Yemen Civil War (2011-202?)

The civil war inside Yemen has effectively come to a halt. There haan't really been any fighting since March 2022, when the UN-brokered truce went into effect.

David Rundell suggest that Washington "bears some responsibility for today’s Houthi crisis due to its failure to maintain its longstanding security partnership with Saudi Arabia. ... While it seems unlikely that the Saudis spent expensive munitions deliberately targeting school buses, such incidents prompted harsh criticism of Riyadh ... Washington’s tepid support for the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis caused the Saudis to doubt the credibility of US security commitments ... American hesitancy to supply the Saudis with drone technology forced them to turn to Italy and China. ... With Washington appearing to ignore their security concerns and facing persistent Houthi missile attacks, the Saudis changed course. In 2023, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, renewed diplomatic relations with Iran ... It would have been much wiser for America to have supported Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates when they were willing to commit their own troops to defeat the Houthis." A study by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) released 27 October 2018 revealed that the death toll in Yemen is five times higher than previously thought. According to the study, 56,000 people rather than the 10,000 often reported have been killed in the war led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with the support of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.

“We estimate the number killed to be 56,000 civilians and combatants between January 2016 and October 2018,” Andrea Carboni, who researches Yemen for ACLED, told The Independent. ACLED has been able to tally the number of casualties by drawing mostly on the Yemeni press after carefully assessing the source’s credibility. Where figures differ, the group relied on lower estimates. The figure of 56,000 excludes the victims of the man-made famine caused by Saudi Arabia’s inhumane blockade of Yemen's ports and persons killed between the start of the Saudi-led intervention in March 2015 and December 2015. The study’s final findings were expected to be published in January or February 2019.

As of 31 October 2019 the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded more than 100,000 reported fatalities in Yemen since 2015, including over 12,000 civilians killed in direct attacks. These findings are consistent with recent projections drawing on ACLED data issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, which estimate that approximately 102,000 people will be killed in direct violence by the end of 2019.

By early 2018 Yemen was on the verge of disintegration, with three major factions battling over its fate. In January 2018, the internationally recognised government has been forced from its headquarters by separatists seeking to carve out their own state in the south. This was a major blow to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was already battling Houthi rebels in the north. It also signals divisions in the Saudi-led coalition, whose support is essential to Hadi's war effort. Saudi Arabia backs Hadi, but its ally, the United Arab Emirates, had thrown its weight behind the southern separatists.

By mid-2019, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and as many as 85,000 children may have starved to death. But there were two things going on which may have the potential to change that war. One is the increased ability of the Houthis to hit back. On Thursday, they claimed two major attacks against Saudi-Emirati backed forces. More significantly in the long term, is the UAE's decision to reduce its military presence in Yemen. The move started a few weeks ago and, for the first time in six years, Emirati officials met an Iranian delegation in Tehran. They signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation on maritime border security. But the meeting in itself was a significant step.

By early 2015, Yemen already a failed state, beset by a circular firing squad of factions. Besides a local struggle for power, the Yemen conflict is widely viewed as a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. At least 10,000 people had died by mid-2016. Yemen was wracked by internal divisions as the Houthi movement spread beyond its traditional rebellion in the north, separatists continue to press their cause in the south, and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claims attacks both at home and abroad, including on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris earlier in January 2015.

1. Shia rebels loyal to Abdul Malik al-Houthi are also known as the Shabab Al-Mu'minin (Believing Youth). In September 2014, Houthi fighters swept into the capital and they continued to battle for control of other parts of Yemen. The Houthis are a group of combatants associated with the Zaydi Revivalist movement in Yemen, which emerged as a result of deep-seated frustrations among those tribes who felt as though they had become marginalized after an Egyptian-backed revolution against the Zaydi Imam in 1962 brought an end to Hashemite domination. The Houthis operated alongside allies of former president and former adversary, Ali Abdullah Saleh, toppled in 2011.
2. President Ali Abdullah Saleh had been in power for 30 years until ousted in 2011. Ali Abdullah Saleh was a Zaidi Shiite, but had the support of key Sunni leaders, and his Vice President was a Sunni Muslim. Saleh retained influence among Zaidi tribes - from which the Houthis belong - in the north and top military commanders. By 2015 Houthis appeared to have major backing from Saleh, their long time adversary. Together they formed the so-called “Popular Committees”, militias that controlled much of northern Yemen. The bulk of the January 2015 fighting against the Hadi governement was led by the Republican Guard, the elite military unit led until 2013 by Ahmed Ali Saleh, the eldest son of the ousted president. Just exactly how and when these former opponents became allies is obscure.
3. The Yemeni army avoided clashing with the Houthis or to support them in their advance on al-Qaida strongholds. The army fought a number of campaigns against the Houthi in the 2004-2009 timeframe, and did not give a good account of itself. President Ali Abdullah Saleh had exercised tight control over the army, and its apparent neutrality in the conflict after his 2011 departure may reflect his continued influence. President Hadi released a list of military and political appointments on April 6, 2012 that struck at Saleh’s patronage network.
4. President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was elected in 2012. He is supported by the international community and as a Sunni continued to have the backing of the Sunni majority in Yemen. He was widely seen as weak and inefficient. The Presidential Guard was the only military unit still loyal to the internationally recongnized government of President Hadi. President Hadi, Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and his Cabinet tendered their resignations 22 January 2015. Under Yemen's constitution, the speaker of parliament would serve as interim head of state. The current speaker, Yahia al-Rai, is an ally of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. By March 2015 the president of Yemen controlled barely a quarter of Yemen. Hadi fled to Riyadh and sought help there in a bid to return to power. A Saudi-led campaign of bombardment has been devastating Yemen without a UN mandate since 26 March 2015, several days after Hadi was said to have fled the country.
5. Islah, the Islamist opposition party, is generally considered moderate, but contains radical members of the Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood factions. Although not party policy, per se, powerful individuals within Islah have made targeting Zaydis a major objective. Fighters from the conservative Islamist forces loyal to military general Ali Mohsen Al Ahmar of the Islah Party are backed by the Saudis.
6. The Herak group of Southern separatists are seeking a two-region division between the former North Yemen (Yemen Arab Republic) and South Yemen (Republic of Yemen), as a precursor to full secession. The Houthis found common ground with the separatists, and support a two-region state in which they could dominate the north and consolidate territorial gains secured during 2014.
7. Al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is a Sunni extremist group based in Yemen that orchestrated numerous high-profile terrorist attacks. AQAP emerged in January 2009 following an announcement that Yemeni and Saudi terrorists were unifying under a common banner. AQAP took control of Zinjibar and other areas in Abyan, Lahj, and Shabwah governorates in 2011 and held these locations for approximately one year until a government offensive drove them out in June 2012.

