Saudi-led coalition has gone into second gear

Theodore Karasik looks at the challenges facing Operation Restoring Hope in Yemen

Saudi officials say that the transition from Decisive Storm to Restoring Hope has been smooth. Hani Mohammed/ AP Photo

Last week, the Saudi-led military coalition announced that Operation Decisive Storm had ended and that Operation Restoring Hope had begun. The transition from one mission to another represents a changing approach and the attempt to avoid mission creep.

This is a technical term used by military planners when politics forces the military to take on additional missions that lengthen the planned operations. Saudi officials say that the transition from Decisive Storm to Restoring Hope has been smooth.

Now, they seem to see the Yemen mission as a long- term one. The Salman Doctrine, which has been described as “Saudi interest comes first”, sees it as essential that the kingdom’s influence be restored in the governance of Yemen.

From the start, Operation Decisive Storm focused on denying the Houthis and the militia backed by Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh use of the country’s MiG-29 fighter jets. It destroyed missiles, which could target Saudi territory or sea traffic as well as surface-to-air batteries that could target coalition aircraft. It bombed major ammunition storerooms that had fallen into rebel hands and destroyed Houthi command and control centres. According to an official who requested anonymity, Operation Decisive Storm was mostly successful. He noted that 2,415 sorties were needed to achieve the mission’s initial goals.

That is true but the humanitarian cost has undoubtedly been very high. A thousand people are estimated dead and 3,000 wounded and nearly half of Yemen’s 26 million people face a crisis in terms of food and security. The thinking goes that Operation Restoring Hope will address the crisis with emergency aid and engineering expertise. Some may scoff at the notion that this may be a transformative experience for Yemen, but it is such a basket case that the coalition, with backing from key international actors, may actually pull off a miracle in the long term.

There is another aspect to Saudi thinking about the transition from one phase of the mission to the other: future Yemeni generations. During the transition from Operation Decisive Storm to Restoring Hope, the Saudi ambassador to the United States Adel bin Ahmed Al Jubeir said that the kingdom’s main concern was Yemen’s future. He said that hundreds of thousands of Yemeni children would be susceptible to extremism if the country’s situation did not change. And he added that King Salman was determined to stop the radicalisation of generations of Yemenis. That statement was a long-term commitment by Saudi Arabia to security and stability on the Arabian peninsula’s south-western tip.

That said, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is the wild card. Just this month, it has carried out 27 operations in Yemen: 12 in Al Bayda, five in Lahj, four in Shabwa, three in Abyan, two in Taez, and one in Al Hudaydah. It’s important to note that AQAP continues principally to attack the Houthis. For the Saudis then, AQAP is a force multiplier.

Nevertheless, Operation Restoring Hope is to feature strikes against AQAP with the assistance of the United States. A strike group from the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier is deployed in the Gulf of Aden. Both the Saudis and the Americans, along with Egypt, want to keep the Red Sea supply chain open and free from threat. The US is still flying drones from Djibouti, one of which killed AQAP’s ideological leader Ibrahim Rubaish last week.

In terms of the politics of the situation, Saudi Arabia and its allies are on the right side of international law because they are seeking to fully implement the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2216. The resolution seeks to force all the parties in Yemen to the negotiating table. That negotiations are to be held in Oman is a given. Saudi Arabia’s UK ambassador Mohammed bin Nawwaf said just last week that the military campaign is poised to continue until Mr Saleh and the Houthis fully comply with the United Nations conditions.

In the meantime, the Saudi-led coalition’s focus, alongside the UN, on getting humanitarian aid into Yemen is a sensible and well-judged move. The intention – and the hope – is to be fully in line with the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Last week, Riyadh agreed to cover $274 million (Dh1bn) in humanitarian aid via OCHA’s Yemen office. This is a notable commitment and reflects Saudi Arabia’s intentions. The kingdom has learnt the lessons from US, French and British military and humanitarian operations throughout the Middle East and North Africa region. Some key Arab states, especially the UAE, are remarkable in their ability to deliver tonnes of aid to the needy in disaster and war zones.

Now, Riyadh is doing the same in its own way. It is yet another part of the wraparound approach the kingdom is taking towards foreign national security priorities. In that sense, Yemen is just the first step. Other issues to the north of the kingdom will be dealt with in due course.

Overall, of course, it should surprise no one that Operation Restoring Hope grew out of Operation Decisive Storm. Much like shifting gears with a stick shift, the Saudi-led coalition just went into second gear: there is no reverse in the mission.

Dr Theodore Karasik is a Dubai-based analyst on the Gulf with a specific focus on Saudi Arabia