Greifswald, Germany (Special to Informed Comment) – In a context of war, do accountability and justice need to wait until the end of the conflict? In her well-researched and original book Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War, Stacey Philbrick Yadav answers the question above in the negative. More than eight years after the rebel Houthi movement took over Yemen’s capital Sana’a, prompting a Saudi-led intervention in March 2015, the civil war in Yemen is still ongoing. Although there has been a decrease in the intensity of the conflict during 2022 (with a six-month truce between April and October), there is no clear end to the war in sight.

Yadav, an Associate Professor of International Relations at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, describes in her book how, despite the enduring violent context, Yemenis have set up home-grown initiatives dedicated to the pursuit of justice. As the author notes, “Yemenis are not waiting (…) for an agreement to be struck to pursue justice claims.”[1] Yemen in the Shadow of Transition documents the complicated pursuit of transitional justice in Yemen after the 2011 uprising against long-time President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Transitional justice, as broadly defined by the New York-based non-profit organization International Center for Transitional Justice, is a victim-centered process that “refers to how societies respond to the legacies of massive and serious human rights violations.” Yadav’s book does not only recount the complicated situation of transitional justice in Yemen but also intelligently suggests some avenues to promote the work of local civil society actors that currently advance the cause of justice.

Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War (London: Hurst and Co., 2022). Click Here.

As the author explains, the grievances that motivated calls for transitional justice after Saleh was forced out of power originate in the two decades that followed the unification of North and South Yemen to form the Republic of Yemen in 1990. After unification, the northern elites, headed by Saleh – who had presided North Yemen since 1978 and became President of the Republic of Yemen in 1990 – imposed themselves over southern politicians. The discontentment of the southern elites led to a short civil war  in 1994. Much later, in 2007, former South Yemen army officers who had been dismissed after the 1994 war started to protest against the Saleh government and were soon joined by the youth and other groups. These protest mobilizations were known as the Hirak, “The Movement”, and many of its participants supported a return to independence for southern Yemen. The grievances held by the Hirak, explains Yadav, were intensified by the army’s response to the protests, which “included a dramatic escalation of force that was out of proportion with the provocation.”[2]

Meanwhile, in the northwestern province of Sa’dah, the local population resented the growing influence of Saudi-supported Salafi clerics as well as the economic and political marginalization of the region. The members of the influential al-Houthi family led a new movement against Saleh that combined Zaydi religious revivalism – Zaydism is a branch of Shia Islam that is majoritarian in Yemen’s northern areas – with anti-imperialism. The Houthi movement entered a series of armed confrontations with the Yemeni government from 2004 to 2010, known as the Sa’dah Wars, that resulted in the internal displacement of more than 100,000 Yemenis. As was the case with Saleh’s counter-productive approach towards the Hirak, the Houthi movement grew more powerful as a result of “the government’s campaign of destruction and its perceived partnership with those engaged in a cultural onslaught against Zaydi beliefs and practices.”[3]

The northern populations affected by the Saleh government’s brutal campaigns during the Sa’dah wars on the one hand, and the supporters of the Hirak on the other, were at the forefront of the demands to hold accountable the former regime after Saleh lost power. However, the 2012 Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative (GCCI) that forced Saleh’s resignation in favor of his vice-president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, in its Article 3, called for the immunity of “the President [Saleh] and ‘those who worked with him during his time in office.’” In Yadav’s assessment, “the prospects of pursuing justice though the legal system were remote due to provisions of the GCCI that protected and empowered existing elites, as well as to the weakness and non-independence of the Yemeni judiciary.”[4]

In 2013, President Hadi – himself interested in a narrow approach to transitional justice due to his position as vice-president of Yemen from 1994 to 2012 – created two commissions to investigate illegal land seizures in southern Yemen after unification and the dismissal of southern military officers and civil servants after the 1994 war. The commissions encountered several difficulties: the volume of applications was enormous – the commission dealing with the former southern officials alone received over 150,000 claims –, there was a severe lack of funds for compensation payments, and the increasing spiral of violence in Yemen since 2014 complicated the process even further. The gap between demands and capacity in Yemen was even broader than in other countries facing similar problems at the same time, such as Tunisia after the fall of long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.[5]

As we have seen, the institutional road to transitional justice in Yemen is full of obstacles. As of now, there is actually no national transitional justice program to speak of. Civil society actors, however, have been doing important work to address injustices “through their everyday practices under conflict conditions.”[6] This is something Yadav has been able to ascertain after conducting multiple interviews with civil society actors across Yemen. and participating in collaborative research projects with Yemeni colleagues. Although the author has not been able to visit Yemen since 2011, she has previous experience conducting research on the ground.

Yemenis have managed to establish a range of justice projects that, although highly localized, have yielded tangible results. For instance, the author explains how a civil society organization mediated between a militia operating on the Red Sea coast and the local community so that female students would be allowed to attend school. On a broader level, Yadav argues that knowledge production by Yemeni researchers documenting the current conflict represents a form of preservative justice. Their documentation work “creates a record essential to post-conflict accountability, reconciliation, and reparative policies.”[7]

The civil society actors interviewed by Yadav often resent the fact that international peacebuilding efforts in Yemen – chief among them those sponsored by the United Nations – have failed to promote local ownership of their programs. An additional complication is that small civil society organizations doing highly valuable work in Yemen struggle to receive international financial support, which often goes to those Yemeni groups with more experience in communicating with donors or writing project proposals.[8] Yadav advocates for international institutions to recognize the agency and learn from the successes of local civil actors. She argues that a bottom-up approach is needed so that lessons from local justice work can be incorporated to broader peacebuilding projects.

Although the reader would probably have liked to learn more about the local initiatives promoting justice within Yemen, the projects and people Yadav writes about offer a glimpse into Yemen’s current reality that goes beyond the hunger and destruction we are sadly more accustomed to. The current civil war in Yemen has led to the death of around 250,000 people according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Any path to recovery and reconstruction for the southern Arabian country will necessarily be uncertain and full of difficulties. But one thing is clear: in the future Yemen will necessitate more than ever the dedication of those Yemenis who currently are, in Yadav’s words, “pursuing justice amidst war.”

[1] Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War (London: Hurst and Co., 2022), p. 6.

[2] Ibid., p. 99.

[3] Ibid., p. 94.

[4] Ibid., p. 133.

[5] Salehi, Mariam. “Trying Just Enough or Promising Too Much? The Problem-Capacity-Nexus in Tunisia’s Transitional Justice Process.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 16, no. 1 (2022): 98–116.

[6] Yadav, Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War, p. 156.

[7] Ibid., p. 182

[8] Abdulkarim Qassim, Loay Amin, Mareike Transfeld and Ewa Strzelecka “The Role of Civil Society in Peacebuilding in Yemen,” Brief (Bonn: Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO), May 2020), p. 14. https://carpo-bonn.org/en/18-the-role-of-civil-society-in-peacebuilding-in-yemen/.

