The Yemen Civil War (2014–Present) is a conflict which has raged in Yemen since 2014 and is still ongoing a decade later. Its roots actually lie much further back in tensions which emerged in Yemen when the Houthi tribe formed themselves into a large Islamist paramilitary organization that began shaping the country’s politics in the 1990s. Moreover, there have been divisions between North Yemen (in the west of the country) and South Yemen (in the east of the country) since the 1970s. This led to previous civil wars in 1986 and 1994. A Houthi insurgency began in North Yemen in 2004 and gradually escalated until it became a nationwide civil war in 2014 after the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, that year. That triggered intervention by a coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia to restore the established government in 2015. The war has since become a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with the Houthis being back by Tehran and the Republic of Yemen’s forces supported by Saudi Arabia. The conflict has killed 400,000 people, displaced millions and created mass food insecurity across the country.[1]
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Yemen Civil War chronology of events
Yemen has only recently become a unified country. In the early twentieth century the west of the country along the shores of the Red Sea, what is somewhat confusingly called North Yemen, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War, the Kingdom of Yemen emerged here. This subsequently became the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962. To the east the British established a protectorate over the eastern half of the country, known in general as South Yemen, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Aden Protectorate was a strategic asset controlling entry to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal at a time when British control over the sea route to India was vital to its national interests. South Yemen, or the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, was granted independence from Britain in 1967.[2]
Over the next quarter of a century numerous wars were fought in North Yemen and South Yemen. Some of these were internal between Islamists and secularists, while others involved movements to unite North and South Yemen into one country. This was achieved in 1990 when unification came about. But just four years later a fresh civil war erupted as the old differences between north and south, or east and west, re-emerged. It was in this environment that the Houthi tribe developed into a powerful military and political entity in the west of the country (formerly North Yemen). They began a Shia Islamist insurgency conflict in the years that followed, one which escalated in the early twenty-first century, fuelled from 2011 by the impacts of the Arab Spring across the wider Middle East.[3]
In 2014 the Houthis seized control of the capital, Sanaa. The country’s internationally recognized president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, was forced to relinquish power not long afterwards. He then fled to eastern Yemen and later to Saudi Arabia. These developments prompted Saudi Arabia to intervene in 2015 as leader of a large coalition of Arab states. Riyadh’s motives in doing so were connected to the fact that the Houthis are allies and proxies of Iran in the region.[4] The intervention led to a dramatic escalation of the war. Generally speaking the Houthis have controlled much of the west of the country ever since, what used to be North Yemen, while the Saudi-backed forces of the Republic of Yemen control the east. However, there are numerous other groups involved as well, including branches of Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. As of 2024 the war is no closer to being resolved and has caused enormous dislocation.[5]
Extent of migration caused by the Yemen Civil War
The level of displacement which has occurred because of the civil war is truly enormous. Yemen is a country with approximately 33 million people. The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that 4.5 million people, nearly 15% of the total population, have been displaced because of the conflict. Most of these are internally displaced, but a sizeable number have fled abroad, some over the the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and the Red Sea to places like Djibouti, Eritrea and Egypt, while others have gone further afield to places like Turkey. The largest concentration of Yemeni refugees abroad is in neighboring Saudi Arabia, where over half a million people have fled. It is possible that this situation may become worse in years to come, as the UN Refugee Agency also estimates that over 21 million people, nearly two-thirds of the population of Yemen, are mired in food insecurity because of the conflict.[6]
Demographic impact of the Yemen Civil War
The Yemen Civil War has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 400,000 people. Of these, it is believed that around 60% have died because of hunger, malnutrition or the lack of adequate medical services. Thus, the majority of the casualties are civilians. Some 15,000 civilians have died directly in air strikes and other military actions. The country is also constantly on the precipice of severe famine, with malnutrition having become a fact of daily life.[7]
Population growth in Yemen has slowed to a certain extent as a result of the conflict, though not to a dramatic extent and the population has still grown by five million people since the civil war began. In many ways the most tangible impact of the war is in the expansion of the Yemeni diaspora community in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Saudi Arabia already had a substantial Yemeni community prior to the civil war, but this has expanded markedly over the last decade. An estimated 600,000 Yemenis have settled in Saudi Arabia since 2014 and that community now stands at upwards of two million people, roughly 5% of the total population of Saudi Arabia.[8] Elsewhere there are tens of thousands of Yemeni people living in Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia and an estimated 700,000 in Egypt.[9] There are more longstanding Yemeni diaspora communities in India, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Britain and Canada which have also grown in the course of the war.
Explore more about the Yemen Civil War
- Yemen's Endless Wars at History Today
- Yemen's Tragedy: War, Stalemate and Suffering at Council on Foreign Relations
- Yemen at Human Rights Watch
References
- ↑ https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen
- ↑ https://history.state.gov/countries/yemen
- ↑ https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/yemen-crisis
- ↑ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/saudi-arabia-and-the-civil-war-within-yemens-civil-war/
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29319423
- ↑ https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/yemen/
- ↑ https://caat.org.uk/homepage/stop-arming-saudi-arabia/the-war-on-yemens-civilians/
- ↑ https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/08/31/saudi-arabia-yemeni-workers-risk-mass-forced-returns
- ↑ https://sanaacenter.org/publications/main-publications/12286