Yemen's Capital Falls To Shiite Militants, President Is Captured

The thing is, I don't see how "Gain more influence" will be achieved except through military means. The Houtis that have taken control of Yemen are good old Shiia fivers (as opposed to the twelvers in Iran) whom are pretty much an ally of Tehran. Iran has been funding them to achive just this. Now Yemen stands under Iran's sphere of influence. It's not out of the question that Iran now will do the same (or is already doing the same) with Shiites in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. The Saudis response to this will of course be to propegate more Salafism in order to compat Shiism. Basically, a lot more people die and the region will be plunged into even more chaos.


I did read an article that said this is basically a power-play for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Does anyone have any insight on that?


Btw, where does the Ibadi in Oman stand in all of this? I haven't read anything to indicate that they are friendly with either Riyadh or Tehran.

oman has been irans partner on the arabian peninsula.

and yes,this is basically iran telling SA that they can start shit anytime
 
How is this not front page news?

the houthis arent cutting peoples heads off,raping or stealing.
its also not clear yet if they want to take over the govt or merely use this as leverage (they took over sanaa in september,then reached a peace deal).

its clear that the prez is a sitting duck,theres been reports of certain army units refusing help and his inner circle abandoning him
 
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yeah, this is bizarre...it's not on the front page of CNN or Foxnews...

why is this story so Hush hush...

IDL!! Chime in on this with your conspiracy theories!
 
How is this not front page news?

Because the only thing remarkable about this is how slowly these Houthi rebels have advanced, they were camping just outside of the capital in late 2012.
 
yeah, this is bizarre...it's not on the front page of CNN or Foxnews...

why is this story so Hush hush...

IDL!! Chime in on this with your conspiracy theories!

because Americans weren't killed.. yet.
 
If Yemen's Al Qaeda branch took over the capital, it would be Islamic State 2.0.

A coup is probably the fastest way to make that happen. The Houthi have pledged to minimize American interference. Without American drones dropping bombs on AQAP, they are now free to merrily go about creating an Islamic State 2.0.
 
This has gotten amazingly little press. In the hellhole that is Yemen, the Shiite militants have just successfully taken over the capital city, Sanaa (one of the oldest centers of Islam), and the Yemen president (a staunch ally of the US) has been captured by the militants. The US is sending warships to the area.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/21/us-sends-navy-warships-into-red-sea-poised-for-emb/

People focus on Islamic State, but the reality is that Yemen is completely out of control, and now basically replicates the debacle to the North, being controlled by Shiite rebels, Al Qaeda Sunnis, and a brutal regime supported by the West and Saudi Arabia that is collapsing (well, pretty much collapsed yesterday) under the extremist assault.

So much is coming back to haunt Saudi Arabia ... they are surrounded by nightmare extremists to the North AND the South now. The US cannot solve this problem for them. Either the Saudis step up to the plate, or they are going to get systematically dismantled by the extremists within and without their country.

Well the Shiites in Yemen are Zaidis which is not Iranian 12er , and is supposed to be much closer to Sunni Islam. Saudi supported a previous Yemeni Shia president. So they don't see Zaidi Yemeni in the same vein as Iraqi Shia.

But...

They are still Shia and reputed to receive Iranian support. John McCain has stated the Houthis are more dangerous than AQ because of their links to Iran. McCain ofcourse is such a NeoCon shill that it is to be expected of him.

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I do hope the House of Saud get their just deserts from ISIS,Shia,AQ,Houthis and everyone else. The Sauds are the reason for the Salafi evil.
 
yeah, this is bizarre...it's not on the front page of CNN or Foxnews...

why is this story so Hush hush...

IDL!! Chime in on this with your conspiracy theories!

Been reading about it for a few days now on Arab and International news sites. I probably read about it on US news too but it isn't being pushed to forefront like ISIS stuff.
 
Well the Shiites in Yemen are Zaidis which is not Iranian 12er , and is supposed to be much closer to Sunni Islam. Saudi supported a previous Yemeni Shia president. So they don't see Zaidi Yemeni in the same vein as Iraqi Shia.

EDIT: My mistake, I think I misread your post.:icon_lol:

That was in the 60's. Things where a bit diffrent back then.

Yemen was ruled by a Zaidi monarch. Then Egypt - under the Arab Socialism leader Gamal Nasser - started messing about in the country and drove through a coup. Nasser was basically the highpoint of what we call Ba'athism (Arab secular Nationalism). Ba'athism was the dominant ideology in the Arab world at the time, much more popular than Salafism or any other Islamism ideology. And it just so happened that Ba'athism promoted military dictatorships instead of a hereditary monarchy.

So what you had was a Ba'athism vs Monarchy divide. Saudi Arabia (being a monarcy) didn't want Ba'athism to succeed and grab a foothold just south of its boarder. So they aided the Zaidi monarch against the Ba'athists in hopes of curbing Arab Nationalism.

These days, Ba'athism is a dying ideology. Saddam fell, Assad is with his back against the ropes and realigning with the Shia ideology, and Ba'thism is increassingly impopular in its former stronghold of Egypt, and so on and on.

These days the divide is more about Sunni vs Shia - or more specificaly, Salafism vs Iran-lead Shia. The kind of comradery between Shia Yemen and Saudi Arabia that existed in the 60's is not something we will see in the current climate.
 
