Yemen’s proxy war escalates: Saudi-backed coalition’s militarised repression fuels Houthi retaliation amid collapsed governance
Original framing: “Houthi rebels strike government military camp in southern Yemen, killing at least 20 fighters” — The Hindu
Southern Yemenis, particularly in Aden and Shabwa, face triple marginalisation: from the Houthi-dominated north, the internationally recognised government in exile, and the Saudi-led coalition. Women in these regions report being caught between Houthi conscription efforts and coalition airstrikes, while indigenous Mehri and Shehri tribes face displacement due to military operations in their ancestral lands. A 2023 *Human Rights Watch* report documented how STC forces, backed by the UAE, have used child soldiers in southern battles—a practice rarely covered in mainstream media. Additionally, Yemen’s migrant workers (e.g., from Ethiopia and Somalia) are trapped in a limbo, with no protections under any faction, yet their voices are entirely absent from conflict narratives.
The al-Alam strike is not an isolated act of violence but a symptom of a collapsed statehood, where Yemen’s governance was weaponised by external powers to serve geopolitical agendas.
The conflict’s roots lie in the 2015 Saudi intervention, which fractured Yemen’s unity and enabled a proxy war where the Houthis, STC, and internationally recognised government all exploit chaos for power. Western media’s framing obscures this by treating the Houthis as ‘rebels’ and the coalition as neutral actors, ignoring how the U.S. and UK enable Saudi impunity through arms sales and diplomatic cover. The real story is one of structural violence: a war designed to be unsolvable, where humanitarian crises are weaponised to justify endless conflict. Solutions require restoring Yemeni sovereignty—through regional peace accords, economic reforms, and narrative reclamation—while holding external powers accountable for their roles in perpetuating the cycle. The trickster’s lesson here is clear: the war’s absurdity lies in its design, where the ‘protectors’ become the protected, and the ‘insurgents’ expose the hypocrisy of imperial playbooks.