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It's sometimes called a forgotten war: fighting in Yemen has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Hunger has claimed even more lives, while 4.5 million Yemenis are internally displaced. Yet the complex conflict between Saudi-led forces and Houthi rebels doesn't always make headlines. This September, nine years after the Houthis attacked the capital Sanaa, triggering Saudi Arabia's intervention, the country is not in the grips of all-out war, but it's still not at peace either. In this special edition, we bring you reports from our team on the ground and speak to Asher Orkaby, the author of "Yemen: What everyone needs to know".
After more than four years of war, Yemen teeters on the brink of what the European Union has described as “the world's largest humanitarian crisis.” Conservative estimates count at least 10,000 civilian deaths in the ongoing conflict, with millions more threatened by disease and famine. Yet for many in the West, Yemen remains a forgotten war, despite the fact that the Saudi-backed forces fighting the northern Houthi rebels continue to deploy weapons produced in the United States and in Europe with devastating effect. This month, History Talk explores the current conflict in Yemen and its historical antecedents with two experts on the region: Dr. Asher Orkaby and Dr. Austin Knuppe. We examine the conflict in its multiple facets – a civil war between regional parties, an anti-terrorism campaign, and a proxy war between regional foes: it's all three – to better understand why peace remains so elusive. To learn more about the War in Yemen, read this month's feature article, Yemen: A Civil War Centuries in the Making, by Dr Asher Orkaby. For more coverage of the Middle East, be sure to check out The Secular Roots of a Religious Divide in Contemporary Iraq, Alawites and the Fate of Syria, and Syria's Islamic Movement and the 2011-12 Uprising. Posted: April 2019 Connect with us! Email: Origins@osu.edu Twitter: @OriginsOSU Instagram: @OriginsOSU Facebook: @OriginsOSU Find transcripts, background reading, and more at origins.osu.edu
On this episode of SEPADPod Simon speaks with Asher Orkaby, Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University. Asher is the author of Beyond the Arab Cold War (2017) and a range of other articles about Yemen. On this episode, Simon and Asher talk about the Yemen civil war, the domestic, regional and international factors, the 'Arab Cold War', the strange alliances formed in the conflict, and the importance of focussing on people.
The civil war in Yemen today harkens back to a similar conflict half a century ago, when the overthrow of the ruling imam, Muhammad al-Badr, in 1962 sparked a conflict that dragged on for the rest of the decade. While primarily driven by domestic politics, as Asher Orkaby explains in his book Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68 (Oxford University Press, 2017), the fighting drew in a variety of foreign powers and multinational organizations, each with an agenda that played an important role in defining events. Despite the ongoing Cold War of that time, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves in the curious position of both supporting the new republican government that took power in the aftermath of Badr’s ousting, though their involvement was quickly eclipsed by that of Egypt. Seizing the opportunity to advance his vision of Arab nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser dispatched thousands of troops to Yemen, where they soon found themselves in an intractable struggle that they were poorly prepared to fight. Nevertheless, Egyptian forces secured the republicans hold on Yemen’s major population areas, forcing the royalists to wage a guerrilla war from the mountainous countryside where, with the backing of Saudi Arabia and support from Great Britain and Israel, they were able to prolong the conflict in ways that shaped the history of not just Yemen but the entire Middle East as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The civil war in Yemen today harkens back to a similar conflict half a century ago, when the overthrow of the ruling imam, Muhammad al-Badr, in 1962 sparked a conflict that dragged on for the rest of the decade. While primarily driven by domestic politics, as Asher Orkaby explains in his book Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68 (Oxford University Press, 2017), the fighting drew in a variety of foreign powers and multinational organizations, each with an agenda that played an important role in defining events. Despite the ongoing Cold War of that time, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves in the curious position of both supporting the new republican government that took power in the aftermath of Badr’s ousting, though their involvement was quickly eclipsed by that of Egypt. Seizing the opportunity to advance his vision of Arab nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser dispatched thousands of troops to Yemen, where they soon found themselves in an intractable struggle that they were poorly prepared to fight. Nevertheless, Egyptian forces secured the republicans hold on Yemen’s major population areas, forcing the royalists to wage a guerrilla war from the mountainous countryside where, with the backing of Saudi Arabia and support from Great Britain and Israel, they were able to prolong the conflict in ways that shaped the history of not just Yemen but the entire Middle East as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The civil war in Yemen today harkens back to a similar conflict half a century ago, when the overthrow of the ruling imam, Muhammad al-Badr, in 1962 sparked a conflict that dragged