Middle East war number three?

Following the Christmas Day attempted attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 which appears to have been orchestrated by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula based in Yemen, the Obama administration’s response has come under attack by hardliners in the Republican Party. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that Obama’s reaction was “low key” and that he did not “want to admit we’re at war”. Always sensitive to the charge that he is soft on security issues, Obama responded by announcing a “partnership with the Yemeni government – training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al Qaeda terrorists”.

This expansion of the “war on terror” more deeply involves the US in a long standing, complicated and intractable conflict. The $67 million spent last year in Yemen to assist the corrupt and unpopular government in confronting a number of insurgencies is sure to be increased next year.

The biggest threat to the central government is the al Houthi rebellion in the North. The Houthi complaints range from government corruption to the influence of the Saudi influenced Wahabi Sunni Muslims. The Houthis are Zaydi Shias who would like to return the caliphate which ruled Yemen for 1000 years. This will involve the US in a civil war which has the potential to become a Saudi – Iranian proxy war. Signs of this have already appeared with the recent Saudi attack on Houthi positions near the Yemen border and the appearance of Iranian sourced weapons in Yemen.

While a priority for the Yemen government, the Houthi rebellion has little to do with the al Qaeda threat to the US. Al Qaeda’s bases are in the south where sympathetic tribes such as al Fadhli are also fighting an insurgency against the central government. Al Fadhli fighters are veterans of the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and have been funded by Osama bin Laden.

Increasing US involvement in a complicated civil conflict in which most of the funding will go to fight groups other than those threatening the US, will be siphoned off to line the pockets of corrupt politicians or will help smuggle weapons to rebel groups in neighboring Somalia, seems like a recipe for a quagmire that will do little to make the US safer while risking escalating sectarian conflict in the region.