Yemen is in the grip of its most severe crisis of the latest years, as different competing parties fight for control over the country. This power struggle has serious implications for the region as well as the security of the whole Middle East, as Yemen is located south of the entrance to the Middle East and Africa. Conflict map In recent months, Yemen has been sliding "to the edge of civil war" because of conflicts between several different groups. After the Houthi rebels stormed Sanaa in September, they have been steadily expanding to other parts of the country. The Houthis are supported by elements in the security forces and backed by President Hadi's predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh and Iran. Due to this support the Houthis were able to take control of a major airbase near Aden, where Hadi had taken refuge, while former president Ali Abdullah Saleh attempted to regain power by congratulating the Houthis on seizing the southern city of Aden. The conflict between the Houthis and the elected government is also seen as part of a regional power struggle between Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia supporters. The picture is further complicated by the emergence in late 2014 of a Yemen affiliate of the militant group Islamic State, which propounds an extreme version of Sunni Islam and seeks to eclipse AQAP. In March, IS said it carried out bombings on two mosques in Sanaa, which killed some 140 people in one of the deadliest attacks in Yemen's history. On the opposite side both President Hadi and the Houthis are opposing Al Qaeda's local affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has staged numerous deadly attacks from its strongholds in the south and south-east. The importance of the conflict What is ruling in this conflict is the sectarian factor in addition to the geographical factor: Iran backs the Houthis, while Saudi Arabia, which shares a border with Yemen, and the Gulf state, are strong backers of President Hadi. The strategic location of Yemen, which is the entrance to the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea and East Africa, is the reason for mounting and legitimate regional fears. The Saudis, who conducted air strikes against the Houthis on their common border in 2010, say they will not allow Iran "to sow sectarian strife in the region" and have vowed to back Yemen's beleaguered president. Saudi Arabia is still in the process of building a massive border fence with Yemen and is now bolstering its naval base at the southern Red Sea port of Jizan. "The looming danger is seeing Yemen merely as a proxy war between the Gulf Co-operation Council states and Iran," says Jon Altman, Middle East program director at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. The pressing question is whether the Royal Saudi Air Force will intervene to prevent Aden from falling to the Houthis. All indications are that the Saudis are preparing militarily to answer this question, but the political decision is not yet taken." In the civil war of 1994, Saudi Arabia allegedly supported the Southerners as they tried, unsuccessfully, to break away from the North. Yemen is not only a Saudi matter Yemen is no stranger to outside interference because it sits on the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow waterway linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, through which much of the world's oil shipments pass. Therefore Egypt fear a Houthi takeover would threaten free passage through the strait are justified. And this importance of Yemen to Egypt was repeated throughout history. In the civil war of the 1960s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser sent his country's air force to support the Republicans against the Royalists, dropping chemical weapons from the air. Aden and its adjacent provinces were British protectorates until the British withdrawal in 1967. South Yemen was then ruled by communists with Soviet backing, and the Russians established bases there. And for the last 20 years, the US military has maintained a small and discreet military presence in the country, mostly training and advising on counter-terrorism, a presence which has now ended in an abrupt withdrawal after Al Qaeda fighters overran a town close to the base used by US Special Forces. The real danger of the civil war, is that of outside players getting involved. But outside powers will be thinking carefully before committing themselves to military intervention in Yemen. It is an expensive, difficult country for anyone to wage war in, the battle lines are blurred and there is no clear exit strategy for either side. Put bluntly, Yemen is in enough trouble with the ongoing fight between its own citizens. If Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states get drawn in one side, and Iran on another, the conflict risks getting exponentially worse. But the situation is more complicated as both Saudi Arabia and Egypt and their allies are fighting both the Houthis and Iran (Shiite alliance), and both of them are opposed to Al Qaeda and terrorism. From here the situation in Yemen has become a war of all against all.
