Yemen Begins Retaliation

After Yemeni rebels took down the unrepresentative government of the country, Saudi Arabia to the North initiated an invasion strategy. At first, the attacks consisted of F-16 air raids and had regional support from among the other gulf countries and even Morocco.

A moderate ground invasion started, but unlike Russian forces in the Ukraine, the invasion force secured assets in the remote north of the country.

Western Media Outlets stressed that this was certainly a hot war spawning from a regional cold war with Iran dating back to the historic "Sunni-Shia" and "Arab-Persian" divisions. However, this was far from the case. There is a strong element of Sunni-Shia tensions and can be linked to Saudi Arabia's excess of hostility, but this conflict did not happen because of the historic Sunni-Shia tension.

Quite simply, Saudi Arabia saw a militant take over in their southern neighbor and needed to be certain that their borders and assets within the south were secured from hostilities. This is not the most unreasonable action. Libya and Iraq have fallen into factional chaos and Iraq, especially, has seen the internal chaos spread outside its borders into neighbors like Syria. Saudi Arabia was ensuring that there would be no push into their own country.

However, the one negation to a preemptive strike is the consequences that follow. Yemen is an ancient civilization, strong to the core. To expect them to lay aside and let themselves be attacked without retaliation is not realistic. Even a country with as strong a military as Saudi Arabia should know that such a military cannot protect every square inch of the land.

Last week, 7 soldiers from Saudi Arabia were killed by Yemeni insurgents. However, that compares nothing to what happened today. Yemen fired a SCUD missile into Saudi Arabia and it exploded a missile base far beyond the border, in Riyadh province. This of course will not be tolerated by Saudi Arabia, and will lead to further escalation.

Although Yemen is 50/50 between Sunnis and Shia, compared to regional neighbors which are nearly 100% Sunni it establishes itself as a Shia neighbor. While this conflict did not start based on religious divisions, but on a security issue, historic religious differences between the two is most likely the reason why attacks have been excessively violent.