Here is what the people who know Yemen best have to say about it

• Laura Dean

CAIRO, Egypt — A Saudi-led coalition of Arab countries began bombing Yemen Thursday night as the Houthis, a Shia movement from Northern Yemen, sought to expand their control across the country.

The apparent goal of the intervention was to reinstate President AbdRabbuh Mansur Hadi, who had fled the capital, and to push back Houthifighters, who at the time of the bombings were trying to wrest control of the port city of Aden from Hadi.

Saudi Arabia perceives the Houthis — a Shia movement — as being directed by Iran. However, Yemen experts dispute the extent to which this is true, arguing that the Houthis are focused on local grievances and while they have ties to Iran, they are not under Iranian control.

The coalition was a diverse one. Saudi Arabia provided the bulk of the planes, but the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan have said they were involved. US Secretary of State John Kerry told Gulf foreign ministers on Thursday that the US commends the strikes and is providing intelligence, targeting assistance and other logistical support.

Analysts expect the bombing campaign to continue, prompting fears that the intervention will inflame, rather than mitigate, risks of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Meanwhile, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted following peaceful protests in 2011, is still playing a significant role.

As Yemen slides toward all-out chaos, GlobalPost asks experts to weigh in on what the future holds for the country.

ADAM BARON. Visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in Sanaa, Yemen, from 2011-2014.

"The question is: what is Saudi Arabia going to do next?  If Saudi Arabia remains in the air, this could inflame things further, but obviously Saudi Arabia won’t take major losses. That being said, if they end up going in on the ground I think it will be it’s hard to imagine that this won’t end up being a huge quagmire.

If you look at the terrain where the Houthis are it’s never been friendly to invaders, whether you’re talking about the civil war in the 1960s or 2,000 years ago when the Yemenis repelled the Roman army.

It's an insane amount of mountains, it’s very rocky so if Saudi Arabia and the coalition is aiming to go in and fight this as a ground war, it will be a very, very long slog.

I think it’s hard to imagine that the Houthis won’t retaliate in some way. The question is whether Saudi and the coalition will be able to repel them."

LAURA KASINOF. Author of the reporting memoir, "Don't be Afraid of the Bullets: An Accidental War Correspondent in Yemen."

"[The Houthis] have gained support among various tribes over the past couple of years. They consolidated power and took over territory more so than before and part of the population in Sanaa supported them before these strikes. It seems like even more are going to support them after these strikes.

When the Houthis were taking over territory, tribesmen said it was pushing people to support Al Qaeda, but now with these strikes it might go the opposite way, it might push people to support the Houthis against anti-Saudi aggression.

It’s also important to add that these strikes killed women and children, and while there’s lots of conflict in Yemen it never kills women and children unless it’s an accident, like it’s just one stray bullet. But to bomb a house that women and children are in, it really goes against Yemeni social norms. It really, really upset the population of Sanaa.

The feeling is that it’s targeting them because it did hit civilian areas. The problem too is that people were so ill prepared last night. No one knew this was going to start and so people didn’t have time to get to basements they had no idea what was happening and so I think that added to it. They didn’t know if Saudi was going to target the entire city and that led to the feeling that the entire population was being targeted."

ABDEL-GHANI IRYANI. Yemeni political analyst based in Sanaa.

"The big question is what is the coalition going to achieve by military action? If they want to flex their muscles, a few days is enough. If they want to destroy the Houthi movement, they will fail.

If the Saudis pursue a policy of eliminating the Houthi movement, the Yemeni people will not accept that and the Yemeni people will be unified behind the Houthis.

They [the Houthis] have to be given a face saving exit. For example, a mediator proposes a cessation of hostilities and going back to negotiations in a place such as Muscat or Cairo. Somebody has to say to the Houthis, please come.

The UN should be the broker . The only regional actor that is still in a position to negotiate is Oman and even Oman would be in an awkward position, after all they are part of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

I think that if the Houthis — with some kind of mediation — agree to withdraw from certain places in the south, honor the agreement they have already signed and agree to peace, the Saudis will stop [bombing]."

ASIL SIDAHMED. Research fellow at the Sanaa Centre for Strategic Studies.

"The Saudis' expressed intention was to reinstate Hadi. So let’s say that the airstrikes led to the Houthis backing down and Hadi was reinstated, then what?

Hadi doesn’t have any military control. That’s been his problem ever since he became president.  And he doesn’t know how to manipulate people in the way that [former president and now Houthi ally] Ali Abdullah Saleh did. He doesn’t have the resources that Saleh has.

Saleh has $63 billion in assets. The problem with the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]-brokered deal that was given to Saleh when he stepped down was that it gave him immunity and they didn’t freeze his assets, unlike all of the other despots that got ousted out of the Arab Spring. They left him scot free, that was the only way they could get rid of him. And so much of foreign direct investment going into Yemen goes through Ali Abdullah Saleh. What kind of a ousting is this? This doesn’t make any sense.

Hadi doesn’t have any assets. He doesn’t have any military control. He’s not even able to get people in the south where he comes from to support him because they think of him as a traitor because he went with the north after the early 90s. Hadi is seen as finished, we don’t care about him. He has a couple of supporters but it’s just not enough."

http://www.globalpost.com/article/6502608/2015/03/27/here-what-people-who-know-yemen-best-have-say-about-it