21 April 2015

War in Yemen: The African Dimension

Richard Reeve
17 April 2015


The war in Yemen and its exacerbation through international military intervention is a tragedy first and foremost for the Yemeni people as their state fragments and thousands of lives and livelihoods are lost. Yet the shifting alignments that the build-up to Operation Decisive Storm has occasioned in inter-Arab relations may also have far-reaching consequences for Northeast Africa. Saudi Arabia’s growing rapprochement with Qatar, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood may be an opportunity for conflict resolution in Libya but it will cement the power of Sudan’s once isolated regime.
Continuity and Change in Arabian Geopolitics

The internationalisation of the war in Yemen since late March has sucked in a coalition of nine Arab states, the United States and, reportedly backing the Ansar Allah (better known as Houthis) insurgency, Iran. Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led intervention, is the most overt manifestation yet of the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran as the Middle East’s competing regional powers. 

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