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