Yemen Civil War

The Yemen Civil War is generally dated from September 2014, when Houthi forces (Ansar Allah), allied with units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, seized the capital Sana'a. By early 2015 they had pushed President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi from power; Hadi fled to Aden and then to Saudi Arabia. In March 2015 a Saudi-led coalition — including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, and others, with logistical support from the United States, United Kingdom, and France — launched Operation Decisive Storm, beginning an air campaign and naval blockade aimed at restoring Hadi's government.

The war has produced what UN agencies have repeatedly described as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with widespread famine conditions, a major cholera outbreak from 2016 onward, and tens of thousands of direct conflict deaths plus far larger indirect mortality. The port of Hodeidah, a critical entry point for food and fuel, became a focal point of fighting and of the Stockholm Agreement brokered by UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths in December 2018.

Key dynamics include:

• Houthi–Saleh split in late 2017, ending with Saleh's killing in December 2017.
• Southern separatism, with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) clashing with Hadi loyalists and signing the Riyadh Agreement in November 2019.
• Cross-border strikes, including Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi and Emirati territory, notably the September 2019 Abqaiq–Khurais strikes claimed by the Houthis.
• Presidential Leadership Council, formed in April 2022 after Hadi transferred powers, alongside a UN-brokered truce that largely held through much of 2022.
• Red Sea shipping attacks by the Houthis from late 2023, linked to the Gaza war, prompting US- and UK-led strikes.

The conflict is widely framed as both a Yemeni political struggle and a theater of Saudi–Iranian regional rivalry, though analysts caution against reducing it to a simple proxy war.