Is It Time to Divide Yemen? |
The Saudi-led intervention in March 2015 was driven by regional strategic necessity rather than choice. And while the intervention succeeded in containing the crisis within Yemen’s borders and preventing the spillover of the civil war into neighboring countries, it failed to present a fixable Yemen.
Today, the pressing issue isn’t merely the Houthi threat but Yemen’s fundamental unviability as a unified nation state. With more than 19.5 million Yemenis requiring humanitarian assistance in 2025, a decade of civil war, multiple failed peace processes, and persistent humanitarian crises, no amount of force or money can solve this problem.
The notion of a unified Yemen has been a fiction since the 1990 merger. President Ali Abdullah Saleh did not pursue equitable unification but domination. The resulting 1994 civil war revealed that unification was fatally flawed. History demonstrates that attempts to force national unity where none naturally exists........