Yemen Civil War To Be Protracted Conflict, World Should Brace Up

Yemenis loyal to the Houthi group protest against the USA and Israel on May 24, 2023 in Sana'a, Yemen. ( Image Source :Getty )

The international crude oil market got a massive jolt and price rose by more than 1% per barrel to $70 a barrel within a couple of days after multiple missiles struck Saudi Aramco facilities in the Red Sea city of Jeddah last year, and drone attacks rocked the Ras Tanura (the world’s largest oil loading facility) and Rabigh refineries when the city was hosting an F1 racing event. The Jeddah-based Aramco oil distribution facilities had been targeted by the Iran-sponsored armed group Ansar Allah (Supporters of God), better known as the Houthis, multiple times before but not with much success. And the Houthis, though they follow a slightly different version of Shi’ism and live in northern Yemen, are part of the “Shi’a crescent” of Iran — an eyesore to the surrounding Sunni Gulf states. This country is strategically located on the shore of Bab al-Mandab, a strait between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden on the Arabian Sea. Along with the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab al-Mandab is one of the busiest routes for transportation of crude oil from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The strait being only 20 km wide made it easy to target Saudi oil tankers at this juncture in April 2018 by the Houthis. The action forced the Saudi authorities to stop using this shipping route.

The devastating Houthi missile attack took place six years after Saudi officials had assured the Obama Administration that they would end the Houthi rebellion in Yemen “within six weeks”. Saudi Arabia cobbled up a coalition of other four Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members to use their mighty military force, especially the Air Force, to wipe out the Houthis from northern Yemen. Only Oman did not join the Saudi-Led Coalition (SLC). It has its own compulsions. The US has provided the SLC with intelligence inputs along with logistical and re-fuelling supports for its fighter jets. Previously, the US had targeted terrorists affiliated to AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) in Yemen. 

The war in Yemen had started as a mass movement, part of the domino effect of the “Arab Spring” that began in Tunisia in the early years of the 2010s against corrupt leaders in the Middle East. In Yemen, this quickly metamorphosed into a civil war between the north Yemenis and their southern brethren, which eventually transformed into a much more complicated monster after the intervention of regional heavyweights who vied to safeguard their own economic, geopolitical and strategic interests in Yemen. 

Thus, the war in Yemen is multidimensional. The various forces fuelling this conflict are the historic (since the 1st World War) animosity between the northern and southern Yemenis, the clash of interests of the Gulf countries and the effect of the Cold War in the Islamic world. And, importantly, al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) militants found safe haven in southern Yemen from where they not only carried out terrorist attacks on foreign targets, but also got embroiled in the struggle for power among the Yemeni tribes.

History Of Yemen And The Conflict

Yemenis are basically tribal people. They consider themselves as of north or south Yemeni tribes and traditionally don’t discriminate along religious lines, i.e. Shi’as or Sunnis. Though most Yemenis on both sides are Sunni, typically there was never any systematic oppression of religious minorities. However, there has been an aberration in the recent past due to the Cold War in the Islamic world between Iran-led Shi’ites and Saudi Arabia-led Sunnis. 

In the early modern age, there was an independent Qasimid State of Zaydi tribe in the Greater Yemen region, which was founded by al-Mansur al-Qasim in 1597 and absorbed much of the Ottoman Yemen Eyalet (govornorate) by 1628, and was victorious in expelling the Ottomans from Yemen by 1638. Zaydis follow Shi’ism but consider Zayed Ibn Ali (the great grandson of Prophet Muhammad) the Imam to be the imam to be worshipped while Hazrat Ali (Prophet’s son-in-law) is the last imam of mainstream Shi'ism. Zayed was a descendant of Fatima, Prophet Muhammad’s daughter, from his father’s side. 

After the First World War, the Imam of the Zaydis at that time became the ruler of North Yemen, who continued their rule until they were dethroned by a military coup in 1962 led by a fellow Zaydi of Hashim tribe, the largest tribe in Yemen. North Yemen was named the Republic of Yemen (ROY) and developed close relations with the West, especially with the US. The Zaydis fled to their original tribal homeland in the northwestern region. Since then, these people have been marginalised and even discriminated against resulting from tribal rivalry.

Port of Aden and its surrounding areas were of critical importance to the British for food and other essential supplies for their supply ships en route to India. As such, first they brought Aden under its control and subsequently established a protectorate in South Yemen, bringing the various ports on the southern Yemeni coastline under their command. But in 1967, the British were forced to forfeit this territory following violent insurgency resulting in the birth of a new country — People’s Republic of Yemen (PRY). Even post-independence, the southerners were suspicious of the machinations of their northern countrymen. But facing an actual shortage of resources and finding no help from the West or the wealthy Arab states, they turned to the Soviets, who gladly brought them within the Soviet umbrella during the heydays of Cold War, renaming the southern Yemeni region the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY).

With the dissolution of the USSR, PDRY’s supply of aid from them stopped. At that time, when oil was discovered in two governorates in the south, the two warring Yemens considered that their union would be mutually beneficial. And so a new country, the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) was formed with political power shared between them. Army General Abdulla Saleh, head of the ROY and leader of the revolution, became the President and the President of PDRY, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, became the Vice President. But disturbances started during the 1980s when Saudi Arabia began spending huge amounts of money to spread its version of Islam, Wahhabism, in Yemen, and Hussein Badreddin founded the Houthi movement to counter these Saudi efforts as well as to oppose the government of Saleh for his pro-Western and anti-poor policies. The momentum gained after the first Gulf War when Yemen’s economy slowly started to decline and finally reached a situation when its people could not afford to buy food and find a shelter to sleep. 

