No resolution in sight in Yemen as war becomes increasingly complicated

Yemen has become a theater for conflicting regional interests and ambitions that led to a devastating civil war whose settlement is in the hands of concerned regional parties rather than the Yemenis themselves, said Yemeni and Egyptian experts.

Yemen has been engaged in internal fighting since the Iranbacked Shiite Houthi rebels, who helped overthrow internationally-recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, seized most of the northern Yemeni provinces in September 2014 including the capital Sanaa.

The pro-Hadi forces supported by a Saudi-led Arab military alliance controlled the rest of Yemen, including the major southern city of Aden.

Since March 2015, the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been launching airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen in support of Hadi.

More than 10,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, have been killed in the war and over three million others displaced, according to UN reports.

The conflict in Yemen between the Houthis and the internationally-recognized government represents a larger conflict between the regional backers of both sides, namely Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two major rivals in the Middle East region.

“The crisis is complicated, for it includes massive regional interventions. Iran interferes from one side and Saudi Arabia from the other. Thus, it has become not just a Yemeni crisis but a regional one,” said Wedad al-Badawi, a Yemeni journalist and activist.

Despite its massive antiHouthi air raids for more than three years, the Saudi-led coalition could not resolve the situation in Yemen. The Yemeni government officially complained to the UN Security Council in July about the presence of Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah militant group, Iran’s key regional ally, in Yemen, claiming that the group provides the Houthi fighters with military training and planning.

“These regional parties talk about the Yemeni issue as if it’s their own affair, whereas none of them is concerned about the sufferings of the Yemeni people who face poverty, famine, cholera and other fatal epidemics due to the ongoing war,” Badawi told Xinhua.

She noted the growth of “war economy” in the conflictstricken country where the Houthis buy large properties, make arms deals and control taxes and humanitarian aid to expand their financial and economic influence in the northern parts in general and in the capital Sanaa in particular.

“The legitimate forces and the pro-legitimacy coalition couldn’t limit the Houthis’ economic influence that expands to currently control the Hodeidah Red Sea port in the west that provides them with huge resources,” she lamented.

Although not directly involved, the US remains in the background of the Yemeni picture, for US President Donald Trump, who withdrew from a Western-Iranian nuclear deal and restored sanctions on Iran, supports Washington’s major regional ally Saudi Arabia in its military campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

The author is a writer with the Xinhua News Agency. The article first appeared in Xinhua. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn