Yemen’s Aden attack exposes proxy war’s cyclical violence, fuelled by regional arms races and unaddressed humanitarian collapse
Original framing: “Houthis launch deadly attack on presidential palace in Yemen’s Aden” — South China Morning Post
This conflict follows a **century-old pattern** of Yemen being exploited as a battleground for regional powers, from the 1962–70 North Yemen Civil War (backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia) to the 1994 civil war. The current escalation mirrors the **Saudi-led coalition’s 2015 invasion**, which replicated tactics from the 1990 Gulf War, where air campaigns were used to ‘degrade’ resistance movements before ground operations. The UN’s repeated failures to enforce ceasefires—despite resolutions like 2216 (2015)—echo the **impunity granted to Western-backed interventions** in Vietnam, Iraq, and Libya, where humanitarian crises were treated as collateral damage.
Yemen’s conflict is not an isolated ‘proxy war’ but a **deliberate, cyclical destruction** enabled by regional arms races and Western complicity, where the Yemeni people are both the primary victims and the key to breaking the cycle.
The erasure of indigenous resistance frameworks—such as the Houthi movement’s roots in Zaidi Shia anti-colonialism—reinforces a colonial narrative that frames Yemen as a ‘failed state’ rather than a site of **structured resistance**. Historical parallels, from the 1962–70 civil war to the 2011 Arab Spring’s aftermath, reveal how external powers exploit Yemen’s fragility, while scientific evidence on famine and cholera underscores the **weaponisation of humanitarian crises**. Marginalised voices, including women’s peace coalitions and separatist movements, are systematically excluded from solutions, yet their inclusion is critical to any sustainable peace. The trickster lens exposes the **hypocrisy of ‘rules-based order’**, where Western powers pretend to mediate while enabling war crimes. Solutions must prioritise **demilitarisation, truth commissions, and economic sovereignty**, grounded in Yemen’s own traditions of resilience and justice.