The international community cannot be allowed to forget about Yemen

It is a cruel war. Blockades and sieges inflict untold harm on ordinary people. A majority struggle to meet the food needs of their families. At least half a million children under the age of five are suffering from extreme malnutrition. Breakouts of diseases like cholera are rampant. The fragile economy has long since collapsed.

Last Sunday marked the eighth anniversary of Yemen’s harrowing civil war – one of the worst armed conflicts in recent history, particularly for civilians. Hopes that the complicated conflict will peter out after so many years, so much misery, and at least 15,000 deaths, are at a high point.

Too high, in fact; and there is a grave danger that what has been described frequently as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis will continue, and that it will slide even further down an already crowded global agenda.

Raising hopes for peace is the endurance, thus far, of a United Nations ceasefire deal brokered exactly one year ago, on 2 April 2022. The truce deal expired on 2 October, but has largely held over the last six months. Fighting in certain parts of the country has decreased, even as key hotspots around Yemen continue to smoulder. Modest steps such as prisoner exchanges are being carried out between the Houthis and the Aden government.

Then came the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the international patrons of the main forces fighting each other in Yemen. Many around the world cheered the resumption of relations, hoping the Iranians would persuade the Houthi movement that currently controls the capital, Sanaa, to compromise with the Saudi-backed internationally recognised government in Aden.

If only ending Yemen’s war were as simple as announcing the reopening of mutual embassies in Riyadh and Tehran for morning visa applications and afternoon tea.

This week, even as Saudi Arabia and Iran contemplated forthcoming diplomatic tete-a-tetes, Houthi forces launched fresh offensives against Yemeni government positions in the provinces of Marib, Shabwa and Taiz.

The Houthis, whose movement is officially known as Ansar Allah, used drones and rockets. Hundreds of civilians fled for their lives, adding to the 12,000 the war has already displaced during the first three months of the year, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

The budding diplomatic rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran may help to curb some of the foreign weapons shipments and financing of a conflict that has turned into something like a proxy war between regional rivals. But Yemen’s home-grown fractures have yet to be healed. They include the war between the Houthis and the forces of the internationally recognised government, but also a conflict between southern separatists and everyone else.

The Chinese-brokered deal bringing Iran and Saudi Arabia together was a big win for Beijing’s prestige, but short on actual substance. Riyadh and Tehran hosted diplomatic missions in each other’s countries for years, yet continued to wage proxy and media wars against each other.

Saudi Arabia clearly wants to withdraw from the Yemen conflict. After years of daring international gambits, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to have shifted course on foreign affairs, hoping to wind down entanglements abroad and focus his efforts on revamping the kingdom’s economy and society.

But withdrawing from a conflict does not necessarily mean ending it. Houthi animosity towards Saudi Arabia began decades ago, when the Zaydi Muslim sect began objecting to the exportation of Sunni fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam to the country’s northern regions. Saudi Arabia has now all but abandoned Wahhabism, easing a long-standing source of hostility. Riyadh and the Houthis have been speaking, directly or indirectly, for a year. A deal in which Riyadh ignores Houthi ambitions in Yemen, as long as the group halts attacks on Saudi territory and interests, is not out of the question.

“The situation has some complexity to it,” says Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst. “Of course, the Saudi priority is no attacks, but Saudi is also a player in internal Yemeni politics and will help its allies there – not necessarily through military action.”

It is not at all clear that Iran is so eager to end a war that costs it no blood and little treasure, and manages to generate so many headaches for Saudi Arabia. But even if Tehran did decide to make good on its vague commitments on Yemen, in an attempt to bolster relations with China and calm relations with Riyadh, there is no guarantee that it could get the Houthis to stop fighting.

Iranians have influence over the Houthis. But the Houthis’ grievances and militancy predate the involvement of Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, its ally in Yemen. The fit between the Zaydi sect and Iran’s Twelver Shi’ism was always uncomfortable, despite some ideological similarities – such as avowed opposition to Israel and US hegemony. But there remain huge cultural gaps between Iran’s urbanised Persian-speaking military and clerical elite and the complex, vital tribal tapestry of Arabic-speaking Yemen.

“Despite claims that Yemen is a proxy war, Iran exerts little influence over the Houthis,” says Arwa Mokdad, a Yemeni peace activist and analyst. “As the war drags on, their relationship has been strengthened, but there remain stark differences, namely in religious doctrine and political aims.”

The war is often described as a stalemate, but the main problem is that the Houthis are winning. They control huge swaths of the country and are continually picking up new allies. While there is little possibility of the Houthis monopolising power over an unruly tribal society like that of Yemen, they will seek to dictate the terms of any settlement.

“The Houthis aren’t about to stop fighting their rivals in Yemen, no matter what deal the group signs with Saudi Arabia,” writes Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen-focused journalist and a former member of the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen.

Even as both Iranian and Saudi officials and media have noticeably toned down criticism of each other over Yemen, the Houthis have upped their rhetoric.

“We renew our warning to the countries of aggression that if they do not heed the warnings and advice of the leader of the revolution to stop their aggression, lift their siege, and leave the occupied Yemeni lands, they will very much regret it,” Houthi defence minister Major General Muhammad Nasser al-Atifi said on 29 March.

Western leaders, Yemeni stakeholders and international organisations must get to grips with the fact that the Yemen conflict will likely continue, and perhaps even worsen, regardless of whether Iran and Saudi Arabia kiss and make up. Even if both decide to disengage from the conflict, the world must remain engaged, provide humanitarian aid to desperate civilian victims, and press all sides diplomatically for a permanent peace.