FILE Photo: Houthi rebels chant slogans during a gathering
aimed at mobilizing more fighters into battlefronts to fight
pro-government forces, in Sanaa, Yemen. Hani Mohammed/AP
“If Iran tries to block the Bab al-Mandab strait, I’m sure it
will find itself facing an international coalition determined to
prevent it. This coalition will include all Israel’s army
branches as well,”declared
Benjamin Netanyahu in August, following Iran’s threats
against American sanctions.
Such a coalition had already been set up in 2015 by Saudi
Arabia, who partnered with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Egypt and Pakistan. Israel is also an unofficial partner.
Israeli cyber companies, gun traders, terror-warfare instructors
and even paid hitmen operated by an Israeli-owned company are
partners to the war in Yemen.
In September, London-based Al-Khaleej Online published a long
article about Israel’s involvement in training Colombian and
Nepalese combatants, who were recruited by the UAE for the war
in Yemen. The report cites sources in a U.S. House Intelligence
Committee who said the foreign fighers’ recruiter was Mohammed
Dahlan, who was a member of Fatah’s central committee and head
of intelligence in Gaza. Dahlan was ousted from Fatah in 2011
and later moved to the UAE, where he became the advisor of the
crown prince and the liaison and mediator between the UAE
security forces and Israel.
The report also says that Israel set up special training
bases in the Negev, where the mercenaries were trained by
Israeli combatants. Dahlan occasionally visited those camps, in
which the UAE flag was hoisted.
The mercenaries later took part in the war on the port town
Hodeidah and other fighting zones in Yemen.
The site’s sources said Israel also sold bombs and missiles
to Saudi Arabia, some of which are banned. Recently it was
reported and later denied that Israel also sold Saudi Arabia
combat drones and intends to sell it Iron Dome systems as well.
Many reports have been written about Israeli companies like
the NSO group, which issuspected
of selling Saudi ArabiaPegasus spyware accused
of helping trace and surveySaudi
journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or the AGT company owned by the
Israeli businessman Mati Kochavi, which in 2007 won the $6
billion bid to set up surveillance and monitoring systems in Abu
Dhabi. But what remains a mystery is to what extent Israeli
technology served the fighting forces in Yemen.
Another company, Spearhead Operations Group, which was set up
by Israeli Avraham Golan and is registered in the United States,
was responsible for assassinating Yemenite clergyman Anssaf Ali
Mayo in December 2015. Mayo was one of the leaders of the Yemeni
reform party, which is affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood. The
latter is classified in the UAE as a terror organization. Golan
confirmed to BuzzFeed in October that “there was a plan for
targeted assassinations in Yemen. I ran it. We did it. The plan
was under the UAE auspices as part of the Arab coalition.”
A Yemeni man walks in the ruins of a building destroyed in
Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen's capital Sanaa on February
1, 2019. AFP
Golan added that during the months his company was active in
Yemen he was in charge of several “high profile” assassinations
and that the United States needs a murder plan based on the
model he set up. According to BuzzFeed, those who actually
carried out the assassinations were apparently former combatants
in top American commandos.
Israelis aren’t the only ones selling military services to
the UAE and Saudi Arabia to go to the war in Yemen. Private
American companies, senior officers and ex-CIA agents found
their bonanza in these two states, just as private companies
made a huge fortune out of “military” services they provided the
Iraqi government after the occupation. These services include
active warfare and intelligence gathering as well as commanding
mercenary units or combatant units from Saudi Arabia and UAE.
For example, the former American general Stephen Toumajan is
serving as the UAE’s commander of the Joint Aviation Command and
was the chief of a combat helicopter unit that fought in Yemen.
Toumajan isn’t the American security agencies’ subcontractor,
he wears the UAE air force uniform and in interviews he speaks
of himself as a general in the state’s army. Toumajan represents
a new stage in the privatization of the war in Yemen and in
other states in which the United States is involved but isn’t
taking part in the battles.
