The war in Yemen has been one of the most important conflicts in the Middle East, despite little media coverage.
The current fighting in Yemen is one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 21st century. In 2023, an estimated 21.6 million people will need humanitarian assistance. There are more than 4 million internally displaced people and 3 million have been forced to flee the country.
However, this civil war remained in the background until mid-November 2023. In retaliation for the Israeli military operation ("Operation Iron Swords") in the Gaza Strip, the Houthi rebels have attacked more than twenty ships trade in the Red Sea due to its links with Israel.
Freight traffic in the Red Sea area, bounded to the north by the Suez Canal and to the south by the Bab el Mandeb Strait (a key route in global trade), has fallen by 46% in recent weeks and recently, the US, UK and other states carried out bombing raids against the Houthis inside Yemen. These tensions have brought the conflict in Yemen back to the international and media spotlight. In the following article, this conflict and its regional and international repercussions will be analyzed.
To understand this civil war we must go back to the recent history of this state, specifically since the 19th century.
Yemen was a territory disputed by two empires in the 19th century.
The British took control of the port of Aden at the time the Suez Canal was being built. The new sea route between the Mediterranean Sea and East Asia placed Yemen as a highly strategic destination for the refueling of British ships.
The Ottoman Empire controlled northern Yemen from the 14th century until its defeat in World War I in the 20th century.
In the early 20th century, increasing clashes between the British and Ottomans along the undemarcated border posed a serious problem. In 1904, a joint commission surveyed the border and a treaty was concluded establishing the border between Ottoman North Yemen and the British possessions in South Yemen. Since then, Yemen was divided into north and south.
During this period under Ottoman control, conflicts occurred with the Zaydi tribes of the northwest of present-day Yemen, from the 16th century until the signing of the Treaty of Daan in 1911. It is important to note that the Zaydis are a branch of Shiite Islam and have made up a third of the population in Yemen.
Map 1: religious division in Yemen. Source: https://elordenmundial.com/yemen-una-historia-de-violencia/?share=custom-1460060522
After the First World War, Yemen achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire and was divided into two parts. The south controlled by the British Empire and the north that once again became a kingdom controlled by the Zaidis. Northern Yemen, with its capital in Sanaa, came under the leadership of Imam Yahya, an Islamist religious leader who declared himself king of the territory. In 1962, this clerical regime would be overthrown.
Meanwhile, in the south the British, for their part, retained control over the south, which they considered strategically and economically important to their empire. In 1967, the United Kingdom withdrew from the territory and formed South Yemen with its capital in Aden, the Yemen Arab Republic. This was the first Arab nation with a communist tendency.
The new government in Aden, short of resources and unable to obtain significant amounts of aid, either from Western states or those of the Arab world, began to turn towards the Soviet Union, which enthusiastically provided economic and technical aid in the hope to attract an Arab state into its political sphere.
During these decades, a literacy campaign, fight against poverty, inclusion of women and fight against tribalism was implemented. However, South Yemen was a very poor country.
The situation in North Yemen was unstable. In North Yemen, the conflict between the imam's royalist forces and the republicans had escalated into a full-blown civil war that continued irregularly and tragically until 1970. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Jordan supported the royalists, while Egypt and the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc states supported the Republicans.
North Yemen and South Yemen coexisted for more than two decades, but political differences would also lead to two conflicts between them. For example, in 1972, a brief border war occurred between the two Yemens. Continued friction between the two Yemens led to another brief but more serious border war in 1979; As in the previous case, this conflict was followed by a short-lived unification agreement.
Map 2: division of Yemen into two states. Source: https://elordenmundial.com/yemen-una-historia-de-violencia/?share=custom-1460060522
At the end of the 20th century, two key factors would occur . The first of these, oil and natural gas were discovered in both countries at more or less the same time and in the same geographical region (from Maʾrib to Shabwah), part of which was in dispute between them.
In turn, Mikhail Gorbachev, then president of the Soviet Union, abandoned that country's support for governments and policies in several states in Eastern Europe. Some of these states were the main sources of financial, technical and personnel aid to South Yemen. Once the communist bloc gave way to popular democratic movements, it was only a matter of time before South Yemen's isolated regime crumbled.
