Does anyone find it odd that among the weaponry captured by the Houthis, there is barely any American firearm... most of the captured weaponry seem like they were just picked up from the battlefields of Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded???
There were billions upon billions they paid for arms to the US and the UK....
Shiite Royalists in North Yemen (from where the present Houthis come from) were supported by the Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis and British in the 1962-1970 North Yemen Civil War. The royalists fought republicans supported by Egypt and the Soviets.
South Yemen was a Marxist Soviet satellite state,in the 70's and 80's. The only avowedly Marxist state in the Arab world. The widespread presence of Soviet small arms in the current conflict, is almost certainly a legacy of that period..
"The war began with a coup d'état carried out in 1962 by revolutionary republicans led by the army under the command of Abdullah as-Sallal, who dethroned the newly crowned Imam Muhammad al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. The Imam escaped to the Saudi Arabian border where he rallied popular support from northern Shia tribes to retake power, escalating shortly to a full-scale civil war.
On the royalist side Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel supplied military aid, and Britain gave covert support, while the republicans were supported by Egypt and were supplied warplanes from the Soviet Union."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Yemen_Civil_War
"[South Yemen] …... became a Marxist socialist republic in 1970 supported by the Soviet Union. It was the only communist state to be established in the Arab world. Despite its efforts to bring stability into the region, it was involved in a brief civil war in 1986. With the collapse of communism, South Yemen was unified with the Yemen Arab Republic (commonly known as "North Yemen") on 22 May 1990, to form the present-day Yemen."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Yemen
