From the beginning of the Yemen conflict in 2015, the United Nations Security Council has been quick to condemn the armed Houthi movement. Initially, at least, this made sense. The Houthis are a non-state actor that seized power in a coup. The Yemeni government, led by President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is a member of the UN – in bureaucratic…

Saudi Arabia launched its military intervention in Yemen in March 2015, initially at the head of a coalition of 10 states, with the official objective of re-establishing the government of President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the capital, Sana’a, from where it had been expelled the previous September by the Houthis. Five years later, Saudi Arabia is now stuck in…

When Qasim al-Raymi mourned his predecessor and lifelong friend, he said the 2015 US drone strike that killed Nasir al-Wuhayshi had fulfilled the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader’s dream of martyrdom. Following Al-Raymi’s own death in a US military operation this January in Yemen, his assassination has stirred debate about whether AQAP can survive without this charismatic and…

More than 15 years ago, in November 2003, the United States and the then Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh defeated the first iteration of Al-Qaeda in Yemen. That victory did not last long. Less than two-and-a-half years later, in February 2006, 23 Al-Qaeda suspects tunneled out of a prison in Sana’a and into a neighboring mosque, where they…

The fall of Al-Jawf to the armed Houthi movement significantly changes the course of the war in Yemen, militarily clearing the Houthis’ path to move into oil-rich Marib governorate, as well as politically and diplomatically in ongoing not-so-secret negotiations between the group and Saudi Arabia. Al-Jawf’s capital, Al-Hazm, fell at the end of February with Houthi and government officials confirming…

Since September 2016, competing branches of the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) have operated from either side of the frontlines in the country’s ongoing armed conflict, with the resultant fragmentation in monetary policy increasingly undermining domestic currency stability. Recently this has led to an accelerating collapse of the Yemeni rial-based currency system altogether and driven a migration toward the use of hard currencies – primarily Saudi riyals and United States dollars – for financial transactions inside the country.

On returning from work one evening, my house was unusually quiet. Only my sister was home, and she was packing up a few things. I knew immediately my parents had taken the decision she and I had been resisting for weeks: we were leaving the home I had grown up in. Armed fighters on every street, especially those visible from…

The most important aspect of the Riyadh Agreement that was signed in the Saudi capital today between the internationally recognized Yemeni government and the Southern Transitional Council (STC) is that, if fully implemented, it will mean that Saudi Arabia will assume ultimate responsibility for southern Yemen politically, militarily and in terms of security, with the United Arab Emirates relinquishing its authority over its Yemeni proxies there.