Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen’s Shi’ite Houthis and trying to reinstall former President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in power, is talking up the idea of “expanded ground operations” across Yemen today, while touting the takeover of much of the southern Yemeni port city of Aden.
Gen. Asseri insisted that the capture of Aden was positive, but “only the beginning,” and that the intention of the four month long war continues to be the return of Hadi to power nationwide. Hadi resigned in January, and is in exile in Saudi Arabia, awaiting the end of the war.
Saudi Arabia is training thousands of Yemeni fighters in their country now, but has held off on deploying the troops into Yemen because the Hadi forces didn’t actually hold much meaningful territory. Aden is intended to be their new staging area.
The trainees include some former military officers, but are believed to be mostly Sunni tribesmen who the Saudis are trying to get whipped up on sectarian grounds to attack the Shi’ite Houthis. While tribal factions have traditionally been hugely powerful in Yemen, it remains to be seen if one can be counted on as the primary force backing a government. Historically, that has not been the case.
As usual, the Saudi pooffs aren't doing the 'heavy lifting' themselves.
News Flash — Houta Army invades Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has a very small army, the dictators fearing a military coup d’état more then foreign enemies. So, with the Houta government of Yemen having won a ten year Revolution, with most of the men in Yemen owning guns and in good support of their new government, just how suicidal are those Saudi royalty anyway?
The Saudis are all in. To them the Houthis, as proxies of Iran, represent a mortal threat that will not be tolerated. The Saudis have over 200,000 men armed forces equipped with some of the most modern weapons and lots of it. They have the 6th largest military budget in the world. A major ground attack is coming designed to destroy Houthi forces, capture their leaders and their Iranian adviser who will all be subject to enhanced interrogations, trials and beheadings. After the Coalition expels Iran from the Arabian Peninsula, they will destroy the Assad regime and expel Iran from Syria. Those executioners the Saudis hired a few months back are sharpening their swords. Don't underestimate the Saudis.
The tribes protect themselves. That has rarely meant protecting a government, not for very long anyway.
That system was deliberately supported by a century of British occupation. The Brits kept Aden safe in its isolation by encouraging separatist tribes to remain fragmented. They accomplished what they set out to do, and it has never been undone.
Undoing that would be a necessary first step to creating a nation, and so far nobody has even tried to undo that. They use it, exist around its reality, but don't challenge it.
The Saudi's are pure evil. The root of all ME terrorism.
we got all the weapons and equipment ready to go, now we just have to find people willing to fight for us.