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Guest post by Marta Furlan
In 2014, the Houthis, a Zaydi Shia armed group from the Sa’ada region of northern Yemen, aligned with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been removed following the Arab Spring uprisings. Together, they defeated the government led by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and established control over the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and the entirety of northern Yemen.
At that time, Iran began to progressively increase its support for the Houthis, seeing partnership with the group as an opportunity to advance its revisionist agenda in the region and establish its influence in the southern Red Sea, an area of immense strategic significance. Threatened by aggressive Iranian expansionism at its doorstep, in March 2015, Saudi Arabia entered the war alongside Hadi. As Iran sided with the Houthis and Saudi Arabia sided with Hadi, Yemen became the battlefield of both a domestic competition for power between different local factions and a regional competition for influence between Teheran and Riyadh.
The complexity that characterizes the Yemeni conflict is not unique. In the modern Middle East, countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Libya also experienced civil wars that developed into multi-layered conflicts involving local, regional, and international actors. In Syria, for instance, the confrontation initially involved the Assad regime, the secular opposition, a plethora of jihadist groups, and the Syrian Kurds. It grew, however, into a competition between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey over the regional status quo and a competition between the United States and Russia over influence in the Middle East. Despite the civil war scholarship suggesting that one-sided victories become harder with the passing of time, the Syrian conflict ended de facto with the one-sided victory of Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russia and Iran.
As far as Yemen is concerned, the conflict is still ongoing. A major development, however, occurred two weeks ago when Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic ties and reopen embassies within two months, seven years after they severed relations. Following the signing of the agreement, which was brokered by China, questions emerged as to whether the deal might have positive implications for the war in Yemen.
Prospects aren’t promising. The conflict in Yemen is at its heart a civil war between Yemeni factions, which is driven by social and political tensions that emerged in Yemen following the country’s unification in May 1990. On the background of those tensions, the inception of the current conflict can truly be traced back to the early 2000s, when six rounds of confrontation saw the government and the Houthi movement fight each other in Sa’ada. Rather than being a simple binary confrontation between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed government, the war in Yemen is a complex mosaic of multiple armed factions fighting against and, at times, alongside each other. Within the anti-Houthi camp, there is a significant degree of military and political fragmentation, with different militias harboring different interests and visions. Some of those include the Southern Transitional Council (STC); al-Islah; the National Resistance Forces led by Tareq Saleh; and the National Shield Force formed by Saudi Arabia.
A reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia will not address the deep-rooted and long-harbored hostility between the Houthis and their opponents, nor will it address the tensions and differences that dominate the anti-Houthi camp. At the very best, the Saudi-Iranian détente will facilitate the bilateral talks that have been ongoing between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. Those talks were initiated last October, when a six-month-long ceasefire expired, yet no side (Houthis, Saudi Arabia, the government) was willing to return to the battlefront amidst war fatigue. However, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC, Yemen’s de facto government) has been excluded from the Houthi-Saudi negotiation table. Its exclusion inevitably makes any Houthi-Saudi deal that might be reached in the future with Iranian support hardly consequential for the country’s peace and stability.
Will Yemen see a one-sided victory, similar to what happened in Syria? That’s unlikely. The Houthis and the government-aligned forces reached a mutually damaging stalemate in Marib that left them all weaker. Under these circumstances, academic research suggests that the warring parties could either take steps toward a negotiated settlement or persist indefinitely in a costly, stalled conflict.
The regional dimension of the war might gradually be moving toward a negotiated settlement between the Houthis and Iran, on one hand, and Saudi Arabia, on the other. Pummelled by years of fighting, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia seem to view bilateral negotiations favorably. But the domestic dimensions of the war continue to evade any negotiated settlement between Houthis and the PLC and between different PLC-affiliated militias. As the civil war literature suggests, the trajectory of the conflict will depend on how those parties assess what they can gain or lose from fighting versus negotiating. As the Houthis appear once again determined to resort to force, prospects for peace do not look particularly encouraging.
Marta Furlan is a research and policy consultant at Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) in Germany.
Guest post by Alexandra Byrne, Zoha Siddiqui, and Kelebogile Zvobgo
Haitian officials and world leaders are calling for an armed humanitarian intervention backed by the United Nations (UN) to defeat organized crime. Gangs in Haiti have reportedly kidnapped and killed hundreds of civilians and displaced thousands. Gangs are also limiting access to fuel and blocking critical humanitarian aid to civilians. Add to this a resurgence of cholera.
