2 years on, country stuck in 'quagmire'

(Endowed Blogs.)

Deadly fighting, a rise in jihadism, the threat of famine -- two years after Saudi Arabia intervened against Iran-backed rebels, Yemen is more unstable than ever.

The chaos has also seen fighting erupt in vital Red Sea shipping lanes, and Riyadh's ally the United States stepping up its involvement.

The war has become "a quagmire", Peter Salisbury, a research fellow at London's Chatham House, said ahead of the March 26 anniversary of the intervention of the Saudi-led coalition.

Yemen itself has fractured to the point where its future "as a functioning unitary state" is hard to imagine, he said.

Financed and equipped by the coalition, various factions are aligned with Yemen's internationally recognised government against the Huthi rebels and their allies.

But analysts warn of tensions among the anti-rebel forces that will likely lead to internal conflict even if the civil war ends, which is unlikely any time soon.

"The entire country continues to fall apart at the seams" while Yemen's elites look out for their own interests, said Adam Baron, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

play Conflict in Yemen
(AFP)

Along with a severe humanitarian crisis, government institutions and overall security have collapsed, leaving ordinary Yemenis the greatest victims, Baron said.

"And unfortunately there's no sign that there is a light at the end of the tunnel."

The United Nations warned this month that Yemen represents "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world."

The conflict has killed nearly 7,700 people, more than half of them civilians, and wounded more 42,500 others, while it has displaced three million people.

Seven ceasefires alongside peace efforts by the UN and former US secretary of state John Kerry failed to stop the fighting.

The Yemen focus of new US President Donald Trump has so far been on a major escalation of attacks against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Trump's administration may also see Yemen as a chance to show its resolve against Iran, wrote Joost Hiltermann and April Longley Alley of the International Crisis Group.

play Yemenis protest against a Saudi-led coalition which supports various factions aligned with Yemen's internationally recognised government against Huthi rebels
(AFP/File)

Both Washington and Riyadh accuse Tehran of stoking regional unrest, including by arming the Huthis, although Hiltermann and Alley say there has been "very little hard evidence" of such support.