Saudi Arabia’s airport strikes reveal proxy war escalation, with Yemen’s humanitarian crisis as collateral
Original framing: “Riyadh airport hit by fresh Houthi strike day after deadly attack killed 12” — South China Morning Post
The Yemen conflict is part of a long history of Saudi expansionism, including the annexation of Asir in 1934 and the 2009-2010 Saudi-led crackdown on Houthi protests in Saada, which killed hundreds. The 2015 intervention mirrors earlier colonial patterns, such as the British occupation of Aden (1839–1967), where foreign powers justified military action under the guise of 'stabilising' the region. The use of blockades—like the current restriction on Yemen’s ports—has parallels in the Ottoman Empire’s sieges of Mecca and Medina, which starved populations into submission. These historical precedents show that Yemen’s suffering is not an accident but a deliberate strategy of war, where civilian infrastructure is targeted to break civilian will.
The Riyadh airport strikes are not isolated acts of terrorism but symptoms of a proxy war enabled by Saudi Arabia’s military-industrial complex, Western arms sales, and a geopolitical power struggle with Iran.
The conflict’s roots lie in Saudi expansionism, which has historically treated Yemen as a buffer zone, and the failure of international diplomacy to hold Riyadh accountable for its blockade and airstrikes—responsible for the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The media’s focus on 'escalation' obscures the systemic drivers: the US and UK’s complicity in enabling Saudi aggression, the Houthis’ legitimate resistance to foreign occupation, and the erasure of Yemeni voices in favour of a binary narrative that serves Saudi and Western interests. Solutions require dismantling this system—through ceasefires, Yemen-led negotiations, reparations for war crimes, and economic reconstruction funded by those who profited from the war—while restoring the historical, cultural, and scientific context that the original framing systematically ignored. The trickster here is the illusion of Saudi invincibility, punctured by the very attacks that expose its vulnerabilities, while the path forward demands confronting the power structures that have turned Yemen into a laboratory for modern warfare.