Western powers could help conclude the war in Yemen swiftly – instead they're protracting it for profit

Among the many dreadful incidents in the Middle East last week was the little-noticed story of a soldier fighting for government forces in Yemen who, upon finding out he wasn’t getting paid, promptly pulled out his gun and shot himself dead in the middle of the Aden headquarters of the First Infantry Brigade.

The death of a young man apparently distraught over his inability to feed his family was a reminder of the misery enveloping Yemen’s non-stop war, one of several grinding conflicts that have turned major stretches of the Middle East and North Africa into landscapes of horror and deprivation.

The greatest tragedy of the five-year war in Yemen may be that of the numerous conflicts in the region it is the most easily resolved, if the international community had the will to rein it in rather than to largely ignore it, or serve as its enabler.

Unlike Syria, Yemen itself holds little interest for either of the world’s superpowers. Unlike Iraq or Libya, it has little oil; it’s merely adjacent to an increasingly unimportant strait through which a tiny fraction of the world’s shipping passes.

Unlike the Taliban and Khalifa Haftar, Yemen’s warring parties all have shown they can share power. No one in their right mind believes any one faction could rule the parched, lawless country at the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula alone.

In fact, there is little upside for any of the parties for continuing the war with Yemen. Like all wars, this one has spawned profiteers that see an interest in keeping the conflict going. But Yemen remains among the poorest countries on earth; there’s not a whole lot there to exploit.

More fundamentally, there’s very little strategic upside in keeping the war going.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched the conflict against the surging Houthi rebels because the armed group was viewed as a proxy of their arch-rival Iran and a danger to the Arabian Peninsula monarchies.

But the longer the war continues, the more closely the Houthis are allying with Iran, and the better the group’s military capabilities become, posing even graver security threats to the Saudi kingdom ruled by Mohamed bin Salman and the UAE of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed.

Iran got involved in the war merely to play along, providing the Houthis with weapons and training as a relatively low-cost way to mire Saudi Arabia in a protracted conflict. Unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, Yemen shares no border with Iran; dor does it play a vital role in its ambitions to serve as protector of Shia Muslims.

But as the war continues, its stake in the outcome of the conflict is becoming more deeply entrenched. Last week came reports that Iran is increasingly supplied with better weapons. The United States accused Iran of shipping the Houthis knock-offs of Russian Kornet anti-tank guided missiles and advanced surface-to-air missiles via a small cargo ship caught at sea on 9 February, the second major interdiction of alleged Iranian weapons since November. “The continual supply of Iranian weapons to the Houthis has certainly prolonged the conflict, delayed a political solution and increased the suffering of the Yemeni people,” US military spokesman William Urban told reporters. Then, on Friday, Houthis claimed they downed a Saudi Tornado fighter jet with “an advanced surface-to-air missile,” suggesting ever more sophisticated capabilities are being deployed on the battlefield.

Instead of heading towards a conclusion, Yemen’s war is becoming more complicated and dangerous with each passing month. The anti-Houthi factions are now essentially at war themselves, as the separatist-minded Southern Transitional Council backed by the UAE regularly clashes with the UN-recognised government of Prime Minister Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, a client of Saudi Arabia.

For Saudi Arabia, the conflict has been anything but cheap. Houthis claim the war is costing Saudi Arabia $60 billion. While the figure, like almost everything the group says, is likely exaggerated, Riyadh has unquestionably plunked down tens of billions of dollars to pay for war’s weapons and mercenaries and to keep the fragile Hadi government afloat, even if its local allies are sometimes coming up short on paying the bills. Houthi attacks on Saudi territory have also likely cost the country. Imagine if, instead of bankrolling the war over the last five years, Riyadh had instead invested half that money in Yemeni education and agricultural projects – perhaps even found a paying, productive job for the young man who shot himself dead over unpaid wages last week.

Peace talks between the warring parties begun late last year have gone nowhere, with indications that a fragile truce over the port city of Hodeidah is unravelling.

Meanwhile, western powers – especially the United States, United Kingdom and France – continue to sell Saudi Arabia weapons, and provide it diplomatic cover for a war that they admit in private moments is morally bankrupt and strategically counterproductive. Press them further and they’ll admit they do so not necessarily because western companies profit directly from arms sales for the Yemen conflict, but because Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their partner Egypt buy a lot of weapons, saving jobs and yielding profits in the west.

But if western economies are so flimsy that they depend on further immiserating 25 million already impoverished people, they don’t merit salvation.

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