Amid its persistent, so-far largely ineffective aerial campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the U.S. may now move to support Yemen’s internationally recognized government in a ground operation against them.
Speculation of some sort of anti-Houthi ground campaign in Yemen has bubbled up for weeks, sparking fears that the country’s civil war, made dormant by a 2022 ceasefire that largely held after its lapse months later, could reignite.
“The idea that Trump may provide U.S. support to reignite this civil war is horrifying, because it will be extremely bloody,” Dr. Annelle Sheline, Research Fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Responsible Statecraft.
“Such a war would further immiserate the Yemeni population, already the poorest in the Middle East. In 2018, the UN declared Yemen to be the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with 22 million people at risk of starvation due to the war. Restarting the civil war would again put millions of people at risk of famine,” she said.
Publicly, U.S. officials have remained tight-lipped on possible involvement in on-the-ground operations in Yemen.
“I can't talk about that stuff from the podium, but we have ways of conducting sensitive site exploitation without ground troops on the ground,” Sean Parnell, United States Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Chief Pentagon Spokesman, said about possible U.S. involvement in ground operations in Yemen during a March 17 Pentagon press briefing.
Asked early last week about possible U.S. support for a ground operation in Yemen, likewise, a defense official told Responsible Statecraft on background that details surrounding possible future operations could not be disclosed “due to operational security to ensure the safety and security of…service members.”
"Under Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden, the U.S. provided significant support to the Saudi-led coalition that fought a war to oust the Houthi rebels from 2015 to 2022,” Sheline explained. “Even with a massive air campaign as well as a ground invasion led by the Saudis and UAE in southern Yemen, the anti-Houthi coalition was unsuccessful, partly due to the infighting among the Yemeni members, who beyond their antipathy towards the Houthis, agreed on little else.”