Al Mukalla: A day before a Saudi-led Arab coalition launched a massive air bombing campaign on Iran-backed Al Houthis across Yemen, Ali Al Ahmadi, who was later assigned to speak on the behalf of local resistance fighters in Aden, was overwhelmed with sadness after hearing that Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled the city as Al Houthi fighters surrounded his city.
“I was so sad when I heard about president’s departure and Al Houthis’ capture of Al Anad [military] base,” Al Ahmadi told Gulf News. At that moment, Al Ahmadi and many other people who decided to oppose Al Houthis’ imminent occupation of Aden banded together and formed the Resistance Council.
“We knew that we were not capable of confronting Al Houthis’ military invasion of the city,” he said.
On March 26, 2014, Al Ahmadi was overjoyed to hear the news that warplanes from Saudi Arabia and many other Arab countries began air strikes on the approaching Al Houthi occupiers who were about to completely seize the strategic city.
They had already taken over the capital in late 2014, placing Yemen’s legitimate president under house arrest before he was able to escape.
Before the coalition stepped in, Al Houthis controlled most of northern Yemen, except a few districts in Marib, and stormed Lahj and Abyan in the south.
“No one was able to hold off their advance,” Al Ahmadi said.
“The Decisive Storm [campaign] gave a morale boost to the resistance fighters in Aden and encouraged more people from the city to join. A month after the operation, we announced the birth of Popular Resistance Council and we were able to communicate directly with the coalition’s jets,” Al Ahmadi recalled.
Fatehi Bin Lezrag, the editor of Aden Al Ghad, who was also in the city during the Al Houthi offensive on Aden, told Gulf News that Yemenis were so desperate for help from anyone including the UN, the US and Gulf states to stop Al Houthis’ advance.
“They were powerlessly watching Al Houthis rapidly storm one city after another,”
Four months after destroying most of Al Houthis’ weapons cache and killing a large number of their fighters in Aden, the coalition deployed highly trained Yemeni forces equipped with modern heavy weapons.
The fighters received training in the UAE.
The coalition and Yemeni government forces made their first major military breakthrough in July when they liberated the strategic city of Aden from the Iran-backed militants.
Soon after, Al Houthi forces in the southern provinces of Abyan, Dhale, Lahj and Shabwa began to quickly crumble.
Bin Lezrag says that Al Houthi incursions into these provinces would have triggered armed resistance even if the Arab states had not stepped in, but it would not have been able to reverse their gains in the short term.
Analysts credit most political and military achievements in the last 12 months to the Arab coalition.
Al Houthis and renegade units of the Yemeni army that remained loyal to ousted Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, analysts say, were about to take over the entire country after pushing Hadi into exile or arresting him and his government. “By destroying their military capabilities, the Decisive Storm operation successfully thwarted Al Houthi–Saleh plans to exclusively run the entire country. Saleh was planning to strike a power-sharing deal with Al Houthis after getting rid of Hadi’s government,” Bin Lezrag said.
It was a well-known fact that Saleh was dying to make a political comeback after ruling Yemen for over 30 years.
“Decisive Storm has rebalanced the power of forces on the ground. It has almost completely reduced Al Houthis’ and Saleh’s influence in the south,” Sami Noaman, a political analyst from the city of Taiz, told Gulf News.
Noaman said that the coalition has made advances into the northern provinces like Jawf and Marib and could reach the countryside of the capital.
A year after decamping to Saudi Arabia, Yemeni forces are in control of roughly 80 per cent of the country, according to a recent statement from Vice-President Khaled Bahah.
Even before the beginning of the military operation by the Saudi-led coalition, Al Houthis have long been tight-lipped about their casualty figures.
But figures by government army soldiers who count militant corpses say that air strikes have taken a massive toll on the Iran-backed group. Hadi has long accused Al Houthis of being puppets of Iran to destabilise the country and neighbouring Gulf states.
In the light of events in Yemen and Syria, GCC states have solidified their opposition to Iran’s meddling in the Arab world. They have unified and spoke with one voice saying “enough is enough” as they have long complained of Iranian attempts to seek sectarian strife to undermine Arab governments, particularly in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain.
Najjab Gallab, a political analyst, agrees that one of the achievements of Decisive Storm was the curbing of Iranian influence in Yemen.
Regarding the impact of the operation on the government of president Hadi, Bin Lezrag said that the coalition, mainly Saudi Arabia, used their diplomatic leverage to pressure international agencies to recognise the government of President Hadi as the only legitimate representative of the Yemenis.
“The coalition has strengthened the position of Hadi’s government in the international arena.” Bin Lezrag said.
On the ground, local army commanders say without the heavy air strikes from the coalition, they would not have been able to turn the tide against Al Houthis and the elite forces of the former president. Major General Amen Al Waeli, the commander of the 6th Military Region who is also leading the fight against Al Houthis in the northern province of Jawf, told Gulf News on Wednesday that the coalition’s air support has smoothened the path of his forces.
“Thanks to the air strikes, we have managed to advance deeply into Jawf taking control of Matoun and Al Masloub districts.”
Al Waeli forces are now controlling most of the province including the capital, Hazem.
He concluded that the Arab coalition has contributed to building a new army in Yemen. “The coalition has built the base for a well-trained, combatant and non-partisan army that would protect Yemen.”