Three years ago this month, the then 29-year-old Minister of Defense of Saudi Arabia (now its crown prince) launched a ruinous war on Yemen.

Yemen had been in Saudi Arabia’s back pocket in the 1990s and 2000s, and was a major recipient of Saudi aid, which went into the pockets of dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. Yemen’s people remained desperately poor, and the Saudis then tried to spread their intolerant form of Wahhabism even among Zaydi Shiites, producing a backlash in the form of the Houthis.

In 2011-2012 Saleh was overthrown and Yemen began working on a new constitution and new parliamentary elections.

That process was interrupted by a 2014-2015 Houthi coup in covert alliance with the deposed Saleh. In turn that coup provoked the then 29 year old defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, to launch an air war on the Houthi guerrilla movement, a war he was most unlikely to win.

I’ve been to Yemen several times. The terrain is mountainous and rough. You can’t bomb it into submission.

Bin Salman charges the Houthis with being Iranian agents. They aren’t, however, the right kind of Shiites for that. Iran has likely given them a little bit of aid, but it is minor compared to the billions of dollars worth of bombs from the US and the UK that Bin Salman has dropped on civilian apartment buildings in downtown Sana’a. It is rich that the Saudis wax hysterical about some small rockets aimed at Riyadh while they are daily flying bombing raids on Yemeni cities with F-16s and F-18s.

The propaganda about Iran being behind Yemen unrest rather than Saleh’s corruption that the Saudis enabled has roped in gullible generals in Washington, DC, who have actively been aiding the Saudi war effort. This is an old tradition. Eisenhower invaded Lebanon in 1958 because Chamoun told him that Druze villagers were part of the internatiional Communist conspiracy.

Saudi Arabia and its allies bombed indiscriminately. A third of their targets have been civilian buildings like schools or hospitals or key civilian infrastructure like bridges. Perhaps half the people they’ve killed have been civilian non-combatants, including children.

Also deadly have been the public health effects of the war.

The numbers on the Saudi-led Yemen War are apocalyptic, worse even than Syria.

The total number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen is 22.2 million – or 76% of the population – including 11.3 million children.

The Saudis and allies have hit Yemen with 15,000 airstrikes.

5,000 children have been killed.

8,700 civilians have been killed

50,000 civilians have been wounded

1.9 million children are not in school, and both sides have recruited children, some as young as ten, as fighters

11.3 million children need humanitarian assistance, with many on the verge of going hungry.

All in all, 22.2 million Yemenis of all ages need humanitarian assistance, 3/4s of the population.

There have been a million cholera cases and there is the threat of another outbreak.

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VICE: “How The U.S. Is Helping Saudi Arabia Fight A Controversial War In Yemen“

The Saudi-led coalition is waging total war on Yemen in a bid to defeat the guerrilla group, the Houthis or the Helpers of God. The Houthis took power in Sanaa in fall of 2014 and consolidated it in early 2015. By March-April, Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad Bin Salman, now the crown prince, had ordered air strikes on the country that have continued to this day. These strikes have been indiscriminate, hitting schools, hospitals, apartment buildings and key civilian infrastructure like ports, bridges and roads. Any one of these strikes is a war crime. In the aggregate they become crimes against humanity.

The Houthi gang is also guilty of war crimes, and of severe human rights violations and cannot be held blameless in the unfolding devastation of Yemen. But the Saudi-led war and the various forms of blockade Riyadh is imposing on Yemen are far worse. The Houthis are a radical group deriving from Zaydi tribes in Saadeh and other towns in rural north Yemen, who as Shiites deeply resent Saudi proselytizing for hard line Salafi Sunnism in Yemen. Houthi leaders have vowed to overthrow the House of Saud and have tried to imitate the rhetorical style of Hizbullah in Lebanon. However, Houthis are a local indigenous protest movement in Yemen, and are not a proxy for Iran. Houthi weaponry is mostly American and Iran does not give them much money or other support. The Saudis try to blame Iran for the Houthi revolt in order to shift blame from their own aggressive policies.

These political considerations should not allow us to forget what is being done to Yemen children.

Save the Children writes,

“Severe acute malnutrition is the most extreme and dangerous form of undernutrition. Symptoms include jutting ribs and loose skin with visible wasting of body tissue, or swelling in the ankles, feet and belly as blood vessels leak fluid under the skin.”

* 130 children die every day in Yemen from extreme hunger and disease–one child every 18 minutes. The Saudi blockade on ports such as Hudeida will increase this death toll.

*This year, at least 50,000 children are expected to die as indirect casualties of the war (if food cannot be off-loaded at ports, and bridges are knocked out, children will die of malnutrition).

* Nearly 400,000 children will need to be treated for severe acute malnutrition in Yemen in the next twelve months. Aid organizations are being actively interfered with in this work by the Saudi blockade and bombing strikes.

* As a result of the Saudi blockade, aid organizations like Save the Children will be out of food and medicine stocks in the next two to three months.

* If left untreated some 20 to 30 percent of children with severe acute malnutrition will perish every year.

* It should be remembered that famines usually do not kill people because there is no food at all. What happens is that the food becomes too expensive for the poor to purchase. This situation now obtains in Yemen and obviously the Saudi blockade, by obese princes who are obviously getting three square meals a day, is driving up the price of food for Yemenis.

* A shocking 10,000 children are likely to die in Taiz district and another 10,000 in the Hodeidah district this year.

The aid organization concludes:

“Save the Children currently has five shipping containers full of life-saving food for sick and malnourished children stuck in Aden because of road closures. Our staff cannot reach communities to provide life-saving care and much-needed supplies and relief workers cannot enter the country. Essential medicines, fuel and food stocks could start running out in a matter of weeks. It’s utterly unacceptable to let children die of neglect and a lack of political will. Without urgent action the future looks bleak.”

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Related video:

Yemen: Millions of children and families are on the brink of starvation | UNICEF

Yemeni blogger Afrah Nasser was awarded this year’s International Free Press Award for her work covering the conflict in Yemen despite the many obstacles faced by journalists in the country. But Nasser, who also holds Swedish citizenship, was nearly unable to attend the awards ceremony in New York in person, because of the US travel ban on Yemeni nationals.

After three applications and many letters in support of her application, Nasser finally obtained her visa from the US Embassy in Stockholm, where she resides.

On Twitter, she remarked:

I never really had faith in the power of media & public opinion as I have today. Makes me think of people who don’t enjoy my high media profile. This is why, we need to get the tragedy in Yemen as well-known as hell so we can all help pushing an end for it!

While Nasser has done much of reporting from her home in Sweden, Yemeni journalists working on the ground face much graver obstacles.

Among them is political commentator and writer Hisham Al-Omeisy, who was detained by Houthi rebels without explanation in August 2017. This week, it was reported that Al-Omeisy was arrested on charges related to his correspondence with US-based organizations.

