Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states could not keep silent about the developments in Yemen. It was also quite impossible for them to ignore the plea for help made by the legitimate President of Yemen Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi. The president, chosen by the people of Yemen, urged the GCC states and other Arab countries as well as the United Nations to save Yemen's legitimacy and not to abandon the country and allow its people to be engulfed in the anarchy and chaos brought about by the Houthis. Decisive Storm is the result of a meticulous and elaborate plan put swiftly into action. Neither the Houthis nor those who stand behind them within Yemen and outside ever expected such a quick operation. It is a well-known fact that the deposed Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh had requested the GCC states for an intervention when the people of Yemen took to the streets in 2011 in a revolution against a president and government which did not bring them anything other than tyranny, corruption and backwardness. Subsequently, the Gulf states saved the Yemeni people from chaos with a peace plan called the Gulf Initiative, under which Saleh handed over power to his deputy Hadi. Under the peace deal, Saleh was provided with legal immunity and a safe exit from the presidency. Saleh was present in Riyadh to sign the pact in the presence of the late King Abdullah, and that brought normalcy back to Yemen. As per the UN-GCC brokered peace deal, Hadi was chosen as the new president to lead the country during the two-year transition period. It was decided to hold a National Dialogue Conference (NDC) with the participation of all the major stakeholders in Yemen to decide their future during this period. The conference aimed at discussing all the problems and outstanding issues in order to find solutions which were acceptable to all. The NDC process which lasted for about 10 months agreed to prepare a draft constitution and hold a plebiscite on it. All the major players in the Yemeni political arena, including Saleh's General People's Congress, the Houthis, and forces from northern and southern parts of the country participated in the conference. It seemed that all of the parties came to an agreement on all the vital issues except for minor differences like the number of provinces in the north and south. However, it later became evident that Saleh had a hidden agenda to torpedo any agreement reached by the parties. Subsequently, he entered into a secret alliance with his former archrivals, the Houthis, who acted in accordance with dictates received from external forces, namely Iran, which blindly supported the Houthis after having made gains in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Iran wanted to incorporate Yemen into the region under its domain and hence started supplying military and financial aid to the Houthis. This enabled the Houthis to advance on Sanaa after taking control of Amran and Al-Baidaa. They found little resistance from the armed forces of the country because these forces were apparently receiving orders not from President Hadi but from the deposed President Saleh who still wields influence among units of the army and the security forces. This enabled the Houthis to take control of the capital and the arsenal of the armed forces. Eventually, they laid siege to the presidential palace, and the president, prime minister and members of the government were put under house arrest. When Yemen's legitimate President Hadi managed to escape Sanaa and reached Aden, he made it the temporary capital and eventually all foreign diplomatic missions moved to the port city. At this critical juncture, Hadi called for the resumption of dialogue with all the parties in the country under the aegis of the GCC and within the framework of the Gulf Initiative. But the Houthis rejected this offer in an arrogant way. The Houthi spokesmen threatened those who stood in their way and they were not hesitant to disclose their ambitious plans for expansion. Some of them threatened to advance even up to Makkah. They defied the legitimacy of President Hadi and claimed that the Gulf Initiative was no more. They ignored the decisions of the United Nations to leave the cities that they had invaded by force. They tried to silence all the voices raised against them and dispersed all the demonstrations held in protest against their hegemony with the power of weapons. The Houthis also advanced toward the south of the country and invaded Taiz as part of their plan to take control of the entire country together with supporters of the deposed President Saleh. When the Houthis and their associates rejected the language of wisdom and the concept of dialogue to resolve the crisis, and remained adamant in their coercive and threatening tactics, there was no option for the Saudi-led coalition of 10 nations other than starting a military operation in order to restore the legitimacy in Yemen and crush the anarchy and protect the broad interests of not only Yemen but of all the countries in the region. Decisive Storm will uproot the pillars of arrogance and anarchy and restore the legitimacy of the president and bring security, stability and peace to the Arab people of Yemen. Moreover, the operation also aims at putting an end to the potential dangers that threaten Yemen and other countries in the region by sending a strong message to Iran that the strategic interests of the Gulf Arab states is the red line that should not be crossed, and that good neighborliness should be the ideal approach to serve the interests of every nation in the region.
— Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at [email protected]
