Yemen, a small country on the Arabian Peninsula, has become the site of grievous civilian suffering amid an intractable civil war. Many analysts say that the fighting, now seven years old, has turned into proxy war: Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who overthrew the Yemeni government, are pitted against a multinational coalition led by Saudi Arabia. The conflict has displaced more than one million people and given rise to cholera outbreaks, medicine shortages, and threats of famine. The United Nations calls the humanitarian crisis in Yemen “the worst in the world.” The chaos has also allowed the al-Qaeda affiliate in the region to expand its foothold.
Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when Houthi insurgency—Shiite rebels with links to Iran and a history of rising up against the Sunni government—took control of Yemen’s capital and largest city, Sana’a, demanding lower fuel prices and a new government. Following failed negotiations, the rebels seized the presidential palace in January 2015, causing President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government to resign. Beginning in March 2015, a coalition of Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia launched a campaign of economic isolation and airstrikes against the Houthi insurgents, with U.S. logistical and intelligence support. Hadi rescinded his resignation and returned to Aden in September 2015, and fighting has continued since. A UN effort to broker peace talks between allied Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized Yemeni government stalled in the summer of 2016. As of December 2017, Hadi has reportedly been residing in exile in Saudi Arabia. In July 2016, the Houthis and the government of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, ousted in 2011 after nearly thirty years in power, announced the formation of a “political council” to govern Sana’a and much of northern Yemen. However, in December 2017, Saleh broke with the Houthis and called for his followers to take up arms against them. Saleh was killed and his forces defeated within two days. The intervention of regional powers in Yemen’s conflict, including Iran and Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia, threatens to draw the country into the broader Sunni-Shia divide. Numerous Iranian weapons shipments to Houthi rebels have been intercepted in the Gulf of Aden by a Saudi naval blockade in place since April 2015. In response, Iran has dispatched its own naval convoy, which further risks military escalation between the two countries. The crown prince was pressing the Trump administration to designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The State Department was responsible for the designation of FTOs, so the prince was pushing the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The Houthis are a violent and dangerous organization with very extremist propaganda, but they have not attacked Americans or Israelis despite their rhetoric.An FTO designation is a political act. If the Houthis are designated an FTO, it will also hamper the efforts of humanitarian relief organizations to get food and medicine to Yemeni civilians living in the territory that the rebels control. The United Nations estimates that 80% of Yemenis are at risk of malnutrition and that Yemen is in “a countdown to catastrophe.” The pandemic has made the situation immensely worse. Yemen’s primitive health care infrastructure, which is a frequent target of Saudi airstrikes, is overwhelmed. The Houthis are hard to work with, according to humanitarian leaders, but designating them an FTO will make an already difficult situation worse. Given that the Houthis are already isolated, the FTO designation would reap little practical benefits. The Biden-Harris administration should make ending the war an urgent priority for both strategic and humanitarian reasons.
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