The Forgotten War: Why Yemen Matters
3 years of fighting, and 3 failed peace attempts. 4.5 million malnourished children, 10,000 people killed, 3 million forced to flee their homes, 500,000 cases of cholera.
These are the statistics of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, whose 24 million inhabitants have experienced violence and political strife for decades. Located at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, the largely Muslim country has fallen victim to the power struggles which have defined the region for the past several years; since 2015, however, the conflict has evolved into a brutal campaign of violence on both sides, with Yemen trapped in the middle. Despite the incredible physical and human costs of the violence, however, most Western news outlets have focused on the tension between Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shia-majority Iran, ignoring the web of international considerations which underlie the conflict.
The entrenched interests in Yemen have recent historical precedents. Following the Arab Spring in 2011, pro-democracy protestors forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh, accused of plundering billions of dollars from the country, to step down after 33 years of rule. His replacement, former vice president Abdrabbuh Hadi, attempted constitutional and budget reforms; this was met with outcry from Houthi rebels, an armed Islamic political movement in the north of Yemen which forms the backbone of the anti-government forces. Initially backed by former President Saleh — who later switched allegiances and was consequently killed — the Houthi insurgents have slowly infiltrated south, taking control of the capital city Sana’a in 2014 and forcing President Hadi to relocate his government to Aden, where it now resides.
Yemen’s civil war is far from just a domestic issue, however. The Houthi movement’s predominantly Shia identity has garnered the support of Shia-majority Iraq, which has been accused by the international community of supplying weapons to the rebels — a charge which Tehran unequivocally denies. Meanwhile, a Saudi-led coalition, including eight other Arab states and backed by the U.S. and the U.K., has been fighting an air campaign to restore Hadi’s exiled government. The coalition also recently imposed a blockade of rebel-held Yemeni ports in the name of limiting Iran’s weapons deliveries to the Houthis, with devastating results. Yemen, already dependent on imports for food and medicine, is now facing severe shortage: an estimated 60% of people don’t know where their next meal will come from, and a crumbling health infrastructure has left growing numbers without access to necessary medical care, made more urgent by a recent and widespread cholera outbreak.
Jihadist militants from al-Qaeda and affiliates of Islamic State have also taken advantage of the chaos in Yemen to seize territory in the south and launch deadly attacks on Aden. Saudi Arabia’s response has been widely criticized for its indiscriminate bombing campaigns, and Saudi-allied United Arab Emirates has been accused of engaging in torture against prisoners. Though the U.S. temporarily halted its arms sales to Riyadh, President Trump’s renewed ties of friendship with King Salman seem to indicate a return to the previous arms agreement, despite allegations of atrocities. The UK has also been accused of a “double standard” for overlooking the wrongdoings committed by their Saudi allies. And while all of this is taking place, the UN has identified that 10 million Yemenis “require immediate assistance to save or sustain their lives.”
The conflict in Yemen is important to the United States for a wide variety of reasons, not least because of the precedent it sets for Trump’s approach to foreign policy. According to a British official, Trump was “fired up” discussing the crisis with UK Prime Minister Theresa May, and rightly so; the question, then, is not whether the United States should take action, but rather whether it will. So far, Trump has used his good standing with Saudi Arabia to call for an end to the blockade of ports, resulting in a 30-day reprieve to deliver humanitarian aid. Yet his administration has not only provided military support to the Saudi-led coalition, but has also ramped up its own counterterrorism attacks in Yemen, without addressing the allegations of abuses by our allies in the region. If the U.S. wants to establish itself as global arbiter and peacekeeper, it’s going to have to think long and hard about its position on Yemen.
