Yemen Confuses me

And I don't think I'm alone. Though I try to make sense of what is happening there I'm not really sure our government completely understands what is happening there either. (Even though U.S. drones regularly assassinate Al Qaeda members there).

Here is what I know about Yemen. First of all for me to make any sense at all about Yemen I have to look at the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia. They are natural sectarian enemies and have been for over 1000 years for a variety of reasons. Mostly, they are enemies because Saudi Arabia is mostly an extreme form of Wasabi Sunni Muslim and Iran is an extreme form of Shia Muslim mostly.

Then we have the world who has always needed oil in the 20th and 21st century from both Saudi Arabia and Iran which makes worse the problems between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In this setting imagine Yemen which is a small country on the border of Saudi Arabia and Iran trying to destabilize it in one way and Al Qaeda trying to destabilize it in another. Both of them (Iran and Al Qaeda) want to destabilize Saudi Arabia and are trying to use Yemen to help do that. But, the end result so far is just a whole lot of chaos in Yemen. And because Saudi Arabia is so very rich (the richest of all the oil nations in the middle east) it's effect because of it's wealth mostly has just   completely messed up Yemen too. The Yemeni people might want any number of things but in a similar way to Syria they are being manipulated by a variety of countries around them and abroad because of various interests. However, Yemen isn't in as bad a shape as Syria.

So, if Syria is confusing to a factor of 10, for me Yemen is confusing to a factor of 100 which makes it too impossible to even know really who to root for to win in this ongoing conflict. My thought presently is because of all the international actors in Yemen there is no good end for Yemen possible because of all the International (Mostly Middle Eastern and Al Qaeda) external manipulation.

However, in a more understandable way Syria could easily become like Somalia in the 1990s and is on it's way there now. The United Nations however, is proving itself ineffective much like it was during the Cold War because of Russia's need to control what happens in Syria because of their long term interests and Russian citizens living there for over 50 years. And to further complicate Syria we have Russian and Iranian soldiers and weaponry there. So, at best at this point Assad is a victim puppet of both Russia and Iran now. Otherwise he would already be dead or long gone at this point.

So, though there might be no good end in sight for Yemen, Syria is a worst case scenario and looks like and likely will continue to look like most cities in Europe in 1945. In other words "Blown up".