Al-Qaeda and a stalemate in Yemen

It is no secret that the devastating Yemen war is a stalemate.

The Houthis still control the majority of Northern Yemen, the more populous half of the country. The recent threat of operations against Hodeidah, the Houthis' largest port in Yemen, is a strategy by the Saudi-led coalition to give it an edge over the Houthis.

But to break the stalemate, the coalition is trying more than just the threat of operations in Hodeidah. Increasing intelligence reports show that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the largest terrorist organization in the region, has been covertly enlisted against the Houthis in Northern Yemen, even while the UAE leads military offensives against the same organization in the south of the country.

As highlighted in a previous article [see http://jwaverforgotten.blogspot.com/2017/12/yemen-next-islamic-state-update-2018.html] the aim of the tribes in Southern Yemen is to use Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [or AQAP] to weaken Northern Yemen to such an extent that Southern Yemen will be able to become an independent nation. This requires AQAP to be driven out of the south while also being encouraged to relocate to the north, receiving funding, arms and guaranteed protection from counter-terrorism agencies.

As Al-Qaeda was driven out of Saudi Arabia exclusively into Yemen in 2006, so the coalition hopes to see Al-Qaeda driven out of Southern Yemen exclusively into the north, keeping two enemies of Saudi Arabia - the Houthis and AQAP - at each other's throats.

This would lead Southern Yemen to a status of superiority over Northern Yemen, similar to Pakistan over Afghanistan or Turkey over Syria. This would force Northern Yemen into endless internal conflicts between AQAP, the Houthis and the government, while Southern Yemen continues to consolidate a position of strength with help from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

This may even lead Southern Yemen to be allowed to join the Gulf Cooperation Council, leaving Northern Yemen reeling from poverty, terrorism, chaos and more war. Should the Saudi-led coalition's strategy prove successful, Southern Yemen's future looks as bright as Northern Yemen's future looks bleak.

Should AQAP be driven out of Southern Yemen exclusively into the north, Saudi Arabia would have little to fear from the organization as it would be preoccupied in Northern Yemen and turn to destabilize Southern Yemen before Saudi Arabia. But the success of this strategy depends on how permanently AQAP is driven from Southern Yemen, as well as a successful secession of the south, which is still by no means a certain prospect.

UAE overreach in Tunisia to have grave consequences for Libya

For those hoping the end of the Libyan civil war was in sight, previous developments in Tunisia are particularly worrying.

Several months ago Libyan strongman Haftar Al-Khalifa secured Derna, the most conservative city in the country's east. This city, previously taken by ISIS before being driven out by other Islamist militias, served as a severe handicap on the Libyan National Army's ability to drive into either the west or south of the country. Now that the city is secure, Haftar can attack west or south as he chooses.

But in Tunisia in June, the UAE sponsored an attempted military coup. The UAE has long been a supporter of autocracy in the region, supporting Abdul Feteh As-Sisi's rise to power in Egypt, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's rise in Saudi Arabia, the Southern Movement in Yemen, the attempted military coup in Turkey and, of course, Libyan strongman Haftar Al-Khalifa.

The attempted coup in Tunisia will very likely have a drastic impact on how the North African neighbour views developments in Libya in favour of Haftar Al-Khalifa. In short, UAE's funding of an attempted military coup in Tunisia backfired in a classic case of strategic overreach.

This is likely to have grave consequences for Libya. Tunisia views the militias in power in Tripoli and western Libya as a bulwark against UAE-backed autocracy and will be less cautious about Islamist ambitions in the region, spearheaded by Turkey, Qatar and Sudan.

Because of this, it is unlikely that Haftar Al-Khalifa will try and wrest control of western Libya in the short-term. The next target for the Libyan National Army will likely be the country's lawless south.

But even military operations in the south pose problems. Smuggling from western Libya - and, by extension, Tunisia - could give covert support to terrorist groups like ISIS which would keep Haftar distracted in a long, bloody battle for southern Libya at the expense of the west.

Worse still, Sudan, an important partner in the Qatari-Turkish axis, borders Libya in the south. Should Tunisia more actively side with the Turkey, Qatar and Sudan in the Libyan proxy war, as seems likely, terrorism could spike in Libya as it has done in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. For Tunisia, the calculation is likely to be that terrorism is an easier threat to manage than the threat of regime change from their military.

