Who Benefits from an Exhausting War

Posted: April 21st, 2016

By David Ottaway

David B. Ottaway worked for 35 years for The Washington Post as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe and later as a national security and investigative reporter in Washington before retiring in 2006. He has won numerous awards for his reporting at home and abroad and was twice nominated a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ottaway was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 1979-80 and again in 2005-06 and is currently a Senior Scholar.

Peace talks are stalled and a ceasefire between the Saudis and the Houthis in Yemen is not holding. This is exactly what terrorist groups, like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State, want. The Cipher Brief talked to Wilson Center senior scholar and former Middle East correspondent for The Washington Post David Ottaway about the current situation on the ground.

The Cipher Brief: Saudi Arabia’s involvement in Yemen is the Arab nation’s first major military campaign abroad during the Obama administration. Explain why Saudi Arabia decided to take take action and how the U.S. is assisting.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+