Yemen: 2017 in Review

A displaced woman (Malkah Ahmed Saleh) with her daughters sitting at their
temporary home (camp). (Photo: UNICEF/Moohi Al-Zikri)

*A U.N. official warned days ago that, “Yemen could be the worst humanitarian crisis in 50 years.” As 2018 begins, these words reflect the increasingly deteriorating unspeakable human suffering in Yemen, after the UN had been calling Yemen throughout last year as the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

The poorest Arab nation with a population of around 25 million has been sent into destitution after nearly four years of war. 2017 has been a year of utter despair in light of countless human rights atrocities committed on multi-fronts; from the Saudi-led coalition to Saleh-Houthis’ forces and the U.S. counter-terrorism military operation, all sharing responsibility for creating unspeakable human suffering in Yemen. However, the killing of Saleh at the end of 2017 marks a historical transition that’s going to drastically change Yemen’s political map for years to come.


Human Suffering


Saleh’s violent death gives a glimpse into the gruesomeness of this war. Both combatants and noncombatant innocent civilians are caught up in the violence. While Houthis’ (and Saleh’s for a certain time, until his death) forces in Taiz continued their indiscriminate shelling or, as described by the UN Human Rights Office, the “unrelenting shelling,” against civilian inhabited areas for about three years, resulting in a terrible death toll, the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes since 2015 did not cease to hit non-military populated areas across many parts of Yemen. In 2017, markets, a migrant boat, a local inhabited hotel, among many other non-military targets were hit. The glaring example last year, however, was the story of the five-year-old Bouthina who survived an attack in August by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes hitting an apartment building in Sana’a, killing all her family.

The Yemen Data Project reveals that since 2015 nearly one-third of Saudi air raids hit non-military sites in Yemen. To rub salt into the wound, 2017, in particular, was when more US strikes hit Yemen than the past four years combined, with 125 strikes, under the U.S. war-on-terror military operations. Another glaring example of that was the U.S. Special forces’ first raid in Yemen’s al-Baydah province under U.S. president, Donald Trump, end of January 2017, killing dozens of women and children.

In parallel, Yemenis face a humanitarian catastrophe as the country's infrastructure is almost totally destroyed and humanitarian operations don’t have full access to some of the hardest hit communities in Yemen, following the Saudi-led coalition imposing a siege, in retaliation to a Houthi-fired missile hitting close to Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh airport in November. Despite progress in Saudis promising to open Houdaidah port and letting Aden port open, the humanitarian situation seems to be only worsening, proven by the UN’s recent announcement of the largest-ever emergency relief allocation - $50 million for UN aid-operations to come forward in 2018. This doesn’t reflect a success but rather an indication of how desperate the humanitarian situation is.

The current number of reported civilian casualties seems illogical given the conflicting reports from the U.N. that are not matching the scale of human suffering on the ground. More than a year ago, a UN official revealed that 10,000 civilians have been killed in Yemen but another recent UN report claimed that only 5,000 civilians have been killed since March 2015. As widespread famine threatens millions of lives, there is a new outbreak of disease, diphtheria, in addition to cholera; that’s probably the worst outbreak the world has ever seen, ripping more than 2,000 lives and reaching one million suspect cases. Also, UNICEF has been reporting since the beginning of 2017 that every 10 minutes a child dies in Yemen. In a situation like this, looking like the apocalypse, reports failed to match the real death toll throughout 2017.

While Yemenis are still counting the dead, the only slight of progress ever made in September 2017 was the establishment of an independent investigation committee by the UN Human Rights Council into the war crimes, thanks to great pressure and advocacy work done by international and local Yemeni Human Rights organizations since 2015. This is significant because campaigning clearly pays off and local and international civil society efforts in Yemen do matter. Nonetheless, the committee is due to begin its work later this year.



Yemen without Saleh


By December 2017, a political earthquake was to hit Yemen. Saleh’s death at the hands of the Houthis marked a violent end for an era and a defining point in Yemen’s political map. As ensuing days warring parties’ military operations intensified, Saleh’s death posed two critical aspects. One is that, whether Saleh genuinely desired to initiate negotiations away from Houthis or him forseeing the deadly path of his alliance with the Houthis, it’s confirmed today that Houthis’ politics are driven by violence.