While global attention remains on Iraqi elections, the Syrian civil war and the devastation in Yemen, Libya may unexpectedly heat up and destabilize. This may turn southern and western Libya into terrorist hubs as deadly as Afghanistan before 9-11.

Forgotten Middle-East Update - Qatar

Qatar is the way through which instability is likely to rear its ugly head in the Arabian Gulf.

Due to the embargo imposed by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, Qatar's own economy is under threat. While short-term things are unlikely to change in the small Arabian nation, mid-term to long-term the embargo is likely to negatively impact not only Qatar but the surrounding Arabian Gulf region.

The result of such an embargo has been that Qatar has strengthened relations with both Iran and Turkey, both of which are adversities to the four countries involved in the embargo. Through Qatar's current predicament, Iran and Turkey have been brought closer to the Arabian Gulf than ever before.

As the geopolitics of the Middle-East continue to realign, relations will continue to deteriorate in the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the council itself is likely to be disbanded and recreated under a different name - with Qatar excluded. Such a move is likely to benefit Iraq, which may end up swapping places with Qatar and, for Iraq, instead of being the pro-Iranian outcast, may be brought into a new Gulf Council. Qatar would then be the new pro-Iranian outcast, bringing more open hostility from its neighbours than ever.

Before such hostilities are brought to bear in the Arabian Gulf itself, they are likely to be settled in a preliminary proxy war in Libya. (Such a dress rehearsal is reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's, which was the prelude to the longer, bloodier conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1940's.) As the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have been winding down, countries like Libya are becoming increasingly unstable. This conflict has pitted autocrats against Islamists - which is the classic UAE/Saudi-versus-Qatar rivalry. As violence continues to recede elsewhere, such hostilities are likely to escalate severely in Libya.

The conflict in Libya would either end in a victory for the autocrats - led by Haftar Al-Khalifa - or a less-likely victory for the Islamists. The only way the Islamists would win in Libya would be if another nation got involved, such as Turkey, either through a direct military confrontation or through the funneling of supplies and foreign fighters from its own land - which was used in Syria - into Libya.

After the Libyan civil war is concluded, either way, instability will arrive at the Arabian Gulf. Should Turkey continue to militarily back Qatar and make sure that the Ikhwan philosophy survives in the Middle-East, eventually the Arabs will no longer tolerate Turkish meddling in Qatar, and a war would ensue between previously American allies - namely, Turkey and Saudi Arabia - which would tear the Arabian Gulf to pieces.

Saudi Arabia's Mohammed Bin Salman is facing increasing pressure in his proxy wars in Yemen, Qatar and Iraq (the latter two being economic proxy wars instead of military). Should insufficient progress be made on any of these fronts, the Saudi Crown Prince would have to make a game-changing decision: either more directly fund Al-Qaeda in Yemen to win the war against the Houthis, or militarily occupy Qatar and force regime change. Though former is more likely, Mohammed Bin Salman's own impulsive foreign policy would be wise not to underestimate.

Forgotten Middle-East Update - Yemen and Libya

In Syria, Bashar Al-Assad is consolidating control, while Iranian influence is being rolled back from the Syrian-Israeli border and Trump wants to withdraw - meanwhile in Iraq, anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada As-Sadr has won the largest number of seats in the election and is set to make a coalition government with Haider Al-Abadi's party.

As the known conflicts in Iraq and Syria continue to deescalate, other conflicts are escalating.

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is poised to start an offensive to take port Hodeida from Houthi control, a move which would cripple northern Yemen's already dwindling food supplies. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda continues to thwart the US-anti-terrorist strategy in the country's southeast, while in the north the terror group is flourishing in the absence of effective government. Yemeni President Hadi is only nominally in control of Yemen, while Houthis, Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the Southern Movement control different parts of the country.

In Libya, though the As-Sirraj government and the Libyan National Army headed by Haftar Al-Khalifa have agreed to hold elections, the situation in Libya is exacerbating. Haftar's forces have surrounded the city of Derna - Derna being a city like Iraq's Fallujah: a city that even in the days of the dictator was hard to control.

Meanwhile, the situation in Libya's Tripolitania is made tense by the growing rift between the Sirraj government and the militias in control of various parts of the region. It may be that the coming elections will force any legitimate government out of Tripolitania altogether and propel the militias into effective control, much as the Syrian Opposition has tried to do in Syria's Idlib. But, like Syria's opposition forces, the Libyan Shura councils and militias have links to groups as extreme as Al-Qaeda and ISIS - and, with the Syrian conflict winding down, many Islamists will continue to see Libya as the ultimate destination for establishing Shariah and waging jihad.

