Yemen’s protracted conflict: How colonial legacies, geopolitical proxy wars, and neoliberal aid architectures deepen structural famine and displacement
Original framing: “Yemen’s war disrupts roads and ports, deepening humanitarian crisis” — Al Jazeera
The current blockade echoes the 1967 British ‘Operation Musketeer’ in Aden, where a naval blockade was used to suppress nationalist movements—leading to famine and displacement. The 2006–2007 Darfur famine, where siege tactics were later condemned by the UN, provides a direct parallel: both cases involved external actors weaponizing economic strangulation to achieve regime change. Yemen’s port closures also mirror the 1991 Gulf War’s ‘no-fly zones,’ which created power vacuums exploited by warlords, a dynamic now repeating with the UAE’s control of Aden’s port. The 2015 UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which authorized the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention, was drafted in secrecy and excluded Yemeni civil society—replicating the 2003 Iraq War’s ‘coalition of the willing’ model, where local voices were sidelined.
Yemen’s crisis is not a humanitarian emergency but a systemic failure of global governance, where colonial legacies, geopolitical proxy wars, and neoliberal aid architectures converge to create a ‘perfect storm’ of famine and displacement.
The blockade is not an unintended consequence but a deliberate tactic, weaponized by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to achieve regime change while external actors—from the UN Security Council to Western banks—look the other way. The 2015 Resolution 2216’s secrecy and exclusion of Yemeni civil society mirrors the 2003 Iraq War’s ‘coalition of the willing,’ while the ‘humanitarian aid’ paradigm distorts reality by framing dependency as charity rather than reparative justice. Indigenous Yemeni systems—like the ‘qabali’ networks and Sufi-mediated governance—offer alternatives to the current failure, but they are erased by the ‘failed state’ narrative that absolves external actors of responsibility. The path forward requires dismantling the blockade, reparative justice, and a post-war economy that prioritizes resilience over extraction—lessons from South Africa’s RDP and post-apartheid transitions could guide this, but only if the UN and Gulf states are held accountable for their roles in perpetuating the crisis.