Of stormy battles, won (in)decisively

Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign against the Houthis  in Yemen is over. But the Houthis are still in power and Yemen's legitimate President is still in Saudi Arabia

Once upon a time, big military operations were given obscure names so the enemy wouldn't guess what the plan was. The German plan for the invasion of France in 1940 was called Fall Gelb (Case Yellow); the American counter-attack in the Korean War that recovered Seoul was Operation Chromite. But then the people from public relations got their hands on it. By the 21st century, we were getting dramatic titles like Desert Storm (the 1991 Gulf War), and then aspirational ones like Operation Iraqi Freedom. So it was only natural that when Saudi Arabia decided to bomb the Houthi rebels who had taken over most of Yemen, it named the operation Decisive Storm. That sounds nice and decisive, and stormy too.

And when the Saudi military spokesman, Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Asiri, announced last week, that Saudi Arabia was calling off the bombing campaign after one month and 2,415 bombing sorties, he naturally claimed that it had been a decisive victory. The bombing had destroyed 80 per cent of the Houthis' “transport lines” (colloquially known as ‘roads’), and they had also knocked out all of the rebels' ballistic missiles. Ballistic missilesIJ Yes, the Houthis had captured a base outside Sana'a that was home to some Scud B ground-to-ground missiles (range 300 km, vintage 1965), although the missiles might not actually fly after half-a-century of Yemeni-style maintenance, and, if they did, they’d barely reach the country's own borders

Moreover, said General al-Amiri, the Houthi militia is no longer in a position to harm civilians. He didn't actually say so, but you would assume from the context and his manner that Yemen is now at peace, and the Houthis have all gone home to their own tribal territory in the north of Yemen, and the country’s legitimate President is safely back in Sana'a, the capital.

What's thatIJ The legitimate President is still in exile in Saudi ArabiaIJ And the Houthis haven't gone home eitherIJ They still control most of Yemen right down to Aden. And the remainder of the country is now ruled by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, except for the bits run by its even nastier Islamist rival, the Islamic State. How is that a victoryIJ

Have some pity for poor General al-Asiri. He had to say something positive; he works for the Government. But the one scene that defines the event was a television studio in Sana'a where a Yemeni news anchor was running a clip of General Asiri's speech. When the anchor comes back on the screen and picks up his script, he can't say anything. He's trying to, but he's corpsing.

He giggles, he snorts, he fans himself with his script, he puts his head on the desk, he completely loses it. And then the people behind the camera start laughing too. This is known in PR-speak as “abject failure”. When you are trying to convince your audience that your bankruptcy was actually a canny tactical move, you do not want them to collapse in hysterical laughter.

What can have possessed Saudi Arabia to launch this foredoomed aerial campaign, and rope in practically every other Sunni Arab state to send a few planes along to helpIJ Mostly, it was simple paranoia. The Saudi Arabian authorities have convinced themselves that the Shias (by which they usually mean Iran) are on the offensive, and gobbling up any Arab territories where they can find fellow Shias. The Houthis are Shias. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Bigger countries have made bigger mistakes and paid quite small prices: The United States invading Iraq, for example. Saudi Arabia won't pay a big price either, for it appears that the grown-ups in Riyadh have intervened after a month and turned the military machine off. No follow-up ground invasion, just a smooth transition to Operation Restore Hope, the humanitarian aid they would have provided after they'd won, if they had won.