Al-Omeisy has been actively tweeting about the humanitarian crisis and violations committed by both warring parties in the ongoing conflict in Yemen. He also has analyzed and spoken about the conflict to international media including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and NPR.

For more than two years, a coalition of Houthi rebels and forces loyal to former authoritarian president Ali Abdullah Saleh (who was removed from power following street protests in 2011) have been fighting to seize power from the internationally-recognized government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Hadi’s government is also supported by a Saudi-led airstrike campaign.

Journalists and media covering the conflict face risks from all warring parties, making it difficult for Yemenis and the outside world to get information on what’s already been described as a “forgotten war”. Placing restrictions on key voices like those of Nasser and Al-Omeisy only exacerbates the situation.

Global Voices Advocacy’s Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world.

Via GlobalVoices.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Wochit News: “Saudi-Led Coalition Claims Market Strike Hit A Legitimate Target In Yemen”

Houthi-Saleh Obstruction also Heightens Crisis

(Beirut) – The Saudi-led coalition’s restrictions on imports to Yemen have worsened the dire humanitarian situation of Yemeni civilians, Human Rights Watch said today. The restrictions, in violation of international humanitarian law, have delayed and diverted fuel tankers, closed a critical port, and stopped life-saving goods for the population from entering seaports controlled by opposing Houthi-Saleh forces.

Houthi-Saleh forces, who control the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country, have also violated international legal obligations to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians and significantly harmed the civilian population. They have blocked and confiscated aid, denied access to populations in need, and restricted the movement of ill civilians and aid workers.

“The Saudi-led coalition should end its unlawful restrictions on imports to Yemen, and Houthi-Saleh forces should stop interfering with aid,” said Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Before even more children suffer and die of preventable causes, the warring parties need to allow fuel, food, and medicine to reach the families that need it.”

Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, is enduring the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Malnutrition and disease, to which children are particularly susceptible, are widespread. An estimated 1.8 million children are acutely malnourished. Half the country’s hospitals are closed, 15.7 million people lack access to clean water, and the country has over 700,000 suspected cholera infections, increasing by about 5,000 cases daily. From late April 2017 to mid-August, nearly 500 children died and 200,000 fell ill from cholera, a disease spread by contaminated water.

Human Rights Watch documented seven cases since May in which the coalition arbitrarily diverted or delayed fuel tankers headed for ports under Houthi-Saleh control. In one case, the coalition held a ship carrying fuel in a Saudi port for more than five months and had not responded to the shipping company’s requests for an explanation. The oil cargo had to be unloaded in a Saudi port without compensation and crew members needing medical treatment could not leave the ship.

Under international humanitarian law, parties to an armed conflict may impose naval blockades to prevent arms and materiel from reaching enemy forces. Goods such as food, fuel, and medicines destined for civilians can be inspected but not excessively delayed. The blockading force must publish a list of contraband items, but the coalition has not done so.

“[We] can only speculate what these prohibited items might be,” said a shipping company official. “We certainly don’t carry any weapons on our ships.” Three of his company’s fuel tankers sailed to Yemen regularly and always received United Nations clearance, but the coalition subjected them to lengthy inspections on every trip, he said, with the delays costing the company up to US$10,000 per day per ship – costs passed on to ordinary Yemenis.

Human Rights Watch is not aware of any cases in which the UN monitoring body has issued clearances to ships on which the coalition later found weapons. The coalition and other naval forces have intercepted weapons shipments at sea intended for Yemen, but according to media reports, these were on smaller dhows, not container ships or fuel tankers.

Fuel – now often unavailable in areas under control of both sides – is needed to run the generators that most of Yemen depends on for electricity. The lack of fuel makes it more difficult to pump clean water, run hospital equipment, and safely store vaccines, aid officials said. The coalition closure of the fuel port of Ras Isa in June has significantly curtailed fuel deliveries.

An aid official said:

I have seen hospitals that can’t turn on their generator. The labs can’t function, hospitals have to close at night, the cold chain [continuous refrigeration during transport and storage] for vaccines can’t function, and there are no air conditioners or even fans when the heat is unbearable for seriously ill patients.

A UN Panel of Experts reported in June that the Houthis had earned up to US$1.14 billion from fuel and oil distribution on the black market, and that fuel was “one of the main sources of revenue for the Houthis.” Houthi-Saleh forces apparently also use imported fuel for military purposes. However, preventing or excessively delaying fuel imports from reaching civilians is contributing to the collapse of the health system, a lack of access to uncontaminated water, and increased costs that make food and basic goods unaffordable for impoverished Yemenis. The substantial harm to civilians is disproportionate to any concrete and direct military advantage to the coalition, in violation of international humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch said.

The Houthi armed group and forces loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh have also blocked or confiscated aid intended for civilians and imposed onerous and unnecessary restrictions on aid workers and interfered with aid delivery. Aid groups have pulled out staff or ceased working in some areas due to these restrictions.

In Taizz, Yemen’s third largest city, a hospital official said that on April 17, Houthi-Saleh forces confiscated medical equipment from two trucks, including dialysis materials, that would have benefited at least 160 patients at his hospital. In February, the UN humanitarian chief’s relief convoy was denied entry into the city at a Houthi-Saleh checkpoint. On September 17, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that Houthi-Saleh forces had enforced a “brutal” siege on the city of Taizz. Houthi-Saleh forces have repeatedly laid landmines that have impeded aid workers from reaching certain areas.

All states should support efforts at the UN Human Rights Council to create an independent international inquiry into abuses by all sides in Yemen, including unlawful restrictions on imports and denial of aid access, Human Rights Watch said. Houthi-Saleh authorities should immediately cease denying aid access to populations in need, including in Taizz, and threatening, intimidating, or harassing humanitarian staff whom the authorities should ensure can carry out their work unimpeded and impartially.

“The Saudi-led coalition’s cruel restrictions on fuel to Yemen, effectively shutting water taps and hospitals, have turned an impoverished country into a humanitarian disaster,” Van Esveld said. “Meanwhile, Houthi-Saleh forces have repeatedly blocked groups bringing vaccines into Yemen and kept aid from reaching people who desperately need it.”

Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen
The humanitarian situation in Yemen has significantly worsened in the past year. Even before the cholera crisis, the UN children’s fund (UNICEF) reported in December 2016 that one Yemeni child was dying from malnutrition or other preventable causes every 10 minutes. In July 2017, three UN humanitarian agencies found that “nearly 80 percent of children in Yemen need immediate humanitarian assistance.”

The Saudi-led coalition’s restrictions on fuel have greatly contributed to the humanitarian crisis. Because fuel is needed for agriculture and transportation, the shortages also increase food scarcity. The UN estimates Yemen’s fuel needs at 533,000 metric tons per month based on pre-conflict levels. So far in 2017 the monthly average of fuel imports is 163,000 metric tons, but this fell in June to only 88,000 metric tons. Fuel prices have increased by more than 50 percent since the conflict began, and up to tenfold in some areas, and cash-strapped hospitals often cannot afford fuel to run generators, a humanitarian official said.

