Throughout the past two and a half years, the middle-eastern country of Yemen has been becoming increasingly destabilized, a situation which began with a rough political transition and the corresponding rise of the Houthi rebel movement and jihadist groups. It began with massive protests in 2012, the President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a very authoritarian leader, was forced to resign, leaving Abdrabbuh Hadi in his place. However, once in office, Hadi faced many unavoidable difficulties due to the state of the country at the time and thus he lost much support due to the problems which arose. One of Hadi’s main challenges was how to deal with the Houthi rebels, a Shia group which opposes the internationally-recognized government. As Hadi’s popularity decreased, though, more and more citizens began to sympathize with the Houthi, giving them even more power and allowing them to gain control of the more northerly parts of Yemen. Eventually they would take over the capital city, Sanaa. This forced Hadi and his administration into hiding and eventually into exile, to the southern part of the country and abroad. The Saudis then became involved, forming a coalition with other Sunni powers in an attempt to prevent the Houthis from taking over the country, in part triggered by a Houthi missile being fired on Riyadh. Their bombing and bombardments, supported by the US, UK, and France, brought yet more devastation to an already war-torn Yemen. The most significant and disturbing effect of Saudi involvement though, is the blockade which they have established to weaken the country. Yemen has to import nearly all its food and resources due to the nature of the desert environment and the effect of the Saudi blockade has consequently been utterly devastating. While this is undoubtedly part of the Saudi’s plan to weaken the Houthis’ hold on Yemen, it has left tens of millions of helpless people in a state of famine. This then leaves the international community with a moral dilemma: how much infliction of human suffering can be allowed to a political end before it is unacceptable? And how can other countries effectively resist the Saudi blockade, especially when many support the Saudis’ objectives? \u00a0 And if other countries do intervene, how can they do so without becoming overly involved and causing further issues in the region?<\/p>\n
The first thing which the international community must do after deciding not to blatantly ignore the Yemen is to put pressure on the Saudis to let up on the blockade. And indeed this is what Theresa May, the British prime minister, has just done on her trip to Saudi Arabia. However more world leaders should be doing the same to assert the statement strongly enough for the Saudis to take it seriously. It is the responsibility of influential countries around the world to come together hold Saudi Arabia accountable in the face of this humanitarian crisis. However, intervention shouldn’t be pushed too far. Foreign involvement in the Middle East has historically not ended well and while the current Saudi tactics do seem brutal, their objectives are certainly legitimate. So the difficulty lies in averting the humanitarian crisis while not disrupting the complicating the political situation further and still allowing Saudi Arabia to resist the Houthis in Yemen in an effective, but less inhumane manner.<\/p>\n
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Throughout the past two and a half years, the middle-eastern country of Yemen has been becoming increasingly destabilized, a situation which began with a rough political transition and the corresponding rise of the Houthi rebel movement and jihadist groups. It began with massive protests in 2012, the President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a very authoritarian leader, was forced to resign, leaving… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1091,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions\/1091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}