Post-Arab Spring Crisis Containment (Late 2014 - Present)

Following the mid-2014 turning point, the Gulf monarchies’ proxy strategies became increasingly status quo-oriented. Where Gulf monarchies sought to partner with proxies, they did so in order to contain crises and revert to the status quo in civil wars rather than seize opportunities to expand their influence. They no longer intervened to topple established Middle East states. The Gulf monarchies’ actions as part of Operation Inherent Resolve (the anti-ISIS coalition), and in Yemen and Libya illustrate the shift in approach. However, ongoing competition in the Horn of Africa—and in parts of the Yemen war—suggests that in certain contexts, opportunistic aims continue to drive proxy competition on the part of the Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar joined the U.S.-led international coalition against ISIS in the fall of 2014 under the banner of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), joining more than 60 coalition members. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia contributed to aircraft-to-strike operations in Syria, while Qatar provided in-country basing and overflight authorization for U.S. forces as well as transport aircraft. All three also contributed to the training and advising mission.¹ While Saudi Arabia deployed F-15 aircraft to Turkey to contribute to the coalition, in practice, it carried out relatively few strike missions. Of the three countries, the UAE made the most significant contribution to CJTF-OIR: the UAE fighters flew more missions in the anti-ISIS airstrikes than any other coalition member besides the United States, and Emirati F-16 Fighting Falcons often accompanied U.S. aircraft on their missions.² This discrepancy is due to significant differences in the capabilities of the Emirati and Saudi air forces, as the coalition intervention in Yemen would soon demonstrate.³

The goal of reversing Iran’s presence in Syria had also declined in relative importance for the United States. Indeed, former Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL Brett McGurk would later criticize the Trump administration for confusing the mission by entertaining broader goals regarding Iran while at the same time not committing to them.⁴ In Iraq, the counter-ISIS coalition was in effect tacitly supporting Iranian proxies. Meanwhile in Syria, despite some initial hope that the Syrian opposition would form an on-the-ground partner force, the coalition relied upon the primarily Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).⁵ From the beginning of the Syrian rebellion, Syria’s Kurds embraced a strategy of détente with the Assad regime rather than direct confrontation.⁶ As the United States withdrew its forces from parts of northeast Syria, the SDF looked to the Assad regime for protection from Turkey.⁷

While Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE had all supported elements of Syria’s opposition since early in its civil war, the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria saw all three revert towards a status quo-orientation, conducting airstrikes against ISIS, by then one of the most powerful opposition groups in Syria. The United States made clear that the goal of the anti-ISIS coalition was not to resolve the Syrian civil war militarily but to counter and degrade ISIS.⁸As noted above, with the destruction of ISIS’ caliphate and Assad’s gains, Gulf states have begun to seek normalization with the Assad regime, illustrating the change from revisionist hopes of the earlier interventions in Syria.

In September 2015, Russia intervened militarily to further shore up Assad’s government. Commander of the IRGC Quds Force Qasem Soleimani reportedly traveled to Moscow several times before the intervention began to participate in operational planning.⁹ The combination of Iranian and Russian intervention made it substantially more difficult, if not impossible, for the Syrian opposition to achieve its aim of toppling the Assad regime.

Following the Houthi takeover of Yemen’s capital Sanaa in September 2014, Yemeni President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government fled to the southern port city of Aden. At the invitation of Hadi’s government, on March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of nine Arab states, with logistical support from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, launched an intervention on behalf of the internationally-recognized government headed by President Hadi.¹⁰ This considerable military effort was nonetheless aimed at preserving the status quo—a weak yet relatively pro-Saudi regime governing Yemen’s territory and insulating the Arabian Peninsula from Iranian influence.

While deemed “the Saudi-led coalition,” the intervening coalition was led in practice by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with a de facto division of labor: Saudi Arabia led the air campaign in the north, while the UAE led the ground offensive in the south. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE contributed to efforts to train and equip local militias, although these efforts were dominated by the UAE in the south.¹¹

The intervention included a sustained campaign of air strikes, the blockade of air and sea routes into Yemen, and the deployment of special forces, led by the UAE but with contributions from other coalition members.¹² According to the Yemen Data Project, between March 26, 2015, and March 25, 2018, the coalition conducted an average of 15 air raids per day (with each air raid comprising one or multiple strikes) and 453 air raids per month on average, for a total of 16,749 over the course of the first three years of the conflict. About 30 percent of all recorded air strikes in this period targeted non-military sites.¹³

In contrast with the early years of intervention in Syria and Libya, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi saw proxy sponsorship alongside a broader Saudi-led coalition intervention in Yemen as a means of containing the crisis of increased Iranian influence on the peninsula, rather than an opportunity for expanded influence.

