Though it hasn’t been hitting the headlines recently, the situation in Yemen has been rapidly deteriorating and looks set to grow worse in the coming months. The country now seems to have fallen into all-out civil war, with a level of complexity which echoes the catastrophic war occurring 1,500 miles north in Syria.
The war in Yemen is part of the larger Sunni-Shia conflict currently shaking the Middle East. There are the Houthis, a Shia Islamist group, which back in February forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi out of Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. Hadi is supported by Sunni militia in the south of the country, as well as parts of the security forces who have remained loyal to him, and by a Saudi-led coalition which started bombing the predominantly Houthi-controlled west of the country in late-March.
The Houthis themselves are not alone either; they have the support of those in the security forces who back Hadi’s predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who belongs to the same Zaidiyyah sect of Shia Islam as them.
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