Yemen conflict slipping into Saudi Arabia: Academic

Press TV has conducted an interview with Seif Da'na, a professor at the University of Wisconsin from Chicago, to ask for his insight on the continuation of Saudi aggression against Yemen and the retaliatory attacks by the Yemeni people.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How do you feel this war on Yemen is going, especially because of course the retaliation only increases as well?

Da’na: Well, we are in the fourth month, it’s been four months actually since the beginning of the aggression and Saudi Arabia and the coalition, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates particularly, achieved basically nothing except killing about five thousand people most of them are civilians, and creating a sever humanitarian crisis in Yemen.  At this point, I mean, they started aggression with military airstrikes on Yemen and now we see part of the conflict actually is slipping into Saudi Arabia itself. That shows a total failure of the campaign, but at this point, what seems to be happening really is with these recent attacks on the Anad military air force base. They seem to be attempted to control the south, because this is one of the most important military bases actually in Yemen. Anybody looks just at the map, they will see that it’s the key the most southern district in Yemen. So, it seems to be like the battle for Aden now, but despite this, it’s a total failure. Reports from the ground actually say that part of the attack on the ground by Hadi’s militias, they have been joined by some members of al-Qaeda. Another interesting fact actually that we were informed about because until now they claim they control the Aden Airport and it seems they have controlled part of it, but it’s not functional, because the Ansarullah groups and the Yemeni military are about hundreds of meters away really. So, it cannot be functional. So, instead the Saudis and the Emiratis have been using the Boraiga Airport, which is another airport in the southern district in the southern part of Yemen, but again if people look at the map they will see that this airport is under the control of the al-Qaeda also. So, we have al-Qaeda participating actively at this point on the ground to support the ... and the Saudi aerial attacks actually are providing the aerial cover for the al-Qaeda forces on the ground. This is very clear at this point.

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/24/421628/Yemen-Saudi-Arabia-Ansarullah-alQaeda-Dana