This chapter explores the various manifestations of Saudi influence in Yemen’s extreme north, particularly with regard to the role of Saudi patronage politics in protection of the controversial and vulnerable border between the two countries. The beginnings of Saudi patronage policy can be traced back to the Saudi-Yemeni War of 1934 and the Treaty of Ṭāʾif, which resolved it. Since 1934 tribal elites in the Yemeni borderlands played a vital role in securing the common border. By considering the boundary problem through the lens of the borderland tribes, this chapter focuses on the influence of Saudi patronage politics in the area, the mutual interdependencies between Saudi boundary policy and the emergence of the Houthi conflict, and the vital role that tribes and tribal elites played in this process.
Global Solutions to the initial boundary problem of 3-D compressible Navier–Stokes–Poisson on bounded domains