Operation Decisive Storm has proven to be far from decisive thus far. The Saudi-led coalition has launched hundreds of air strikes in Yemen against Houthi forces over the past three weeks with no discernable effect. Their efforts have not even caused the Houthis to put their advance on pause, let alone fall back. Instead, they have continued to make progress, especially in the area around the important southern port city of Aden. Fierce street fighting across the city has seen Houthi forces and their allies, army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, slowly grinding away at southern Yemeni positions.

The anti-Houthi campaign has not only involved air strikes, but strict control over Yemen’s air space and territorial waters, with a humanitarian crisis the result. In the capital of Sana’a, air strikes crippled the infrastructure of the city, including its emergency and medical services. The dire situation there is far from being relieved despite the delivery of 15 tons of medical supplies from Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders).

Aden is witnessing a similar situation, with the added burden of urban combat. Saudi Arabia has been parachuting arms and military supplies into the city, but basic humanitarian supplies are desperately lacking. Access to water is limited at best and food is running short. In scenes reminiscent of Sarajevo in the 1990s, civilians are daily having to run a deadly gauntlet in order to queue up at bakeries or any one of the other increasingly few food distribution points.

Houthi and Pro-Saleh forces are not the ones feeling the pain, and if they actually are, they certainly aren’t showing it. They haven’t been pushed back, and they do not seem any more willing to come to the negotiating table as before the intervention started. It is Yemen’s civilians who are paying the price for a campaign that is yet to come anywhere close to bearing fruit.

It is also a campaign that doesn’t appear to have any real direction to it. The Saudis claim to have 150,000 troops on the border, and is currently in talks with Egypt and other Arab states to hold military maneuvers, yet don’t seem ready to veer from their present course. Pakistan’s rejection of involvement put a damper on the coalition’s mood, as they were hoping to have its troops and air power ready to use. Turkey has also decided to abstain from military involvement, robbing the coalition of another significant regional military power. The confidence of the coalition is clearly waning; they do not know where to go from here.

Saudi actions on its border with Yemen are indicative of their dithering. Thousands of Border Guards patrol the area, with massed regular army units based further behind. They have launched scattered artillery salvos at Houthi positions, but are mostly engaged in aggressively patrolling the area to prevent a repeat of 2009, when the Saudis found themselves dealing with embarrassing cross-border attacks by the Houthis. Saudi Border Guards are also studying the possibility of evacuating some or all of the 96 villages that close to the Yemeni border. Much of the area they are watching over lies adjacent to Saada province, the heart of Houthi territory in Yemen. Rugged and mountainous, it is forbidding country that the Saudis most likely are not too enthusiastic about having to enter.

Police outside of a building destroyed by one of the Saudi-led airstrikes (Reuters/Stringer)

The way the intervention is going makes clear the tremendous lack of thinking ahead that was done before beginning the air campaign. Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies apparently have not been paying attention to the fight against ISIS in Syria or Iraq. Or in Kosovo or any one of the other many examples of a very simple lesson: air strikes alone can only do so much. ISIS was pounded by air strikes at Kobane in northern Syria, but it was only the arrival of reinforcements and supplies that forced them back and relieved the city. Air strikes paved the way for Iraqi forces to make a final push and retake Tikrit. Ground power and air power are complementary. They work together. Just as the fight against ISIS requires reliable ground forces to retake territory, air strikes against the Houthis and Pro-Saleh army units are not going to be effective on their own.

If the Saudis thought that some air strikes would send the Houthis scurrying back to their northern strongholds, they have seen that notion proven very, very misguided.

If the military efforts lack direction, it is because Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition with unrealistic political goals (if they can be called “goals). First and foremost is their support for President Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, currently living in exile in Riyadh. Hadi has helped lend some legitimacy to the actions of the coalition, as he has publicly said he has requested their assistance. However, he is a spent force, if he ever was one at all.

Hadi was put in power as part of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC, of which Saudi Arabia is a member) brokered deal that saw long-time president Saleh step down from power. Hadi was Saleh’s vice president, taking office after the 1994 civil war as the token representative of southern Yemenis. All power rested with Saleh, though, but as his vice president (and a Sunni Muslim) he was the natural choice to succeed him. He had no power base of his own, and his rule had little legitimacy. Saleh and his son Ahmed have remained influential, retaining the loyalty of the military and the security apparatus. In short, Hadi never really stood a chance.

Which makes it all the more confusing that the GCC continues to back him. News from Yemen often mentions fighting between the Houthis and “pro-Hadi forces,” but this is very accurate. One only has to look at the flags flown by the “pro-Hadi” forces to find the truth: they are the flags of South Yemen, which merged with North Yemen to become the modern Republic of Yemen. The Houthi advance has reignited separatist passions, as southerners see themselves as defending against a northern invasion, just as they were in 1994. The Southern Movement, as it is called, has gone from a civil rights-style group when it was born nearly a decade ago to a military force defending the south. They are not fighting for Hadi. He has little visible support, even in Aden.

The appointment of Khaled Bahah as his Vice President is a positive move, but the possible benefits are negated by Hadi’s leadership. If the Saudis and their coalition partners truly care for the stability of Yemen, they will push for Hadi to step down in favor of Bahah. It’s not that Bahah is some Yemeni Mandela who will unite the country, but more that supporting Hadi does not hold any tangible benefits. Hadi couldn’t win an open election for mayor of Aden, let alone President of Yemen.

Support for Hadi shows the truth of Saudi Arabia’s intentions in Yemen. They are not backing legitimacy in Yemen, nor the will of the Yemeni people. They are fighting to keep their proxy in power and keep those that they view as Iran’s proxies out of power. It’s a fight that Iran does not even need to actually participate in. The Houthis and Saleh loyalists possess the bulk of the military power in Yemen, and really haven’t needed Qasem Soleimani or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ help to make the advances they’ve made. All Iran needs to do is sit back, maybe provide some supplies to the Houthis, and watch the Saudis get themselves ever more deeply involved in Yemen.

Not totally unlike Putin in Ukraine, the Saudis are defending against what they see as an intrusion into their sphere of influence. If that is indeed the case, then a new question is raised: how far is Saudi Arabia willing to go to back its proxy and protect its sphere of influence?

Garrett Khoury, a graduate of the George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs and an MA Candidate at Tel Aviv University, is the Director of Research and Content for The Eastern Project. Garrett has previously worked with The Israel Project in Jerusalem and The American Task Force on the Western Sahara in Washington, DC. Contact at: garrett.khoury@gmail.com