High-level policymakers working on Yemen often resemble firefighters: moving from crisis to crisis, rarely affording themselves time to take stock of the bigger picture. Five years on from the launch of Operation Decisive Storm stakeholders remain transfixed by short-term political and military developments in Yemen, such as the recent Houthi advances in Al-Jawf governorate or the stagnant political process. The…

The most appropriate way to chronicle the performance of the internationally recognized Yemeni government since the outbreak of war in the country is by listing its failures. The five years since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen on behalf of the government of President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi has seen misstep after misstep. These failings have occurred on multiple fronts…

The wider Yemen war is made up of various individual conflicts and collaborations among local and regional actors, and there is no place where these intricacies intersect more than Taiz

A Yemeni patient, recently returned from Egypt, presented to the emergency room of a hospital in Aden this month with flu-like symptoms — a fever and a cough. After taking his history and a few other details, he was provisionally diagnosed with the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19.

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…