on for the rest of the decade. While primarily driven by domestic politics, as Asher Orkaby explains in his book Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68 (Oxford University Press, 2017), the fighting drew in a variety of foreign powers and multinational organizations, each with an agenda that played an important role in defining events. Despite the ongoing Cold War of that time, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves in the curious position of both supporting the new republican government that took power in the aftermath of Badr’s ousting, though their involvement was quickly eclipsed by that of Egypt. Seizing the opportunity to advance his vision of Arab nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser dispatched thousands of troops to Yemen, where they soon found themselves in an intractable struggle that they were poorly prepared to fight. Nevertheless, Egyptian forces secured the republicans hold on Yemen’s major population areas, forcing the royalists to wage a guerrilla war from the mountainous countryside where, with the backing of Saudi Arabia and support from Great Britain and Israel, they were able to prolong the conflict in ways that shaped the history of not just Yemen but the entire Middle East as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The civil war in Yemen today harkens back to a similar conflict half a century ago, when the overthrow of the ruling imam, Muhammad al-Badr, in 1962 sparked a conflict that dragged on for the rest of the decade. While primarily driven by domestic politics, as Asher Orkaby explains in his book Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68 (Oxford University Press, 2017), the fighting drew in a variety of foreign powers and multinational organizations, each with an agenda that played an important role in defining events. Despite the ongoing Cold War of that time, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves in the curious position of both supporting the new republican government that took power in the aftermath of Badr’s ousting, though their involvement was quickly eclipsed by that of Egypt. Seizing the opportunity to advance his vision of Arab nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser dispatched thousands of troops to Yemen, where they soon found themselves in an intractable struggle that they were poorly prepared to fight. Nevertheless, Egyptian forces secured the republicans hold on Yemen’s major population areas, forcing the royalists to wage a guerrilla war from the mountainous countryside where, with the backing of Saudi Arabia and support from Great Britain and Israel, they were able to prolong the conflict in ways that shaped the history of not just Yemen but the entire Middle East as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The civil war in Yemen today harkens back to a similar conflict half a century ago, when the overthrow of the ruling imam, Muhammad al-Badr, in 1962 sparked a conflict that dragged on for the rest of the decade. While primarily driven by domestic politics, as Asher Orkaby explains in his book Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68 (Oxford University Press, 2017), the fighting drew in a variety of foreign powers and multinational organizations, each with an agenda that played an important role in defining events. Despite the ongoing Cold War of that time, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves in the curious position of both supporting the new republican government that took power in the aftermath of Badr’s ousting, though their involvement was quickly eclipsed by that of Egypt. Seizing the opportunity to advance his vision of Arab nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser dispatched thousands of troops to Yemen, where they soon found themselves in an intractable struggle that they were poorly prepared to fight. Nevertheless, Egyptian forces secured the republicans hold on Yemen’s major population areas, forcing the royalists to wage a guerrilla war from the mountainous countryside where, with the backing of Saudi Arabia and support from Great Britain and Israel, they were able to prolong the conflict in ways that shaped the history of not just Yemen but the entire Middle East as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The civil war in Yemen today harkens back to a similar conflict half a century ago, when the overthrow of the ruling imam, Muhammad al-Badr, in 1962 sparked a conflict that dragged on for the rest of the decade. While primarily driven by domestic politics, as Asher Orkaby explains in his book Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68 (Oxford University Press, 2017), the fighting drew in a variety of foreign powers and multinational organizations, each with an agenda that played an important role in defining events. Despite the ongoing Cold War of that time, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves in the curious position of both supporting the new republican government that took power in the aftermath of Badr's ousting, though their involvement was quickly eclipsed by that of Egypt. Seizing the opportunity to advance his vision of Arab nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser dispatched thousands of troops to Yemen, where they soon found themselves in an intractable struggle that they were poorly prepared to fight. Nevertheless, Egyptian forces secured the republicans hold on Yemen's major population areas, forcing the royalists to wage a guerrilla war from the mountainous countryside where, with the backing of Saudi Arabia and support from Great Britain and Israel, they were able to prolong the conflict in ways that shaped the history of not just Yemen but the entire Middle East as well.