(What the fuck is happening in Yemen?)
Let's go back just a few decades.
Yemen wasn’t even one country to begin with.
People act like it just “fell apart,” but it was duct-taped together in 1990. You had the north, poor, tribal, backed by Saudi money, and then you had the south, which was basically this old British colony that actually had institutions, schools, and some idea of how a government is supposed to work.
Then the Soviet Union collapses, everyone panics, and boom, they mash the two together like it’s a bad group project. No real agreement, no real plan, just “eh, we’ll figure it out later.” Spoiler alert, they didn’t.
So what happens next? Power goes north, money goes north, southern leadership gets shoved aside, and the south goes, “Wait, what the hell just happened?” They try to leave in the 90s, get crushed, and from that point on the country is basically broken.
Not “struggling.”
Broken.
Way before the current war.
Then people act shocked when groups like the Houthis and the STC show up. Like they just appeared out of nowhere with evil plans.
No.
Western media describes the Houthis and STC pretty much as extremists, rebels, terrorists or militants.
The Houthis came out of northern communities that got ignored, pushed around, and bombed. The STC came out of the south after decades of getting screwed over politically and economically. Neither of these groups invented the chaos. They walked into a house that was already on fire.
And then of course the outside world shows up. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the US, also Iran kinda lurking in the background, all backing their favorite guys, dumping weapons everywhere, flattening infrastructure, and somehow acting surprised when the place turns into a disaster.
The Houthis or the STC “govern”, but that doesn’t mean they’re running Sweden. It means they’re the ones keeping courts open, schools running, hospitals barely functioning, collecting taxes, and stopping total anarchy.
Is it pretty? No. Is it democratic? Definitely not.
But when the state collapses, legitimacy goes to whoever can keep the lights on and the place from completely falling apart.
And then you look at today’s events in Mukalla and it feels like history repeating itself with a bigger headline. Saudi Arabia goes and bombs a port city because it thinks weapons destined for the STC just pulled in from the UAE, the STC pushes back, everybody’s calling everybody else dangerous, and now you’ve got that southern separatist force backed into a corner while Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are yelling at each other like two siblings fighting over the remote.
That’s the part that shows how messy this whole thing has become. It’s not just a local feud anymore. It’s foreign powers dragging their disagreements through Yemen like they’ve got no idea the country is actually full of people trying to live their lives.
It’s tragic, it’s chaotic, and it’s exactly what you’d expect when the state collapses and everyone else tries to fill the vacuum to serve their own interests.