How The Yemen Civil War Started

A combination of factors created the situation Yemen found itself in. Yemen did not support the US-led coalition forces’ attack on Iraq. As a result, the migrant Yemeni labour in the oil-rich Gulf countries, on whose remittances a large number of families survived, were found to be a nuisance by their employers. The international community also stopped sending aid to Yemen. Saleh and Hadi had been ruling the country for a long time. They and their cohorts did not allow their oil wealth to percolate down to the lower strata of people. They lived in luxurious villas, rode expensive cars and led ostentatious lifestyles at the expense of the commoners. 

This economic situation forced the government to seek a bailout plan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But implementation of the IMF-recommended policies proved disastrous. There were huge countrywide protests against fuel price rise and abnormal inflation. This enabled the Houthi movement to gather a large number of supporters from other victimised tribes and forced Saleh to resign and go into exile. In a short span of time, the Houthis captured not only the capital city of Sana’a and the most important port of Yemen on the Red Sea coast, the Hudaydah Port, but almost 70 percent of YAR. They forced Saleh to resign and go to exile in Saudi Arabia. Later, they also forced Hadi, to whom Saleh had handed over power before leaving the country. He also found refuge in Saudi.

In that power vacuum, the people in the south organised themselves under the banner of Southern Transitional Council (STC) and started to fight against the Houthis. The Al Qaeda and IS militants fought with each other to gain control of the STC. In short, this is how the civil war started in Yemen.

Houthi insurgency had started in 2004 but President Saleh cracked it down with the support from Saudi Arabia, who allegedly gave $25 billion to the former. Since then, the Houthis have been harassing the Saudis, sending motorcycle-borne militants inside the Saudi territories in the border areas. Means and pattern of their attacks changed after the SLC started aerial bombing in Yemen. Thousands of missiles were launched by them targeting the places of vital Saudi interest. In this regard, the Houthis continuously received arms and ammunition from Iran illicitly, along with training from Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. In this way, Yemen became a theatre where Saudi Arabia and Iran, rivals who wanted to spread their respective political influence in the region. And the UAE, withdrawing its forces from the south in 2019, quietly continued to exert its influence by pumping money into its various allies within the STC.

Dragging the war on for an unexpectedly long period and their main partner (the UAE) having left the coalition brought a sense to Saudi Arabia’s ruling elite that the war was diverting much of their attention and resources away from its domestic development objectives under Vision 2030. Moreover, the Western governments have been putting pressure on them to stop the war as the anti-war sentiment in their countries became stronger. Visuals of terrible sufferings of the innocent Yemeni men, women and children brought tears to the eyes of westerners sitting in their homes watching this catastrophe on their televisions from far away. In this melee, SLC lacked a definitive strategy for the war and its war policies became inconsistent. They wanted a quick exit from it. However, it is not possible to withdraw from a complicated civil war easily, in which strong regional players with their vested interests were covertly involved.

So they tried the oft-used method — signing peace agreements. Stockholm (2018) and Riyadh (2019) agreements for peace in Yemen were signed between the warring factions (the SLC, Houthis and the STC) to halt the internecine war. But those simply did not work, rather gave the Houthis time to reorganise themselves and bring more areas under them. Control of a large area gave them more strength to bargain in any future peace negotiation.

The real opportunity came after reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, brokered by China. With an assurance from Iran for their support to find a peaceful resolution to the Yemeni crisis, Saudi Arabia, who made several concessions to the Houthis during the past two years, now led to a cooling down of the situation. A peace deal was reached and an extensive exchange of detainees (including those of the STC) are in full progress now. Hundreds of prisoners have been exchanged over the past few weeks. The entire operation is being coordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). This would definitely give the Saudis a quick and easy way out of the Yemen war. 

What Happens Now?

For Iran, the emerging situation resembles very much the way they brought Iraq under their sphere of influence, which they failed to do even after the eight-year war with them, with the change of regime in Baghdad after the US-led invasion in 2003. The present political structure in Iraq is under Iran's firm control. Houthis, who are a part of Iran’s foreign resistance assets, would now gain international political recognition with Iran’s diplomatic and political support. In other words, in the absence of Saudi Arabia, Iran would have a better chance to expand its influence in Yemen, with the blessing of Western powers.

The UAE now could expand not only its political influence in Yemen smoothly, but also safeguard its economic interests through its local allies and proxy forces, which control the country’s long coast, islands, ports, and energy terminals. The reported construction of an UAE airbase on the strategic island of Mayun in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait would be easier. Their air bases in Eritrea and Somalia will now be of more effective use. 

But two issues remained unresolved. First, it has to be ensured that the UAE does not provide any money, material, political and moral support to the STC who might be seeking for a status quo ante, an independent country that is capable of surviving or even prospering with its oil wealth without the help of their northern brethren. Second, al-Qaeda and IS militants have to be eliminated from there with the help of elite Western Special Forces units in collaboration of the GCC countries. Some of their leaders are already killed by the US as mentioned above. But more concerted efforts in this regard are critical. Unless these are addressed immediately, in the near future, Yemen will be on a course of protracted conflict that will create vast ungoverned spaces leading to unnecessary prolonged suffering of Yemeni citizens. 

The author is a retired IFS officer and former Indian Ambassador and High Commissioner who served extensively in the Gulf, West Asia, and Eastern & Southern African countries.

[Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs, and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs, and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.]