The other aspect is, in spite of Houthis’ violent politics, Saleh’s absence has created for the first time in the course of Yemen’s nearly four years of war, one single centralized power in the north part of Yemen; that’s in the hands of the Houthis. Now more than ever, there has to be a regional and international political will to face this centralized power, reinvent a political solution and resolve the conflict.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen as in 2017 alone, both key international allies to Saudi Arabia; the US and the UK have found Yemen's war to be a lucrative business, profiting massively from the financial rewards of their arms sales to Saudi Arabia. With a tragic optimism, let us hope 2018 would bring the political will to end the Yemen war.

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*This article was first written for and published in Open Democracy, January 8, 2018. 

Is a Political Solution Still Possible in Yemen?

Photo: Tribesmen loyal to the Houthi movement hold their weapons as they attend a gathering to mark 1000 days of the Saudi-led military intervention in the Yemeni conflict, in Sanaa, Yemen December 21, 2017.
REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

*The end of Saleh-Houthi alliance marks a new chapter in Yemen’s intractable conflict. Two weeks after Saleh’s death, warring parties intensified their military escalation, increasing an already abominable human cost. Despite Saleh’s legacy of subversive tactics and coercion, his death undermines efforts to resolve the conflict. The Houthis, an irrational movement lacking in political experience, make for a highly emotional and unreliable party at the negotiating table. With the passing of Saleh, the ultimate pragmatist with longstanding political and diplomatic ties both locally and internationally, an opportunity has passed with him. In a post-Saleh Yemen, the question remains: is a political solution still feasible?

The most serious issue with the negotiation effort is its absence for more than a year. Days before his death, Saleh presented himself as a negotiator, expressing his readiness for talks with Saudi Arabia. Had he survived, those talks would have materialized through the UN framework, UNSC resolution 2216, which called on Saleh to change his destabilizing action, facilitate disarmament of the Houthis, and return to the National Dialogue Conference’s outcomes. Since his death, the UN Security Council has not passed an amended resolution in line with the recent developments; it instead had a closed-door meeting on the situation and simply called for de-escalation.

With the apparent lack of urgency in reinventing the political solution, on-the-ground fighting has only escalated and new emerging alliances appear to herald further military escalation. Despite its necessity, discussion about a new political solution to the conflict seems premature. Not only has the increased appetite for military competition undermined the prospects for a negotiated solution, but so does the Saudi-led coalition’s flawed tactical approach that aims to unify Yemen’s local factions against the Houthis.

While neither Saudi nor the Houthi camps can claim military superiority, the Houthis have gained significant military strength over the course of the war. After overtaking Sana’a in September 2014 with Saleh’s support, the Houthis captured valuable material from the disoriented national army. Emboldened by their initial victories, Iranian support, and lust for total control, the Houthis met any dissent with violence. Saleh’s betrayal in their eyes justified his undignified execution—and the subsequent crackdown on anyone allied with him. Local press reports also describe Houthi threats and shelling of dissident and pro-Saleh tribes.

Operating on a winner-take-all mentality, the Houthis’ lack of sophistication and nuance has consequently undermined local tribal diplomacy in resolving domestic conflicts. With little regard for even local negotiations, the chances they might engage with international negotiators in good faith appear unlikely.

On the opposing side, a key member in the Saudi-led coalition has taken advantage of the new normal. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has taken steps to realign itself with an old enemy, the Islah political party (a Yemeni version of the Muslim Brotherhood), in the fight against Houthis. This marriage of convenience comes as a sequel to Saleh’s short-lived marriage of convenience with his old enemy, the Houthis. This latest shift suggests that the Saudi-led coalition aims to unify Saleh’s General People’s Conference (GPC) forces, Yemen President Abdrabbo Mansour Hadi’s forces, the Southern Hirak’s forces, and Islah to counter the Houthis. All these factions, however, hold deep historical animosities towards each other, which threatens the effectiveness of such mobilization.

Such marriages of convenience between Yemen’s different factions have allowed each to survive in a highly volatile political climate. Each party reorders its own interest, depending on the political and military dynamics. If any lesson is to be learned from Saleh’s death, however, it should be the eventual collapse of these loose alliances and their potential to backfire.

