Written by: Sairash Sharma Gautam - 21118, Grade XII
Posted on: 12 October, 2020
Yemen is one of the countries in the Middle East which is connected to Omen in the east, Saudi Arabia in the north, and the sea in the remaining borders. There is a war going on in Yemen that is more dangerous than the war happening in Syria. This war is also known as proxy war because there is a closed conflict between Saudi and Iran who are using Yemen as their proxy war spot.
The initial cause of this war was the Arab Spring. Arab spring was the movement of different countries to get rid of autocratic rulers and make them a republic country. After this internal war between these autocratic rulers and citizens, all countries except Syria and Yemen were free.
Now Seeing inside Yemen what had caused this war….
There was a conflict between Present President, Ali Abdullah Salah, and army chief, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar as Salah wanted his son, Ahmed Ali Salah to be the army chief. And the military was also split in half. Some were in support of Salah and others were in the support of Ahmer. In 2011 they started to mobilize their forces because of which internal war started and as the military was divided into two factions the military was weak. Whose advantage was taken by a local rebel, Abdul Malik Al Houthi, who was not satisfied by the government?
Yemen at that time had a government led by Sunni and Houthi’s were Shia. Houthi now started to take action and occupied many regions of North Yemen which were initially ignored by the military. Houthi were being supported by Iran because Iran is Shia and Iran placed Naval vessels in the Gulf of Aden for supporting Houthi. The main purpose of Iran to support Houthis was to take control of Saudi Arabia. Now Scared Salah went to ask Saudi for help and Saudi offered it to them. Saudi started to bombard those places which were Houthis conquered areas and because of which Yemen started suffering for Saudi and Iran. Salah now wanted to kill Ahmar so he gave the misinformation about Houthis being at the place where Ahmar was. Hearing that Saudi immediately bombarded Ahmer to kill him and the Houthis but luckily he survived. Now Ahmar realized that he was weak so he started supporting Houthis in the hopes of getting the same support back. The war started to take place. Saudi now seeing that the war is getting stronger and the number of Houthis increasing day by day they asked Salah to resign from the post which could bring temporary peace to the country. Salah refused the offer which in turn made the situation worse. Salah was attacked at a mosque in November 2011, more than 40% of his body was burnt which scared Salah and after this attack, he resigned from his post... Mansour Hadi now was the President of Yemen. He relieved the general from his duties and made Mubarak the general. Now the Houthis had become very strong and told that now they won’t speak their guns will. Houthis then immediately conquered the capital of Yemen Sana. The Al Qaeda terrorist group had also started to spread in South Yemen at the same time. Now scared of the Houthis, Hadi signed a peace deal with the Houthis which gave them the power to have their voices heard in the government. That was an embarrassment to Haddi as he gave terrorists the power to make decisions as to the government. Haddi wanted to change the Prime Minister to stop Houthis, but the candidate for P.M he had chosen was kidnapped and, Houthis now wanted their person as Prime Minister. Having no other choices Haddi resigned but in turn, got house arrested by the Houthis. But fortunately.. he escaped in 2015 and ran to Saudi.
After reaching Saudi he planned an operation with them, called Operation Decisive Storm, Which led to bloodshed and tears. In this operation, Saudi teamed up with 10 other countries to get rid of Haudis and Ali Qaeda. While more bombarding started, many places were destroyed among which in 2015, a seaport was destroyed which led to Food supply disruption and starvation started.