The militarily contested city of Taizz, where Houthi-Saleh forces have repeatedly blocked aid, including medical supplies, from entering, has been particularly affected by a lack of humanitarian access and a shortfall in fuel and supplies. In 2017, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, or MSF) reported that:

Damaged hospitals and shortages of staff and essential supplies have resulted in the virtual collapse of Taizz’s health service, severely compromising people’s access to life-saving medical care. A crippled health system, combined with increasingly harsh living conditions, has prompted a decline in people’s health, with particularly acute consequences for vulnerable groups… such as pregnant women, newborn babies, and young children. Most families now live with little or no electricity and insufficient food and water.

Coalition Interference with Fuel Tankers
In response to the coalition’s blockade of Yemen, which began in March 2015, the United Nations established a Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNVIM) in 2016 to inspect and issue clearances to ships bound for Houthi-Saleh-controlled ports. If cleared – a process the UN says should take only a few days, though some shipping company officials told Human Rights Watch it was often longer – ships proceed to a demarcated “coalition holding area” in the Red Sea, to wait for the coalition to inspect or give them permission to go to port. According to reports by the World Food Programme (WFP), the average waiting time for fuel tankers at Red Sea ports was eight days as of July 15, but had increased to 14 days by August 20.

In August, a shipping company representative told Human Rights Watch that Saudi authorities had been holding one of the company’s fuel tankers for more than five months after diverting it from Ras Isa. The ship received a cargo of oil in Djibouti, where UNVIM granted the ship permission to proceed to the “coalition holding area” in early April. The coalition boarded the ship to search for weapons. The ship was diverted to Jeddah, then to a second Saudi port, Yanbu, where it remained as of August 25.

Information obtained through a ship-tracking service corroborated this account, as did accounts from port officials interviewed separately by phone in Ras Isa and Hodeida. All the accounts said the ship received a clearance from UNVIM before the coalition diverted it.

The shipping company representative said neither the UN nor the Saudis had informed the company of the reason for the diversion or prolonged delay. He said that in the months that the ship has been forced to wait at the Saudi port, the coalition had prevented the crew from leaving the ship, even though some of them needed medical attention. “The cargo is all lost now because the coalition forced it to discharge the oil [at a Saudi port] and that cost about $20 million” without compensation, the representative said.

An official at another shipping company said three of his company’s tankers had regularly carried fuel to Yemen before the conflict and had continued to do so. The company’s ships are regularly cleared by UNVIM, but then subjected to coalition inspection and excessive delays when they try to deliver fuel to Hodeida, “costing us huge sums of money in lost time.”

Ultimately, rising shipping costs are passed on to consumers in Yemen, where nearly 40 percent of the population lived on less than US$2 per day even before the conflict. He said the coalition held one of the company’s ships in the holding area for 19 days in July:

We didn’t know what the problem was. The coalition navies have a number for commercial ships to contact them, but whenever we tried to call them and give them the permission number that we already obtained from UNVIM, they would reply that “The permission number is not clear. Wait for further instructions.

In four additional cases, shipping industry officials, UN agency logistics updates, and ship-tracking information indicate that fuel tankers appeared to have been delayed by the coalition for excessive periods. For example, the UN reported that a tanker with 11,485 metric tons of fuel oil was “expected” to arrive in Hodeida on June 10, but it was in the coalition holding area for 49 days, from June 11 until July 29. Because of the costs of the delay, an official at Hodeida port said:

The ship’s owners wanted the importer… to pay these expenses or else they won’t deliver the cargo. The importer bowed to the inevitable and paid all additional expenses. The ship arrived at the port, but then the importer filed for a court order to hold the ship at anchorage until its owners pay back his money.

Other recent instances include:

• A tanker carrying 4,105 metric tons of fuel oil was expected to arrive at Hodeida port on June 20, but instead was diverted to anchorage off Somalia, where it remained for 74 days, from June 10 until August 22. As of August 25, the tanker was off the coast of al-Mukalla, a government-controlled area of southeastern Yemen;
• A tanker carrying 12,035 metric tons of gasoline was expected in Hodeida on June 29, but was held in the coalition holding area for 28 days and did not arrive until July 26; and
• A tanker with 13,977 metric tons of gasoil was expected at Hodeida on July 9, but remained in the coalition holding area for 13 days, until July 21, before heading to the port.

The lack of clarity about whether a given ship might be inspected, denied, or seized by the coalition caused shipping companies to be “reluctant” to accept bookings for Hodeida port, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported. A shipping company manager told Human Rights Watch by phone that the coalition delayed a fuel tanker in the holding area for 28 days, from January 9 to February 5, and ultimately refused to allow it to proceed to port, “and provided absolutely no reason.” The ship had to discharge its fuel cargo in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which did not cost the company but did cost the charterer about US$500,000. The same ship discharged cargo at Hodeida in mid-2016 with no problems, but because of the risk of being blocked again, the company no longer shipped there, he said.

The coalition has refused to provide ships any justification for refusing to allow some to berth, including ships that had received UN clearance. Saudi and other coalition members have also not reported on inspections they have carried out, according to a UN Panel report, which Human Rights Watch has observed, in violation of Security Council Resolution 2216, paragraph 17.

Coalition Closure of Ras Isa Marine Terminal
On May 30, 2017, the coalition notified the UN it had ordered the closure of Ras Isa the previous week, due to concerns Houthi-Saleh forces were using the revenues from imports at the terminal. The coalition-backed Yemeni government subsequently sent the port authorities a letter, dated June 5, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, that ordered the closure of Ras Isa purportedly to protect the “marine environment” from “pollution and oil leaks.” The WFP, which coordinates humanitarian logistics in Yemen, reported that “as of 14 June, vessels will no longer be granted clearance” for Ras Isa port, and would be diverted to Hodeida. The agency noted UNVIM had stopped issuing clearances for Ras Isa.

Nabil al-Mutahar, the general manager at Ras Isa, told Human Rights Watch the coalition had imposed “almost a full blockade” on the terminal since July. Already in early 2017, monthly diesel imports at Ras Isa had fallen from between 80,000 and 90,000 metric tons per month in 2015 to between 20,000 and 24,000 tons per month. He said, “In January 2016, we had six fuel tankers berthing at the terminal, but in January 2017, that number decreased to one. As far as I know, the coalition didn’t give a specific reason, and the fuel tankers didn’t violate any rules.”

Hodeida port is incapable of making up the lost diesel capacity from the closure of Ras Isa. Ras Isa was designed for diesel imports and had specialized diesel storage tanks with a greater capacity than the Hodeida port, al-Mutahar said. Yahia Sharaf Addin, the deputy chairman of Yemen Red Sea Ports Corporation, said that Hodeida cannot accommodate large fuel tankers with more than around 18,000 metric tons of fuel. He said that the fuel imports to Hodeida were limited – mostly around 40,000 to 50,000 tons of petroleum per month – and “can only cover the needs of Hodeida city and the local area.”