Given the current configuration, the conflict in Yemen will not likely end in a formal negotiated settlement through the same existing UN framework born out of the National Dialogue and previous UN resolutions. The nearly four years of civil war and Saudi-led military intervention have exacerbated unresolved animosities between Yemen’s different factions. Saleh had killed the godfather of the Houthi movement, Hussein Bader al-Din al-Houthi, which partly motivated his assassination. Islah is asked today to come to good terms with the remaining GPC forces, despite a desire to retaliate for GPC hostility against the party during Saleh’s alliance with Houthis. Southern forces are asked to be the backbone of the anti-Houthi fighting force but still harbour a separatist streak. Any peace effort that dismisses the growing divisions and historical grievances is doomed to fail. A political solution must prevail eventually, but only if it seriously considers these old and newly born challenges.

While warring parties are reluctant to lay down their weapons, people in Yemen face widespread famine and an unprecedented cholera outbreak. A tougher international approach to finding a political solution in Yemen could nevertheless still help avert even greater tragedy in Yemen. There is both a moral and strategic interest in stabilizing Yemen.

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*This article was first written for and published in The Atlantic Council, January 3, 2018. 

The Unfolding UN Failure in the Yemen War

My latest on the Atlantic Council organization's #MENASource blog:


Despite the two previous unsuccessful attempts to pass a draft resolution to establish a UN independent international investigation commission into possible Yemen war crimes, sixty-seven Human Rights groups recently initiated another call demanding the establishment of the inquiry commission. The call for a commission is unlikely to be successful, but if it is formed it runs the risk of being hijacked by state interests and failing to hold accountable certain actors, particularly members of the Saudi-led coalition who wield influence at the United Nations.

Around 10,000 civilians have been killed in Yemen’s war—what the United Nations called the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Oddly, different UN bodies report different numbers. Last year a UN OCHA official stated that 10,000 civilians have been killed in Yemen since March 2015 (OCHA confirmed to MENASource that the number referred to civilians since some sources simply stated “people”). However, a September 2017 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) report claimed that only 5,000 civilians have been killed since March 2015. Interpreting the changing number is difficult. OCHA gathers its data from health facilities, but OHCHR did not report its methodology. If, for example, they are conducting site visits, then being denied access to certain areas, a practice both sides in the war have used, would limit their ability to gather accurate data.

The United Nations’ track record on Yemen’s civil war shows that it has often dodged key issues, leading critics to say it is beholden to state interests. Several reports by international Human Rights groups show that all belligerent parties have committed atrocities that could amount to war crimes. Nonetheless, these reports have made remarkably little difference at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) or other top UN bodies. In 2015, the UNHCR adopted what Human Rights Watch called a “deeply flawed resolution,” abandoning a Dutch-led draft resolution to create an independent commission, due to pressure from Saudi and “insufficient support” from permanent Security Council members the United States and United Kingdom. The resolution that was passed created an inquiry body led by Saudi Arabia and Riyadh-based Yemeni government—allies in the war against rebels—that has not produced any significant reports. In 2016, the UK blocked another call to establish an independent international inquiry. This futile battle for a more rights-based approach reflects what powerful UN state members want influences the future of any accountability process in Yemen war.

If the current call for a commission is successful, it will likely result in a heavily biased body. The risk, then, would be that the commission would not only fail to properly investigate possible war crimes, but that by failing to do so it could also legitimize some of the belligerent parties and their actions and worsen the conflict. The UN decisions up until now show just that.

In 2011, the United Nations, with the help of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), co-led a power transfer deal. However, the deal did not include any transitional justice process, and granted impunity to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and members of his close circle. This opened the door for Saleh to continue to fuel internal conflicts. In 2015, the passing of 2216 UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution gave an international legitimacy to the Saudi-led coalition military operations backed by two of the world’s most powerful UN state members: the United States and United Kingdom. The impetus for the resolution was a letter by president Hadi to the Security Council, pleading for the GCC “to immediately provide support, by all necessary means and measures, including military intervention, to protect Yemen and its people from the continuing aggression by the Houthis.” Although Resolution 2216 was framed in terms of peace and stability for Yemen, the specific criticisms were directed at the Houthis. The resolution declared support for the GCC’s efforts and imposed an arms embargo on Saleh and Houthis. Only the Houthis were called on to disarm. The resolution was passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, opening the door for international intervention and legitimizing the Saudi-led coalition’s military approach. While political and military domestic conflicts are not a novelty in Yemen, legitimizing the international military intervention without a mechanism to ensure the protection of rights undermines traditional, local conflict resolution mechanisms, and worsens the humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations’ systematic failure to take positive steps to hold the Saudi-led coalition responsible is because it is subject to the nation-states it represents and dependent on their funds. Saudi, for instance, was able to force the United Nations to withdraw the Saudi-led coalition from the annual UN “list of shame” for violations against children in Yemen. The withdrawal supposedly came after Saudi threatened to pull hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the United Nations, although Saudi denies doing so.

