Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, which imports 90% of its total food produced. Its present crisis is a kind of proxy war between the USA-supported Saudi alliance and the Iranian-backed Houthis. The current crisis has a long history which took root after the nation’s independence in 1967, splitting Yemen into two parts, South and North. In 1990, the two Yemen were unified and Saleh remained as the president.
Saleh was ousted from power as a consequence of the Arab Spring in 2011. Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi took the power supported by Saudi Arabia and others. The Houthis, the Zaidi Shia sect, seized the capital Sana’a with the help of military factions loyal to Saleh in September 2014.
In January 2015, the Houthis surrounded the presidential palace and kept the president and other senior government officials under house arrest. On February 21, Hadi fled to Aden, declaring it the new capital, and withdrew his resignation.
On March 25, Hadi subsequently scooted to Saudi Arabia and asked for an intervention by the international community following the Houthis’ control over the Al Anad Air Base north of Aden and keeping Hadi’s defence minister hostage.
The present tension deepened through Riyadh’s airstrikes with the help of the Arab League and the GCC partners on March 26, named as Operation Decisive Storm, supported logistically by the US. Riyadh states this intervention as reinstalling the legitimate government in power.
Against this backdrop, two kinds of debates are dominant about the recent crisis. Political scientists argue that the current crisis a result of the failure of domestic politics over the years. Firstly, the Houthis want to establish a Shia-dominated government that will serve their interests through legitimate means.
Secondly, the Sunni want to reinstall the legitimate government in power supporting the Saudi-led attack to solve the crisis -- the military being highly polarised.
One faction is inclined to former president Saleh. Saleh is supporting the Houthis and the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) groups to come to power again. Because of the conflict between two tribes, political institutions cannot function smoothly throughout the country. As a result, Yemen is treated as one of the failed states in the Middle East.
The second argument from international power politics denotes that the present turmoil is an outcome of its geo-political and geo-strategic importance, for which it is crucial to the super powers as well as the regional power blocs. A recent research on Yemen from Global Research has sketched the following geopolitical and geostrategic issues behind the crisis. First, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US see the Houthi takeover of Sana'a as a series of successes or regional victories for Iran.
Iran plays a vital role in the domestic issues of Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq and maintains close ties with other Shia communities in the Middle East. Israel and the House of Saud became strategically aligned with the objective of neutralising Iran in the region. Saudi Arabia intends to establish its own sphere of influence with the help of the US. Israel is concerned because Iran’s control of Yemen could cut off Israel’s access to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea. The US wants control over the strategic locations of Yemen as the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Gulf of Aden, and the Socotra Islands.
The Bab-el-Mandeb is an important strategic choke point for international maritime trade and energy shipments. The US supports the Saudi joint military force as a means of preventing other superpowers like Russia and China from overlooking the geo-strategic aspects in this region with which Iran maintains a good relation.
It is clear from the above discussion that Yemen is undergoing a significant crisis or a proxy war has emerged through the domestic politics or geo-political and geo-strategic issues. To me this crisis will have to face some very crucial situations. It will deepen the crisis in the Middle East for a long time, resulting in displacements, casualties, injuries, and destruction of property. Meanwhile, sectarianism (Sunni and Shia) in the region may deteriorate resulting in civil war -- which has been under fire in other Arabian countries like Iraq and Syria for long time.
Programs under the US, to root out ISIS and AQAP from the Middle East, are being hampered. This crisis will turn out helpful for these militant organisations to work freely and expand branches within the country because of their deteriorating security conditions.
There is great possibility of the division of Yemen yet again to prevent the victory of the Houthis because Saudi Arabia, the US, and Israel are not eager to increase Iran’s influence in this region.
The Saudi-led force is attacking the Houthi controlled areas and ports. It will create a food crisis seeing how the country already imports 90% of its production.