In March 2015 in response to a request from Yemeni president Hadi for Arab League / Gulf Cooperation Council military intervention, invoking Article 51 of the UN Charter, Saudi officials announced the formation of a coalition to counter the Houthi rebellion, with membership including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, and Senegal. The Saudi-led coalition conducted air and ground operations throughout the remainder of the year.

Houthi rebels fired numerous rockets and three SCUD missiles across the border from Yemen into Saudi Arabia, killing at least 47 Saudi civilian and military personnel from April to December, according to media reports. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reported that the Saudi-led coalition launched rocket attacks into populated civilian areas near the Saudi-Yemen border in northern Yemeni towns of Sa’ada and the province of Hajja. Human Rights Watch reported that 13 people total were killed, including three children, in seven rocket attacks from April to mid-July in Hajja Province.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that “[t]he cases monitored by the Office indicate that air strikes were the single largest cause of casualties, resulting in approximately one third of the deaths and injuries recorded by the OHCHR.” The OHCHR reported that between July 2015 and June 2016, 1,259 civilians were allegedly killed and 1,360 injured by air strikes led by Saudi Arabia and its coalition forces. In March 2017, the OHCHR reported that at least 4,773 civilians have been killed and another 8,272 injured. It further reported that there had been an “intensification in hostilities” in the first three months of the year, including 106 civilians killed mostly by coalition forces in one month.

In a series of investigations undertaken between 2015 and 2017, a U.N. Panel of Experts concluded that the Saudi coalition had breached its international obligations during the course of hostilities. After an investigation in 2015, it concluded that the Saudi-led coalition had bombed residential neighborhoods and treated “the entire city of Sa’dah and region of Maran as military targets.” The Panel assessed the information to which it had access and concluded the coalition has committed “a grave violation of the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution” and in some specific instances “found such violations to have been conducted in a widespread and systematic manner.”

On May 8, May 2015, Brigadier General Assiri (official spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition) stated publicly that “[w]e have also declared Saada and Marran as military targets loyal to the Houthi militias and as a result the operations will cover the whole area of those two cities.” The targeting of entire cities, as inferred from the statement of Saudi officers, was a seemingly egregious violation of applicable international law related to targeting, suggesting deliberate disregard for binding international obligations. While the Saudi statements could have been taken to imply a general operational priority, the UN Panel assessed the continuing pattern of questionable strikes to warrant the adverse inference.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which entered into force in December 2014, provides important rules relevant to the Mission’s findings. The ATT was adopted by the General Assembly to regulate the international trade in conventional arms. Its stated object and purpose explicitly include establishing the highest possible common international standards for regulating or improving the regulation of the international trade in conventional arms for the purpose of reducing human suffering. One of its guiding principles is to respect and ensure respect for human rights and international humanitarian law.

Article 6 prohibits a State Party from authorizing the transfer of conventional arms if it has knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a party.

Where transfer is not prohibited under Article 6, Article 7 of the ATT places a due diligence obligation on exporting States Parties to assess, inter alia, the potential that the arms or other items would contribute to undermining peace and security, or could be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law or of international human rights law.

Under general rules of State responsibility and customary rules of international law a State is prohibited from aiding or assisting another State in the commission of an internationally wrongful act where three conditions are fulfilled: that the State organ or agency providing aid or assistance is aware of the circumstances making the conduct of the assisted State internationally wrongful; that the aid or assistance be given with a view to facilitating the commission of that act and actually does so; and that the completed act be such that it would have been wrongful had it been committed by the assisting State itself.

Yemen's warring parties laid down their weapons on 02 April 2022 for the first nationwide truce since 2016, with all eyes on whether the UN-brokered ceasefire will hold. The Iran-backed Huthi rebels and Saudi-led coalition both agreed to observe the two-month truce, which took effect at 1600 GMT on the first day of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan. "The two-month truce started at 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) tonight. As of tonight, all offensive ground, aerial and naval military operations should cease," UN special envoy Hans Grundberg said in a statement.