As Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes into Yemen extend into a third week, the government’s daily face of the campaign is Brig. Gen. Ahmad Asseri, who gives a daily press briefing featuring photos, videos and other images highlighting the Saudi strikes into Yemen. These photos and videos have been released and disseminated to Saudi media and are circulated widely on social media sites.
A Saudi soldier on the border with Yemen in Jazan.
A report by the AFP as reprinted in Khaleej Times notes that the daily briefing on an ongoing war effort was an American invention done first in Saudi Arabia – by General Norman Schwarzkopf during the 1990-91 Gulf War, otherwise known as Operation Desert Storm, when American troops were based in the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes into Yemen have not stopped the advance of Yemen’s Houthi rebels in that country, but the Kingdom says these strikes will continue indefinitely until Saudi Arabia’s aims are achieved.
“The kingdom has barely slowed the advance of Shiite rebels who appear to be digging in for a long fight,” writes Brian Murphy in the Washington Post. “But so far, Saudi commanders have projected no outward signs of concern that the campaign is falling short,” noting that the general in charge of giving daily briefings to journalists, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Asseri, has said, “we should not be impatient for the results.”
An image still from a Saudi airstrike.
The AFP notes that with “the help of a Gulf-based public relations firm,” the daily briefings “are delivered just after 7pm at the Riyadh Air Base…After the short video clip to set the mood, Assiri speaks from a lectern, standing in front of 11 flags representing the members of the coalition. Little is known about Assiri, except that he spent at least four years at the Saint-Cyr military college in France.”
Much is at stake in the Saudi-led coalition’s war into Yemen, so control of the message is important to the Saudi leadership. Speaking with NPR’s Linda Wertheimer this weekend, Gulf expert Thomas Lippman said that the Yemen campaign was a “big gamble.”
“…[F]irst of all, they could lose. The Houthi rebels in Yemen could defy the bombing and succeed in taking over the country, which would be a mighty embarrassment, especially because Iran would then step in to fill the aid and friendship vacuum in Yemen. You could get civilian collateral damage in which the Saudis would be seen to be bombing Sunni Muslims in a neighboring country. Yemen is already the poorest country in the region and its prospects are getting worse, not better.”
“If you get a complete state failure or breakdown of services in Yemen, which is also running out of water, you could have an uncontrollable flow of refugees or other trouble for Saudi Arabia,” Lippman said.
