Now in its eighth month, the conflict that Amnesty International has called Yemen's "forgotten war" grinds on, overshadowed by a metastasizing terrorist threat emanating from Syria, and a seemingly endless wave of Middle East and African refugees sweeping into Europe.
But the international community ignores Yemen's war at its own peril. In the first place, it has spawned a humanitarian crisis of alarming proportions. Following a visit to Yemen in August, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said, "Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years." A major reason is the relentless air campaign a coalition of Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia began in March, which has pummeled Yemen's already fragile infrastructure and traumatized its civilian population. According to the United Nations, two million people in Yemen are now internally displaced and over 20 million—80 percent of its population—are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
The ostensible goal of the coalition airstrikes is the restoration of Yemen's internationally recognized government, which was overthrown in January by a Shi'a insurgency that subsequently swept south all the way to the seaport city of Aden, aided and abetted by forces loyal to Yemen's former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. While the insurgents, known as the Houthis, belong to a branch of Shi'a Islam that traces its Yemeni roots back a thousand years, Saudi Arabia sees them as Iranian agents, and the Kingdom's message to Tehran is clear: your interference in the affairs of Arab states will no longer be tolerated. The problem is that it is far from clear that the Houthis are responding to an Iranian agenda.
Meanwhile, the Saudi-led air campaign has now grown into a ground war, with Arab coalition forces joining Yemeni fighters—local militias, tribesmen, and regular army units—loyal to exiled President Abd Raboo Mansour Hadi. They have seized the momentum on the ground and have pushed north from Aden towards Yemen's second-largest city, Taiz, where a fierce battle now rages. Last week, President Hadi returned to Yemen from Saudi Arabia and is now leading a rump government in Aden. At the same time, UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed continues efforts to convene peace talks in Geneva, possibly as soon as mid-December.
The Saudi-led coalition's single-minded prosecution of its war against the Houthis has other implications for regional security, including the prospect of Yemen becoming the safe haven of choice for violent extremist organizations. Since the conflict began, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based franchise of the global terrorist network, has been largely ignored and in June, capitalized on the inattention to seize Mukalla, a major southern port city. With the exception of occasional U.S. drone strikes against AQAP leadership figures in the area, the group has come under little pressure.
Furthermore, the self-described Islamic State (ISIS) launched its first attacks in Yemen in March, a series of assaults by suicide bombers on Shi'a mosques in the capital, Sana'a. Some observers suggest that IS in Yemen is comprised of former AQAP fighters who advocate a more aggressive campaign, although the groups may still form tactical alliances from time to time. All of the above have prompted fears that Yemen's large swaths of ungoverned territory will ensure that extremist groups enjoy operational platforms from which they can conduct international attacks.
Additionally, the preoccupation of leading Arab states with the war in Yemen precludes them from focusing on the most pressing crisis in the Middle East, the civil war in Syria, at a moment when the international community, galvanized by recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut, and the Sinai, is mobilizing resources to eliminate the threat posed by IS and end the Syrian conflict.
The desire to reinstate Yemen's legitimate authority and to restore order to the Arab world's poorest country is laudable: the Houthis must not be allowed to seize power by brute force. But when the guns finally go silent, Saudi Arabia and its allies will gaze upon a nation brought to the brink of ruin and will confront an unwelcome truth famously uttered by former Secretary of State Colin Powell: you break it, you own it.
