Seven months into the “liberation” of Aden, the temporary capital city of pro-Saudi southern Yemen, the Saudi forces continue to see multiple bomb attacks weekly, and regular gunbattles with Islamist rebels. Those aren’t even the same rebels they were fighting over the city.
Rather, having chased the Shi’ites out of Aden, and continuing to battle them in several fronts, while along the southern shore the ouster of the Shi’ites has provided an opening for Sunni Islamist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to set up shop.
This is true not just in areas of the coast ignored by the Saudi forces, but Aden itself, where AQAP flies its flag openly, and has organized public parades through certain neighborhoods. ISIS, for it’s part, has bombed the presidential palace and several other sites.
Almost a whole year into the Saudi war, Aden is the sole real “accomplishment” of the war, and it’s not a great one since they’ve failed to secure it from other factions. This seems to be setting the stage for a protracted conflict, with the Saudis showing no sign of giving up on its open-ended war.
Aden points to the ultimate failure of Saudi efforts. They cannot succeed, and Aden shows why.
Aden was a British base. It was isolated from the rest of Yemen, by political design. It gradually radicalized, and became the core of anti-colonialism because it was the center of colonialism in Yemen.
If there is any part of Yemen that the Saudis cannot possibly control, it is Aden.
The rest of Yemen is more tribal, and those tribes are not Saudi and don’t want to be Saudi. They won’t stop fighting. But Aden is more modern, in a way that rejects everything the Saudis are in a visceral way. It was Marxist, just to be rid of the British. It won’t stomach the Saudi monarchy.