Dr Abdulhadi Alajm
By Dr Abdulhadi Alajmi
After the announcement that Operation Decisive Storm has formally ended, the Houthi militias rushed to try to improve their image, which has become very dark and ugly, in order to launch a misleading media campaign of the Operation, promoting that in the end the Houthis, and in turn its major ally Iran, won the war.
The truth is what these militias are doing is considered a recognition of failure and defeat. It is not surprising to find the Houthis act this way especially when they are backed by the misleading media outlets run by the mullahs of Iran, promoting false media victories after having sensed how the Operation broke their prejudice and fabricated power; it uncovered the Houthis, destroying at the same time Iran’s legend.
Since the launch of Operation Decisive Storm, led by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, Iran has been giving impressions of its power in the media, demonstrating its authority and military capabilities based on the phantom publicity that the Iranian army and the regime rely on.
Since those malicious media campaigns are spreading in most parts of the Arab world, the Houthis and those who follow Iran’s mullahs have rushed to deliver the same speech, marketing their defeat as a victory.
I am not surprised by the lack of intelligence of those who run and manage this type of media. We all see and hear about Assad’s militias in Syria declaring every day their fake victories.
The same goes for Iraq, which has become more like torn cantons over which tribal heads, militia leaders, religious groups, the government, and the Kurds are fighting for control. There is also the egotistical Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Thus, it was not surprising that the Houthis, Saleh, and Iran (the defeated trio) will rush after the announcement of the Operation’s end to claim victory in Yemen.
Saddam did the same after the end of the second Gulf war. Gaddafi also did the same in Zawiya, Ajdabiya, and Misrata.
In general, when military leaders put their hands on people’s homelands, they act in a very ridiculous and misleading way that reflects their love for pseudo-power and their false victory.
Understanding this dilemma will not be insulated from understanding the reality of our societies and the Arab people, in the sense that repressive countries as a whole are based on an ideology that they live in the illusion of the legitimacy of the authoritarian suppressor over others.
Everything that comes from the inspirational leader has to be a victory, and all against him is a conspiracy by his enemies and traitors who want to demolish the state.
This confused and sick way of thinking is what ultimately led us to the falsification of facts and misinformation.
This also creates fictitious victories which we see repeated in the Yemeni
scene today.
As of today and after the official announcement of the Operation’s end and the destruction of most of Houthis’ and Saleh’s targets, coalition aircraft are still completing their mission and hitting sites, targets, and weapons in the centre of the Yemeni cities where Saleh and the Houthis are stationed.
This means, in my personal view, that the consequences of the Operation are still ongoing and that the Gulf is determined to complete what it started very strongly and decisively; and that the end was left open. Probably, this came to make room for more overheating and attrition for the forces of Saleh, the Houthis, and Iran.
I do not know what I was thinking while writing this article when the famous story from our Arab heritage, the story of Baraqesh, a name given to a female dog owned by an Arab family, came to my mind.
When enemies attacked their house at night, they didn’t know where the family was hiding until Baraqesh started barking, so the enemies found them from the dog’s noise. They got hold of the family and killed them with the dog; basically the dog told about the family, which consequently ended its life. From this story, came the famous proverb: snitches end up in ditches.
The adventure of the Houthis and their provocation of the Gulf was the cause of exposing the meagre size and role of Iran and its fictitious and false reality in front of everyone. Iran let the Houthis face the Storm alone, as it could neither send aircraft nor military forces that it constantly brags about.
So it was a natural response of the Iranian side to create this misleading and false media campaign to promote Iran and its followers, as coverage of the outputs of Operation Decisive Storm prior to restoring hope.
The writer is a professor in the History Department of Kuwait University.