Coalition Delays of Ships Carrying Humanitarian Assistance
Humanitarian agencies often contract with shipping companies to bring in aid in standardized containers, which are transported on container ships and require special cranes for unloading. The coalition has repeatedly delayed container ships carrying humanitarian cargo.

On March 4, the coalition diverted a ship carrying 129 containers of vegetable oil and blankets for two UN humanitarian agencies, from Hodeida to the Saudi port of Jezan, and held it there for nearly three weeks after completing an inspection on March 13. UNVIM had already cleared the ship.

Save the Children, an international relief agency, said in March that coalition warships had blocked three of its medical supply shipments from reaching Hodeida in January and February, and rerouted the shipments to the southern port of Aden, which is controlled by the Yemeni government, delaying their delivery to beneficiaries by up to three months.

Overall, only two container vessels entered Hodeida in May, one in June, three in July, and two in August, according to information published on the Yemen Red Sea Ports Corporation website, which matched commercial ship-tracking information that Human Rights Watch reviewed.

In a statement to the UN in January, Saudi Arabia asserted that the coalition “has not refused to grant a permit to any shipment destined for a Yemeni port.” The Saudi statement alleged that Houthi-Saleh forces had “deliberately obstructed the entry of commercial vessels into ports under their control.” Human Rights Watch is not aware of such cases, although in November 2016, Houthi-Saleh authorities refused for weeks to clear deliveries of PlumpyNut, a high-calorie treatment for malnutrition, as well as other humanitarian goods at the Hodeida port. In the cases Human Rights Watch examined in 2017, shipping delays occurred in the coalition holding area, which is the coalition’s responsibility. However, from May 31 to June 4, the merchant vessel Mukaranas was blocked at Hodeida port from sailing back to Djibouti after it had discharged humanitarian cargo, the WFP reported.

In addition to restricting ships, the coalition has reduced the capacity for goods other than fuel at Hodeida port, through which 70 percent of all food imports enter Yemen, by refusing to allow imports of materials to repair or replace damaged infrastructure. Ras Isa terminal had been partly closed since coalition airstrikes damaged its Floating Storage and Offloading terminal in January 2016, Reuters reported.

The coalition has refused to allow the port to replace destroyed cranes or import spare parts needed to repair cranes that are “worn-out and in need of maintenance,” an official at the port said. In 2016, the US donated $3.9 million to the WFP to purchase four mobile cranes to unload dry bulk cargo – although not containers – from ships at Hodeida, but in January 2017 the coalition refused to allow a ship carrying the cranes to berth, humanitarian officials told Human Rights Watch.

The UN agency re-routed the cranes to a storage facility in the UAE, where they remain. Ships that berth at the port since then have needed to carry their own cranes, which take longer to unload cargo, increasing costs, a port official said. He told Human Rights Watch in late July that the coalition had also blocked a ship carrying six container chassis intended to move containers from the berth to the port’s containers-yard area from entering Hodeida port.

Two humanitarian officials said the coalition’s restrictions had made the Red Sea ports untenable and forced them to import aid via Aden, or to resort to cargo flights, which were up to five times more expensive. Importing aid through Aden can make it difficult for humanitarian agencies to transport assistance to some of Yemen’s major population centers, or areas in need of aid, as it requires crossing front lines and likely involves double taxation.

In September, Foreign Policy magazine reported that the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had again approached Saudi Arabia about the cranes, but Saudi Arabia still refused to allow them to proceed to Hodeida.

Houthi-Saleh Obstruction of Aid
Houthi-Saleh forces have diverted humanitarian aid and imposed excessive requirements on humanitarian agencies before allowing aid distributions, the UN Panel said in its report. Some humanitarian organizations have been forced to close operations in areas under Houthi-Saleh control. In March 2017, MSF announced it was withdrawing from a hospital in Ibb governorate, which is controlled by Houthi-Saleh forces, due to its “inability to run activities according to MSF’s principles of independence and impartiality.” MSF said it had provided life-saving care to more than 41,000 patients in al-Thawra hospital’s emergency room since 2016.

Houthi-Saleh forces have repeatedly frustrated humanitarian efforts to provide vaccines, including those intended for children. In October 2016, Houthi-Saleh authorities repeatedly refused permission for a plane carrying vaccines to land in Sanaa, forcing it to return to its point of origin, despite prior negotiations with aid agencies and the Yemeni Health Ministry. “[The Houthi-Saleh authorities] want trauma kits, not vaccines, because those can be used for the war wounded,” an aid worker told Human Rights Watch at the time.

In November 2016, 11 armed Houthi-Saleh fighters raided Health Ministry buildings in Sanaa, attacked a guard, and took five vehicles, including two refrigerated trucks that humanitarian agencies had provided for vaccines requiring cold storage, which they wanted to use to transport dead bodies, a Health Ministry official told Human Rights Watch.

Houthi-Saleh forces have also denied or confiscated food aid. A humanitarian official described incidents in 2016 when Houthi-Saleh authorities delayed one truck delivery of food for several days “until the supplier gave them more than 20 bags of wheat for [their] war efforts,” and detained a staff member for two days when he refused to hand over soybeans from a second delivery for distribution to Houthi-Sale fighters.

In August 2017, another official in Sanaa said that the Houthis had repeatedly harassed, threatened, and detained staff involved in health and food projects. The official said that, “Whenever an organization receives funding and would like to start implementing an activity, the Houthis start bothering and blackmailing them, preventing them from working until they either give them the money or they give the money away to a local organization that belongs to them so the Houthis can take it easily.”

Yemeni staff at an aid agency with a food distribution project said that Houthi-Saleh authorities had repeatedly detained staff members for short periods, accused them of spying, and confiscated their belongings. “The main reason for stopping them was because they are working for an NGO,” he said. In February 2016, Houthi-Saleh authorities in Hodeida detained six Norwegian Refugee Council staff as well as a contracted driver for one week on suspicion that they were distributing supplies from the coalition. A Taizz-based activist said Houthi-Saleh forces had arrested two humanitarian volunteers at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city in February and March, detaining the first one for a month and the second for more than one year.

Houthi-Saleh forces have also imposed onerous restrictions on internal movements of both international and national staff of humanitarian organizations in areas of Yemen they control, including, at times, refusing permission to travel to certain areas entirely or asking staff to seek official permission to travel to individual directorates.

The cumulative impact of Houthi-Saleh obstruction and interference with humanitarian assistance has significantly harmed the civilian population, Human Rights Watch said.

