Riyadh fighting Washington’s war in Yemen: Analyst

Saudi Arabia is fighting the United States’ war in Yemen since the Obama White House has decided to “lead from the behind,” an American journalist says.

US Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Tuesday that Washington increased weapons supplies, including ammunition and bombs, to assist the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting against the Ansarullah Houthi revolutionaries who are seeking to oust terrorist groups from the country.

Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report, told Press TV on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia is “playing the US role as head of the coalition of the willing, that’s the role that the United States has played for the last couple of decades in that part of the world.”

“Now President Obama is taking a lower profile; he likes to use the term ‘leading from behind,’” he said. “But these kinds of large operations involving lots of states most of which have no carrying capacity, that is they can’t carry big loads of troops or ammunition.”

“And they don’t have big reserves of missiles and such.  They have to be resupplied. All of that requires imperial military power of the united states,” he noted.

Saudi Arabia’s military aggression against Yemen started on March 26, without a UN mandate, in a bid to restore power to fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

More than 540 people have been killed and thousands have been injured in Yemen since the military conflict began in the Arab country, according to the World Health Organization.

Ansarullah Houthi revolutionaries say Hadi, who is now in Riyadh, lost his legitimacy as president of Yemen after he fled the capital to Aden in February.

Popular committees backed by Ansarullah fighters are continuing their advances despite the Saudi attacks while stepping up their fight against al-Qaeda terrorists and securing many areas from the militants.

Commenting to Press TV, Ford  said, “It’s also very significant that the Saudis are so publically demanding – it sounds a demand more than a request – that Pakistan join this coalition and send troops, because that would make the troika complete.”

“It was the United States, and Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan that back in the late 1970s and early the 1980s actually created… the international [terrorist] network. That network did not exist,” he stated. “There had been always [terrorists], but not organized, and funded and armed on an international scale. That happened with the troika – Pakistan, the Saudis and the United States. ”  

“And now they are bringing [the troika] to bear in Yemen, where the net effect of their military aggression will be to vastly increase the influence of al-Qaeda,” he concluded.

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