Yemen conflict should be a lesson to Canada: Walkom

Canada’s Conservative government likes to paint its wars in stark black and white.

The battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it says, is a simple one of good versus evil — of virtuous heroes taking on murderous barbarians.

In the Commons Thursday, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander drew comparisons with Canada’s fight against Nazi Germany in World War II.

But war is rarely simple. And, as the current conflict in Yemen demonstrates, Middle Eastern Wars are murkier than most.

There, a coalition of Canada’s official friends, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are in a de facto alliance with the murderous Islamic State to defeat a rebellion by a Shiite grouping known as the Houthis.

The Islamic State used suicide bombings to kill Houthis this month. The Saudis, with intelligence help from the U.S., used air power to kill Houthis this week.

The ostensible reason is that the Houthis are backed by Iran, which is also predominately Shiite.

This, incidentally, is the same Iran with which the U.S.-led coalition (including Canada) is quietly co-operating in Iraq and Syria, in order to battle the Islamic State.

In Yemen, it’s hard to figure out who the good guys are. The Saudis and Egyptians back President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the person they regard as the country’s legitimate leader.

He was the consensus choice of the country’s two main political parties in a 2012 election where he was the only candidate.

Both the Houthis and southern secessionists boycotted that vote.

Hadi’s enemies now include the Houthis and forces aligned with Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s former president.

Saleh used to be Washington’s man in Yemen, helping America in its fight against Al Qaeda terrorists. At that time he was viewed as a good guy.

But the U.S. eventually decided he was no longer useful. As part of U.S. President Barack Obama’s embrace of the so-called Arab Spring, Saleh was persuaded to step aside.

Now, for the time being at least, he is a bad guy.

Oh yes. I almost forgot. Saleh also fought six wars against the same Houthis who are now his allies.

Which is another way of saying that Yemen is a complicated country beset by regional, clan and religious fissures.

For most of the 20th century, it was divided in two. The north was conservative and Islamic. The south was a British colony that, after independence, became a Soviet-supported Marxist state.

While the two Yemens reunited in 1990, the marriage has never been happy.

Overlaid on this are clan frictions and sectarian differences.

According to the International Crisis Group, a non-profit think tank, the Sunni-Shiite split has historically been a relatively minor source of division within Yemen.

But that, says the ICG, is threatening to change as Yemen becomes a proxy battleground between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran.

For Canada, the good news from Yemen is that this is one exotic war we are not taking part in.

The bad news is that the forces at play in Yemen are like those that led to Canadian involvement in the civil wars of Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Yemen has essentially no government. It is in chaos. It is already home to a major Al Qaeda franchise. The Islamic State is moving in.

As the ICG notes in a report released Friday, the Saudi bombing is only making matters worse.

Yemen is not Iraq. Neither is it Syria. But the travails of this small, poor nation should act as a caution to those who would casually sign up for the civil wars of the Middle East.

Sometimes, there are no good guys. Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, foreign military intervention only makes matters worse.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.