Houthi-Saleh Forces’ Obstruction of Aid into Taizz
Houthi-Saleh forces besieged Taizz from August 2015 until the coalition opened a road into the city from the south in March 2016. However, the route along secondary roads is “arduous,” and “access to Taizz remains extremely limited and residents continue to suffer,” the UN human rights office reported in September 2017.

The human rights office report said:

The prices of basic commodities in Taizz have skyrocketed, leaving civilians unable to afford basic essential items even if they are accessible or available. To access basic services such as health care, residents report that they have to traverse routes mined with explosives and are exposed to the constant risk of shelling, airstrikes and snipers. Residents also report that if they manage to reach locations where health care may be available, they often find that the facilities have been destroyed or damaged in the fighting, or that they lack even the most basic supplies. No public health care facilities in the city, and few private facilities, are fully functional.

Yemeni human rights activists said by phone in late August that Houthi-Saleh forces continued to restrict access to humanitarian aid and civilian goods into Taizz. They restricted aid at the al-Ghurab and al-Waze’aia entry points, which connect Taizz to the ports of Mokha and Hodeida, and also from four entry points to the north: Sabir al-Moadem, al-Aqroudh, al-Dimnah, and al-Houban.

In August, at least 18 people were killed during heavy floods while trying to take the only major route currently open to Taizz. It is under Yemeni government control, and requires lengthy, arduous travel, including on roads that Houthi-Saleh forces mined before they withdrew from the area.

Houthi-Saleh forces outside the city have demanded “large sums of money at security check points” from people wishing to enter the city or bring in goods, one activist said. The activist also said government-aligned forces had confiscated aid and civilian goods that entered the city and re-sold it for inflated prices.

High fuel costs in addition to other problems have forced many health facilities in the city to close, causing severe harm to patients with kidney failure who regularly need dialysis. One researcher said, “They have to travel outside of the city for treatment, and the journey to Aden is not easy at all” due to bad roads, and is expensive and lengthy:

It is very difficult for the sick and injured to travel to get medical assistance, but there is no alternative in Taizz because most hospitals are closed and the rest lack medicines and staff. The last humanitarian aid that was delivered to Taizz was almost four months ago.

International Humanitarian Law
All parties to the armed conflict in Yemen are bound by international humanitarian law, or the laws of war. Applicable law includes Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions, and customary international humanitarian law for a non-international armed conflict. The laws of war prohibit attacks against civilians that are deliberate, indiscriminate, or can be expected to cause harm disproportionate to the anticipated military gain at the time.

Under international humanitarian law, warring parties are obligated to grant humanitarian relief personnel freedom of movement, and protect them from attack and arbitrary detention. Confiscating goods necessary for the survival of the civilian population and blocking humanitarian aid are serious violations.

While a party may impose a blockade during an armed conflict, a blockade is unlawful if it has the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denies the population goods indispensable for its survival. A blockade also violates the laws of war if it has a disproportionate impact on the civilian population, when the harm to civilians is, or may be expected to be, greater than the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.

A blockading party can only confiscate goods on board a neutral merchant vessel (or aircraft) if they are “contraband.” Contraband is defined as goods that “are ultimately destined for territory under the control of the enemy and which may be susceptible for use in armed conflict.” A blockading party must have published contraband lists, which may vary according to the particular circumstances of the armed conflict, but must be reasonably specific.

Via Human Rights Watch

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Al Jazeera: “Yemen war: Millions face devastation, disease and famine”

A concerted effort by the international community to resolve Yemen’s war would see considerable benefits at a small cost, yet profits, alliances, and egos are getting in the way.

On midnight, March 26, 2015, Saudi fighter jets took to the skies of Yemen, marking the beginning of Operation Decisive Storm, a military campaign with the stated aim of defeating the Houthis and restoring the government of ousted president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Gulf diplomats speaking to France 24 at the onset of the mission predicted that it would be over within one to six months. Al Jazeera published an even more optimistic time frame: “It is expected that the operation will last a few days, although Saudi Arabia declared that it will last as long as it takes to achieve its goals.”

Twenty-eight months later and the Saudi-led campaign, rebranded as Operation Restoring Hope, is no closer to achieving its goals and any guesses as to the end date of Yemen’s war have been thrown to the wind. Three months of fruitless peace talks in 2016 and rejected truce proposals have led many observers to view the conflict as intractable.

Approximately 10,000 people have been killed and 40,000 injured in the war, most of them civilians falling victim to the Saudi-led, US-backed coalition. Yemen’s infrastructure and economy has been devastated, sparking a recent cholera outbreak that has infected over 500,000 people, many of them children. Seventy-five percent of Yemen’s citizens are in need of humanitarian assistance and practically every sector of Yemeni society has been wracked by war.

The apparent hopelessness of this crisis is reinforced by the fact that most parties to the conflict benefit enough from present instability that they are unlikely to initiate a truce, but with sufficient pressure and assurances of their role in political dialogue, the war could be brought to a close.

“Right now, as it is, the war will continue because everyone is benefiting from it,” says Abbas Zaid, a Yemeni politician and former member of the Houthi movement. “Both Hadi and the Houthi military leadership are benefitting from the war monetarily and there is money in the weapons trade along with taxes on goods coming in. The ones being harmed are the civilians.”

A recent article by Chatham House’s Peter Salisbury explains, “With the front lines of the Yemen war largely static for the better part of two years, and previously marginal groups now in control of swaths of territory including lucrative trade routes, the incentives for many militia leaders point to sustaining the conflict–especially since most groups operating on the ground have not been asked to participate in Yemen’s UN-led peace process.”

Pro-Hadi forces and Houthi leaders alike have found ways to exploit the situation in Yemen. With few incentives for the major players to pursue peace, international pressure will be a requisite to bring warring parties back to the negotiating table.

For its part, Saudi Arabia will never see victory in Yemen and its coalition’s bombardment and blockade will only prolong the suffering of Yemenis. The airstrikes are rationalized as a necessary tactic to force the Houthis to make concessions–the reality, however, is that Saudi bombs are not weakening the Houthis, they are hurting civilians.

While this prolonged and expensive conflict has proven to be an embarrassment for Defense Minister and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, an admission of failure at this point would be even more unpalatable.

Recently leaked correspondence between US officials and UAE ambassador Yousef Otaiba shows that Mohammad bin Salman is looking for an exit strategy.

Former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk responded to an email from Otaiba saying, “He [Mohammad bin Salman] was quite clear with [former security advisor] Steve Hadley and me that he wants out of Yemen and that he is OK with the US engaging Iran as long as it is co-ordinated in advance and the objectives are clear.”

Otaiba replied: “I do not think we will ever see a more pragmatic leader in that country. Which is why engaging with them is so important and will yield the most results we can ever get out of Saudi.”

It is tempting to see this sentiment as an indication that Saudi Arabia is eager to resume peace talks, but this does not mean that the conditions the kingdom requires before withdrawal are any different now than they were during last summer’s negotiations.

