Thursday, April 2, 2015

A Door of Hell Opens in Sanaa

Yemeni bloggers and tweeters have launched a campaign to end the war in their troubled country focused around the hashtag #kefaya, Arabic for "enough". One wrote,
A door of hell has just been opened in Sanaa.
It makes me sad. Here are thousand of people who just want to be left alone to get on with their lives, but the world won't allow that. Between the Sunni radicals, the Shiite militias, the various thugs who have served as president, the Saudis and Iran, they are going to be torn to pieces.

Right now most of their anger is directed at the bombing campaign launched by Saudi Arabia to stop the Iranian backed Houthi militias from taking over the country. Here is a pretty typical specimen:

This makes me think that the Saudi campaign is doomed -- so far the main effect has been to bring the urban middle class more firmly to the side of the Houthis, and against that alliance the Saudis' friends have no chance of taking control of the country. But now that the Saudis have committed themselves they are not going to give up easily, and the people of Yemen are going to pay a high price no matter how it ends.

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