As Saudi Arabia’s allies try to bomb Islamic State out of its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, the kingdom’s war in Yemen is enabling jihadists to seize new ones.
Al-Qaeda took over two cities in south Yemen on Wednesday, local media said. In the key port of Aden, whose recapture from Shiite rebels was the biggest success for Saudi-led forces in Yemen, there are growing signs of a militant presence. Al-Qaeda’s flag has flown above the police station in the war-scarred al-Tawahi neighborhood, and graffiti on the road to Taiz warns that “the Islamic State is strong.” Students at Aden University have been warned not to mix with the opposite sex.
All that is grist to the mill for critics who say the world’s biggest oil exporter, already squeezed by the slump in crude prices, is storing up more trouble by fighting the wrong war. In making the Shiite Houthi rebels their military priority, the argument goes, the kingdom has inadvertently empowered more dangerous enemies -- Sunni jihadists who have repeatedly called for the overthrow of the Al Saud ruling family.
The Saudis and their allies “prioritize the fight against what they see as Iranian allies over the fight against Salafi jihadists,” Gregory Gause, a professor of international affairs at Texas A&M University, said by e-mail. “They think that they can clean up the latter after they have taken care of the former,” he said. “It is a dangerous and risky bet.”
Iran Priority
For Gause and other analysts, there’s a parallel with the U.S. war in Iraq, now widely seen as having strengthened Islamist militants. Saudi Arabia got caught up in that backlash, suffering a series of bomb attacks that roiled energy markets.
Still, the Saudis and their chief ally in Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, mostly cite Iran as their biggest threat, accusing the Houthis of being tools to spread the Islamic Republic’s influence on the Arabian peninsula. It’s part of a wider concern about Iran’s growing power after this year’s nuclear accord and signs of detente with the U.S. The rebels say their ties with Iran are limited, and Western diplomats have expressed skepticism over the degree of Iranian involvement in Yemen.
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There’s no sign of the Yemen conflict ending anytime soon: the Houthis still hold much of the country, even as jihadist groups emerge in the “liberated” areas.
Al-Qaeda now has “almost complete freedom of maneuver across much of southern Yemen,” Ludovico Carlino, a senior analyst at IHS Country Risk, said in an e-mailed note.
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