*RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s sudden overhaul of military commanders is thelatest power play by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he looks to revampforces currently bogged down in Yemen.*
A dramatic shake-up announced in royal decrees late Monday saw top brass,including the chief of staff and heads of the ground forces and airdefence, replaced and a broad defence reform plan approved.
The changing of the guard comes just a month shy of the third anniversaryof the launch of a Saudi-led intervention to fight Iran-backed Huthi rebelsin Yemen.
Prince Mohammed has been the main driver of the once-staid kingdom’s moreaggressive regional push since he took over as defence minister in early2015.
But despite a multi-billion dollar military campaign, the coalition hasfailed to defeat the Huthis in a conflict that United Nations says hascreated the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The war’s failures have exposed the limitations of Saudi Arabia’s militarymight and accelerated the need to reform what is seen as a scleroticmilitary establishment.
“This plan seeks to reform the Saudi armed forces from a large, inefficientfighting force full of top-level bloat to a streamlined andprofessionalised military,” Becca Wasser, a policy analyst at the US-basedRAND Corporation, told AFP.
“The armed forces have been plagued by wasteful spending, incoherentresource allocation, and unmeritocratic personnel policies, with thedifferent services acting as mini-fiefdoms rather than a coherent whole.”
*‘Dead weight’*
Prince Mohammed’s military reshuffle comes after he sidelined politicalrivals to become heir to the throne last June and orchestrated anunprecedented royal purge in November.
The 32-year-old prince has amassed a level of power unseen by previousrulers as he oversees a sweeping programme of modernisation aimed atpreparing Saudi Arabia for a post-oil era.
Now the military reform plan appears geared towards reducing inefficientspending and turning the armed forces into a meritocracy, both gargantuantasks in an institution widely seen as resistant to change.
Some of the command shifts saw the removal of “dead weight” from top ranks,Wasser said — military leaders opposed to change who were sent intoretirement.
They were replaced largely with younger, more flexible leaders loyal toPrince Mohammed, further consolidating his control within the military.
Those retired include veteran General Abdul Rahman bin Saleh al-Bunyan, whowas replaced as the chief of staff by Fayyad al-Ruwaili.
Government officials insist the revamp is not prompted by the short-termproblems facing the military in Yemen but is part of a long-term strategythat has been years in the making.
“The most significant order issued by King Salman was approval of theMinistry of Defence development plan,” tweeted Faisal bin Farhan, a senioradviser at the Saudi embassy in Washington, referring to Monday’s royaldecrees.
“This multiyear effort, which had been under review for months encompassesall elements of the ministry including organisation, force structure andlong term procurement.”
‘Major player’
The overhaul to reinvigorate the military comes as Riyadh is looking tobreathe life into attempts to establish its own arms industry.
Saudi Arabia has long been a major global arms importer — but somecountries now refuse to sell weapons over the kingdom’s role in the crisisgripping Yemen.
In a sign of its ambitions Riyadh this week held an arms exhibition bystate-owned Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI) that drew severalglobal firms.
SAMI’s goal is to become a “major player in the global defence industry”and “localise more than 50 percent of the military spending” by 2030,according to its website.
It aims to create 40,000 direct jobs and contribute 14 billion riyals ($3.7billion) to the kingdom’s gross domestic product by 2030.
“The military shake-up is aimed at cleaning up and reinvigorating thestructure as Saudi Arabia tries to create a viable, sustainable andeventually an export-oriented military industry,” Mohammed Alyahya, anon-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, told AFP.
“Projecting military strength is a key part of the strategy.”
While the revamp announced might be aimed at transforming the armed forcesin the long-haul, experts say it could well have far-reaching implicationson the conflict in Yemen.
“While the military transformation plan was not driven by the Yemen war,the war has dragged on for nearly three years,” said Wasser.
“All of these (changes) could have knock-on effects for the Saudi militaryperformance in Yemen”. – Agencies