Saudi Arabia has long viewed Yemen as falling directly within its sphere of influence and as a high security priority, and perceived Iran’s support for the Houthis as a threat to be confronted.¹⁴ Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), who is understood to be the architect of the Yemen intervention, told American reporter Jeffrey Goldberg that “I believe the Iranian supreme leader makes Hitler look good…. The supreme leader is trying to conquer the world….We are pushing back on these Iranian moves. We’ve done this in Africa, Asia, in Malaysia, in Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon.”¹⁵ In another interview, he clarified that Ayatollah Khamenei “wants to create his own project in the Middle East very much like Hitler who wanted to expand at the time.”¹⁶ Likewise, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan stated in 2015 that “Iran is not carrying out this activity only in Yemen, it is conducting the same activity in Lebanon, in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and in Pakistan…there is a systematic action that has been going on for years on the idea of exporting the (Iranian) revolution.”¹⁷ He added, “It is not possible to accept any strategic threat to Gulf Arab states,” making clear the perception of the Yemen intervention as a response to an Iranian threat.¹⁸ A prominent UAE businessman with close ties to the regime wrote in an op-ed in Al-Arabiya in 2015, “most of this region’s troubles are rooted in Iran’s thirst for hegemony.”¹⁹ These statements point to a more fearful and pessimistic perception on the behalf of the Gulf states than predominated during the early Arab Spring.

Iranian perception of the Yemen war also supports the conclusion that the Gulf states approached the conflict from a reactive status quo maintenance frame. Iran saw Yemen as an area of little intrinsic strategic value beyond the leverage it gave Iran over its rival Saudi Arabia: according to Iran scholars Dina Esfandiary and Ariane Tabatabai, “Yemen is not a priority for Iran; it will not allocate many resources to Yemen.”²⁰ Yemen was historically an area of Saudi influence, Iran was the revisionist foreign influence in the conflict. Emirati officials also feared that the conflict in Yemen would allow Muslim Brotherhood (MB)-affiliated groups, namely the Islah political party, to gain influence in Yemen.²¹ Islah, the Islamist coalition opposition party in Yemen that included MB elements, played an outsized role in Yemen’s politics after 2011, and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated elements were poised to gain political power in southern Yemen.²²

However, in keeping with its initially more revisionist approach to the Arab Spring compared to Saudi Arabia, the UAE’s strategy in Yemen has also included opportunistic elements. The Emirates has sought to leverage its role to expand its military and economic access to the horn of Africa and the Bab al-Mandab strait, which is a vital link in global trade routes. Control over the port of Aden in southern Yemen, as well as much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, would significantly expand the Emirates’ access to and control of these routes.²³

In July 2015, the coalition launched Operation Golden Arrow to retake the southern port city of Aden and surrounding territory from Houthi forces.²⁴ Emirati forces led the coalition’s efforts on the ground in the south: the joint Hadi-Southern Resistance offensive, which quickly recaptured Aden and advanced north to link with other anti-Houthi forces, was accompanied by Emirati and Saudi special forces.²⁵ Emirati efforts in Yemen were widely viewed by international observers as more tactically sophisticated than the Saudi-led airstrikes: the offensive to retake Aden involved “more than 3,000 troops supported by Apache attack helicopters and dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers as well as an amphibious assault.”²⁶ The UAE also provided economic aid to Aden and the surrounding area, in addition to its investments in equipping and training southern militias, many of which are united under the banner of the predominantly secular Southern Transition Council (STC) but include Salafist militia groups as well.²⁷ These militias, which numbered some 12,000 fighters, alongside Emirati Special Forces, took the lead in clearing Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) fighters from areas in the south, including the port city of Mukalla and the Masila oilfields in 2016.²⁸ The UAE deployed about 1,500 special operations troops and other forces to Yemen at the beginning of the conflict, and by September 2015, that number increased to about 4,000.²⁹ However, after a missile strike in the Yemeni governorate of Marib in September 2015 killed more than fifty Emirati troops, Abu Dhabi drew down some of its own troops, replacing them with foreign contractors operating under the UAE flag.³⁰

