Executive Summary

Taiz, Yemen’s third most populous city and the capital of its largest governorate (province) of the same name, is engulfed by war. Long seen as the cultural heart of the country, Taiz emerged in early 2015 as the center of what many observers describe as a proxy war between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis, an armed Zaidi Shia revivalist movement with ties to Iran.

The current military situation in Taiz is a stalemate between the Houthis and a diverse, loosely formed coalition of anti-Houthi groups. Having surrounded and besieged the city of Taiz, the Houthis remain in control of most of its entrances and exits, controlling the passage of goods and people along with a strategically critical north-south gateway. The conflict in Taiz is emblematic of the way regional rivalries between Gulf States and Iran and hyperlocal competition for power and influence have played out and intersected across Yemen.

Foreign powers play an important role in the conflict by seeking to impose their own goals through sponsorship of armed factions and political groups. As a strategic location abutting Saudi Arabia’s southern border and the shipping lanes of the Red Sea, Yemen holds importance for several foreign powers’ regional agendas. This has led many commentators to analyze the conflict through the lens of proxy warfare.

Yet this lens can easily misrepresent the war as one in which Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Iran move their proxies like chess pieces seeking comparative advantage, while also reducing the war as a whole to these movements. It is not only a matter of misdiagnosing the dynamics involved; framing the conflict as primarily a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia complicates efforts to resolve the conflict. The framing provides strategic advantages for many of the belligerent parties who use it to fuel their war efforts. The narrative itself further internationalizes the conflict, obscuring the essential nature of the war in Yemen, which is at heart an internal Yemeni political conflict.

The internationalization of what was originally a domestic political struggle has made the conflict more complex, in turn making it more difficult to resolve, but it has not fundamentally altered the goals of the original domestic combatants. If the war is ever to end, the goals of Yemenis must be recognized for what they are, and elevated in importance above those of the international parties to the conflict.

Key Findings:

• Various military forces in Yemen use the proxy war frame as a propaganda tool to recruit and raise funds, but the day-to-day experience of the conflict is highly local. In many cases, rather than a top-down proxy relationship of control, local forces exercise substantial agency despite receiving sponsorship, pursuing their own interests and using foreign sponsorship opportunities for their own purposes.
• The complex web of forces and sponsorship opportunities has empowered individuals—in addition to groups—to act as major players in Yemen’s war. Abu al-Abbas, the leader of the Abu al-Abbas Brigades, for example, skillfully drew on Saudi, Emirati, local, and potentially al-Qaida support to drive his rise in influence.
• Though the Houthis have increasingly aligned with Iran, they continue to enmesh themselves in Yemen’s wider body politic. Prior to the current war, the Houthis waged six wars against the Yemeni government in the twenty-first century, during which there is little evidence of firm Iranian command and control. Iran’s reported provision of missiles and drones shapes the conflict, but its roots are local and would not disappear were Iran to fully abandon the Houthis.
• Foreign powers’ development of proxy relationships in the form of external sponsorship has made the conflict more complex and difficult to resolve via negotiations. Such foreign relationships have resulted in an interplay between an expanded and shifting set of local forces, national political factions, and international parties, each of which have their own interests and aims. This expanded set of armed and political groups fuels tensions and complicates efforts to end the violence through a negotiated settlement.
• Uncritical adoption of the proxy war narrative poses challenges for peacemakers and policymakers, increasing the risks of escalation and frustrating efforts at conflict resolution. The narrative obscures the true localized nature of the conflict and ignores the goals and ambitions of key domestic stakeholders.
• These wider divisions have dragged out the battle against the Houthis while providing growth opportunities to extremist groups like al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Qaida’s strength has diminished recently and its power should not be exaggerated, but the group stands to benefit from persistent conflict.