Video: The Gulf States and the war in Yemen

While Yemen is facing a variety of political, ethnic and sectarian conflicts, Saudi Arabia and Iran add further complexity to the situation by fighting a proxy war in the country.

Saudi Arabia leads a coalition of Arab states that has carried out airstrikes against shia Houthis in the northern part of Yemen – a clear indication that the Gulf countries are seeking greater military and political independence from the U.S. The fallout could be future Arab-led interventions in other conflicts in the region, says Jane Kinninmont, Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Head of the Middle East and North African Programme at Chatham House. 22 April she spoke at a DIIS seminar in Copenhagen.

- The coalition has had certain aims for Yemen itself, but it is also seeking to achieve regional objectives, especially countering Iran. The perception in the Gulf Cooperation Council is that the Houthi movement in Yemen is little more than an Iranian proxy, although that is an assessment not necessarily shared by many Yemenis nor Western governments, she said.

The war in Yemen has developed in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, when various fractions united around the goal to oust the then president Ali Abu Saleh. However, after his resignation a national dialogue ended in political violence throughout the country. Houthis, backed by former president Saleh, overran the capital of Sanaa and forced the Western-backed president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, to flee the country.

Saudi Arabia then formed the coalition of ten Arab countries including Egypt, which is a new alliance in the context of intervention in Yemen.

- It contrasts with the situation back in the 1960s, the last time there was regional intervention in a civil war in Yemen, where Saudi-Arabia and Egypt were on different sides: Egypt backing the Southern separatists who were mostly following a left-wing, secularist ideology, and Saudi Arabia at that time supporting the Zaidi-Shia imamate of Northern Yemen. That history indicates quite clearly that although Yemen has been beset by conflicts for decades, it has not been primarily sectarian conflicts, and nor has the policies of international and regional players towards Yemen been mainly driven by sectarian issues. However, there is a big worry now that the mobilization for and against the conflict in Yemen has often fallen along sectarian lines, and that this conflict could add to an existing trend of sectarian polarization in the region, said Jane Kinninmont.