Joe Biden ends support for Saudi’s Yemen war

  • President Joe Biden announced an end to United States support for Saudi-led military offensive operations in Yemen.
  • Now, the US will stop supporting offensive operations, including the sale of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
  • Now new US envoys on Yemen, and Iran, are tasked with ending this war, and the regional rivalries which still fuel it.
  • This marks a change of tack from Mr Trump's administration, which increased support for the Saudi-led coalition.
  • Saudi Arabia welcomed Biden’s remarks, particularly his commitment to the country’s defence and addressing threats against it. 

YEMEN WAR

  • Fighting began in 2014 between a weak Yemeni government and the Houthi rebel movement. 
  • It escalated a year later, when Saudi Arabia and eight other Arab states - backed by the US, the UK and France - began air strikes against the Houthis.

HOUTHIS

  • The Houthis are Zaydi Shiites, or Zaydiyyah. 
  • Shiite Muslims are the minority community in the Islamic world and Zaydis are a minority of Shiites.
  • The Zaidis, once a powerful force in north Yemen, were sidelined during the 1962-70 civil war and then further alienated in the 1980s.
  • Zaidi clerics began to militarise their followers against Riyadh and its allies. 
  • The Houthi movement was founded in the 1990s by Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi.
  • In 2014 they allied with their former enemy Ali Abdullah Saleh. 
  • They seized the capital, Sana’a, and overthrowed the new president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in 2015

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