The Other Ukraine, on Steroids - Yemen

“The world’s worst humanitarian crisis” per the United Nations

Sensing American weakness and discord, amplified by the best intelligence experts Russia can muster, Vladimir Putin is assessing Biden’s inability to do much given latter’s tsunami of unpopularity and the dedicated internal GOP efforts to end representational democracy. Ukraine became a viable bargaining chip. China too, rampaging against democracy and human rights in Western China and Hong Kong, threats looming over Taiwan, senses American disunity and weakness. Iran, which is willing to go only “so far” to restore nuclear weapons-grade enrichment containment, which has only accelerated since Donald Trump pulled the US out of the six party, UN-sponsored nuclear containment accord (“Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”), also notes American weakness.

Iran, effectively the representative of Shiite Islam (20% of the Muslim faith; Sunnis representing most of the balance), has long operated through surrogates to spread its vision of Islam wide and far. It’s Hezbollah has become the dominant force in Lebanon, its sympathetic forces govern predominantly Shiite Iran, a minority allied Alawite Shiite sect rules Syria, and its Houthis in Yemen have destabilized the former Sunni government and threaten to build the bottom half of a Shiite encirclement of Sunni stronghold and absolute monarchy, Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, facing hated Shiites in Iran and Iraq (where Iran calls the shots) in the north, have pledged to prevent a Shiite government in the south.

Why does this regional conflict concern the United States, other than its generic hostility with Iran? Until recently, when this policy was reversed, Saudi Arabia relied on US supplies of weapons to attack Houthis who seized the Yemeni capital, Sana, in 2014. It has been a bloody and inhumane conflict since, with hundreds of thousands of innocent Yemenis dying from the conflict but most from starvation. Yet, the U.S. and British Royal Navies continue to patrol the Gulf of Oman to interdict smugglers in ships, some carrying illicit narcotics, others with weapons or materials used to build bombs enroute from Iran to Yemen. It is a volatile region in the extreme. The United Arab Emirates, a Sunni monarchy wedged in an uncomfortable geopolitical reality, has more clearly supported anti-Houthis military action alongside Saudi efforts.

“Though the Houthis regularly exchange missile fire with the Saudis, the Emirates had been spared since withdrawing its troops from Yemen in 2019, while continuing to train and assist anti-Houthi paramilitary groups. Those groups — along with Emirati drones deployed above them — were instrumental in pushing back the Houthis from Shabwa, a strategic, oil-rich province seen as a linchpin for controlling Yemen’s south and which the Houthis almost captured late last year… ‘There had been an implicit and very valuable understanding between the Houthis and the UAE that they wouldn’t confront each other directly,’ said Thomas Juneau, a Yemen expert at the University of Ottawa.’” Nabih Bulos, writing for the January 23rd Los Angeles Times. 

That “détente” ended in mid-January when “the Iran-backed Houthi militia claimed responsibility [for a drone/missile attack on Abu Dhabi International Airport, close to a US airbase, and a nearby industrial area, which] sparked the latest escalation in Yemen’s grinding seven-year civil war. Within hours, warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition that includes the United Arab Emirates pummeled Sana, the Houthi-controlled capital, killing about 20 people. And early Friday [1/21], further air retaliation from the coalition resulted in at least 82 reported civilian deaths and the internet being cut off for a city…

“President Biden, seeking to end the civil war as he also makes efforts to reinstitute a nuclear accord with Iran abandoned by then-President Trump, had reversed the eleventh-hour terrorist designation of the Houthis in the last days of the Trump administration. Biden has also halted support for the Saudi-led coalition’s offensive operations and dispatched a veteran diplomat, Tim Lenderking, as special envoy to Yemen.” LA Times.

That US effort to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table has been, at best, elusive, now further complicated by a US pledge to support UAE’s territorial integrity. “‘The Biden administration didn’t make a decision to reverse this [“terrorist”] designation because of the Houthis’ conduct. They did it because of the devastating humanitarian consequences it would have, and moreover because it wouldn’t be effective diplomatically,’ said Scott Paul, Oxfam America’s humanitarian policy lead, in a phone interview. ‘Nothing has changed from a year ago. This is high-stakes name-calling, and it’s Yemenis across the country that would pay the price.’…

“The Houthis contend their arsenal is locally manufactured. A confidential U.N. Security Council report viewed by the Los Angeles Times said the Houthis build most of their missiles and rockets using local materials, as well as components sourced from abroad through a complex web of intermediaries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia… Houthi officials say they have no need to coordinate such attacks with anyone… ‘We have a very large war being waged against us; isn’t that justification enough to respond to this aggression? We were defending ourselves back when we didn’t have these capabilities,’ said Nasr al-Din Amir, deputy chief of the Houthis’ ministry of information, vowing that the group would attack anyone who attacked it. ‘Let the world today end the nuclear standoff with Iran. If it happens and the war upon us continues, then we’ll continue fighting.’

“In the meantime, said Ahmed Nagi, a nonresident scholar at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, that has left policymakers in a quandary… ‘Either you go for escalation, and expect drones and attacks from your sides. The other option is to surrender to the Houthis’ conditions and withdraw ... or you try to achieve a military stalemate and work on the diplomatic track,’ Nagi said.” LA Times. As time passes and tensions seem unending, the death and destruction in Yemen, the sheer misery of the conflict, continues unabated, now even escalated. The limits of American and Western influence in Yemen are marginal at best.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with so much turmoil within and without the United States and its obvious confrontations with Russia and China, it’s easy to ignore the massive suffering in one small region of the Middle East.