By Maher Mughrabi
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What is happening in Yemen?
As of April 14, the World Health Organisation estimated that more than 600 Yemenis had been killed and more than 2000 injured as a conflict that has been going on since 2011 intensified from March 19 onwards. The WHO says the longer-term conflict has seen more than 250,000 Yemenis leave the country and more than 330,000 internally displaced.
A man reacts at the site of an air strike in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on April 8.Credit: Reuters
On March 25 Saudi Arabia intervened in the conflict as part of what it called Operation Decisive Storm, claiming the backing of 10 other countries in the region and the United States for a campaign of air strikes against the rebels. The Saudis have also approached a number of their coalition partners, including Egypt, Sudan and Pakistan, to supply ground troops in support of their intervention.
Yemen, a country of about 26 million people which has existed in its current form since 1990, was the poorest of the Arab states that experienced political upheaval during the "Arab Spring" of 2011 and 2012. Popular protests there led to the eventual removal of long-serving dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, but as elsewhere in the Middle East, disputes over the subsequent direction of the nation have degenerated into open warfare.
Yemenis carry the body of a child from houses hit by Saudi air strikes near Sanaa Airport on March 26.Credit: AP
What is the main driver of the current conflict?
Despite what many Western analysts would have us believe, the answer is not the centuries-old sectarian divide between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
Although the rebels who entered the capital Sanaa in February and have now pressed into the south of the country belong to the Zaydi sect of Shiite Islam, which is estimated to form between 35 and 45 per cent of the population, one of the keys to their recent success has been support from forces loyal to Saleh - a Sunni - and the party he headed for 30 years, the General People's Congress.
Sunnis in Yemen are divided in many ways, but the chief driver of the present conflict would appear to be regionalism along the historical division between the country's north and south.
Houthi rebels hold up their weapons in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.Credit: Reuters
Weren't the north and the south separate countries?
From 1970 until 1990, Yemen was divided in much the same way as the Korean Peninsula, but with the polarities reversed. On one side was a Republic (South Korea, North Yemen) broadly aligned with Washington, and on the other was a People's Democratic Republic (North Korea, South Yemen) that was part of the Communist bloc. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, South Yemen was effectively absorbed by North Yemen, which Saleh had ruled since 1978.
Ancient City of Sanaa in Yemen, 2013.Credit: Rod Waddington/Flickr Creative Commons
The major difference between Yemen and Korea is that Yemenis do not have long centuries of shared nationhood to draw on, having been divided into tribal fiefdoms and kingdoms for much of the last 200 years. Another notable division is between the country's urban and densely populated west and its rural and sparsely populated east.
So why not just go back to the way things were?
Demonstrators in support of the Saudi intervention hold posters of Saudi King Salman in the south-western city of Taiz on March 29.Credit: Reuters
The cold war in the region these days is not between the USA and the USSR but between "stability" - represented by Saudi Arabia, the Sunni Arab regimes and the Pentagon - and "resistance", represented by Iran and Syria and their allies, a bloc that is avowedly anti-American and anti-Israeli.
When the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels began to defeat the forces of "stability" led by President Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and its regional allies felt forced to intervene to stop Iranian power extending to another Arab capital. Forces aligned with Iran already control Baghdad in Iraq, Beirut in Lebanon and are fighting to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power in Damascus.
A woman supporting former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh wears rings and badges showing Saleh and his son Ahmed Ali Saleh (in sunglasses, above her nose) during a rally in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.Credit: Reuters
Has anything like this happened in Yemen before?
Yes, in northern Yemen, but with one crucial difference. The last time Saudi Arabia raised a coalition to fight in Yemen, in 1962, they were opposing revolutionary Egypt, not revolutionary Iran. Then as now the Saudis relied on support from the Jordanian monarchy and Pakistan, but they also had Iran (then a monarchy ruled by the Shah) in their corner, and this coalition - with covert help from Britain and Israel - fought to save the Yemeni king even though he was the head of a Shiite religious dynasty.
People dig graves for the victims of an air strike in Okash village near Sanaa on April 4.Credit: Reuters
Moscow supported Egypt's intervention, but without enthusiasm, and although northern Yemen did become a republic, the intervention bled Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser dry financially and politically. The Yemen war ended in 1970, and has since been called "Egypt's Vietnam".
What will happen next?
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, right, talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during their meeting in Tehran on April 7.Credit: AP
Both sides in the conflict insist they want a return to the UN-sponsored talks that broke down in January, but they disagree over the venue, with the rebels insisting it should be the Yemeni capital Sanaa (which they hold) and the Saudis offering to host the talks themselves.
Iran has sent warships to the region but given that Iran is already fighting wars in Syria and Iraq as well as conducting sensitive negotiations with the West over its nuclear program and ongoing sanctions, the Houthis are unlikely to see the ayatollahs ride to their rescue.
What the conflict needs is a circuit-breaker, a broker who has the standing and the credibility with both sides to announce a face-saving compromise. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has visited Tehran this week for talks with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, might once have played this role but his strong opposition to Iran's role in Syria probably makes it impossible now. It is hard to see who else might step in.
What do Yemenis want to happen?
If this question had a straightforward answer, we wouldn't be here. Yemen is now the stage for a conflict between six major factions:
Maher Mughrabi is Foreign Editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
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