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RIYADH, Jan 20th (Wall Street Journal) - As Yemen ratchets up a military offensive against al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia is quietly pressing a surprisingly costly battle of its own against rebels along Yemen's northern border.
Last week, Prince Khaled bin Sultan, the kingdom's assistant minister of defense and aviation, said 82 Saudi soldiers have died in the fighting so far, with another 470 injured and 21 missing. The death toll took many analysts by surprise.
"Of course we expected casualties in a guerilla war in a mountainous terrain, but this is a large number," said Saleh Almani, a political science professor at King Saud University in Riyadh.
In November, Saudi Arabia launched a series of blistering air strikes on Yemeni rebel positions along the two countries' unruly frontier and sent ground forces to retake pockets of Saudi territory. The strike followed a cross-border raid by the rebels, which killed a Saudi border-patrol officer.
Saudi commanders said at the time they easily pushed back the rebels. Officials and Saudi analysts, citing Riyadh's superior military hardware, predicted a limited operation against the rebels, a band of fighters who have fought against Yemen's central government since 2004.
Instead, the battle—the first significant military operation by the Saudi armed forces since the Gulf War—is still raging after more than two months.
Last year, Yemen relaunched military operations against the Houthi rebels, a well-armed, disciplined and highly motivated force that follows an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The mountainous terrain in which they have long operated has aided them in their fight with the government.
The Yemeni government alleges the Houthis work with al Qaeda, and are receiving aid from Iran. But Western officials say there is no intelligence to support that. Instead, diplomats say that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's preoccupation with the Houthis has distracted him from his fight against al Qaeda.
Mr. Almani believes the Houthis are fighting hard because the Saudi operation has disrupted their long-running drug and human-trafficking business along the border.
Saudi and Yemeni officials have jointly established a buffer zone on both sides of the border. Both governments say they are coordinating operations against the rebels.
But Riyadh says it has no interest in suppressing the rebels, as the Houthis claim, only in securing its border. Even that limited, public goal could be elusive, given the asymmetrical nature of the fight and the Saudi army's lack of experience, says Joost Hiltermann, deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group.
Mr. Almani said the Houthis are fighting hard because the Saudi operation has disrupted their long-running drug and human-trafficking business along the border.
The fighting—between the Yemen and Saudi governments and the rebels—has displaced more than 200,000 civilians, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Prince Sultan has said Saudi forces have killed "hundreds" of Houthi rebels. The Yemeni government prohibits journalists from traveling to the region, so the claims are impossible to verify.
Many Saudis appear to support the military action.
"There is a feeling that people are more protective of their homeland, and there is support for the government," said Abdullah Bubshait, an entrepreneur in Saudi's eastern province.