Further undermining the UN processes on Yemen is that one of the UNHRC’s current members is Saudi Arabia, which holds the position despite a poor human rights record and being rated as “not free” in Freedom House’s annual report, Freedom in the World. The position is supposed to give it the opportunity to promote and protect human rights, and enforce UN human rights mechanisms; but Saudi has instead used it to prevent the UNHRC’s Special Procedures from visiting Saudi and arrested Saudi citizens who have spoken at the UNHRC.

The United Nation’s behavior on Yemen is not unprecedented. In the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009), the UN failed to protect civilians and showed a lack of political will to stop atrocities when it could, mainly under pressure from the United Kingdom, which was preserving its colonial relation to the South Asian region. A contemporary example is the UN Security Council’s failure to take any decisive action to end the war in Syria.

What is different about Yemen is that the main state preventing the UN from taking decisive action is Saudi, which is not a member of the UN Security Council and, even if it was, would not have veto power. However, two of Saudi’s biggest supporters are the United States and United Kingdom, both permanent members of the UN Security Council. The United States and United Kingdom have strong economic and security relations with Saudi. They see Saudi as a partner in countering violent extremism in the region, and also are dependent on Saudi oil. The Gulf country is also a major customer of arms from the United States and United Kingdom.

Without full political backing, a commission of inquiry will likely be fruitless. Last month, Carla del Ponte resigned from the UN commission of inquiry in Syria, stating that lack of political support from the Security Council made the task impossible. Realizing these challenges, and the fact that the dynamics at the UN have posed dramatic consequences into Yemen conflict, the United Nations should consider how first to push Saudi Arabia, the United States, and United Kingdom to demonstrate a political desire in ending the Yemen war. The United Nations can capitalize on its role as a mediator and bring the focus to long term human and financial costs, as well as the fact that the destabilized country is fertile ground for extremist groups. To end Yemen’s war and stabilize the country requires a well-thought out approach that balances the need for security with transitional justice and establishing a responsive, democratic government. This is no small task, but the first step is convincing the Saudi-led coalition this is in its best interests.

Save Yemen before the famine rages

One of Yemeni graffiti artist, Murad Subay's work in Sana'a street, reflecting on the humanitarian crisis. 

*The war in Yemen has been often described by media as the forgotten war and in my view, that’s an inaccurate description. It’s rather a lucrative war; lucrative to the West and the East. It has been nineteenth months since the Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US and Britain, began its airstrikes campaign. This came following an attempted coup d'etat against president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi by Yemen’s rebels group – the Houthis – in September 2014. Ever since, the West has been showing indifference to the tragedy in Yemen. As the US, UK and other Western countries have an interest in the arms sale with the Saudis, and a number of Arab countries are themselves members of the coalition, and the Houthi-Saleh coalition stands as deadly to thousands of Yemeni civilians, the international community is turning a blind eye to the atrocities in Yemen, mostly the silent death of thousands of Yemenis through starvation.

Towards the end of Yemen’s post-uprising transitional period in 2014, Yemen started to witness a counter-revolution movement, manifested in Houthis-Saleh alliance, each motivated by its own agenda. Houthis were discontent with the new political realignment preparing Yemen for a new ruling system (Federalism) and led by their political agenda in restoring a religious imamate and resuming their hierarchical supremacy. Saleh was led by resentment and aiming at crushing those who helped oust him in 2011. Over the coming months, the alliance began an aggressive military campaign against Saleh’s oppositional forces, which included president Hadi, after the Houthis descended to Sana’a and militarily took over the capital and stormed into Hadi’s presidential palace. Consequently, Hadi escaped to Saudi Arabia and sought support. In the name of restoring legitimacy in Yemen, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition consisting of 11 Arab states and launched its airstrikes campaign.


