Analysis of Yemen Conflict Dynamics

Where is this going? I was watching a, uh, an Al Jazeera

report where they had a, a reporter on the ground in both the,

the Houthi areas,

and also they were reporting from the, the other government-controlled areas-

The other government

... the foreign government-controlled areas,

I guess, let me try to get the

terminology consistent, and he said that the Saudi-backed government side

is in an absolute panic because there's apparently a lot of internal fighting

inside of their forces. They have formed a committee to find

out why their brigades have collapsed.

They said if they don't have some sort of a counterattack pretty quickly, then the

Houthi side is gonna either manifest its positions and, you know, get even deeper

in these cities, or their worry is it's gonna keep going.

And when these are some of the, uh, Saudi...

Some of their brigades have surrendered in large numbers.

And, and, and, you know, I want your opinion on this, uh, Patrick,

because this

looks to me very similar to what happened when ISIS first made its

movement through Iraq, and the Iraqi security forces, which

were more num-

numerous, just melted away in the heat. How do you see it?

I have experience on the ground with Iraq and that story during the

ISIS period, so I can comment on that as to why the Iraqi

forces seemingly melted in the face of it, the ISIS onslaught.

But just put that off to the side for a moment.

The footage you're looking at here, Daniel, the UN ba- recognized, quote,

"government," the Saudi-backed government forces, as we've rightly labeled them

'cause that's kind of what they are, these are not fighters.

They don't have a lot of native Yemeni soldiers within

those ranks. Saudi Arabia has been outsourcing a lot of

their

ground troops throughout this war from 2015 forward.

They've been buying them from Sudan.

They've literally been subcontracting off anybody they could suit up and boot

up and give a weapon to, whether that's even RSF, former RSF

soldiers, but mainly from Sudan, people who needed money from the

Sudani army who were, uh, available for mercenary services,

as well as a collection of other sources patchwork together to make

infantry. Daniel, you can't fight any kind of a war like

that.

Wow.

The public support overwhelmingly, I think, throughout Yemen is really

behind Ansar Allah. You're going against another factor there

that you

can't really win. Short term, yes, there's certain things that they could

do. They got off to a very good start at the

beginning of this conflict by

taking Aden and then controlling the mouth of the Bab-el-Mandeb, as

well as Socotra and these other key islands like Perim and so forth.

But as time wears on, Ansar Allah just keeps getting stronger.

Every time they're attacked by Israel or the United States, they then

reorganize and double up. They've improved their air defense,

their anti-ship

missiles. I mean, where they are now compared to where they

were 10 years ago or

even five years ago, where's Ansar Allah gonna be in two years'

time?

Much stronger than they are today.

That's a trend that has not changed in terms of the development of this

conflict, where Saudi has just become more

ham-fisted, more

weaker, uh, more problems organizing and holding territory.

That's a trend that has not reversed.

The United States is not going to improve their influence over

Ansar Allah. They've already had their big run at

Yemen, and

since then it's been kind of intermittent bombing runs by Israel,

assassinations. That's, that's not going to turn, uh, the tide

long term. So D- Daniel, the trends here

are beyond argument. You can't deny them.

It's not going in the direction f- positive direction for Saudi.

It will never, uh, recover. It's not gonna improve for the United

States either.