In 2015, Tanzim al-Qaeda fi Jazirat al-Arab, or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), had established de facto rule in Yemen’s fifth largest city Mukalla, held swathes of territory in the east of the country and controlled strategic smuggling points across the country’s eastern coastline. The local franchise of the global militant organization had exploited the chaos instigated by the…

After nearly five years of conflict, Yemen is more fragmented than at any time in recent history. The war has exacerbated long-standing grievances and created new fractures in Yemen’s social fabric. While the origins of the conflict lie in a political struggle for power, fighting has awakened a sectarian narrative, revived calls for secession in the south, and generally eroded Yemen’s social cohesion. These fissures are a legacy of the war and they threaten to destabilize the country long after…

The 2014 proposal to partition Yemen into a federal system was one of the major causes of the current conflict. The plan, proposed by President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, was supposedly intended to put the country on the path to a more peaceful future by addressing long standing regional grievances toward the central government. These resentments stem largely from a sense of injustice regarding inequitable development in the country and the monopolization of political, economic and military authority in the…

Introduction The United States (US) has traditionally viewed Yemen as both a counterterrorism problem to be managed and as an extension of its policy toward Saudi Arabia. For President Donald Trump’s administration this has meant the continuation and expansion of two separate yet overlapping wars in Yemen, both of which began under previous administrations. In the war against al-Qaeda in…

Yemen’s banking sector faces a litany of challenges stemming from the country’s ongoing economic collapse and the warring parties’ competition for financial control. The most critical challenge is the division of the central bank between Sana’a and Aden and the fierce competition between these two branches over the administration and regulation of the country’s commercial and Islamic banks. In February,…