After the flare up in the news – the Houthi advance in Yemen just disappeared as another small war in Middle East.
Unfortunately you will found out that the flare up will continue as they are continuing advancing towards the south (unknown to the media, apparently).
They are not Muslim terrorist, but a sort of liberation front against the de facto rule from Saudi Arabia.
As the Vietcong once showed the US, a force fighting for freedom and with full advantage of the terrain is not easy to defeat.
Their core positions are in the mountains which are hard to take and they are well prepared for battle…their battle against the regime actually started in 1994 as secession war between the North and the secessionist South (they won) and then, after a short bit the war against the current pro Saudi/US regime since 2004 (they won again).
They are also well armed. There is a lot of talk of Iranian support – which is there, but it is bloated by the media.
But probably the big bounty would be the approximately half a billion USD in US armament, leftover by the previous government.
The Saudi air campaign did not even stopped them and probably we will have a land campaign of mainly Arab/Egyptian force.
Apart the extremism, it is a similar environment to Afghanistan, but the Saudi army is much less prepared than the US to counterinsurgency.
As the world goes, the Houthis do not seem to have the capacity to block the straight (Al el-Mandeb, circa 25 km), but a few well placed terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia (maybe the East West pipeline near Medina) or in the straight would definitely spark the media attention.
The American are still not participating, but two warships are already in the area (and yesterday they retrieved two Saudi pilots as their plane went down for apparent technical problem- which could be a technical fault ..or something else).
PS. Al Qaeda and Islamic State are active, but secondary actors in this conflict.
investorpolitico 