The Yemen Crisis

Facts

• Fighting: A civil war has raged in Yemen since 2014, with multiple factions fighting each other. Both the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-Backed Hadi side claim to be Yemen's official government. The Southern Transitional Council backed by the United Arab Emirates also controls significant area, while Sunni militant groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda have influence in some parts.¹
• Casualties: According to a UN report, the conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, mainly children, at a rate of one child dying every 9 minutes during 2021. It is often described as the worst humanitarian crisis of this millennium.²
• Atrocities: The Iran-, Saudi- and UAE-backed sides have all been accused of war crimes, including use of child soldiers. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have also been accused of causing famine through a blockade and of indiscriminate bombing of civilians using weapons mainly from the United States.³
• Cause: Although parties blame each other, the conflict is often described as a proxy war between Shiite Iran (via the mainly shiite Houthis) and various Sunni factions backed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and its American and European allies.⁴

Sources: ¹Democracy Now, ²UNDP, ³Relief Web, and ⁴Wikipedia.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by The National. The Houthis are an Iran-backed terrorist group that violently overthrew Yemen's internatonally recognized government in 2014 and now perpetrates terrorist attacks on Saudi Arabia and the UAE with Iranian drones. The Houthis don't represent Yemen's legitimate government, and must be defeated. Saudi Arabia and its allies have tried to negotiate peace in good faith, but all efforts have been rejected.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by AntiWar. There cannot be peace in Yemen until the Saudis and Emiratis' brutal war and blockade is ended. The two nations are conducting war crimes in Yemen and the Houthis' resistance is just as legitimate as the resistance in Ukraine. The US and Western allies provide the weapons for these war crimes, and could quickly stop this war if they cared more about Yemeni civilians than about money, oil and power.
• Cynical narrative, as provided by The Washington Post. The war in Yemen, now in its eighth year, is every bit as brutal as what's taking place in Ukraine. The West's failure to address this humanitarian disaster or cover it in the media with any sort of urgency says a lot about its inherent bias and who it considers worthy and unworthy victims.