The United States asked the UN Security Council in October to approve a targeted intervention, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield underscored “extreme violence and instability” in Haiti and proposed a mission led by a “partner country” (not the United States or UN peacekeeping forces).
There is nominal support for the mission. In the coming weeks, Canada will send naval vessels to Haiti’s coast, and Jamaica has offered some troops, but no country is taking the lead. Critics argue that past missions in Haiti did more harm than good. In 2010, UN peacekeepers even reintroduced cholera into Haiti. Nonetheless, the United States is pushing for an intervention.
What is an armed humanitarian intervention and would it be legal under international law? Here’s what you need to know.
An armed humanitarian intervention is a use of force to protect, maintain, or restore peace and security in a target country and internationally. Armed humanitarian interventions differ from ordinary military operations because they aim to protect populations from severe human rights abuses.
Past armed humanitarian interventions achieved limited success in places like Somalia, where troops initially stabilized the country but failed to improve the country’s security environment long-term.
Armed interventions fundamentally clash with state sovereignty—the idea that states control activities within their territories—because they can be conducted without the target state’s consent. While sovereignty is important in international law, it can nevertheless be sidestepped to stop atrocities and restore international peace.
The prevailing law on international interventions is the UN Charter, which binds all UN member states. Chapter VII of the charter governs international interventions and comprises thirteen key articles. Article 39 establishes that the Security Council may determine when international peace and security are breached or threatened. The article also gives the council authority to take all necessary measures to restore peace.
The remaining articles elaborate on those measures. Article 41 authorizes actions “not involving the use of armed force,” such as economic sanctions, while Article 42 permits “action by air, sea, or land forces.”
So, the Security Council decides whether, how, and why state sovereignty may be infringed, including through the use of force. States may only use force without council authorization in response to an armed attack, under Article 51, but they must still notify the council.
Security Council-authorized interventions may be conducted by UN peacekeeping forces or by UN member states’ troops. (Regional armed interventions require approval under Chapter VIII, Article 53.)
The Security Council has not always authorized armed humanitarian interventions, notably failing to prevent genocide in the Balkans and Rwanda in the 1990s. To avoid repeating those failures, the UN in 2005 adopted the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle.
R2P delegates to all states the responsibility to protect all people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Under R2P, the international community must be prepared to take collective action through the Security Council “should peaceful means be inadequate,” a line taken from Chapter VII.
R2P was invoked once in Kenya, not to justify armed intervention, but to rally international mediation. R2P was also used in Côte d’Ivoire to deploy additional UN peacekeeping forces. (These forces completed their mandate in 2017.) One of the largest military actions authorized by the Security Council under R2P was the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, which has since been criticized for poor planning, increasing instability, and pushing regime change.
Possible Legal Armed Intervention in Haiti
If the US resolution for an armed humanitarian intervention in Haiti is approved by the Security Council, the operation would be legal and, if it focused solely on humanitarian objectives (i.e., opening aid delivery channels, providing aid, and protecting civilians), it could succeed. Still, there is the risk of failure. A more ambitious plan, seeking to change the country’s overall security environment, could also fail, as in Somalia.
But even if the intervention complied with international law and was invited by Haitian officials, critics argue it would be unethical, undermining Haitians’ sovereignty.
If the United States fails to gain Security Council support for an armed humanitarian intervention in Haiti, there are other measures available. The United States can increase the humanitarian aid it already provides, and provide tactical equipment and armored vehicles to the government. The Biden administration could also reverse recently expanded immigration restrictions, and instead provide asylum to Haitian migrants while also supporting struggling transit countries.
For its part, the Security Council could expand the economic sanctions and arms embargoes it adopted against criminal actors in Haiti. But such measures take time to implement and might not be felt for months.
The biggest challenge to mitigating the crisis in Haiti is the gangs that are blocking the delivery of food, fuel, and medical supplies to civilians. The challenge for the United States and the broader international community is to not repeat past mistakes—either by intervening too little, too late, or too much.
Alexandra Byrne is a research fellow in the International Justice Lab at William & Mary. Zoha Siddiqui is a 1693 scholar, a research fellow in the International Justice Lab at William & Mary, and an incoming George J. Mitchell Scholar at Queen’s University Belfast. Kelebogile Zvobgo is an assistant professor of government at William & Mary, a faculty affiliate at the Global Research Institute, and founder and director of the International Justice Lab.
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