Yemen, one of the Arab world’s poorest countries, has been devastated by a civil war. Here we explain what is fuelling the fighting, and who is involved.
How did the war start?
IMAGE SOURCE, AFPThe conflict has its roots in the failure of a political process supposed to bring stability to Yemen following an uprising in 2011 that forced its long-time authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
As president, Mr Hadi struggled to deal with a variety of problems, including attacks by jihadists, a separatist movement in the south, the continuing loyalty of security personnel to Saleh, as well as corruption, unemployment and food insecurity.
IMAGE SOURCE, AFPThe Houthi movement – known formally as Ansar Allah (Partisans of God) – took advantage of the new president’s weakness.
The Houthis, who champion Yemen’s Zaidi Shia Muslim minority and fought a series of rebellions against Saleh during the previous decade, seized control of their northern heartland of Saada province in early 2014 and then began advancing southwards.
Disillusioned with the transition, many ordinary Yemenis – including Sunnis – supported them, and in late 2014 and early 2015 the rebels gradually took over the capital, Sanaa.
IMAGE SOURCE, AFPThe Houthis and security forces loyal to Saleh – who was thought to have backed his one-time enemies in a bid to regain power – then attempted to take control of the entire country, forcing Mr Hadi to flee abroad in March 2015.
Alarmed by the rise of a group they believed to be backed militarily by regional Shia power and rival Iran, Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states began an air campaign aimed at defeating the Houthis, ending Iranian influence in Yemen and restoring Mr Hadi’s government.
The coalition received logistical and intelligence support from the US, UK and France.
What’s happened since then?
At the start of the war Saudi officials forecast that it would last only a few weeks. But six years of military stalemate have followed.
Coalition ground troops helped drive the Houthis and their allies out of much of the south after landing in the port city of Aden in August 2015. However, the rebels have not been dislodged from Sanaa and much of the north-west.
The Houthis also weathered the collapse of their alliance with Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2017. The former president was killed fleeing Sanaa after he appeared to switch sides.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERSIn 2018, the coalition and its allies – now joined by Saleh loyalists – attempted to break the deadlock by launching a major offensive to capture from the Houthis the Red Sea city of Hudaydah, whose port is the principal lifeline for millions of Yemenis at risk of famine.
After six months of fierce fighting, the warring parties agreed a ceasefire. The agreement required them to redeploy their forces from Hudaydah, establish a prisoner exchange mechanism, and address the situation in the city of Taiz, which has been besieged by the Houthis since 2015.
While hundreds of prisoners have been released, forces have not been fully redeployed and the siege of Taiz continues, raising fears that the battle for Hudaydah’s port could resume at some point and trigger a humanitarian catastrophe.
In 2021, the Houthis went on the offensive in Marib, the government’s last stronghold in the north and the capital of an oil-rich province.
The UN has called for a ceasefire, warning that an all-out battle for the provincial capital could put two million civilians at risk and cause mass displacement.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERSThe Houthis have also stepped up their ballistic missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, often hitting civilian infrastructure. Saudi and US officials have accused Iran of smuggling parts for the sophisticated weapons, as well as conventional arms like rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, into rebel-held Yemen in violation of a UN arms embargo. Iran has denied the allegation.
President Hadi’s government has been based for the past six years in the southern port city of Aden, but it has struggled to provide basic services and security and the president himself continues to be based in Saudi Arabia.
The government’s authority there has also been challenged by the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is its ally in the war against the Houthis but wants an independent South Yemen, which existed from 1967 until unification with the north in 1990.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERSIn 2018, STC-aligned forces supported by the United Arab Emirates ousted Saudi-backed Hadi loyalists from Aden and several neighbouring provinces, accusing the president of mismanagement and links to Islamists. The infighting ended when Saudi Arabia intervened in late 2019, months after the UAE announced the withdrawal of its forces from Yemen.
The Riyadh Agreement offered the STC a role in government in exchange for a withdrawal of its forces from Aden and their integration into the military and security forces. But the deal has not been fully implemented and tensions remain high.
Militants from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the local affiliate of the rival Islamic State group (IS) have also taken advantage of the instability, carrying out deadly attacks and occasionally seizing territory from the government in the south.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERSAs a result of the escalation of hostilities in 2021 the prospects for a nationwide ceasefire and a political solution appear slim.
However, UN efforts to reboot peace talks were boosted by changes to the US policy towards Yemen announced by President Joe Biden in 2021. He revoked the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group and ended support for what he called “offensive operations” by the Saudi-led coalition.
What’s been the human cost?
The UN says the war has resulted in shocking levels of suffering.
In December 2020, it reported that the conflict had caused an estimated 233,000 deaths, including 131,000 from indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure.
Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded as a direct result of the fighting, including more than 10,000 children.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERSThe US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) had recorded more than 147,000 fatalities by the start of November 2021.
Another monitoring group, the Yemen Data Project, had meanwhile attributed 8,780 civilian deaths to Saudi-led coalition air strikes.
UN experts say all parties to the conflict may have committed war crimes.
The conflict has also caused what the UN says is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
Four million people have been forced to flee their homes and more than 20.7 million – 71% of the population – are in need of some form of humanitarian assistance or protection for their survival.
They include 5 million who the UN says are on the brink of famine, and almost 50,000 who are already experiencing famine-like conditions.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERSAn estimated 2.3 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished, including 400,000 who are at risk of dying without treatment, according to the UN.
But with only half of the country’s 3,500 medical facilities fully functioning and 20% of districts having no doctors, almost 20 million people lack access to adequate healthcare.
One out of every two people also do not have access to safe water.
That left authorities struggling to deal with the largest cholera outbreak ever recorded, which has resulted in 2.5 million suspected cases and about 4,000 related deaths since 2016.
The healthcare system was further strained by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The government had registered 9,800 confirmed cases and 1,880 deaths by the end of October 2021. But the actual figures are thought to be much higher due to limited testing, delays in seeking treatment, and the failure of the Houthis to report cases and deaths in areas under their control since May 2020.
Why should this matter for the rest of the world?
IMAGE SOURCE, AFPWhat happens in Yemen can greatly exacerbate regional tensions. It also worries the West because of the threat of attacks – such as from al-Qaeda or IS affiliates – emanating from the country as it becomes more unstable.
The conflict is also seen as part of a regional power struggle between Shia-ruled Iran and Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia.
Gulf Arab states – backers of President Hadi – have accused Iran of bolstering the Houthis financially and militarily, though Iran has denied this.
Yemen is also strategically important because it sits on a strait linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, through which much of the world’s oil shipments pass.