A foreign partnership in the armies of Arab states isn’t new.
Pakistani pilots for example fly Saudi planes, the Presidential
Guard commander in the UAE is Australian general Mike Hindmarsh.
Companies from all over the world including Israel run advanced
intelligence systems, so the term “mercenaries” has evolved from
armed combatant units from poor countries who come to improve
their standard of living to a role filled with extensive
activities including setting up combat units, commanding them,
planning war moves, purchasing equipment and managing budgets.
The difference between sending combatants who serve in the
armies of foreign countries, like Iranian and Russian forces in
Syria, or forces of the Western coalition fighting in
Afghanistan, and mercenaries who are recruited privately, is
blurry. Regular forces acting in foreign states are subjected to
the laws of the state that sends them, compared to mercenaries,
who act at the instructions of the recruiting state. But this is
also the problem with employing them.
Soldiers with a military coalition in Yemen backed by Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates stand guard at a
facility of Yemen's
Red sea mills company in the port city of Hodeida, January
22, 2019 AFP
These forces need a legal permit, which is given after a
parliamentary debate or by legislation, and then the state can
decide on the kind of fighting its forces will be involved in
and the length of time they’ll stay on foreign soil. In
contrast, mercenaries, whether combatants or in air conditioned
high tech companies in Dubai or Riyadh, are subject only to the
terms of their employment contract, unless they pass information
to a foreign state without a permit.
An example for this is the United States House of
Representatives’ decision to ban the involvement of U.S. troops
in the war in Yemen (although intelligence cooperation is still
permitted). This is a declarative decision intended to convey to
President Donald Trump and the Saudi crown prince that the U.S.
no longer supports this war, which has generated one of the
greatest humanitarian tragedies, despite its description as a
struggle against Iran.
The United States doesn’t have military forces that are
active in the war in Yemen, but an “army” of mercenaries, which
includes numerous Americans, may continue to act unhindered as
long as it is financed by Arab states.
The senior mercenaries have not ruled out the need for the
cannon fodder recruited by the fighting states from the ever
available stock in poor states. Many Yemenites have avoided
joining their state’s army to fight the Houthi insurgents, they
prefer to be mercenaries of the Saudi army for the same cause.
Much of it could be due to wages as a soldier in the Yemeni army
earns some $100 a month on average, whereas a mercenary’s
monthly wage is $350-$500 plus some $130 for every attack.
Columbian combatants earn three or four times what they would
make in their army, while Afghan combatants who are recruited
from the thousands of Afghan refugees in Iran to fight in Syria
are assured a $250 wage each month. More importantly, they may
be eligible for Iranian citizenship along with their families.
The most expensive mercenaries are from elite American units
like the Navy Seals, army rangers and the Marines. According to
the silentprofessionals.org site, a professional with training
as a sniper who gets a job in Afghanistan or Iraq can make some
$544 a day plus perks and bonuses. Yemenites or Columbians
cannot get this coveted post even if they are gifted snipers, as
the key requirement is having an American citizenship. However
this doesn’t mean private companies won’t agree to employ
talented snipers from other states, after all, the supply and
demand principle works in this market too.
Mercenaries may be private people or companies that don’t
represent governments, but often the states they come from are
suspected of initiating or at least turning a blind eye to their
activity. The Israeli Defense Ministry or Mossad may claim
people who served in their ranks and are now private contractors
of the UAE or South American states are not working in Israel’s
name, and as long as they don’t break the laws of their host
state there is no reason to put them on trial. But it is
doubtful whether anyone would accept this argument when such a
mercenary, whether an independent contractor or a private
company, acts in foreign states in a way that serves Israel’s
interests, such as the war against Iran. Thus there are those
who argue that if Israel cannot allow anyone to pass information
and technology directly to Saudi Arabia while being recruited,
they can wait a few months until being discharged and then
proceed privately, for big money.
After all, it’s all for the same purpose – Israeli’s security
or the region’s security or the world’s security.
