Yemen: why the "forgotten war" never really ended
For almost four years, Yemen disappeared from the headlines. The 2022 truce lowered the intensity of the conflict enough for the country to fall off the international agenda, and with it, the label "forgotten war" was installed: a serious conflict, but invisible. In 2026, that apparent calm began to crack, and the United Nations warned that Yemen today faces the greatest risk of returning to a large-scale war since that truce. The question worth asking is not whether Yemen was forgotten, but what it really means for a conflict to be "frozen" without being resolved.
From the Arab Spring to the takeover of Sana'a
To understand the present, one must go back to 2011. The protests of the Arab Spring ended more than three decades of Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule, who ceded power to his vice president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, within an internationally supported transition. However, that transition never resolved the country’s structural problems: weak institutions, territorial fragmentation, historical tensions between the north and the south, and an economy on the brink of collapse.
In that vacuum, Ansar Allah, the movement known as the Houthis, of Zaidi roots and northern origins, grew. The tipping point came on September 21, 2014, when the Houthis took Sana'a. Hadi's government lost control of the capital until the president himself fled the country. There, the Yemeni political crisis ceased to be a dispute over reforms and became an open struggle for control of the state.
2015: an internal war becomes regional
In March 2015, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened militarily in support of Hadi's government. That decision changed the nature of the conflict: what had been an internal dispute became part of the regional rivalry between Riyadh and Tehran. Saudi Arabia interpreted the Houthi advance as a direct threat on its southern border; Iran, for its part, deepened its political and military support for Ansar Allah.
It is important to resist simplification. Reducing the war in Yemen to a proxy confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran overlooks something essential: the Houthis have their own agenda and an autonomous political and military structure. Iranian support explains a large part of their combat capacity, but it does not automatically make them an instrument of Tehran. The distinction is not only political, it is also legal: International Law requires a specific standard of control to attribute the actions of an armed group it supports to a state. It is not enough to ask if Iran supports the Houthis; one must ask under what conditions that support can translate into legal responsibility.
A board that has ceased to be binary
For years, the conflict has been narrated as a confrontation between two sides: the Houthis on one side, the internationally recognized government on the other. The reality has always been more fragmented.
Today, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) heads the internationally recognized government, with strong Saudi support. But the south of the country has its own political history, and the Southern Transitional Council (STC), supported by the United Arab Emirates, has been advocating for an independent state in the south for years.
Between the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, that front underwent a sharp turn: the STC expanded its territorial control, but a counteroffensive backed by Saudi Arabia reversed those gains. In January, the STC announced its dissolution, a decision disputed even within the organization itself, although Southern separatism did not disappear with the announcement. The episode confirms something that is often overlooked: the "anti-Houthi" camp is not a homogeneous block either. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, allies for much of the war, ended up supporting different political projects within Yemen itself.
2022: a truce that froze the war without resolving it
In April 2022, the UN achieved a truce that drastically reduced fighting. It formally expired in October of that same year, but there was no immediate return to open war: for almost four years, violence remained well below previous levels and the fronts were relatively frozen.
The result was a paradox: Yemen was not at peace, but neither was it in total war. The underlying questions of who governs, how power is shared, what happens to rival armed forces, how resources are distributed, what the future of the south is, and what the country's relation will be with regional powers, remained unanswered. More than peace, 2022 produced a prolonged de-escalation without a fundamental political solution.
2026: the balance begins to break
This unstable balance began to crack this year. In July, the Houthis announced new operations against shipping linked to Saudi Arabia and attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, expressed his alarm and warned that the resumption of these attacks could push the country back towards a large-scale war.
The escalation did not stop at sea. In recent weeks, fighting has increased in areas such as Marib, Hadramawt, and Mokha, with military and civilian casualties. On August 13, Grundberg informed the Security Council that Yemen faces the gravest risk of returning to a large-scale conflict since the 2022 truce. What is relevant is not only the intensity but the novelty: the conflict is not simply reverting to its previous form; it is incorporating new dimensions.
The Red Sea: when a civil war becomes a global issue
The strategic importance of Yemen extends far beyond its borders. The country controls a stretch of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the busiest maritime passages between the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. Therefore, when the Houthis attack commercial vessels, the consequences are felt far beyond Yemeni soil: they affect transportation costs, energy routes, and international supply chains.
What began as a question of who controls Yemen has also transformed into a question of who can guarantee the security of one of the planet's most important maritime routes. In July, the Houthi blockade against shipping linked to Saudi Arabia and the attacks on oil tankers led the UN to warn that these operations could drag the country into a larger regional confrontation.
An internal war that is becoming regionalized again
This is likely the most significant change of the current moment. After 2022, relative stability had allowed for some separation between the Yemeni war and the major regional crises in the Middle East. In 2026, that separation is dissolving.
