Is the Yemen war a proxy one or a border dispute

There are conflicting reports about the ongoing battles between the Saudi forces and the Yemeni forces; best represented by the South Yemen Houthi tribes, who profess the Zaidi Shia faith. A cursory look at the print media, the electronic media and the Twitter reveals conflicting claims and counter claims. Other than that, the media seems to report it as yet another proxy war between the Shia Iran and the Sunni Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, with few journalists or analysts taking any interest in going beyond and looking at the conflict in a more objective way.

The lack of objectivity stems from the hard fact that the conflict as said above is treated as proxy theater and thus accordingly the news stories are filed with compromised objectivity. As that lack of objectivity stems in there are increasing chances that the incidence of false reporting creating a ground for false flag can sway the perception on the conflict to the points which are not present in the first place. Ironically Pakistan has not hidden its involvement in the conflict, which quietly suggests that the establishment is somewhat ready to deal with baggage accruing out of participation in such conflicts.

Back to the debate on the causes of the conflict; a few news outlets in the developed world and a few Twitter handles having braved the general news reporting environment point out to the fact that the war has its origins not in what is generally visible, but in centuries old issues, which remained unresolved or were rather corrupted to the point that they were shelved by the successive nation states; until the Yemeni civil war crisis erupted in the aftermath of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011. That ‘Spring” encouraged the Yemeni polity to challenge the military dictatorship under Ali Abdullah Saleh precipitating a long conflict between the warring factions of which the Houthi militia the rag tag reincarnation of the centuries old Zaidi dynasty.

The spring was viewed with suspicion by the regional monarchies’, especially Saudi and the Emirati ones, as they felt that their strategic interests can get a fatal hit. Towards that end the Saudi government egged on a faction within the Yemeni opposition to make sure that the future Yemeni government is obliged to Riyadh to comply with whatever the benefactor state demands from them.

Things came to head when in 2015 with the real king of Saudi Arabia apparently inactive; Salman Bin Abdul Aziz, his heir apparent Mohammad Bin Salman commonly referred to as MBS decided to plunge into the Yemeni political quagmire on behalf of its puppet government in exile to fight what the Saudi considered the Iranian threat in the form of the Zaidi Shia Houthi militia. The perception build up was enough for any geopolitical analyst working in cahoots with the regional militaries and their affiliated research institutes to conclude that the Iranian- Saudi conflict has created another theater.

Very few analysts ever had the professional courage to go beyond that narrative and debunk the same. The recent ground incursions from both sides the Saudi led coalition ground forces and the Houthis suggest that the issues at hand are beyond just the sectarian divide and rather has its roots in the issues which pertain to the history of the region.

Yemeni republic under the Zaidi dynasty has been in the region for almost 1000 years and has traditionally included much of the southern flank of the Arabian Peninsula. That state it seems had a sort of an arrangement with the Turkish Ottomans, until the Ottomans disintegrated and the Peninsula fell into the British hands, the rest being the history.

That takeover of much of the Arabian Peninsula by the Saudi dynasty was facilitated by the British to slice much of the Yemeni land for integration into the Saudi republic. The conflict did created ripples in the geo political peace at that point of time. However, with the passage of time and the influx of the new entrants like the free officers supported by the Nasser regime Egypt through much of the 60s and the shot lived Saudi support for the Zaidi dynasty, the issue did not raise its head until the current civil which started in 2011-2015 period.

As said before the conflict continued to be read as another proxy theater; until the Makkah alliance helped the intelligent analysts to think beyond. The Saudi Air Force has been pounding the Houth positions for the last 10 years without success. Recently in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 developments, the USAF and IDF too had tried to hit Houthi positions but without success.

However, the introduction of the ground forces made up from the Makkah pact states suggested strongly that what was at stake was not the elimination of the Houthi movement, rather what was being threatened was the territorial integrity of the Saudi southern flank, which if the Ottoman era records are studied, will make it clear that provinces like Jizan, Taiz, Abha not to forget Najran and other small governorates were never Saudi in essence, but tempered upon by the Saudi- Yemeni border commission equivalent of Redcliffe who without any qualms sliced much of the Yemeni territory in favor of the pro west Saudi monarchy.

If the current competence of the Saudi forces is evaluated and their dependence upon Pakistani and Turkish ground forces, a fact authenticated by the Pakistani military spokesman about the later forces’ participation, it is a do or die for the Saudi monarchy while for the Yemenis; read Houthi it is like reclaiming what has been theirs but confiscated by the departing colonial power in favor of the compliant local actor.

If the ground war escalates, which the situation suggests it can, the intensity of the war, firepower and intervention of the external players from the Saudi pact side will determine the level of threat from the Houthi side. Towards that end an intense media war bordering at fanning a sectarian conflict on the back of a false flag operation, coupled with intense air strikes bordering to the possibility of causing collateral damage cannot be ruled out.