The UAE also deployed forces to several bases in East Africa to support training of local forces and facilitate the UAE’s operations in Yemen. The UAE deployed forces to Djibouti for this purpose, but following a dispute with Djibouti’s government in mid-2015, the Emirates relocated and began using facilities in Eritrea instead.³¹ The UAE also expanded its relationship with Somalia, opening a new training center where Emirati Special Forces train Somali commandos in counter-terrorism operations.³² However, the UAE’s relationship with Somalia was subsequently complicated by the 2017 diplomatic crisis with Qatar, as the Emirates stoked conflict with Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Farmajo), who they considered too close to Qatar, by supporting rival political factions.³³

While co-leaders of the intervening coalition with ostensibly shared strategic goals, in practice, the divergence between Saudi and Emirati proxy strategies became more apparent over time. On August 7, 2019, fighting broke out in Aden between the Southern Transition Council (STC), the coalition of secessionist militias supported by the UAE, and forces supporting Hadi, which are backed by Saudi Arabia. Because Saudi Arabia’s overriding priority has been securing its southern border and opposing Iran’s presence in a neighboring country, its efforts focused on fighting the Houthis in the north of the country and supporting Hadi’s government as the sole entity deserving of international recognition. In contrast, while sharing Saudi Arabia’s concerns about Iran, Emirati officials were also deeply concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Yemen, and sought to support proxy forces that were in some cases Salafist or Islamist but did not have Muslim Brotherhood ties. From the Emirati perspective, its support for southern militias that oppose Islah is status-quo maintenance because it meant preventing Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated militias from gaining military and political power in Yemen.³⁴

In part due to this divergence, as well as fatigue over the ongoing stalemate, the UAE began to draw down all of its troops in Yemen in the summer of 2019.³⁵ While Saudi Arabia has continued air strikes in northern Yemen, Saudi leadership has also engaged in talks with the Houthis, in the December 2018 Stockholm Agreement³⁶ and indirect peace talks via Oman in late 2019.³⁷ In April 2020, Riyadh announced a unilateral, two-week ceasefire in Yemen, although both sides appear to have violated it in short order.³⁸

The Emirati withdrawal and Riyadh’s willingness to negotiate pointed to the limits of Gulf revisionism in the region, and an acknowledgement that they would not be able to fully restore the status quo through the use of military force on the peninsula, let alone opportunistically revise the regional order in their favor via proxy warfare.

Despite its difference with Saudi Arabia and the UAE over the perceived threat of the Houthi gains, Qatar’s approach to Yemen remained status quo-oriented. Doha’s leadership did not perceive the rise of a Houthi government to be a security threat in the same way that Saudi Arabia and the UAE did; rather, Qatar’s participation was designed to diminish the intra-GCC diplomatic crisis by acceding to Saudi leadership on regional security issues.³⁹ As such, the Qatari strategy in Yemen emphasized objectives of crisis management in an effort to restore and support a stable status quo for Gulf security.

Qatar participated in the Saudi-led coalition intervention from March 2015 until it was expelled from the coalition in June 2017 following the resurgence of the intra-GCC dispute. Qatari pilots participated in airstrikes early on in the intervention, and Al Jazeera reported that Qatar sent 1,000 ground troops along with 200 armored vehicles and 30 Apache helicopters in the early fall of 2015.⁴⁰ David B. Roberts writes that while Qatar’s role in Yemen was “relatively small,” deploying forces on the ground represented “an assertive step for Qatar”⁴¹—albeit one designed to demonstrate alignment with its GCC neighbors rather than full independence from them.⁴²

When fighting picked up again in Libya in 2014, both the UAE and Qatar continued to support their preferred sides. However, in contrast with their 2011 intervention in Libya, in 2014, their competition in Libya was oriented towards crisis management, with both intervening just enough to ensure that their side did not lose. For Abu Dhabi, this meant supporting forces aligned with Khalifa Haftar, who promised to push Islamist militias out of Benghazi, while for Doha, this meant supporting the new government established in the wake of the Gaddafi regime that was threatened by Haftar’s advances.

