Middle East Conflict

While the United States is tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, other nations in the Middle East are dealing with a scuffle of their own. Shiite rebels -- reportedly supported by Iran -- are fighting the elected government of Yemen, and as they have been dodging back and forth over the border with Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia has been assisting Yemen in fighting the rebels. This week the conflict spread, as Jordan responded to an request for help from Saudi Arabia, and sent in troops and arms to help contain the insurgency:

Jordanian forces pitch in to help Saudis expel Yemeni rebels

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 422 Exclusive
November 24, 2009, 11:17 PM (GMT+02:00)

In response to an appeal from the Saudi King Abdullah, the Jordanian monarch this week dispatched his army's elite Royal Special Force of 2,000 commandoes to help the Saudis drive out the Yemeni Houthi rebels, who invaded the oil kingdom with Iranian support earlier this month. DEBKAfile's military sources report that the Jordanian troops are now battling the Yemeni invaders holding onto the Jebel Dukhan sector, which is split between the southern Saudi Jizan region and northern Yemen.

Day after day, Saudi troops backed by artillery, marines, tanks, engineers and air force F-15 and Tornado warplanes, together with the Yemeni army, have been fighting to dislodge the intruders from the rugged mountains which rise 6,600 ft high over a desolate landscape with no roads. They were repeatedly beaten off. The Yemeni rebels have sowed the narrow mountain passes with thousands of improved explosive devices.

In the early hours of their engagement, the Jordanian troops also took dead and wounded. It was their first experience of combat outside the borders of the Hashemite Kingdom since the 1960s, certainly the first time they had encountered Iranian-backed fighters.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly disclosed that Hashemite King Abdullah II sent this crack troops across in response to an urgent phone call Saudi King Abdullah put through on Nov. 16, appealing for Jordanian military back-up to support the Saudi effort to purge its southern border of the Yemeni rebel intrusion. An broader inter-Arab dimension was thus added to the Yemeni civil war.

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=6388

And the BBC news reported this week:

Five killed at south Yemen rally
Five people, two of them soldiers, have died in southern Yemen in clashes between security forces and protesters demanding secession, officials say.

Shooting began as troops had tried to disperse a rally in the town of Ataq, in Shabwa province, witnesses said.

The protesters wanted the restoration of the former republic South Yemen, which was independent until 1990.

There have been other similar clashes in the south in recent months, fuelling concern about the country's stability.

Yemen, an impoverished country of 23 million, also faces an intensifying conflict in the north between government forces and Houthi rebels, which has drawn in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and displaced thousands of people.