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I saw this on BBC News yesterday and they reported that the President wasn't there when the capital building fell. Has that report changed?
 
So much is coming back to haunt Saudi Arabia ... they are surrounded by nightmare extremists to the North AND the South now. The US cannot solve this problem for them. Either the Saudis step up to the plate, or they are going to get systematically dismantled by the extremists within and without their country.

Saudi Arabia already have a barrier in the South along the Yemen border, which I'd imagine would suddenly increase in both height and width very soon.

In few years, the cradle of Wahhabism will looks like a scene out of World War Z.

opi_world-war-z-jerusalem_584.jpg


tumblr_md7eepI4sT1rpfx57o3_500.gif
 
EDIT: My mistake, I think I misread your post.:icon_lol:

That was in the 60's. Things where a bit diffrent back then.

Yemen was ruled by a Zaidi monarch. Then Egypt - under the Arab Socialism leader Gamal Nasser - started messing about in the country and drove through a coup. Nasser was basically the highpoint of what we call Ba'athism (Arab secular Nationalism). Ba'athism was the dominant ideology in the Arab world at the time, much more popular than Salafism or any other Islamism ideology. And it just so happened that Ba'athism promoted military dictatorships instead of a hereditary monarchy.

.

No biggie:icon_lol:

The Saudis supported Saleh who was a Zaidi Shia and President for something like 30 years. They finally brokered a deal for Saleh to step down after massive protests following the Arab Spring.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-hearst/blowback-in-yemen---houth_b_6015990.html

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Saudi blowback from their Yemen policies??

The Iranians are long term planners. The Saudis, in contrast, are anything but. Considering they now have an active, armed and trained Iranian proxy on their vulnerable southern border, their initial contacts with the Houthis now seem like a bet which has gone wildly wrong. From the Saudi perspective, the Houthi advance into the Sunni heartland of Yemen is a text-book example of what the CIA calls blow-back.

I first reported a year ago that the Saudis had opened contacts with the Houthis (with whom they once fought a bitter war) by flying the Houthi leader Saleh Habreh via London to meet with Prince Bandar, who was then Saudi intelligence chief. Saudi ambitions had been tactical and probably limited. They were aimed primarily at crushing Islah, the political Islamist group with whom Hadi was sharing power.

However, the Saudis may never have intended the Houthis to walk into the capital unopposed. They calculated, wrongly, that Islah would have stopped the Houthis long before they were at the city's gates. They assumed the Houthis and Islah would cancel each other out.

Islah did not play ball. They refused to confront the Houthis saying that this was the task of the government. By allowing, or at the very least, doing nothing to stop the Houthi offensive from taking place, Riyadh has opened the door to a much bigger and more destabilizing struggle taking place -- a conflict involving al Qaeda and the southern Yemeni tribes that has already become sectarian.

As the Zaydi Houthi movement advances into territory and cities which are traditionally Sunni, al-Qaida militants have launched car bombs against Houthi targets. A car bomb targeting a house sheltering Houthi militiamen in the western province of al-Bayda killed 20 on Monday.

Considering how much effort the Saudis put into keeping Saleh in power for 33 years, Riyadh's loss of control in what they have always regarded as their back yard must be regarded as one of the worst blunders in recent memory. They should be asking themselves: "Who lost Yemen ?"

Fcuk the Saudis, they are the worst of the worst in the world.
 
I am concerned for my bros in Oman.

Saudi Arabia must be run by idiots. They can afford to buy peace in Yemen, but instead let people suffer.
 
"Considering how much effort the Saudis put into keeping Saleh in power for 33 years, Riyadh's loss of control in what they have always regarded as their back yard must be regarded as one of the worst blunders in recent memory. They should be asking themselves: "Who lost Yemen ?" "

Yep, several decades of Saudi Arabian 'enemy of my enemy' politics are systematically coming home to roost on their own doorstep. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have kept playing short-term proxxy games and lost sight of their long-term position in the region.

And Saudi Arabia is so volatile it can hardly change course. When you build your state on religious fundamentalist ideology and oil money redistribution, it makes it near impossible to fight religious fundamentalist ideology or divert substantial monies away from the oil money redistribution. It's all you can do to tread water.
 
This has been one of the better reads on the war room, good thread and discussion here. The lot of you has inspired me to look up some 60's era Yemen history.
 
Btw, the Shiite demands seem remarkably reasonable, in contrast to what you'll see from their Sunni counterparts.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/21/yemen-president-under-guard-houthi-rebels

If Yemen's Al Qaeda branch took over the capital, it would be Islamic State 2.0.

The Houthis, rebels from the north drawn from a large Shia minority that ruled a 1,000-year kingdom in Yemen until 1962, stormed into the capital in September but had mostly held back from directly challenging Hadi until last week, when they detained his chief of staff.

What a run.
 
This has been one of the better reads on the war room, good thread and discussion here. The lot of you has inspired me to look up some 60's era Yemen history.

I would like to visit Yemen someday, but it sadly won't be any time soon.

This place, off the coast of Yemen, is one of the coolest islands in the world by my light. Would love to travel there, but also don't want to be killed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socotra

They also speak a really weird and unusual archaic Semitic language on the island:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soqotri_language
 
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