If such regional explosion in north-western Libya were not troubling enough, the conflict in the country's south is threatening to create space in which ISIS may rise in Libya for a third time. After being defeated in the cities Derna and Sirte, ISIS has fled to the south of the country and largely fallen silent. But the resentment of African Libyans in the south against their Arab counterparts in the north may be exactly the sort of thing ISIS needs to make a comeback in the country.

Though this in itself may be troubling, more troubling still is that the tribes in southern Libya are linked to other tribes across the region, such as in northern Chad, northeastern Niger and northwestern Sudan. Should ISIS succeed in winning the protection of tribes in the south of Libya, this protection would spread and ignite a regional explosion - one which would mean that ISIS would once again be breaking borders, this time between Libya, Chad and Niger, with assistance from terror groups Boko Haram and Ash-Shabab.

As Iraq and Syria continue to recover from years and years of war, Libya and Yemen continue to worsen. The instability in the region is not gone - it has only shifted.

Erdogan eyes Libya after failures in Egypt, Syria

For Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan represents a revival of the Ottoman Empire and a rejection of the Ataturk secular state. As a result, Ikhwan ideology has been spreading across the Middle-East at a more rapid rate, with the Arab Spring initially providing perfect fuel for Erdogan's ambitions.

However, in Egypt and Syria in particular, Turkish support for the Ikhwan has backfired badly.

Though Egyptian Ikhwan leader Mohammed Morsi was elected in 2012, a year later he was overthrown in a military coup, a coup aided by the largest protests in history. Ikhwan had completely lost the support of the Egyptian people, and President Erdogan suffered a serious setback in his ambition to recreate the Ottoman Empire.

Though Libya looked promising for the Ikhwan and Turkey after the overthrow of Moammar Al-Qaddafi in 2011, military strongman Haftar Al-Khalifa broke ranks with the Islamist factions in Tripoli and set up a rival government in Tobruk in 2014. Since then, Haftar has regained much territory in Libya, with north-western Libya as the exception.

Syria was where the Turkish-Ikhwan policy was pushed hardest with the least results. Qatari-Turkish funding gave weapons to rebel groups so extreme they had more in common with ISIS than even the most extreme elements of Al-Qaeda. It is not hard to see, then, that these groups never had much support from the Syrian people.

With the regional shift caused by the impending peace process in Syria, President Erdogan is likely to lose much influence in Syria as well. Currently the Syrian Arab Army, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are forcing many of the Syrian rebels out of other regions and into Idlib, which has caused an enormous receding of violence in the region.

However, what President Erdogan has lost in Syria and Egypt he has a chance to regain in Libya. Recently in Tunisia he boasted that he was planning a political settlement in Libya, while also refusing to accept Bashar Al-Assad as the legitimate ruler in Syria. To Russia, President Erdogan is sending a clear message: Assad only stays in Syria if Turkey receives enough compensation.

Such compensation for Turkey would include the dismantling of Kurdish militias in north-eastern Syria, and may even include the relocation of rebel fighters and armaments from Syrian Idlib province to Libya via Turkey.

The reason why such rebel fighters and armaments may be relocated to Libya is because Turkey has acted as a transit for jihad between Syria and Libya before. At the conclusion of the Libyan uprising against Moammar al-Qaddafi, many of the weapons used in Libya were relocated to Syria, to put more pressure on the Assad government:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440822/hillary-clinton-scandals-libya-prosecutions-undermined

Worryingly for Turkey, many of the fighters for the Syrian Opposition are foreigners. Should Turkey lose Idlib to President Assad in the peace settlement, those foreigners may turn their weapons on Turkey without another option.

Libyan strongman Haftar Al-Khalifa is exactly the sort of figure against which foreign fighters from Syria would desire to wage jihad. With relations improving between Turkey and the Libyan Government of National Accord - the UN-recognized Libyan government with ties to the Ikhwan - the war in Libya may be escalated by a concluded political settlement in Syria: one where Russia allows President Assad full control of Syria, while Turkey is allowed more influence in Libya.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shown resilience in the face of setbacks to his original plans for control of the Middle-East. This resilience shows that Turkey under its present leadership cannot be trusted to act as a stabilizing force, and all its actions should be scrutinized as a means for further chaos in the region.