Saudi Arabia early yesterday morning replaced its military chief of staff and other defense officials in a shake-up apparently aimed at overhauling its Ministry of Defense during the stalemated and ruinous war in Yemen.
The kingdom also announced a new female deputy minister of labor and social development as it tries to broaden the role of women in the workplace.
Saudi Arabia made the announcement in a flurry of royal decrees carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. As with many announcements in the ultraconservative Sunni kingdom, it was short on details.
King Salman “approved the document on developing the Ministry of Defense, including the vision and strategy of the ministry’s developing program, the operational pattern targeting its development, the organizational structure, governance and human resources requirements,” one statement said.
That restructuring was part of a “multi-year effort,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan, a senior adviser at the Saudi embassy in Washington, said on Twitter.
Prominent among the personnel changes was the firing of military chief of staff General Abdulrahman bin Saleh al-Bunyan. Another announcement said the general would become a consultant to the royal court.
Al-Bunyan was replaced by General Fayyadh bin Hamid al-Rwaili, who was once commander of the Royal Saudi Air Force.
Also appointed as an assistant defense minister was Khaled bin Hussain al-Biyari, the CEO of the publicly traded mobile phone and Internet service provider Saudi Telecom Co.
The decisions come as the Saudi-led coalition, chiefly backed by the United Arab Emirates, remains mired in a stalemate in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation.
More than 10,000 people have been killed in the war in which Saudi-led forces back Yemen’s internationally recognized government against Shiite rebels and their allies, who are holding the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and much of the north of the country.
The kingdom faces wide international criticism for its airstrikes killing civilians and striking markets, hospitals and other civilian targets. Aid groups also blame a Saudi-led blockade of Yemen for pushing the nation to the brink of famine.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the Saudi minister of defense and architect of the Yemen war. While he has burnished his reputation abroad with promises of business-friendly reforms and other pledges, his role in Yemen haunts that carefully considered public personae.
However, the overhaul in the Saudi defense forces should not only be seen as a reaction to the Yemen war, said Becca Wasser, a Washington-based RAND Corp analyst specializing in Gulf security.
The war in Yemen functions “to push these reforms forward, but it’s not the driver,” Wasser told reporters.
In general, such an overhaul would include improving training and recruitment of troops, allocating better resources and changing the military’s leadership to one willing to hear new ideas and make changes, Wasser said.
Also noticeable was an effort to include a “careful balancing” of appointments of others in the Al Saud royal family, said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.
“It seems the Saudi shake-up is more about moving forward with Mohammed bin Salman’s attempt to put in place a new generation of leadership in tune with his vision to transform the structure of Saudi decisionmaking,” Ulrichsen said.
“Reform is a tricky thing to do. To create change in a larger bureaucratic structure like a military is difficult. To create change in Saudi Arabia ... is incredibly difficult,” Wasser said. “It is not going to be easy and change is not going to happen tomorrow. This is much more of a long-term endeavor.”
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