This is from an embedded link in the article that refers back to a March 31 article from Brookings...which I thought was an interesting complement read to this recent article.
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March 31, 2015 10:37am
Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen: The moral questions
On Saturday, at the opening of the 26th Arab League Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia’s new king, Salman bin Abdulaziz, vowed that the Saudi-led military campaign against Houthi militias in Yemen would continue until the country is “stable and safe.” Given Yemen’s various challenges, this means that “Operation Decisive Storm” will need to go on for a long, long time before its declared objective is achieved.
A stable and safe Yemen is the sort of objective that Saudi Arabia could have pursued six months ago after the Houthis seized control of Sanaa. Now, however, Yemen sits on the brink of civil war, and the Saudi-led intervention does nothing to avert it. The real question is why Saudi Arabia waited so long to act—and why it has intervened in this particular fashion.
Depending on where they stand, analysts give a number of potential explanations for Saudi procrastination. The first is one of administrative transition. With the death of King Abdullah, the Kingdom has been more concerned with putting its own house into order than Yemen’s descent into chaos. A second, related argument suggests that the Yemen “file” was centralized in the hands of the late Crown Prince Sultan until 2011, only to be divided between the Ministry of the Interior under Muhammad bin Naif and the intelligence services under a succession of princes. The third argument suggests that the Saudi leadership, led astray by the UAE and Egypt, was distracted by a needless witch hunt of the Muslim Brotherhood and, along with the war against the Islamic State group, this has occupied their full attention. None of these explanations provides a full answer. If the Al Saud, with their immense resources and established antagonism toward Iran, could not see the Houthi threat looming, then all should worry about the future stability of the region.
It is high time for Saudi Arabia to take a more holistic view of what is going on in Yemen, and for the GCC to recognize the strategic importance of addressing the country as a development problem, not just a security problem. Were only a fraction of the billions spent containing Yemen—through walls, weapons, surveillance, soldiers, and now a bombing campaign—instead used to create employment opportunities and improve the country’s decrepit infrastructure, Riyadh and the rest of the GCC would have far less to worry about.
In justifying its intervention, Saudi is quick to point out that its actions are in response to the appeal of internationally-recognized Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and that its air campaign has received the unequivocal support of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Nevertheless, the nature of such a campaign means that as the Saudis and their allies run out of obvious military targets, it is inevitable that mistakes will be made—as was the case on Monday morning with the killing of 21 in an air strike that struck a IDP camp in the northern Yemeni region of Haradh—and the number of civilian causalities will rise, causing people, both in Yemen and elsewhere, to start questioning the morality of the war.
King Salman and his son Mohammad may have secured the required legal cover, but they will certainly find it much more difficult to justify the war morally. The following are some of the moral questions that the Saudis need to face up to if the intervention is not to lead to a protracted war that bleeds the two countries physically, socially, and economically.
Continued at......
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/03/31-saudi-arabia-war-in-yemen-barakat
= new reply since forum marked as read
