In November of 2017, several dozen Kuwaiti opposition members, including a number of current and former MPs, were suddenly arrested on charges relating to the occupation of the Parliament building in 2011—even though they had been cleared of similar charges four years earlier. [1] The arrests swept up a number of politicians who had been the most visible anti-corruption campaigners in the country, and few doubted that the regime was trying to use the incident to discredit or imprison those who would embarrass the ruling family by airing its dirty laundry.

In February and March 2016, nearly 35,000 Palestinian teachers initiated a series of strike actions across the West Bank. Classes were dismissed and students sent home as teachers marched through Ramallah’s streets and organized sit-ins in front of Ministry of Education field offices. Though short-lived, the strike had wide resonance as teachers utilized their waning social capital in ways they had not done since the second intifada, and encouraged members of other unions to organize industrial actions, particularly after the March 9, 2016 ratification of Social Security Law 6.

The storm of opposition to President Donald Trump’s December 6, 2017 announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital was predictable, and has been, so far, ineffectual. More consequentially, in the following week Israeli forces killed four and wounded ten Palestinian protestors in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There were demonstrations around the world—in Cairo, Beirut, Tehran, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Istanbul, Tokyo and in several European and American cities. The European diplomatic community was exceptionally aroused but has done nothing substantive.

The mass of runners awaiting the starter gun in Manger Square could be anywhere in the world. Hundreds of kindred spirits communicate without words, preparing to compete against each other and themselves, and sharing a familiar nervous energy. And yet this start line feels different than the one in quaint Hopkinton, where the Boston Marathon begins. There’s a church at that line, but it’s not the Church of the Nativity. The race in Massachusetts is the oldest continuously run marathon in the world. Bethlehem, gracious host to the Palestine Marathon since 2013, is the birthplace of Christianity.

In late January this year, an armed conflict erupted in Aden between troops under command of President ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and those loyal to the Southern Transitional Council (STC), both in principle on the same side of the Yemeni war. The fighting left more than 40 people dead and several wounded. The conflict raised speculations of a crack in the Saudi-led coalition that since March 2015 has waged war in Yemen. In Saudi political rhetoric, the war aims at bringing Hadi back to power as “the legitimate president.” Yet the Emiratis, a coalition partner, have in multiple ways contributed to the military and political strength of the southern opposition to Hadi’s regime.

This short note poses three questions central to understanding the nature and meaning of the Yemen war. These concern the strategy of the Coalition war itself, the structure of legal reference, and the forms of information concerning the war. The three fields intersect. 

Strategy

The Yemen war is about to enter a fourth year; thus the strategy of the Coalition, which controls Yemen’s airspace and sea-space (alongside the Combined Maritime Forces and from May 2016 the United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism), has moved through several stages. [1]

At the height of Latin America’s “pink tide” in the mid-2000s, left wing governments throughout the region developed unprecedented economic, political, and cultural ties with the Arab world as part of a larger effort to disrupt U.S. hegemony globally. Meanwhile in the Middle East, entrenched power regimes seemed to teeter against a wave of social and political movements broadly identified as the Arab Spring. Today, as the Pink Tide recedes and renewed conflict and authoritarianism grips the Middle East, the time is ripe to consider the origins, contours, and legacies of a relationship forged in a moment of deep regional and global flux, between parts of the world infrequently considered side by side.