CrabbedOne
Walking sideways snippily
On MEE Yemeni Factions, Saudi Arabia Escalate Aimless War
Main point of the article is neither side appears able to govern. That is perhaps a little even handed.
Hadi after a year of holding Aden is still living in the KSA and there is no real imprint of his governance there. Aden's plagued with terrorist incidents. When he's in Yemen he travels between heavily guarded compounds by helicopter for safety. The regime side here is a very divided constellation of often not complementary interests. They share the rebels as an enemy and sometimes have simply been rented. While some action has been taken against them AQAP remains a serious problem in the South. It was reported as actually doing a better job of delivering aid to towns near to starvation than the government. After the Arab Spring Hadi's was elected but in a rigged election in which he was the sole candidate. He proved to a corrupt continuity ruler who favoured the same Yemeni elites and failed to pass promised reforms. He didn't have the loyalty of much of the army that remained Saleh's. His government fell and he fled the country. He's bombed his own people or rather had the GCC do it on his behalf. This isn't the first time; he did that as Saleh's defence minister. He's been an obstacle in peace talks and appears to favour escalating the war. He's just seized the central bank as a tool of economic warfare with almost no means to use its resources to help a population on the verge of famine. His legitimacy rests on international support that isn't much more than pandering to the GCC.
Consider Assad's red handed claim to legitimacy in Syria: the evil bugger has never lost control of the the major cities and still resides by the capital. He can claim to rule 70% of Syria's people perhaps half of them by reluctant consent and has a functioning if very corrupt and authoritarian state. Perhaps half his lousy conscript army has died defending him. It's mostly remained loyal to him with only a rash of defections in the lower ranks. The revolt against him is heavily backed by foreigners and crawling with Salafi-Jihadis. More favourably in comparison with Hadi in over 5 years of civil war he and his allies have killed over a 100K civilians clinging to power whereas Hadi's side have maybe killed 3K civilians in a year and a half. And that equation might not look so good in a couple of years time if the Hadi regime tries to butcher its way to Sanaa or Yemen collapses into a devastating famine. And let's remember Obama confident in the regime's imminent demise consigned Assad to the R2P trash bin of the monstrous and the UN was talking war crimes after just five months of the revolt well before the total butchers bill in Syria reached the level of Yemen now in fact 2K civilians had died in protests some of which were rather violent. For another regional comparison during the recent coup the Egyptian security forces killed over 600 civilians in one day when ejecting a democratically elected if unpopular MB government.
On the other hand both the awful but wily Saleh and the ultra-reactionary Great Satan hating Houthis have evident popular support in the North. This is partly because of all the GCC bombing that we support and are widely assigned blamed for by the population. The capital Sanaa is chaotic but has something that looks more like a government that might reach terms with the rest of Yemen.
Saleh advances politically in Sanaa.
Main point of the article is neither side appears able to govern. That is perhaps a little even handed.
Hadi after a year of holding Aden is still living in the KSA and there is no real imprint of his governance there. Aden's plagued with terrorist incidents. When he's in Yemen he travels between heavily guarded compounds by helicopter for safety. The regime side here is a very divided constellation of often not complementary interests. They share the rebels as an enemy and sometimes have simply been rented. While some action has been taken against them AQAP remains a serious problem in the South. It was reported as actually doing a better job of delivering aid to towns near to starvation than the government. After the Arab Spring Hadi's was elected but in a rigged election in which he was the sole candidate. He proved to a corrupt continuity ruler who favoured the same Yemeni elites and failed to pass promised reforms. He didn't have the loyalty of much of the army that remained Saleh's. His government fell and he fled the country. He's bombed his own people or rather had the GCC do it on his behalf. This isn't the first time; he did that as Saleh's defence minister. He's been an obstacle in peace talks and appears to favour escalating the war. He's just seized the central bank as a tool of economic warfare with almost no means to use its resources to help a population on the verge of famine. His legitimacy rests on international support that isn't much more than pandering to the GCC.
Consider Assad's red handed claim to legitimacy in Syria: the evil bugger has never lost control of the the major cities and still resides by the capital. He can claim to rule 70% of Syria's people perhaps half of them by reluctant consent and has a functioning if very corrupt and authoritarian state. Perhaps half his lousy conscript army has died defending him. It's mostly remained loyal to him with only a rash of defections in the lower ranks. The revolt against him is heavily backed by foreigners and crawling with Salafi-Jihadis. More favourably in comparison with Hadi in over 5 years of civil war he and his allies have killed over a 100K civilians clinging to power whereas Hadi's side have maybe killed 3K civilians in a year and a half. And that equation might not look so good in a couple of years time if the Hadi regime tries to butcher its way to Sanaa or Yemen collapses into a devastating famine. And let's remember Obama confident in the regime's imminent demise consigned Assad to the R2P trash bin of the monstrous and the UN was talking war crimes after just five months of the revolt well before the total butchers bill in Syria reached the level of Yemen now in fact 2K civilians had died in protests some of which were rather violent. For another regional comparison during the recent coup the Egyptian security forces killed over 600 civilians in one day when ejecting a democratically elected if unpopular MB government.
On the other hand both the awful but wily Saleh and the ultra-reactionary Great Satan hating Houthis have evident popular support in the North. This is partly because of all the GCC bombing that we support and are widely assigned blamed for by the population. The capital Sanaa is chaotic but has something that looks more like a government that might reach terms with the rest of Yemen.
