Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Hoothis Take Over Yemen

The situation in Yemen appears to be a mess.  We don’t really know who is in control of the country.  That’s not unusual.  For a long time, Yemen was more or less divided into two countries, North and South Yemen, with Sanaa and Aden as its respective capitals.  The Hoothis who are taking over the country in Sanaa, are a relatively unknown group, described to some extent by the NYT  
They are Shiites getting help from Iran, but apparently not your ordinary Shiites. And they are fighting al Qaida in Yemen (which sponsored the French terrorist attacks), as is the government that they are overthrowing.  Again we find the US allied with Iran against al Qaida, while Israel is killing Iranian generals in Syria.  

Strange world! 

Yemen would have been a mess in any case, but did we make it worse by intervening in the Middle East in Iraq and Afghanistan, and encouraging government overthrows in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other countries?  We certainly did not have a beneficial effect. 


Yemen borders on Saudi Arabia.  Does the instability in Yemen bode ill for Saudi Arabia, especially if the Shiite Hoothis take over?  Although their border is mostly desert, it can’t be a good thing.  

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