What is going on in Yemen?

Yemen is a sovereign country being bombed by its richer neighbour.

There are three main areas of Yemen which need to be understood to understand the Yemeni conflict. First is Southern Yemen, stretching across all of Eastern Yemen and the southern port cities of Aden and Mukalla. The second and third main areas are located in Northern Yemen, divided in 2, one populated with mainly Sunnis and the other populated with mainly Zaidis.

Zaidiya is an ancient form of Islam that is neither Shi'ite nor Sunni, but halfway between each. For over a thousand years the Zaidi tribes ruled northern Yemen - both the Sunni and Zaidi parts of northern Yemen - and were only very recently thrown off from power - in the 1960's. They since reemerged in their full power in 2014 under the guise of the Houthis.

After the Arab Spring, the dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh was thrown off and his Vice President, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi was made the new President of Yemen. Ali Abdullah Saleh is a Zaidi Muslim from the north - Hadi is a Sunni Muslim from the South.

However with the downfall of the Saleh government, Yemen was ruled by more chaos than ever before. Worryingly, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (القاعدة في جزيرة العرب) had grown alarmingly strong, particularly in Southern Yemen. To solve the crisis, Ali Abdullah Saleh ordered the tribes still loyal to him, both Sunni and Zaidi, to ally with the Houthis. The Saleh-Houthi alliance meant Zaidi Muslims were back on top. They took control of Sana'a and forced Hadi to leave the capital.

But the Houthis wanted to capture Hadi. They wanted a fall-guy to pin the political debacle on and Hadi was it. So they invaded Southern Yemen.

Enter Saudi Arabia.

Hadi subsequently sought refuge in Saudi Arabia and, under then new king, King Salman, a coalition was brought together to target the Houthi-Saleh alliance with a bombing campaign, seeking to bring an end to the Zaidi dominance in Yemen and restore control to Hadi.

Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia's error is very costly and alarming. This war has largely benefitted Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which would have been completely driven out of Yemen had the Houthis controlled Southern Yemen as well as Northern Yemen. If Saudi Arabia succeeds in dislodging the Houthis from their power, the northern tribes - both Sunni and Zaidi - would sooner ally with Al-Qaeda than ally with Hadi. Then Yemen, on the side of Al-Qaeda, would be fighting Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

Of course the war would spread to Saudi Arabia.

That is nothing to say of the awful famine occurring in Yemen. Children are sticks. Five year olds look like toddlers. Toddlers look like infants. Infants look non-human. The barbarity and cruelty of the Yemen War is horrifying.

It is not a civil war. It is a war forced on the Yemenis to benefit Saudi standing in the region. The only reward Yemen can bring Saudi Arabia is a full-fledged Al-Qaeda insurgency on their southern doorstep. And that is the best case scenario.