The Houthis have resumed their missile and drone capabilities against targets outside their controlled areas, while Saudi Arabia is reinforcing its defense mechanisms and seeking new alliances to protect its territory and maritime routes. Yemen thus returns to function as an intersection point between different conflicts in the region, with a particularly dangerous risk: a local incident, an attack on a single vessel, can trigger a military response, which in turn generates new Houthi attacks, which can then draw other states into an expanded theater of operations. It is a dynamic of escalation that, once underway, proves difficult to control.
Civil war, proxy war, or something more complex?
From a legal perspective, Yemen cannot simply be described as a war between states. At its core, it remains a non-international armed conflict between government forces and Ansar Allah, although the military participation of third states adds layers of internationalization that must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, depending on who is fighting who.
The label "proxy war" is useful for describing the geopolitical nature of the conflict, but it does not constitute a legal classification. International Law must also address the legality of foreign interventions, the right to legitimate defense, the protection of civilians, and accountability for violations of International Humanitarian Law, including attacks on commercial vessels.
The other war: the humanitarian crisis
As military actors intensify their operations, the Yemeni population continues to endure one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. According to the UN’s Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for 2026, 22.3 million people need humanitarian assistance and protection, and about 18.3 million face acute food insecurity. More than 2.2 million children under five suffer from acute malnutrition.
The problem is not limited to a lack of food. Years of war have weakened hospitals, water systems, health infrastructure, education, the economy, and humanitarian access, in a context of increasing scarcity of international funding. This means that even a relatively limited escalation can have disproportionate effects on a population that is already on the brink.
What the UN can and cannot do
The United Nations faces a classic conflict management problem in Yemen: it can facilitate a negotiation, but it cannot alone create the political will necessary for an agreement. The special envoy Hans Grundberg continues to promote a negotiated exit and has urged the parties to immediately reduce hostilities, with a clear warning: the relative calm built in recent years could disappear much faster than it took to achieve it.
The problem is that the conflict has accumulated too many simultaneous layers. It is not enough to negotiate between Houthis and the government: any sustainable solution should also address the territorial issue of the south, the distribution of resources, the structure of security forces, relations with Saudi Arabia, Iranian influence, the economic situation, and Red Sea security.
A crisis that can still be averted
Despite the severity of the moment, the UN does not consider the return to total war inevitable, and that distinction matters. The international warning does not say that Yemen has already returned to the scenario of 2015-2021, but rather that the window to prevent it is closing rapidly. Grundberg asserted before the Security Council that there still exists a negotiated path, although the current escalation puts at risk the advancements made over the years.
The difference between both scenarios is enormous. A new open war would not only mean more military operations but also a possible deepening of the food crisis, displacements, destruction of infrastructure, maritime insecurity, intervention by regional powers, and the territorial fragmentation of the country.
The true nature of the "forgotten war"
Calling Yemen "the forgotten war" is appealing, but it may obscure a more accurate reality: Yemen was not forgotten because the conflict disappeared, but because it was normalized. The reduction of large military operations after 2022 allowed the country to exit the center of the international agenda, while the structural causes of the conflict remained intact.
What 2026 shows us is an uncomfortable lesson: a frozen war is not necessarily a resolved war. The truce lowered the violence, but it never built a new political balance capable of sustaining a lasting peace.
Four overlapping disputes
The conflict can no longer be understood solely as a struggle between the Houthis and the government. At least four distinct disputes coexist:
The future of the Yemeni state; who will govern the country and under what structure.
The territorial issue; whether Yemen will continue to be a unified state or if the demand for autonomy or independence in the south will resurge strongly.
The regional balance; how far Iranian, Saudi, and other actors' influence over the country will reach.
International security; whether navigation in the Red Sea can be guaranteed without Yemen returning to being a theater of regional war.
These are interrelated questions, but they are not the same question, and confusing them is one of the reasons why the conflict is so difficult to resolve.
A conflict with no military solution
The greatest difficulty in Yemen is that none of its central problems can be resolved solely with a military victory. The Houthis can be contained, but they control a considerable portion of the territory and maintain the capacity to sustain a prolonged insurgency. The government can regain ground, but it still depends on external actors and drags a fragmented internal political structure. Saudi Arabia can reinforce its defense capacity, but it cannot militarily eliminate the political causes that allow the Houthis to retain support and mobilization capacity. And the UN can promote negotiations, but it needs the main actors to agree to give up something.
Therefore, the current challenge is not simply to avoid another war: it is to transform the pause that began in 2022 into a real political solution.
Conclusion
Yemen is once again in a danger zone. After years of open war and almost four years of relative calm, the escalation of 2026 confirms that the conflict was never fully resolved. The Houthi attacks, the Saudi response, the fragmentation of the anti-Houthi side, and the growing...
The militarization of the Red Sea is recreating the conditions for a larger scale confrontation.
The UN's warning weighs more than any specific battle: Yemen faces today the greatest risk of returning to a large-scale war since the truce of 2022. The question is no longer just whether the country will return to war, but whether the international community will know how to take advantage of the window that is still open before the escalation closes it.
Yemen does not need another ceasefire. It needs, finally, a peace that has something to preserve when that ceasefire ends.
Comments