20 Years Of The Yemen War: What’s The Situation & How Is The Conflict Affecting Civilians?
On 30 September 2000, a Palestinian cameraman captured the defining image of the Second Intifada in Gaza: Jamal al-Durrah crouching against a wall shielding his 12-year-old son Muhammed from bullets as the boy screamed in terror. The footage caught the moment Muhammed was killed, his body lying limp in his father’s lap. The video was viewed by millions. Among those who saw it was 41-year-old Yemeni Husayn al-Houthi. It is said that as he watched it, he reacted with the words that would become the infamous slogan of the Houthi movement established in his name: “Death to America, Death to Israel… Victory to Islam.”
Solidarity for Palestine has long been close to Yemenis’ hearts – for the Houthis, it is part of their identity. The slogan spread rapidly, cemented by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. By 2004, its growing public use by the Zaydi revivalist movement was causing friction with Yemen’s then president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and drawing complaint from the American ambassador in Sana’a. The dispute between Husayn and Saleh led to the first of six wars between Yemeni government forces alongside Salafi tribesmen and the Houthis. Three months into the 2004 conflict, Husayn was shot dead.
June 2024 marks 20 years of the Houthis being at war, from a rag-tag militia in 2004 to becoming Yemen’s de-facto government today. The first decade as an insurgency, the second a civil war that doubled as a proxy conflict between the region’s greatest rivals: Iran, which backs the Houthis, and Saudi Arabia.
In early 2014, violence erupted again in the Houthi northern stronghold of Sa’ada. Riding a wave of popular discontent over government corruption and a rise in fuel prices, the Houthis seized control of the capital Sana’a in September 2014 with the help of their old enemy, Saleh and his loyalists in the military. In February 2015, Saleh’s successor, President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, escaped Houthi house arrest eventually fleeing to Saudi Arabia, prompting the Kingdom to launch a bombing campaign against the Houthis in a military intervention that has yet to be resolved.
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During the conflict, the Saudis imposed a de-facto blockade, restricting inbound goods in a country that imports 80% of its staple food supplies. Farmland, water infrastructure and fishermen were all targeted, with devastating consequences. The air war killed and injured almost 20,000 civilians. The estimated death toll stood at 377,000 by the end of 2021, a result of direct violence and indirect causes including malnutrition. Nearly 70% of the dead were children under five. At the peak of the humanitarian crisis, 80% of the 30 million population needed humanitarian aid, with near famine conditions reported in seven governorates across Yemen.
The Houthis contributed to the humanitarian crisis by appropriating and taxing aid. They regularly used siege tactics in cities including Taiz, cutting off medical aid, food and even water supplies. Long before the current attacks on commercial shipping, the first vessels targeted by the Houthis were humanitarian supply ships bringing food and medicine to the residents of the besieged port city of Aden in 2015.
Under Houthi rule, women are not allowed to travel without a male guardian, while those brave enough to speak out against the regime face arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence and the death penalty. Press access is limited, with the visas and additional security permissions required often taking months to materialise. The restrictions have led to Yemen’s conflict being labelled the “Forgotten War” – despite being described by UN agencies as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.
Houthi survival relies on the existence of an external enemy. Until a ceasefire in 2022, that enemy was Saudi Arabia and its Western backers. Now, it’s Israel and its allies. The October 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza was timely for the Houthis. Days earlier, demonstrators had taken to the streets of major cities in the first significant protests against their authority.
In November 2023, the Houthis launched their campaign against international shipping by hijacking the cargo ship Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea. Since then, the Houthis have targeted over 100 ships, killing three mariners and sinking one vessel in one of the world’s busiest transport chokepoints. Houthi leader Abdelmalik al-Houthi – younger brother of Husayn – pledged to continue attacks until there’s a ceasefire and a free flow of aid to Gaza. On 12 January, the US and the UK responded by launching a bombing campaign against Houthi weapons facilities and missile launch sites.
Although the humanitarian situation has improved somewhat from the peak of the crisis in 2021, last December the World Food Programme suspended operations in northern Yemen after failing to reach an agreement with Houthi authorities over aid distribution amid a funding drop of 45% in the last five years. An estimated 4.5 million Yemenis remain displaced, and more than 75% are women and children. Yemen’s heavy reliance on food imports makes it vulnerable to supply shocks. The Red Sea crisis driving up food prices, combined with complications for importers created by the US listing of the Houthis as a Specially Designated Terrorist Organization in January, will hurt the vulnerable the hardest.
Iona Craig is a British-Irish freelance investigative journalist. She covers Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula for news outlets including CNN, Channel 4, BBC, The Times, The Guardian and many more. She has won awards including the Orwell Prize for journalism in 2016 and the George Polk Award in 2018
