By Steve Bell
In recent months, attacks by the Saudi-led coalition on the Iran-aligned Houthis have intensified, breaking a four-year truce in the Yemen war. On 11 September, Ansarallah – the political and military movement the West knows as the Houthis – took control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, and Saudi Arabia stepped up its attack on Yemen. Ten days later, Prime Minister Andy Burham announced he has agreed to a request from the Saudis to provide ‘defensive air-to-air refuelling’ in their bombing of Yemen, which he claimed would help stabilise the region. On 5 October Saudi’s recently concluded Mecca Mutual Defence Agreement with Turkey and Pakistan was activated, when the two agreed to deploy forces to the Saudi kingdom. STEVE BELL, Stop the War Treasurer, outlines the history of the Saudi war on Yemen and calls for an end to British bi-partisan complicity.
On 13 July, the Saudi government bombed Sana’a airport, preventing the landing of a civilian aircraft carrying a Yemeni delegation returning from the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran. The plane was forced to divert to Hodeidah to land. This attack ended the April 2022 truce.
The truce was established after seven years of war against Yemen waged by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, supported by the US, Britain and the EU. The truce was always precarious. The Saudis had imposed a blockade by land, sea, and air upon Yemen in 2015, and never lifted it despite the truce. Today, 11 years after the start of the war and siege, 22 million Yemenis require humanitarian assistance and 18 million suffer acute food insecurity.
The attack on Sana’a airport was the final straw for the governing authorities there, led by Ansarallah (the correct name for the Houthis). Unsurprisingly, they declared a ‘blockade against the blockade’ – that is, while the Saudis continued their blockade of Yemen, so Yemen would blockade Saudi maritime traffic in the Red Sea. Since mid-July Saudi oil tankers heading for Asia have been attacked and forced to use the longer route through the Suez Canal and around the Cape. The Saudis further escalated aerial strikes, and the war has fully resumed.
Saudi goals
Ansarullah has provided governance for around 80% of the population of Yemen since 2014. It is a religiously inspired national-liberation movement, with profound roots in Yemeni society. It is strongly anti-imperialist, regarding the US and its Israeli client as responsible for the instability and lack of peace in West Asia.
Ansarallah is deeply committed to the Palestinians. It blockaded Israeli bound naval traffic in the Red Sea prior to the October 2025 ceasefire in Gaza. Ansarallah has been responsible for Yemen organising more mass demonstrations for Palestine than any other country in the world.
The rest of Yemen is under the control of Saudi Arabia through an ‘internationally recognised government’. That body is based in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, never having successfully established a presence inside Yemen since 2014. It’s former leader, ex-President Hadi died in custody in Riyadh, after the Saudis removed him for corruption. A replacement Presidential Leadership Council was appointed by the Saudis with no mandate from the Yemeni people. The area under this control is large, but mostly sparsely populated.
The Saudi coalition seeks to prevent radical nationalist forces leading Yemen. The Saudi state has interfered in Yemen since the time of Ibn Saud, who annexed three provinces of Yemen in the 1930s. The Saudis fear the tradition of mass political involvement inside Yemen. Their whole interest in Yemen since the 2011 popular uprising, and Ansarallah’s takeover of Sana’a in 2014, has been to prevent the consolidation of popular power.
Impoverishing Yemen
The idea that the absolutist monarchies of the Saudi and Emirati royal families are offering Yemen progress is ridiculous. Yemen is the poorest Arab-majority country. According to the IMF, it had a gross domestic product (GDP) of $42.4 billion in 2015 when the war began.
As a result of foreign intervention and siege, GDP in 2025 had fallen to $17.4 billion – just over 40% of the pre-war level. The population have had their living standards more than halved. As for humanitarian aid, Yemen received only $687.9 million in 2025, the lowest in 10 years. In 2026, it has so far received only 20% of the UN Development Plan target.
End British complicity
Since 2015, British government policy has been an uninterrupted bi-partisan policy of abject failure. The Cameron government support a supposedly legitimate government whose electoral term had ended and had gone into an exile of luxurious hotels. The Johnson government supported the farce of Saudi Arabia appointing a new government in April 2022.
Successive British Prime Ministers – Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, and Starmer – all endorsed continued Saudi and Emirati interference in Yemen. All of them aided the war through arms sales, the provision of intelligence, training, logistics and refuelling of coalition bombers. Sunak and Starmer authorised the RAF to participate in bombing Yemen, alongside the US.
No British government has provided a diplomatic alternative to a war that resulted in 377,000 Yemeni deaths by 2021. Andy Burnham is now continuing this bankrupt policy.
It is vital that the labour and anti-war movements demand a complete end to British complicity in the oppression of the Yemeni people. This means:
- an end to supporting the Saudi war and blockade of Yemen
- suspending arms sales to the coalition, and
- supporting an inclusive peace process for Yemen that recognises that Ansarallah will continue to play a major role in the country’s future, alongside all national forces.
Yemenis will only hope again when the Saudi and Emirati autocrats leave.
TAKE ACTION
On the eve of Labour Party conference, 10 trade union general secretaries published an open letter to PM Andy Burnham, expressing shock at the decision to provide military support to Saudi Arabia which has ‘repeatedly violated international law’. Signatories included 4 of the 11 Labour-affiliated unions: Unison, CWU, TSSA, and FBU. Stop the War has published the full text of the letter. Ask your union to lend support to their call ‘to urgently end Britain’s military support for Saudi Arabia’.
The above article was first published here by Labour CND.