The Siege of Hodeidah Compared to Afrin City

UPDATE: The latest from Hodeidah is that the Saudi-UAE coalition has successfully wrested portions of the airport from the Houthis. This is denied by the Houthis, a spokesman for which said the coalition forces are in retreat. The airport is destroyed and civilian casualties are growing. The seaport is still operating. UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, left Sanaa without any agreement. The battle for Hodeidah grinds on with no end in sight.

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If looked at through the prism of the Kurdish failure in March to hold Afrin City against the Turks, it's hard to imagine a more hopeful outcome for the Houthis in Hodeidah. The stakes are different as is the terrain. Afrin is a river city in Syria near the Turkish border that is the production center for olive growing. Hodeidah is the principal port -- both air and sea -- on the Red Sea; it is Yemen's fourth largest city with a population of 400,000. Hodeidah falls to the UAE-Saudi coalition and Sanaa the capital starves.

It took the Turks and their Free Syrian Army proxies less than a week to conquer Afrin City, sending the Kurds of the YPG and YPJ retreating into the surrounding hills. The siege of Hodeidah is already into its sixth day.

At first there were breathless reports that the UAE-Saudi coalition was proceeding methodically and with little trouble to control both air and sea ports. The story this morning is not so sanguine. Houthi fighters are stubbornly resisting; the coalition has responded with shelling, which is impacting neighborhoods surrounding the airport. There are civilian casualties.

My assessment back in March was that the if YPG/YPJ failed to hold Afrin City, they would prove themselves merely a U.S. proxy, unable to achieve their objective of an independent Rojava. With the news that Turkish forces are entering the outskirts of Manbij, this assessment has proven accurate.

We'll soon find out if the Houthis are nothing more than Iranian proxies -- which has been the prevailing mainstream wisdom, with an occasional caveat, since the Yemeni Civil War began three years ago.

The Houthis are not Iranian proxies. My guess is that they will put up more of a fight than the Kurds. Moon of Alabama notes reports that French special forces are part of the coalition attacking Hodeidah. What we're looking at is another inconclusive Western-backed military campaign. Plenty of death and destruction, but not much of anything else.