Yemen Civil War and Saudi-led Intervention
Houthi forces took Sanaa in September 2014, and Yemen has been at war since. Ansar Allah, the movement's formal name, is a Zaydi Shia revivalist organisation from the far north that had fought six wars with the government between 2004 and 2010, and whose grievances were regional neglect and the spread of Saudi-funded Salafism in Zaydi areas. The opening came from the Arab Spring. Ali Abdullah Saleh, president for thirty-three years, was forced out in 2012 by a Gulf-brokered transition that made his deputy Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi president and left the state's structures intact and its problems unaddressed. A fuel subsidy cut in 2014 produced mass protests, and the Houthis marched on the capital with the support of army units still loyal to Saleh — the man who had fought them six times, in the most cynical alliance of the war. He was killed by them in 2017 when he tried to switch sides again. Saudi Arabia and the UAE began bombing in March 2015 with American and British logistical support and munitions, expecting a campaign of weeks. The war produced what the UN called the world's worst humanitarian crisis: cholera on a scale not recorded in modern times, famine conditions for millions, and something over 150,000 killed in the fighting with a comparable number dead of indirect causes. A truce in 2022 largely held. The Houthis attacked Red Sea shipping from 2023, which raised their standing at home considerably. No settlement has been reached, and the country remains divided between a Houthi north and a fragmented south.
- Category: Military