After the collapse of the USSR, Yemen would be reunified in 1990. Both the south and the north formed a single State since May 22, 1990. Yemen would be reunified under the command of Ali Abdullah Saleh , a figure close to Saudi Arabia and relevant in the two civil wars in Yemen. Likewise, the capital of this new state would be established in Sana'a.
Photo 1: image of former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, in 2011. Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/yemens-saleh-really-worth-64-billion
The calm would be short-lived in Yemen.
After a 30-month transition period, elections to a new national legislature were due to be held in November 1992, but were postponed.
The Saleh government's efforts to strengthen and build support and legitimacy for Yemen's united political system were compromised by an environment marked by severe economic collapse and widespread deprivation.
The majority of the population of northern Yemen had experienced improved living conditions by the 1980s, if not earlier, and the prospects of oil revenues and the supposed benefits of unification had greatly raised expectations in both parts of Yemen. in the late 1980s.
In turn, the collapse of the Yemeni economy can be traced back to the Persian Gulf War (1990-91), which followed the invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990.
Despite the growing importance of oil revenues, the Yemeni economy in the late 1980s remained largely dependent on workers' remittances and foreign economic aid from Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, the other oil-rich Persian Gulf states.
Yemen's refusal to join the Saudi-US military coalition against Iraq led Saudi Arabia to expel several hundred thousand Yemeni workers and cut off all foreign aid to Yemen; most other Arab oil states followed suit.
With the economy in crisis, political violence, including attacks and assassinations, marred the years leading up to the republic's first general parliamentary elections. Despite the difficulties, prescribed legislative elections were held in April 1993. In these elections, President Saleh's party, the GPC, won a large majority of seats.
The conflict between northern and southern political leaders worsened dramatically in the second half of 1993 and the first months of 1994. The political struggle intensified until it led to a Civil War in 1994. The 1994 Civil War, which lasted from May to early July, resulted in the defeat of the southern forces.
Under this conflict, the freedom of opposition parties, the media and non-governmental organizations is restricted . Human rights were being violated, but internal Yemeni groups were increasingly protesting against these violations.
By late 1994, the economy of unified Yemen was in free fall, primarily as a result of the loss of remittances and foreign aid after 1990 and, to a lesser extent, the costs of unification and the Civil War. Despite rapidly increasing oil revenues, Yemen was no longer economically viable or sustainable.
In 1995, Yemen had a dispute with newly independent Eritrea over control of the Hanish Islands, a chain of small islands in the Red Sea between the two countries.
Map 3: maritime boundaries between Yemen and Eritrea. Source: https://sovereignlimits.com/boundaries/eritrea-yemen
Yemen, in a delicate economic situation, signed an agreement with Eritrea committing to submit the conflict to international arbitration. In 1998, the arbitration court awarded Yemen most of the Hanish Islands, and both sides accepted the ruling.
At the same time, relations with Saudi Arabia continued to be Yemen's main foreign concern. Saudi pressure on Yemen's eastern border included threats to international oil companies working under agreements with Yemen in territory claimed by the Saudis.
Ties with Riyadh would improve with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in January 1995. The agreement called for negotiations to definitively determine the border. After many rounds of talks and the Yemeni threat to resort to arbitration, in June 2000 Yemen and Saudi Arabia signed the long-awaited final border agreement and would begin to deepen their bilateral ties.
At the economic level, from 1995 until most of the first decade of the new millennium, an ambitious multi-phase reform package of the IMF and the World Bank, agreed in 1995, was implemented to a greater or lesser extent. This package focused on implement various stabilization measures and important structural reforms and implement governance reforms.
One of the main objectives was to make Yemen an attractive target for much-needed foreign investment. In parallel (but in the background), it was intended to exploit Yemen's limited oil resources and begin to take advantage of its also limited natural gas deposits.
By the late 1990s, the Saleh regime had demonstrated a growing lack of will and capacity to adopt and implement the most demanding economic and governance measures in the IMF-World Bank package.
The economy soon plateaued at a low level and by 2005 was barely creating enough jobs and public services needed to maintain the country's rapidly growing population. Unemployment remained high, as did the level of malnutrition and the proportion of the population living below the poverty line.
Meanwhile, a Shiite insurgent movement, known as the Houthis, began to gain greater influence in Yemeni politics.
