Yemen War

Yemen has been ravaged by war and civil conflict since 2014, when the Houthis, aligned with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, took control of the capital city Sana’a and eventually much of the country. They drove the Yemeni government led by then-president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi out of the capital. The following year, the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition, comprising several other Arab and Gulf countries, launched a military invasion of Yemen in order to defeat the Houthis and restore the Yemeni government to power. 

Beginning on March 26, 2015, the Saudi-led coalition launched its war on the Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and imposed a punishing land, sea, and air blockade on the country, depriving it of essential commodities including food and medicine. The Saudis stated that the Houthis were a proxy of Iran and wanted the reinstatement of President Hadi, who had fled the country to live in Riyadh. 

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have been killed, mostly civilians, as a result of the violence and fighting, with tens of millions being wounded, internally displaced, and made dependent on international humanitarian assistance for their daily survival. Yemen, already the poorest country in the Arab world before the war, has, according to the UN, become the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” of the century. 

One of the great tragedies of the Yemen war has been that the domestic politics of Yemen - which are considerably complex - now swirl around in the regional geopolitical tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi-led forces have been supplied armaments and technical support by the US, the UK, and France.