Yemen’s dangerous war

Saudi meddling in regional politics and its intervention in Yemen is destabilizing the Middle East, and pushing the country into sickness and starvation.

Laurent Bonnefoy is a political scientist, a researcher at the CNRS/Sciences Po International Research Centre (CERI) and the author of Yemen: From Arabia Felix to War. What follows is an article by Bonnefoy and translated by Charles Goulden. It was first published by Le Monde Diplomatique.

Yemen has been engulfed in civil, and regional war since September 2014; in the West it is often called a hidden or forgotten war, being so far from the minds of the major powers and media. The war has led to a severe humanitarian crisis, with the biggest ever cholera epidemic - nearly a million suspected cases since March 2017 according to the Red Cross - and a famine that threatens 70% of Yemen’s 30 million people.

All this seems barely to touch our consciences. The heavy human toll — now higher than the 10,000 victims, most of them thought to be civilians, estimated by the UN in January 2017 — has failed to put enough pressure on the belligerents to halt the fighting, in a war driven by regional actors led by the Saudi regime. The coalition led by Saudi Arabia, supported by often Salafist local militias, militants from Yemen’s Southern Movement and supporters of the fugitive President Abdu Rabu Mansur Hadi, is fighting the Asarullah Movement and the revolutionaries.  Since hostilities began, the invaders never respected international conventions, civilian life, infrastructure or historical heritage; and they have prevented journalists and humanitarian organizations from working in the country.

Saudi Arabia claims it wants to restore Hadi to power and fight the influence of what Saudis name foreigners unashamedly. The so-called Arab coalition, despite its limited effectiveness and the crimes it has committed, continues to receive technical support including reconnaissance satellites, aerial photography, military advisors, in-flight refueling from the US, UK and France. The complicity of these powers, no doubt motivated by profitable arms contracts, has long led them to oppose the establishment of a UN independent commission of inquiry.

In October 2015 a Netherlands-proposed UN resolution calling for independent investigators was blocked at Human Rights Council level, in response to strong pressure from Saudi Arabia. In September 2017 France instigated a compromise, but the effectiveness of the resulting committee, which includes international experts, is limited by the difficulty of access to the fronts.

The legality of the intervention is questionable, notably because of the constitutional void that existed in March 2015: Hadi’s presidential mandate had officially ended by the time he asked for Saudi help. It was only indirectly validated by UN Security Council resolution 2216, adopted three weeks after the start of the coalition’s offensive. So the so-called Operation Decisive Storm remains based on a specious interpretation of international law.

The laissez-faire attitude of the major powers shows a deep contempt for Yemenis and a refusal to understand the underlying motives of a conflict with consequences far beyond the country’s borders. The world’s lack of interest in this conflict suggests that it is regarded as just another low-intensity backwater conflict, yet Yemen is at the heart of critical issues that it would be foolish to ignore.

The former Arabia felix was not always a neglected, marginal country; lying at the crossroads of trade and strategic routes, it has been called ‘too well situated’ and has always been coveted territory. The West saw it as a cradle of monotheistic religion, and the East as the source of Arab and Islamic authenticity. In the 17th century it was the biggest producer of coffee, and in the 18th Voltaire called it ‘the world’s most pleasant country’. It inspired the Orientalist dreams of Rimbaud, Malraux and Paul Nizan, who searched for traces of the Queen of Sheba on the Red Sea coast. From 1839 Aden was important to the British empire, and in the mid-20th century it became the world’s second busiest port. Yemen’s key position in the movement of goods and people is evident from the great mobility of Yemenis, who are found everywhere from the Horn of Africa to Southeast Asia, and in industrial areas of Wales and the US Midwest.

Yemen has been gradually marginalized by conflicts, the cold war, expulsions of Yemeni workers and endemic poverty due to a lack of natural resources and corruption among its former leaders. In 1990, 800,000 were expelled from Saudi Arabia because Yemen was seen as supporting Saddam’s Iraq in the Persian Gulf war. The 21st-century show called as ‘war on terror’ quickly turned Yemen into a major theatre of operations against Al-Qaeda, but there were no concrete undertakings to aid the country and its development. US drones, supposed to eliminate the militants' threat, have been counterproductive because they help to legitimize the terrorists in the eyes of the population, who have become victims of collateral damage. Drones are also symptomatic of the US’s interest in Yemen, being something of a non-policy and a default mode of intervention.