The Houthis are a group made up of Shiite Muslims, making up around a third of the Yemeni population. The Houthis take their name from the Zaidi cleric Hussein Badr Eddin al-Houthi, who in 2004 led a revolt to achieve autonomy in the Sadah region of northwestern Yemen. Al-Houthi was killed by security forces after the capture ordered by the Saleh government, becoming a martyr.
Beginning in mid-2007, an epidemic of protests and demonstrations, some of them violent, broke out for many months and in a large number of places throughout southern Yemen. The rebellion in the north and protests in the south evolved into questioning the legitimacy of the Saleh regime, the unification of Yemen and even republicanism itself.
In early 2008, there were several bomb attacks by the terrorist group, Al Qadea, in the diplomatic quarter of Sana'a. The responses of the Saleh regime to this and other acts were swift and harsh. Thus, at the end of 2008, the legitimacy and continuity of the Saleh regime, and even Yemen itself, were being questioned in Yemen.
At the end of January 2011, after the first outbreaks of revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab states, thousands of protesters gathered in Sana'a and other Yemeni cities to ask Saleh to leave the presidency.
The first demonstrations took place with little violence between protesters and security forces. In response to the protests, Saleh made several economic concessions and promised not to run for re-election when his current term ends in 2013, and promised that his son would not succeed him in office. However, this promise did not settle the protests.
Protests were held daily, often clashing with Saleh supporters who attacked with stones, sticks and sometimes guns. However, Saleh resisted calls for his ouster.
The increasingly violent tactics employed by security forces against protesters eroded support for Saleh within the Yemeni government, weakening his grip on power. With this power vacuum, in the peripheral provinces, militant groups would occupy that gap.
In the north, the long-simmering Houthi rebellion gained strength. Meanwhile, fighters from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an Islamist militant group, managed to take control of several towns in the southern province of Abyan.
Yemen appeared to be approaching civil war as fighting intensified in late May and early June. On June 3, 2011, Saleh was wounded and seven guards were killed when a bomb planted in the presidential palace exploded. Saleh was transferred to Saudi Arabia and Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi took over as acting president during Saleh's absence.
In late November 2011, Saleh signed an internationally mediated agreement to transfer power to Vice President Hadi in exchange for immunity from prosecution, and presidential elections were called in February 2012.
Hadi's government continued to face challenges from Houthi rebels and Islamist militants. Within this confrontation, the economy worsened. In 2013, GDP was still well below its pre-2011 level and unemployment soared, especially among young people. Much of the country was suffering from shortages of food, water and basic products.
In southern areas, discontent led to a resurgence of secessionist sentiment. At the same time, the Houthis began to have the support of some Sunni sectors and already controlled the Sadah region, in the northwest.
Hadi's administration faced a new wave of public discontent in July 2014. Deep cuts in fuel subsidies had been enacted. Many of the protesters were mobilized by the Houthi rebels, whose leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, accused the government of corruption and ignoring the needs of the country's poor.
At the end of 2014, another civil war would break out in Yemen.
The Houthis staged a series of protests against Yemen's President Abdurabu Hadi in mid-2014, which led to violence. The success achieved by the Houthis boosted them in other regions of the country.
In the heat of the protests, at the end of January 2015, clashes between government forces and Houthi members who occupied the capital increased .
President Hadi and Prime Minister Khaled Bahah resigned before Parliament in protest on January 23, leaving the country with a power vacuum. Additionally, Hadi was placed under house arrest. The Houthis seized the presidential palace in the capital, Sana'a, forcing Yemen's internationally recognized and US-backed government to move to Aden.
In February 2015, Hadi escaped house arrest and reappeared in Aden, outside the control of the Houthi rebels, where he retracted his resignation and claimed that he remained the legitimate president of Yemen.
Hadi's delicate situation led him to request an international military intervention led by Saudi Arabia against the Houthi rebels, financed by Iran.
The coalition, which aims to defeat the Houthis in Yemen, was formed primarily by Sunni Arab states, including Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan. There are also Morocco, Sudan and Senegal.
Saudi Arabia's coalition received logistical and intelligence support from the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Consequently, this intervention led Iran to step up its cooperation with the Houthis, including military assistance, diplomatic support, and hosting a pro-Houthi media outlet in an area of Beirut controlled by Iran's ally Hezbollah.
