Editorial: The Guardian view on the crisis in Yemen: resolve it now

Yemen’s history is one of division and conflict, with occasional periods of shaky dominance by one region or religious or tribal grouping. Its most successful leaders have been skilled manipulators of its divisions, placating at one moment, bargaining at the next, using force at another, and constantly recalibrating their alliances in reaction to events. But such figures have been rare, and even they have fallen off the tightrope sooner or later. Like Afghanistan, Yemen is a country whose people recognise a common identity, and often act resolutely when foreigners intervene in their affairs, but who find it hard otherwise to overcome their differences. At this most fundamental level there is, unfortunately, nothing surprising about the recent breakdown of Yemeni state institutions and the country’s descent into something approaching civil war.

It is also unsurprising that the apparent victors, the Houthis from the north, almost certainly do not have the resources to fully control the country. This would be the case even if the Saudis, who have already twice bombed air bases near the capital, Sana’a, this week, were not standing by ready to intervene with ground troops, along with the Egyptians and other Arab states.

This too is the pattern of the past, rebellions strong enough to challenge and sometimes to overturn the government, but not strong enough to hold on to power for very long. Fears of a new proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran have naturally emerged, but are probably overdone. Iran has certainly provided the Houthis, who constitute a remote branch of Shia Islam, with some aid. Keeping the Saudis distracted by causing trouble in their backyard makes sense from Tehran’s point of view, but it is hard to see the logic of pumping this up into a war which the Houthis are likely to lose, and which Iran would find hard to supply. The words now coming out of Tehran, if taken at face value, emphasise the need for a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

On the Sunni side, the hope may well be that the declaration of readiness to intervene will frighten the Houthis sufficiently to make them more amenable to UN-brokered negotiations, to which they are agreed in principle while objectingto the proposed venue. Yemen’s recent history is indeed one of periodic patched-up power-sharing agreements which last for a time before falling apart, so it may well be that another such deal will be made. The hopes of 2011, when Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president whose continued meddling in Yemeni politics is part of the problem, stood down, seem very distant now. There seemed then a chance of creating a Yemen which was both more democratic and had in place a viable federal arrangment balancing regional autonomy with central power.

But those objectives should still guide both Yemenis and the regional powers. The alternative, which is that the country will slip into real civil war, with the sectarianism, the unforgiveable atrocities and the economic and social damage that would further degrade what is already the poorest country in the Middle East, is horrifying.