their sword. The air intervention demonstrated to the Houthi rebels and their Iranian backers the awesome power that they faced. It is clear that for some rebels, the destruction that their leaders had brought down upon their heads was too much. Defections are on the increase. Brig. Gen. Abdulrahman Al-Halily of the First Military District, the leader of an army brigade which had joined the rebels, took his troops over to the government side. Other tribesmen have been melting away.
Peace is becoming an attractive option for those rebels who see only more death and destruction ahead of them. And the Kingdom and its allies have made it clear that with peace will come aid and support to rebuild the poorest country in the Arab world.
Perhaps another reason that minds are changing is the cavalier attitude of the rebel leadership to humanitarian aid. For example, the French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has been obstructed in its attempt to fly in medical assistance.
Operation Restoring Hope was always going to have a military component. It had to be. The 128 military strikes in the past four weeks had been a salutary lesson. They brought the rebels to a halt, if not to their senses. However, almost immediately with the end of Operation Decisive Storm, the Houthi leaders threw away the opportunity to talk. They restarted their assaults. Fighting resumed in Aden and in Huta, the capital of Lahj province and in the town of Daleh. Most significant was the seizure of an army base outside Yemen’s third city of Taiz.
The Saudi-led response was immediate. At least a dozen devastating airstrikes went in. One of them appears to have destroyed the ammunition stores in the newly captured Taiz base. What had seemed to the rebels a triumph, suddenly became a disaster. It appears that the death and injuries in the base explosion were considerable.
The message could not be clearer. The Houthis will be paying an ever-higher cost for their rebellion. The siren voices from Iran are leading them toward destruction. The Kingdom is not going to flinch in its determination to protect Yemen and its legitimate government. It will not countenance outside interference, designed to destabilize the region.
And the international community is solidly behind the military intervention. At sea, the noose is tightening. The airstrikes have not simply countered ground attacks. Military planners have also targeted support columns and most importantly weapons dumps. The rebels now face diminishing supplies of guns and ammunition. Many of the tanks they seized have been destroyed from the air. Their military position is starting to become desperate.
The question now is how long it will take for them to comply with the demands of the United Nations. The UN resolution was quite clear. On 14 April, it demanded that the Houthis give up their weapons and withdraw from the territory they have seized, including the capital Sanaa. The Iranians, who are themselves defying the UN over their nuclear program, will be pressing their Houthi surrogates to resist. But it must be dawning on the rebels that they are being used. Iran is prepared to promote this rebellion right down the the very last Houthi.
The Houthis have been led into a mad adventure for which they are already paying a terrible price. At the moment the rebel leaders and the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh can divert this fury and frustration toward the UN and the Kingdom and its allies. But if the insurrection continues, if the opportunity for peace talks continues to be spurned, the consequences will be even more terrible. At that point the rage of ordinary Houthis will turn on their leaders and their Iranian masters. The only issue is how many more of them will have to die before this happens. The Operation Restoring Hope should make Yemenis realize that Kingdom has always supported Yemen and its people and that the current campaign is a testament to the Kingdom's sincerity toward Yemenis at large.