Saudi Arabia goes to war
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/23/saudi-arabia-yemen-houthi-war
23 November 2009
A crucially important conflict, woefully under-reported in the west, has now come to a head in the Middle East. In response to an ongoing fight that could spill out beyond the Arabian peninsula, Saudi Arabia has entered into direct war with the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.
Saudi military intervention marks the first time in the kingdom’s history that its army has crossed its borders without an ally. Previously, the kingdom engaged only in proxy wars. The Saudis used royalist Yemenis to fight Nasser’s Egypt in the 1960s, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to fight Iran in the 1980s, and the US to fight Iraq in the 1990s.
Indeed, Saudi Arabia has fought every “ism” that has sought to dominate the Middle East, including Nasser’s pan-Arabism, communism, and today’s Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the terrorism of al-Qaida and the Shi’ism of Iran. The tools it relied upon were oil money and Wahhabi Islam. During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent more than $75bn on the propagation of Wahhabi doctrine, funding schools, mosques, and charities across the Islamic world in an effort to bolster its influence.
- - - - - -
Fighting between these nations is hardly a new thing.
I did not know that. Thank you.