The Kuwait peace talks of 2016 and UN Security Council Resolution 2216 offered the Houthis a raw deal: forfeit your weapons and withdraw from seized territory before being guaranteed a role in post-war governance. Predictably, the Houthis refused and talks have not resumed since.

Whenever negotiations do resume, they will need to be paired with the guarantee of political representation for all parties. As Khaldoon Bakhail, an independent Yemeni politician and former GPC member explained in an interview, “Without having security arrangements along with political arrangements, a resolution will never happen. The two parts must be parallel.

“The Houthis, those fighting for [pro-Hadi commander] Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, and the Islahis [Yemen’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood]–not one of them is going to give up his gun without a guarantee that he is going to be part of the future, part of the government, that he is not going to be punished or sent to jail…I don’t know how the UN does not understand such logic.”

Many of Yemen’s activists and politicians, regardless of affiliation, agree that the country will need to form a representative government where all parties and regions can have a say in post-conflict policy making.

“It is not a matter of how we would solve it,” Bakhail says. “The solution is there, but we are missing the will of the international community, the Houthis, and the Saudis to reach peace.”

The international community’s unwillingness to push for a resolution is difficult to fathom. Aside from the clear moral imperative to end this crisis, a stable Yemen is certainly in the best interests of global powers.

The United States, which has been carrying out airstrikes against al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen for years and considers it to be the organization’s most dangerous offshoot, should be alarmed at the degree to which this group benefits, territorially and monetarily, from the ongoing war.

European countries, already struggling with an influx of refugees from Africa and the Middle East, will need to make a push for peace in Yemen if they want to minimize the number of migrants arriving on their shores. Until now, relatively few Yemenis have managed to escape the conflict–partly due to a strict blockade, but also because they simply do not have the means to travel. As Yemen becomes increasingly unlivable, however, many citizens will be forced to flee.

Despite its complex appearance, Yemen’s conflict is a resolvable one in which all parties have grown stubborn and settled into their roles, none willing to initiate a balanced dialogue that would see a reduction of their power in return for the country’s stability. If international and regional players can leverage their influence on Hadi’s government and Saudi Arabia while offering assurances that the Houthis and marginalized parties will have rights and representation in a post-conflict Yemen, the country will have a shot at peace.

Hannah Porter is an independent researcher and journalist focused on Yemen and the Gulf. She is also a Master’s student at the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

IBTimes from last month: “Explosions Rock Yemen Day After Missile Shot Down Over Saudi Arabia ”

“It is time for parties to the conflict to prioritize the boys and girls of Yemen and put an end to the fighting,” said UNICEF official Geert Cappelaere.

Nearly 600 fatalities have already occurred among a total of 70,000 cholera cases in Yemen. Now, the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has warned that the situation, already deemed as critical, is on the cusp of turning into a catastrophe.
Following his visit to the war-torn country, UNICEF Regional Director Geert Cappelaere stated, “Cholera is spreading incredibly fast in Yemen,” adding that the “number of suspected cases is expected to reach 130,000 within the next two weeks.”

Common Dreams reported that Cappelaere had witnessed harrowing scenes while in Yemen. These included visits to children who were barely alive and tiny babies weighing less than two kilos who were fighting for their lives at one of the handful of operating hospitals in the country.

Ironically, Cappelaere stated “they are the lucky ones. Countless children around Yemen die every day in silence from causes that can easily be prevented or treated like cholera, diarrhea or malnutrition.”

He reiterated that cholera is not the type of disease that needs a permit to cross borders or checkpoints, hinting to the fact that the disease may spread to other parts of the region. He also noted that cholera doesn’t “differentiate between areas of political control.”

Despite working in precarious conditions, health care workers in Yemen have been working around the clock to stave off the deaths resulting from cholera.

Meanwhile, UNICEF has been soliciting and collaborating with partners to respond to the epidemic which hit Yemen almost a month ago. In doing so, the organization has been able to provide safe drinking water to over 1 million people throughout Yemen and deliver over 40 tons of medical equipment, including medicine, oral rehydration salts, intravenous fluids and diarrhea disease kits.

However, Cappelaere has made the case clear that it’s not enough.

Though calling for greater international cooperation, he stressed that “most importantly, it is time for parties to the conflict to prioritize the boys and girls of Yemen and put an end to the fighting through a peaceful political agreement. This is the ultimate way to save the lives of children in Yemen, and to help them thrive.”

As if a cholera epidemic weren’t enough, Yemen, facing a two-year-long war of aggression led by Saudi Arabia and financed by the United States, is also suffering from famine. In one form or another, some 19 million people of its 28 million population are in need of humanitarian aid.

Adding insult to injury, less than half of the country’s health facilities are functioning.

In April, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealed for a total of US$2.1 billion in aid to avoid the “starving of an entire generation” in Yemen. The request was made at the commencement of a donor session conference in Geneva.

“On average, a child under the age of five dies of preventable causes in Yemen every 10 minutes,” said Guterres, adding that, “this means 50 children in Yemen will die during today’s conference and all of those deaths could have been prevented.”

Even if aid is provided, getting assistance to the Yemeni people amid the war-torn country may prove to be a serious challenge. It has been reported that the Saudi-led coalition had previously targeted the country’s main port of Hodeidah, obstructing attempts to import much needed food, medical and fuel supplies.

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Yemen facing an ‘unprecedented’ outbreak of cholera – BBC News

Top 5 Lessons Saudi Arabia Learns from the Yemen War

Saudi Arabia’s Yemen war has reached a dead end. Launched in late March 2015 to restore President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power, either by subduing or by eliminating the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and their allies, the war is entering its third year. The top political and strategic goal of reinstating President Hadi to power is still remaining a goal on paper. Contrary to expected politico-strategic gains, the Houthis are controlling most parts of north and northwestern Yemen, with a tight grip over Sana’a, the Yemeni capital.

Diplomatic maneuvers to find a way out of the war have not yielded any positive outcomes so far either. The UN-mediated peace talks, hosted by Kuwait from late April to early August 2016, ended up in failures, as gaps between the warring sides did not close enough to hammer out a lasting solution. Yemen is now run by two rival governments – the Hadi government based in the southwestern seaport of Aden, and the Sana’a-based Supreme Political Council, jointly controlled by the Houthis and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s General People’s Congress party. Since no side is capable of overpowering the other, a divided Yemen looks set to continue in the foreseeable future, until and unless the UN succeeds in pulling a rabbit out of the hat.

For Saudi Arabia, the war has been a bizarre experience, however. Being the largest and most powerful country in the Gulf Arab region, the kingdom is losing the Yemen war militarily, diplomatically and financially. The incapacity to strike a favorable change in the battlefield, even after being directly aided by a 9-nation Arab coalition and indirectly assisted by the U.S., or create enough diplomatic pressures to bear down on the Houthi rebels to accept a negotiated settlement of the war are no less than a telling blow to the military prowess and diplomatic feat of the Saudis, not to speak of the huge financial losses they continue to incur (an estimated $200 million costs per day). A snapshot at the war situation speaks of at least five lessons Riyadh stands to learn from its abortive war on Yemen.