In Libya, the UN-backed government based in Tripoli struggled to extend its political authority. Because the government had no army of its own, it “depended on the goodwill of the capital’s militias, some of whom tried to topple it. Disagreements among the representatives on the council led to gridlock,” Libya expert Frederic Wehrey notes.⁴³ In May 2014, the second civil war in Libya since 2011 began when Khalifa Haftar, once part of the coterie of military officers around Gaddafi and later exiled for decades in the United States, launched an offensive to take back Benghazi from Islamist militias, vowing to impose military rule instead.⁴⁴ In response, Islamist militias, including Ansar al-Sharia, formed a coalition called Libya Dawn to counter Haftar’s forces. After establishing a parallel government administration in Libya’s eastern city of Tobruk, Haftar’s forces then pivoted to take on the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli. Separately, GNA-affiliated forces reclaimed the city of Sirte in 2016 after a year-long battle.⁴⁵

Haftar quickly received support from the UAE, post-coup Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, France, and Russia, which has sent its Wagner Group mercenaries to assist Haftar’s forces.⁴⁶ In 2016, the UAE set up an air base in eastern Libya to support Haftar’s operations. And in 2019, just days before he launched another offensive, Saudi Arabia promised Haftar “tens of millions of dollars to help pay for the operation,” according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal.⁴⁷

Haftar’s forces have also recruited from local tribes and the ranks of former Gaddafi-era officers.⁴⁸ Haftar welcomed the support of Salafist fighters who hold the Islamists Haftar is fighting as common enemies. In spite of this odd configuration of allegiances, the UAE supports Haftar because of his strongly anti-Islamist stance, which aligns with their own. A former U.S. diplomat reportedly said of the UAE’s presence in Libya that “they are looking to stage-manage and cleave out the parties they don’t like.”⁴⁹ External support for Haftar and his forces “had a dramatic effect in Benghazi,” according to Wehrey: Emirati-supplied military hardware aided the advances of Libyan National Army (LNA) forces on the ground, while Emirati and French airstrikes “more precise than anything [Haftar] could manage” provided air support to advancing ground forces.⁵⁰

The GNA has been defended by an array of Libyan militias, and more recently Turkey, which over the early months of 2020 has sent Turkish military advisors as well as about 2,000Syrian militiamen to Libya.⁵¹ The United States nominally supports the Government of National Accord, but President Trump has also “recognized Field Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources, and [in a phone call] the two discussed a shared vision for Libya’s transition to a stable, democratic political system.”⁵²

Qatar has continued to provide support to GNA-affiliated militias like the Benghazi Defense Brigades, founded by Ismail al-Salabi, who had strong ties with Doha, in 2016, and Misrata’s Mahjub Brigade, whose commanders were part of a delegation that met with Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha in 2017.⁵³ Qatar has continued to back the GNA in diplomatic settings,⁵⁴ while Turkey deployed 2,000 Syrian fighters as well as some of its own military advisors to Libya to support the GNA in January 2020.⁵⁵

For all three Gulf monarchies, intervention in Libya post-2014 can be read as a crisis management exercise, despite the fact that they are supporting opposing sides. Abu Dhabi sees supporting Haftar as a way to push back against Islamist militias that had increasingly engulfed the country in an ongoing conflict, while Doha provides support to the status quo, internationally-recognized government. This is not to say there are no opportunistic elements to the Gulf states’ proxy strategies in Libya. However, the rhetoric of stability predominates, suggesting that management of an existing Libya crisis predominates their strategic thinking.

While Haftar has resisted efforts to negotiate a political settlement to the conflict, reportedly with the UAE’s support, international actors, including Turkey, Russia, the United States, and Europe, attempted to negotiate multiple ceasefire agreements in the early months of 2020.⁵⁶

The latest round of fighting has been immensely destabilizing: UN Secretary General António Guterres warned in early 2020 of “a deterioration of law and order” and reported “numerous cases of crimes and intimidation” by forces affiliated with Haftar.⁵⁷ In spite of international meetings hosted by Germany and Russia in early 2020, where all sides agreed to a UN arms embargo to stop providing support to proxy forces in Libya, that support has continued unabated—in fact, the UAE ramped up its support for Haftar in the aftermath of the agreement, sending cargo planes with weapons to supply Haftar’s forces, according to UN officials.⁵⁸

