Saudi Arabia's Gone Rogue.

I know; "Gone?!"

With it's vast oil reserves Saudi Arabia should be one of the wealthiest nations on earth. However it is actually considered amongst the poorest with a per capita income of around USD17,000. The main reason for this is the nation's venal monarchy which strangles the population with a command economy designed to keep the nations wealth firmly in the hands of the ruling al-Saud family.

In order to stop it's population questioning this system the al-Saud family imposes warped version of Islam known Whabbism. Influenced by Salafism this was invented in the 19th century and demands followers live as people did during the time of the Prophet Mohamed in 9th century. Therefore it would be un-Islamic for the Saudi people to seek the type of material wealth that their royal family enjoy.

The al-Saud's main problem in this deceit is that Shia Muslim's believe that Mohamed was just the most recent in a series of Prophets. Therefore this modern age could well be the time of the next Prophet who has simply failed to reveal himself.

Yemen which sits on Saudi Arabia's southern border has been ruled by Shias known as "Houthis" certainly since the time of the division between Sunni and Shia Islam and for around 900 years before the al-Sauds formed Saudi Arabia as a nation.

When a series of revolutions struck Arab nations such as Tunisia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia's neighbour Bahrain the al-Sauds became extremely fearful that the Houthis in Yemen refusal to submit to Whabbism would trigger a revolution in Saudi Arabia that would see the al-Sauds overthrown and the nation's wealth shared more equally amongst its population. Along with almost psychotic levels of aggression paranoia and delusion have long been the hallmarks of the al-Saud family.

Early 2011 Saudi Arabia started equipping, training and directing Sunni Jihadist terrorists to launch an insurgency against the Yemeni government. This employed the same toolkit seen in Libya and Syria of armed groups using street protests to attack the security forces in the hope of declaring the security forces response an "atrocity."

When this hadn't worked by mid-2011 the Jihadists simply started trying to kill the Yemeni government outright. On June 3rd 2011 (3/6/11) a bomb attack was carried out against a Mosque in which Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was praying alongside senior members of the government including the Prime Minister, his deputies and the head of Parliament. Four bodyguards were killed in this attack and Saleh was seriously wounded forcing him to seek medical care in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis then refused to allow Saleh to return to Yemen until he agreed to step down in October 2011. The Saudis then replaced Saleh with Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. To their shame this Saudi aggression against their southern neighbour was fully endorsed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) despite it being a clear violation of the organisations own charter.

Despite the UNSC's offerings the Hadi regime never really found it's feet in Yemen leaving the nation without a functioning government. The situation really deteriorated in the autumn of 2014 when Hadi announced that he would be pulling out of the power-sharing deal that brought him to power and instead rule as a dictator. This prompted an uprising that quickly swept across the north of the country and by the end of December 2014 had reached the capital Sana'a.

On January 7th 2015 the Sunni Jihadist who had brought Hadi to power launched a series of terror attacks across France's capital Paris that began with the attacks against the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This provoked such a wave of outrage across Yemen that within a week the uprising swept into Sana'a leading to Hadi being arrested, his government deposed and a transitional government being set up.

Unfortunately in response to international pressure the Yemeni government were forced to release Hadi and he fled to the Jihadist heartland in the south of the country where he and his supporters planned an insurgency against the government. That insurgency began last week with the suicide bombing of two Mosques in Sana'a that killed 143 people.

Fortunately the insurgency then failed horrifically with the Yemeni population and more importantly the army siding with the Yemeni government to sweep aside the Hadi insurgency. Yesterday the insurgents had lost control of their southern holdout of Aden, many of their leaders were arrested and Hadi himself was forced to flee the country.

Knowing that their last chance had already passed last night Saudi Arabia launched a fullscale military invasion to overthrow the Yemeni government and re-install Hadi into power. Saudi Arabia's stated aim is to protect Yemen from what it terms "Houthi aggression." The Houthis are of course the indigenous population of Yemen so it should come as little surprise that the Saudi operation has began with an aeriel bombardment of Yemen's main population centres.

Although they are two different countries the nearest comparison to the situation in Yemen I can think of is the situation in Ukraine. There a violent uprising overthrew the nation's government and two separate groups then declared themselves the legitimate government. The US then accused Russia of mounting an invasion in support of what it considered the legitimate government and imposed severe sanctions as punishment.

The only main difference I'm seeing at the moment is that there is no doubt that Saudi Arabia has invaded Yemen. In fact they're quite proud of the fact even going so far as to hold a press conference in Washington D.C, US to announce it. 

11:45 on 26/3/15 (UK date).