Thursday - November 05, 2009

Ruh Roh Shaggy!

Saudi Arabia has launched a large military incursion across the border into northern Yemen, using fighter jets and artillery bombardments to try to end a Shiite rebellion inside its troubled southern neighbor, Arab diplomats and the rebels said Thursday.

The northern rebels, known as Hawthis, have been battling Yemeni government forces intensively over the past few months in the latest flare-up of a sporadic conflict that has lasted five years. The Hawthis are based in northern Saada province, which borders Saudi Arabia.

“Saudi jets dropped bombs on a crowded areas including local market in the northern province of Saada,” Hawthi spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam told The Associated Press. “They (Saudis) claim they are targeting al-Hawthis, but regrettably they are killing civilians like the government does,” he added.

“The attacks were followed by hundreds of shells from the border,” Abdel-Salam said.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

Two Arab diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP Saudi Tornado and F-15 warplanes have been bombarding targets inside Yemen since Wednesday afternoon, inflicting significant casualties on the rebels. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to talks to the media.

They said army units and special forces have been sent to northern Yemen, and that several Saudi towns on the border have been evacuated.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor their Yemeni government allies have confirmed the offensive. But if they do, this would be the first known Saudi incursion across the border in the five years of fighting the rebels.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading oil exporter, has been increasingly worried about extremism and instability in Yemen that could spill across the border. The Yemeni government is currently fighting on multiple fronts — the northern rebels and a separatist movement in the south. But the most worrisome is a lingering threat from al-Qaida militants.

The U.S. also fears the Yemeni fighting could spill over into Saudi Arabia. It concerned that Yemen, with its weak central government, could become a haven for al-Qaida militants hiding out in the impoverished nation on the tip of the Arabian peninsula.

“could become”? WTF? Yemen is where the bombers of the USS Cole came from. And when they were captured and jailed, they somehow mysteriously managed to escape. I don’t put much faith in the “could become” line.

But what are these “rebels” rebelling about? How could they not like living as simple muslims, religion of peace and all that, with the foaming at the mouth Wahhabi Saudis to the north and the nearly as crazy Sunnis to the south?

The Shiite rebels complain their needs are ignored by a government that is increasingly allied with hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, who consider Shiites as heretics.

So maybe Our Friends the Saudis are helping their neighbors do Allah’s Work, stamping out the infidels heretics. I wonder which is worse: not being a muslim or being a muslim of the wrong flavor?

Expect this action to cause the price of oil to jump. Seems like nearly everything that goes on over in sandland does.



Update: It’s muslim vs muslim in this exciting Pay Per View deathcage match up! And events inside Yemen - which haven’t been in the news AT ALL - are being described as an ongoing civil war. WTH?

Yemen civil war spills over border as Saudi official is killed in attack

Yemen’s civil war spilled into neighbouring Saudi Arabia for the first time yesterday when Shia gunmen shot dead a Saudi security officer in a cross-border attack. The Shia rebels, known as Huthis, have been backed up against the Saudi border by a Yemeni army offensive launched this summer. The rebels accuse the Saudis of allowing Yemeni troops to attack them from behind, using a military base in the Saudi town of Jebel al-Dukan. The kingdom’s news agency said that rebels had entered Saudi territory and attacked patrols.

“The infiltrators used various weapons to fire at the border guard patrols, causing the martyrdom of one security officer and wounding 11 others,” it said. Some Shia rebel sources claimed to have taken complete control of the town after defeating Saudi forces there.

They accuse Saudi Arabia, a conservative Sunni Muslim country, of backing the Yemeni army, fearing the emergence of a strong Shia militia similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon. In turn, the Yemeni Government in Sanaa has accused Iran, a Shia theocracy, of supporting the Huthi rebels as part of a campaign to spread Tehran’s influence across the region. The Government said last week that Yemeni troops had seized five Iranians on a boat loaded with arms in the Red Sea.

Yemen has denied receiving any support from Riyadh, but the tensions emphasised the increasingly fragile situation on the borders of the world’s biggest oil exporter. There are increasing signs that al-Qaeda — whose founder, Osama bin Laden, is of Yemeni origin — is using the strife in the country as a means of establishing a dangerous presence close to Saudi Arabia, where it has launched deadly attacks in the past.

Sanaa stepped up its efforts to crush the Shia rebels in August when it launched a land and air offensive that aid groups say has driven 150,000 people from their homes, as well as killing and wounding hundreds.

Oh hella yeah, this is going to cause a spike in the oil market. $3.50 a gallon gas, here we come again.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/05/2009 at 10:20 AM   
Filed Under: • RoPMA •  
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