Yemen, the wound that still bleeds in the Middle East

Abstract

In 2011 Yemen began a process of profound political-social changes. At that time, various actors of the multiform civil society mobilized, achieving the removal of their president, who for more than thirty years had governed the republic, and began a promising transition to a new political system. However, the lack of real solutions led this process to be truncated little by little and the armed conflict broke out. This situation of instability led the Gulf monarchies, led by Saudi Arabia, to decide to form an international coalition and intervene militarily to stop the rebels, claiming that they were driven by Iran. However, the operation was a complete failure and the confrontations lasted for more than five years, without throwing clear winners and turning Yemen into a true humanitarian catastrophe. In turn, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 added a new dimension to the crisis, and affected the political positioning of the intervening actors. In this way, in our work we aim to identify why the conflict has reached such a level of violence and external penetration, as well as to evaluate the health and geopolitical impact of COVID-19. In relation to the first objective, we hypothesize that a local dynamic of strong political, identity, sectarian and tribal disputes among Yemeni actors has become perniciously intertwined with a regional dynamic of dispute for hegemony between different states in the region. In relation to the second objective, we maintain that COVID-19 has aggravated the humanitarian situation to an unprecedented level, and that it has forced, especially external actors, to rethink their level of intervention in it.