For Iran, the rise of the Houthis in Yemen offers an instrument of flank pressure against Riyadh at a time of intense power competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia. With this, this war has become one of the proxy regional confrontation boards between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The international military intervention came at the end of March 2015, when a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes to repel a Houthi advance towards Aden and imposed a naval blockade. At the same time, the resigned President Hadi fled to Aden after the capture of Sana'a by the Houthis, declared his continuity as presidential leader and subsequently went into exile in Saudi Arabia in March 2015.
A Riyadh-led air campaign led pro -Hadi forces to retake control of Aden in July 2015. These forces were joined in August by coalition troops, who helped expel Houthi fighters from most of southern Yemen. . However, wresting control of northern Yemen from the Houthis was more difficult for the coalition.
UN- sponsored peace talks began in December and led to a months-long ceasefire that, although frequently violated, managed to reduce some of the airstrikes and fighting. The talks were suspended without agreement in August 2016.
With the two sides locked in a stalemate since late 2015, Yemen plunged into a serious humanitarian crisis from which it has not emerged. In 2016, the UN estimated that more than three-quarters of Yemen's population lacked access to clean water and sanitation, and almost half lacked access to food and medicine. Yemen also suffered the worst cholera outbreak in history, which began in late 2016.
In Houthi-controlled areas, more than half of the Yemeni population lives in Houthi-controlled areas, which lack natural resources to generate income.
The Houthis have focused heavily on taxes as a key source of revenue. Banks and large companies have been required to disclose their tax accounts since their first year of operation. Taxes taken from the private sector, in particular, have helped finance the Houthi war effort, rather than paying public sector salaries.
At the same time, the Houthi government has often neglected or been late in paying salaries and maintaining public services (schools, infrastructure and hospitals). Typically, state employees have only received half of their monthly salary at irregular intervals. In short, the economy under the Houthis has contributed to rising poverty, creating a wealthy class of war profiteers and widening the gap between rich and poor.
In April 2016, the parties agreed to a nationwide ceasefire , mediated by the United Nations and the United States, which will allow the supply of fuel and humanitarian aid to regions controlled by the Houthis. The truce, initially for two months, was welcomed by Saudi Arabia and Iran and extended until October . However, the truce would not last long and the civil war returned to its bloodiest course.
In December 2017, there was another twist in the race. Former President Saleh and his closest supporters had joined the Houthis to form a joint Supreme Political Council, from Sana'a, to establish a government with a more legitimate appearance than Hadi's. But in the month of December the sectors closest to Saleh began to distance themselves again.
Government forces suffered a setback in January 2018, when southern-allied secessionists demanded Hadi dismiss his government. When Hadi missed his deadline, they took Aden. After several days of fighting between the secessionists and pro-Hadi forces, both part of the Saudi-led coalition, the coalition mediated to end the fighting, and government assets were returned to Hadi and his government.
In June 2018, the Saudi-led coalition advanced on Al Hodeidah. Al Hodaydah is a port city in the north controlled by the Houthi rebels. This attack was hoped that the threat of their loss would prompt the Houthi rebels to negotiate to end the civil war. Al Hodeidah was a major source of income for the Houthi rebels, who received millions of dollars from taxing cargo at their ports.
Saudi-led forces obstructed the distribution of international aid, while Houthi rebels mishandled it. Intermittent fighting continued. In June 2019, the United Arab Emirates began quietly withdrawing its forces from Yemen as victory looked increasingly unlikely.
Fighting intensified in early 2020, as Houthi fighters stepped up their missile attacks and the Saudis stepped up their airstrikes. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, Saudi Arabia faced economic uncertainty due to falling oil prices, while concerns grew about Yemen's ability to manage a virus outbreak in the country. Riyadh announced a unilateral ceasefire in April 2020.
That same month, southern secessionists declared self-government under a body known as the Southern Transitional Council (STC). In June, the STC took control of the island of Socotra, ousting local officials from Hadi's government. After months of negotiations between the STC and Hadi's government, STC members joined the Hadi government.
In April 2022, the main belligerents in the conflict declared a two-month ceasefire. Days later, Hadi, still in exile, announced his resignation and handed power to a council made up of political and military leaders on the ground. The council was tasked with resolving the conflict.