To start with, German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once said: “War is the continuation of politics by other means”. But a miscalculated (or probably an unnecessary) war is bound to be counterproductive, dragging the invading and the invaded states down the road to political, economic and military ruins. Saudi Arabia has traditionally considered Yemen its underbelly, a backwater state that has heavily depended on Saudi financial aid and assistance, especially after the reunification of North Yemen and South Yemen in May 1990 (with the exception of temporary aid cuts in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War). Before the invasion was launched in March 2015, the Saudis had the perceptions that their mighty army and air force would quickly sweep away the impoverished, aid-dependent Yemen by forcing the Houthi rebels to surrender. The reality turned out different though. The war has, in fact, brought a new opportunity for the Houthis and their allies to prove their political and military resilience. The Houthis are now a formidable force to reckon with and an indispensable party to future peace settlements in Yemen.

It appears that the Saudis learned nothing from America’s military debacle in Iraq: what the neocons in the George W. Bush administration saw as a brief invasion of Iraq in March 2003 subsequently proved to be a very long and costly war in terms of unforeseen human and material losses – thousands of American lives along with nearly a million Iraqis killed and wounded, and 1.7 trillion dollars lost as direct war expenses, according to a study by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Similarly, the poor Yemenis are paying the ultimate price of the war: more than 10,000 Yemenis are killed so far, with children being the principal victims of the war, and the destruction of schools, hospitals and power plants by Saudi airstrikes. More ominously, a humanitarian disaster of unspeakable proportions is threatening the total collapse of Yemen.

That political problems defy military solutions aptly appears as the second lesson of the war. The Houthi rebellion in Yemen was/is a political issue, with ramifications for the entire Yemeni political system. The Houthis, named after a Yemeni Shi’a legal scholar Husayn Al-Houthi, started their movement in the early 1990s to preach tolerance and peace but the movement gradually turned violent to protest the socio-economic and political marginalization of the Zaydi Shi’as by the central government of Yemen. Over time the Houthi movement created more political complexities threatening traditional Saudi interests in Yemen. Traditionally, Riyadh has sought to buy Yemeni loyalty for generous economic handouts, either to curb Yemen’s independent role in regional and international affairs or to punish Sana’a whenever it has tried to move out of the Saudi sphere of influence. The Houthis, who fought a brief war against Riyadh in 2009, decry such undue Saudi influence; they want to minimize, if not eliminate, Saudi influence over their country.

Empowered by the pro-democracy movements of the Arab Spring, they managed to overpower the Al-Islah Party and the Hashid Tribal Federation in eastern Yemen, two Saudi-supported Sunni political groups, that seriously undermined Saudi influence in Yemeni politics.

On top of that, the Houthi military push towards the south of the country in February 2015, being supported by Yemeni military units loyal to the former President Saleh, made the Saudis nervous that they were being completely shut out of Yemen. Riyadh immediately implicated Iran in the Houthi military campaign and opted for air operations to strike a massive blow to the Houthi rebels, instead of exhausting all available options for a negotiated settlement of the issue. This was a desperate attempt to put Yemen back on the Saudi orbit by any means whatsoever but it exposed the kingdom’s failure to build a strong Yemeni political coalition to challenge the Houthis from inside Yemen. The end result has been a disaster. The Houthi power is on the rise.

Military prowess is an essential tool to back up foreign policy objectives but there are limits to it. The stalemate in the Yemen war and the Iran and Russia-backed Bashar Al-Assad government’s recent military victory in Aleppo probably underscore another useful lesson (the third here) for Saudi Arabia. The Saudis see Iran as a fierce competitor for power and dominance in the Gulf neighborhood and in the wider Middle East region; they also denounce Iran’s role in the Arab world. But the use of military power presumably to beat back Iran, as in Yemen and Syria, has hardly worked. Riyadh’s dependence on its Western allies, particularly the U.S., for military operations in Yemen and Syria has pushed Iran to seek Russian intervention in support of the beleaguered Al-Assad government in Damascus, thus making the already unstable strategic landscape of the Middle East much more complex and volatile. At the same time, Iran’s deep military engagements in Iraq after the proclamation of the Islamic State in June 2014 and in Syria since 2011 largely precipitated Saudi military actions. What was missing is a process of diplomatic engagements to restrain military competitions between the two countries and to limit external involvements in regional conflicts.

Often as not, Saudi Arabia projects itself as an anti-Shi’a Sunni power creating a sectarian image and identity of the state. This might be a direct influence of the Wahhabi clerics and a part of the state formation process of Saudi Arabia but it sounds awkward to Muslims worldwide. Scared by the prospects of the rise of Shi’a power across the Middle East, late King Abdullah bin Abd Al-Aziz sent troops to Bahrain in March 2011 to quell the Shi’a-led pro-democracy movements, funded and equipped various Sunni rebel groups under the rubric of Islamic Army (a coalition of Islamist and Salafist armed groups) to topple the Shi’a Alawites-led Bashar Al-Assad government in Syria, and King Salman bin Abd Al-Aziz launched an air war on Yemen to force the Shi’a Houthi rebels into submission. Such sectarian roles undercut Saudi Arabia’s standing in the Muslim world. The kingdom is the birthplace of the Islamic religion, hosts and protects the two holiest sites of Mecca and Medina for all Muslim pilgrims from all over the world. In that sense, Saudi Arabia belongs to all Muslims, regardless of their sects, creeds and diverse traditions. The projection of a Sunni image of the state deprives it of a cosmopolitan Islamic/Muslim image to look after Muslim interests on a global scale – the fourth lesson derived from Riyadh’s recent regional foreign policy agenda in Yemen or Syria.

Last but not the least, false threat projections are proving dangerous to Saudi Arabia’s interests. It sees the Houthi rebels as Iranian puppets out to give Tehran a foothold in the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, the Houthis repudiate all foreign influences in their country – Saudi, Iranian or American. Iran’s involvement in the Yemeni war, if any, is very limited. Similarly, singling out Iran as a source of threat to Saudi Arabia is less than convincing. Iran is definitely a regional competitor, may not be a threat to Saudi interest outright. Separated by the Persian Gulf, there exists no serious territorial or resource sharing conflict between the two countries that would justify enemy image projections by either side. The ideological threat of export of revolution Ayatollah Khomeini made after the 1979 Islamic Revolution was effectively nullified by former President Mohammad Khatami in 1998. The use of Iran threat, apparently to conceal Riyadh’s political failures in Yemen, to declare war on the Houthis has got the Saudis bogged down in that country and there is hardly a way to get out of it quickly.

Mohammed Nuruzzaman is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Gulf University for Science and Technology, Mishref, Kuwait

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

AFP: Yemen: “Yemen”