Midst this complex conflict, Yemeni people pay a heavy price as they are directly and indirectly affected. The human cost in Yemen war has reached a critical stage, causing the death of at least 10,000 people, the displacement of more than 3 million people and a worsening humanitarian situation for 80% of Yemen’s 27 million population. One of the devastating impacts of the war is hunger and the predicted famine unfolding itself in front of the world’s eyes and next to some of the world’s richest countries. Over half of Yemen’s population – 14.4 million Yemenis unable to meet their food needs and 19.4 million people lacking clean water and sanitation. As children are the most vulnerable, it is estimated that 320,000 children in Yemen face severe malnutrition. All these indicators are nothing but an early warning of a looming famine.

Photos courtesy: Oxfam. 

Hunger Causes

Prior to the ongoing conflict, several factors made Yemen not only one of the poorest countries in the world but also the poorest Arab country in the Arab region. In light of major domestic events, Yemenis have been suffering a life under overlapping deprivations. The foremost event was the return of about one million Yemeni guest workers from Gulf countries to Yemen in 1990 following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait contributed greatly to needs of jobs, schools, healthcare and other basic social services. Then, in light of Yemen’s unification and the country’s failure to manage the challenges of integrating the North and the South’s economic systems and resolving the implications of the post-civil war period; all these events and much more had a devastating impact on the developmental growth of the country.

In 2009, nearly half of Yemen’s population were living under the poverty line. To be poor in Yemen meant to be food insecure, with no clean water, illiterate and unable to afford feeding your kids nutritious food. Thus, Yemen was repeatedly ranked at the bottom in the Human Development Index. Yemen even failed to achieve decreasing the hunger rate, which was one of the UN’s millennium goals. While all these figures were emerging, Yemen’s ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh was busy piling up his wealth in billions.

Midst of a milieu of ongoing instability, corruption and unequal distribution of national wealth, and out of social inequality and major economic grievances, Yemen’s 2011 uprising broke out leading the country into a vicious circle of one political crisis after another impacting the already fragile economy to decline further.

As Yemen has been rolling into an eco-political shock after another over years, the ongoing conflict has tremendously exacerbated the food safety. For a country that relies on the import of 90 percent of its food commodities, it’s extremely difficult to cope with the current dire humanitarian situation. The World Food Program explains, “fuel shortages and import restrictions have reduced the availability of essential food commodities in the country.” As Yemen was already crumbling by the ongoing conflict, the occurrence of a couple of natural disasters in the past few years; from flash floods to powerful cyclone have had an appalling effect on the situation.

Photo courtesy: Oxfam.

Man-Made Famine

Although the war is a contributory factor, hunger in Yemen is largely a man-made catastrophe for which both the Saudis and the Houthis bear vast responsibility. They are both using food as a systematic and strategic weapon in the war. A blockade over Yemen’s main ports has been placed by the Saudi-led coalition since the beginning of the war, denying flights and shipments of fuel, food and medicine supplies. According to a UN reporter, the Saudis as well forbid aid agencies from delivering humanitarian aid to Houthi-controlled areas. Over the past few months, a number of bridges used to transport UN food aid have been bombed by the coalition. In parallel, the Houthi-Saleh coalition has systematically put people to death in battled areas by denying besieged people access to water and food; this is evident formerly in Aden and currently in Taiz. As a quick solution, a black market for goods is thriving in the country, where only those few who can afford the high prices in the market can buy. The World Bank today estimates that almost all Yemen’s population live under the poverty line.

Silence is a War Crime

Millions of Yemenis are not only poor today but they are also in despair and hungry for both peace and food. As more than 21 million of people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance inside Yemen, this catastrophe is more than anywhere else in the world, including Syria. As human rights issues blogger and activist, I am frustrated by the world’s apathy over the tragedy in Yemen. I always write and give talks about the situation in Yemen, and after describing the devastating current picture, I try to ask the world to imagine that Yemen was hit by an earthquake, hoping that this would encourage them to rally and help this impoverished nation. Instead Yemenis are met with worldwide indifference and left to die in silence. Not taking an action to save Yemen before the famine rages is a choice the the international community is making which unfortunately will be regarded as a disgrace to the international humanitarian system (22 September 2016).

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*This essay was originally published in Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation's website on September 29, 2016.