By seeking to keep Yemen destabilized and weak, Saudi Arabia inadvertently helped the Houthis form a united threat to the kingdom’s security.

As the world remains aghast at the audacity of the recent Houthi attacks on Riyadh’s airport and civilian infrastructure, the Saudi monarchy can hardly be surprised by the renewed confrontation. Saudi Arabia knows that it is dealing not only with the immediacy of an Iranian-backed opposition movement in Yemen, but also with a conflict with its southern neighbor that has been brewing for nearly a century.

By following a decades-long policy of supporting opposition parties in Yemen in order to maintain a weakened state, the Saudi have inadvertently created a formidable and united adversary. While the Saudis could achieve a temporary respite through force of arms, any permanent solution cannot be ushered in by an aerial missile attack or on the backs of an allied military convoy. It requires, instead, an overhaul of Saudi policy towards Yemen.

At its core, Saudi-Yemeni tensions are a question of national boundaries. Saudi Arabia officially annexed the three provinces along the border with Yemen (Asir, Najran, and Jizan) in 1934 under the Taif Agreement, following the Saudi-Yemeni War. While officially Saudi citizens, the marginalized residents of these three provinces remain the poorest segments of the population. With the exception of recent development plans in Asir, the Saudi monarchy has historically neglected economic investment in these three regions, leaving the population particularly susceptible to Islamic radicalization and extremism. 

The residents of these three territories remain Yemeni in language, culture, and religion, with many maintaining tribal and familial affiliations across the border. For decades, this portion of Saudi Arabia’s 800-mile border with Yemen has been porous and open to the crossing of people, weapons, and contraband.  

Threats to Saudi territory have come not only from within Asir, Najran, and Jizan, but from various political movements within Yemen over the past century. As a matter of public engagement and nationalist rhetoric, each new leader or regime that has taken power in the capital city of Sanaa has expressed support for returning these three occupied territories to Yemen. For the most part, these statements have remained in the realm of fantasy, as Yemen has little power to force Saudi Arabia to reverse its annexation. Even if it did, there is no guarantee provincial residents would want to trade Saudi citizenship for Yemeni passports. 

While Saudi leadership did not fear grassroots Yemeni campaigns or empty political rhetoric, it has been perennially concerned about the potential destabilizing effect that conflict with a strong Yemeni state might have upon the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s evolving strategy has ensured a weak Yemeni state by fostering opposition groups with military and financial support, thereby splintering the country between political, religious, and tribal groups. 

When the North Yemeni imamate was overthrown in 1962, for example, and a republican government with Egyptian support took over Sanaa, the Saudis offered their support to the anti-republican northern tribal alliance (the same tribal groups now supporting the Houthi movement). When South Yemen announced its independence from the British Empire in 1968, establishing the first and only Arab communist state, Saudi Arabia withdrew its support from the northern tribal alliance. Instead, it supported a conservative political wing within the republican regime in Sanaa, which by then had lost Egyptian support. 

A divided Yemen and a northern regime increasingly reliant upon Saudi largesse was Saudi Arabia’s preferred status quo. When North Yemen’s third president, Ibrahim al-Hamdi (1974–77), announced his intentions to unite north and south Yemen, he was assassinated, purportedly with the involvement of Saudi agents. 

When the two Yemens eventually united in 1990, Saudi Arabia became outwardly concerned, fearful of a potentially strong southern neighbor. Saudi fears came to fruition after Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh declared his support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Saudi Arabia retaliated by expelling over 1 million Yemeni migrant laborers, setting off a major economic crisis in Yemen, from which the country has yet to recover.

Still faced with the prospect of a united Yemen south of the border, Saudi machinations supported a South Yemen separatist movement in 1994, sparking a bloody civil war between Saleh’s government in Sanaa and a socialist regime in the southern port city of Aden. Saleh’s reliance upon Islamist forces in his military victory against southern separatists introduced new fissures into the country’s increasingly contentious tribal and religious makeup, culminating in the formation of the Houthi movement (Ansarallah).

Anticipating this development, Saudi Arabia began building a security barrier between the two countries in 2003 to exert control over the once-porous southern border. True to the Saudi prophecy, in 2004, the first wars between the Yemeni government and a growing northern opposition movement took place. As the fifth wave of fighting between Sanaa and the Houthis threatened to spill across the border in 2009, the Saudi military intervened, suffering its first casualties against the Houthi militias.

Although the Houthi movement and the government in Sanaa officially reached a temporary rapprochement in 2010, Saudi leadership had already lost confidence in President Saleh. Soon thereafter, the Arab Spring protests forced Saleh from office in February 2012. The Saudis then placed their bet on Salafi politicians and commanders, such as Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, who had positioned themselves as religious and political alternatives to the Houthi-led movement.

A combination of misguided UN diplomatic interventions, declining popular legitimacy, and infighting has produced lackluster results for Saudi-backed opposition parties, who have proven no match for the popularity and organization of the Houthi movement. Rather than a weak southern neighbor, Houthi-ruled Yemen is transforming into an authoritarian and militant state with power ambitions that directly threaten the Saudi kingdom and global shipping through the Red Sea. Iranian support for the Houthis is a reflection of Saudi Arabia’s own approach toward supporting opposition movements with the greatest potential for state destabilization. In this regard, Saudi policy towards Yemen has played directly into the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

If the Saudis want to wake from this Houthi nightmare, they need to change their approach towards Yemen drastically. Variable funding to opposition parties is like a game of Russian roulette; one day the opposition may become the government and a threat to Saudi interests.

Manufactured presidential councils and the arming of disparate militant groups will serve only as a temporary and ineffectual stopgap, especially as the Houthi movement now has the increased ability to launch ballistic missiles at vulnerable Saudi targets. There remains hope that Saudi arms might lead to yet another stalemate or temporary respite and calls for a negotiating table. How the Saudis choose to use that lull in fighting will ultimately determine their fate.

Rather than rallying a loose Saudi-led anti-Houthi coalition, Saudi Arabia should give the remnants of the Yemeni republic something tangible to present to their constituents. Whether economic investment, membership in the Gulf Cooperation Council, or a politically attractive solution to three disputed territories. Rather than fearing a united and strong Yemen, perhaps Saudi Arabia should actively be cultivating a healthy and prosperous Yemeni state that can be held accountable and can serve as an ally in the regional struggle with Iran.

About the Author: Asher Orkaby

Asher Orkaby is a research associate and instructor at Harvard University. He was previously an associate research scholar at Princeton University’s Transregional Institute and a residential fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. He is the author of Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68 (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Yemen: What Everyone Needs to Know (OUP, 2021).

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