Compared to the ongoing proxy wars in Yemen and Libya, the Gulf monarchies’ competition in Africa is still driven, in part, by a desire to secure new spheres of influence. Prompted by a political vacuum in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf monarchies’ designs on the Red Sea basin—and accelerated by the relative lack of U.S. engagement in the Horn—the Gulf monarchies have expanded their competition into the Horn since 2015. For Saudi Arabia, this has meant ensuring that Iran is not able to gain a foothold across the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula. For the UAE, this has meant shoring up autocratic governments to prevent the rise of Islamist groups in a weakly governed region. In short, “The Gulf countries…see a chance to adjust the future economic and political landscape of the Red Sea basin in their favour.”⁵⁹

The Gulf monarchies’ proxy strategies here are similar to their approaches in nearby regions: Saudi Arabia and the UAE seek stability by supporting autocratic governments, some of which have violently suppressed pro-democracy movements, while Qatar and Turkey are more inclined to support popular uprisings that could empower actors that they find common cause with, especially Muslim Brotherhood-affiliates and other Islamist organizations.⁶⁰

The Gulf monarchies’ competition in this region began with basing requirements related to their intervention in Yemen: The UAE first deployed forces to Djibouti to support the Yemen intervention, but following a dispute with the government of Djibouti in mid-2015, the Emirates relocated and began using facilities in Eritrea instead, where it also trained pro-Hadi government Yemeni forces. The UAE also established a second base in Berbera, Somaliland, while Saudi Arabia has proposed building a base in Djibouti.⁶¹ Additionally, the UAE has expanded its military relationship with the government of Somalia, where its special forces train Somali commandos in conducting counter-terrorism operations.⁶²

The intra-GCC rivalries that exploded in 2017 fueled competition in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somalia, which has, according to journalists Ronen Bergman and David Kirkpatrick, “emerged as a central battleground” in the competition between Abu Dhabi and Doha.⁶³ Both the UAE and Qatar have provided weapons and training to the Somali factions they favor, fueling violence and instability in an already-failed state.⁶⁴

For the Abu Dhabi-Riyadh axis, the Horn of Africa is also an arena where Iran’s expanded influence must be reversed. As one Saudi analyst told International Crisis Group researchers, “We needed to ensure that both flanks of Bab al-Mandab were secure. We wouldn’t want to end one war only to find that we have another conflict [to roll back Iran] on the other side.”⁶⁵ Saudi Arabia has conditioned its aid to Sudan and Eritrea, as well as made promises of diplomatic assistance in lifting international sanctions, in exchange for those countries’ promises to expel Iran’s presence.

Gulf competition in the Horn of Africa, however, is also built around the search for economic opportunity, with countries in this region offering under-developed ports and energy and consumer markets that appear poised for rapid growth.⁶⁶ Economic investment in the Horn offers the Gulf monarchies the opportunity to partner with China, which is planning Belt and Road Initiative projects in East Africa. This is an important opportunity to strengthen their relationships with Beijing, from the Gulf monarchies’ perspectives, as American influence in the region recedes.

The coastline of the Red Sea basin, stretching from Somalia through Yemen, is an important strategic area for trade. The Bab al-Mandab strait, the narrowest point between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa, a potential bottleneck for international trade, is located between Yemen and Djibouti.

While much of the competition in the Horn takes place in the non-military sphere, Gulf economic investments in the Horn of Africa are properly seen as inextricably linked to regional competition in terms of economic gain. Security access to ports along Bab al-Mandab strait, the narrowest point between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa and a potential bottleneck for international trade, is a strategic aim particularly favored by the UAE. DP World, a Dubai-based global trade and logistics company hosted 150 operations in more than 45 countries, with over 46,000 employees.⁶⁷ The UAE’s economic investments in particular, which are the most extensive of the three, “are not neutral economic projects. Rather, those ports, highways, security installations, and water and sanitation facilities are intimately linked to Emirati foreign policy. They are important mechanisms for the expansion of both Emirati capital and power.”⁶⁸

Due to its character as a site of competition that has grown in the later years of the post-Arab Spring era, the Horn of Africa provides a particular caution against assuming that the chastening of the Gulf States’ optimism in Syria and Libya will prevent future conflicts or escalations.