After years of hearing how terrible Western interventions are in the Middle East (Exhibits A, B and C the fiascos of Iraq, Afghanistan and post-Gaddafi Libya), it will be interesting to see how a Saudi-led all-Muslim intervention fares in Yemen.
My prediction is it won’t be much better than those of the infidels. For a start we are dealing with the poorest country in the Arab world. Whereas Iraq sits on a lake of oil, squandering the proceeds with a venality that is ghastly to behold, Yemen is running out of water, let alone oil. With an estimated GDP per capita of $2,500, the country comes 187th in the world. The figure for Saudi Arabia, incidentally, is $31,300. The last thing Yemen needs is more war.
Yet thanks to the extraordinary trauma gripping the Middle East, that is exactly what the land known by Romans as Arabia Felix is getting.
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