Yemen was never a priority, even though US decision-makers stated publicly that the local branch of Al-Qaeda (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP) was the world’s most dangerous. When the Yemeni uprising of 2011 ended Ali Abdullah Saleh’s more than three decades as president, the legitimate enthusiasm aroused by the peaceful mobilization of Yemen’s youth and the prospect of democratization did not get enough, or even genuine, commitment from the international community. Yemen was abandoned and slipped into war as the US and EU chose to subcontract their policy on it to the Persian Gulf kingdoms and sheikhdoms.

Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in March 2015 have been motivated by a wish in part to legitimize its new leaders, especially Prince Muhammad Bin Salman (‘MBS’), born in 1985, who had just been appointed defense minister by his recently enthroned father. But the stagnation of the conflict could have costly repercussions far beyond the Arabian Peninsula. The war may be costing $15 billion a year when Saudi Arabia has a large budget deficit and the price of crude oil is around $50 a barrel; however, some estimates put the yearly cost at $60 billion.

The Saudi-led war coalition’s inability to overcome the Yemeni revolutionaries and the difficulties over the political future of Hadi, who has only very limited popular support if any, underline the errors in Saudi strategy. Yemeni revolutionaries and their popular allies in the country have even been able to fire medium-range ballistic missiles at Saudi cities including Riyadh.

The unprovoked war has also become a trap for Saudi leaders; Saudi authorities waver between propaganda that claims military operations are going well and a catastrophist approach that claims victimhood. A Saudi diplomat at the UN stated publicly in August 2016 that 500 Saudi civilians had been killed by the Yemeni revolutionaries. It is unlikely that MBS, who could soon be king, will be able to claim, on the basis of the Yemen war, to have shown foresight, leadership and efficiency. His image could even suffer lasting damage both at home and abroad. Yes, Yemen was abandoned and slipped into war as the US and EU chose to subcontract their policy on it to the Persian Gulf kingdoms and sheikhdoms.

The collapse of Yemen’s state institutions because of the war has benefited armed groups. Saudi Arabia, and to an extent the United Arab Emirates are strengthening Salafist groups by providing funds, and civilian and military equipment, let alone the direct assault on the impoverished nation. In April 2015 the chaos allowed AQAP to take control of Mukalla, Yemen’s fifth largest city, which it ruled for more than a year. This coincided with the emergence of the terrorist group of Daesh. The militants' expansion has not been effectively contained by an increase in US drone strikes or, since Donald Trump became president, by special forces raids. Though the number of foreign militants being dispatched to Yemen is limited, there is a risk, if the conflict drags on, that it will become a fallback base for radical militants, offering them plentiful resources, especially weapons, with which to export their violence.

According to the UN, the conflict and the humanitarian crisis, linked to the sea and air blockade imposed by the Saudi invaders, have displaced more than three million Yemenis. Most have gone back to their ancestral villages. Things could change if conditions continue to deteriorate, in which case Yemenis will cross the Gulf of Aden and easily find their way into existing migration networks that attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, which is already unable to cope with the influx of Syrian refugees. The Persian Gulf states, which share a border with Yemen, are unlikely to be able to contain the increased migratory pressure.

The exhaustion of underground aquifers, especially around Sana'a, could lead to massive population movements over the next decade. The consequences and cost of moving three million inhabitants out of a capital built at 2,300m altitude –hard to supply with desalinated water –would be huge. Taiz is in a similar position. Demographic growth and climate change, which has disrupted rainfall patterns and agriculture, are bringing the crisis closer. The war has obstructed responses to the ecological and human challenges, such as investing in manufacturing industry on the coast.

History shows the Yemenis are a resourceful and resilient people with a capacity to adapt and to invent ways of coping with war, settling conflicts, sharing water resources and reducing inequality. They are an object lesson in surviving adversity. This is surely Saudi Arabia and other states in the so-called coalition, which are trying to diversify their economies, beyond its financial and human cost, they will lose credibility and create a deep-rooted hostile nation at their vicinities. However, the years of assaults proved that they would not achieve their objectives out of this crime against humanity all committed for nothing. Meantime, the so-called international community has kept mum vis-à-vis the worst humane crime on an impoverished nation.   

EA/ME