Map 4: control zones in Yemen (in 2022). Source: https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2024/01/12/yemen-guerra-olvidada-orix/
Tensions in Yemen were easing . According to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), more than 150,000 people have died as a result of the conflict since 2015, including 14,500 civilians.
The balance of the war in Yemen is evidently negative : 380,000 deaths, 85,000 of them minors who have died from fighting, hunger and disease; and four million displaced. Added to this is the destruction of cities, towns and infrastructure.
Since early 2022, Saudi Arabia has actively sought a negotiated end to the war, or at least its involvement in it. On the regional board, in March 2023, under the mediation of China, Riyadh and Tehran reestablished their bilateral relations, broken since 2016.
Riyadh hopes the deal with Tehran will help maintain the momentum toward the exit from Yemen it seeks. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran could see engagement in Yemen as a first step toward a regional security agreement that serves their interests.
In an encouraging move, the Houthis and the government exchanged more than 800 prisoners between April 14 and 17, 2023. In early April 2023, Saudi Arabia invited members of the Presidential Leadership Council, its main Yemeni partner, to discuss the details of a roadmap that Riyadh has been negotiating with the Houthis.
This latest roadmap apparently establishes a three-phase process .
The first phase largely addresses the Houthis' immediate demands, such as expanding the destinations of Sanaa International Airport, further facilitating the flow of goods at Hodeidah ports, paying salaries in Houthi-controlled areas. Houthis (with Saudi Arabia responsible for paying them for the first six months), a ceasefire, the sharing of oil and gas revenues through new negotiations and the resumption of oil exports. The second and third phases focus on complex economic issues such as the reunification of monetary policy, among other aspects.
Negotiations have remained stalled, and the intensity of the civil conflict in Yemen also appears to have waned in recent months. However, the war in Yemen would return and spread to the Red Sea, due to the conflict in Israel in Gaza.
In doing so, the Houthis have sought means to capitalize on the Gaza war in order to raise their profile, increase their pan-Arab legitimacy and burnish their credentials both domestically, in the region and abroad.
Before the Gaza war, the Houthis had attacked Saudi oil transport ships in 2018 and seized an Emirati cargo ship in January 2022. For their part, US and other military vessels present in the Sea Red and the Gulf of Aden carried out continuous operations against smugglers and ships carrying weapons and ammunition for the Houthis.
In mid-October, before attacking merchant shipping , the Houthis repeatedly launched drones and missiles against Eilat, on the Israeli coast of the Red Sea. These attacks were intercepted or did not reach their intended objectives. The frequency of these attacks decreased as the group turned its attention to the ships.
After the first attacks on ships in the Red Sea, the number of Houthis grew thanks to recruitment campaigns in which they showed their support for the Palestinian cause. Furthermore, the Gaza war provided the Houthis with the opportunity to deflect growing public pressure on their governance practices in areas under their control, and allowed them to quell opposition to their rule by detaining opponents.
To safeguard maritime navigation, the United States sent naval destroyers to the Red Sea to protect commercial shipping. On December 20, 2023, he unveiled Operation Prosperity Guard, a US-led multinational security initiative involving the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, the Seychelles and Spain.
On November 29, 2023, Washington imposed economic sanctions on individuals it claimed were part of a network that provided funds to the Houthis. On January 10, 2024, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling on the Houthis to immediately cease attacks on ships in the Red Sea, while implicitly endorsing the US-led intervention force. .
Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea could also undermine efforts to end the wars in Yemen. In turn, tensions in the Red Sea could aggravate the already deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen, especially following the decision by the World Food Program (WFP) on December 5 to suspend aid to Houthi-controlled areas in the north. from Yemen.
Nearly 10 years of civil war have devastated Yemen. According to the United Nations (UN), 21.6 million people need humanitarian aid and 80% of the population struggles to put food on the table. The following months and even years will be key to knowing how this conflict will evolve in a country divided and devastated by war.
Suggested readings:
BBC (2023) ‘Yemen: Why is the war there getting more violent?’, 14 April
Childress, S. (2015) ‘In Yemen, Everyday Life Goes from Bad to Worse’, PBS, 7 April.
Gordon, A. (2024) Who Are the Houthi Rebels? Red Sea Attacks Result in U.S. and U.K. Strikes on Yemen, 12 January.
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