On Yemen's desert battlefield, a war with global consequences is being waged

On Yemen's desert battlefield, a war with global consequences is being waged. Traveling at high speed across the barren landscape in a pickup truck loaded with armed fighters, we moved with Yemen's pro‑government forces, catching glimpses of the Arabian Sea and distant upland peaks. “It was a travel astatine precocious velocity done the godforsaken - successful a pick-up motortruck with equipped fighters successful the back. We were travelling with Yemen's pro-government forces, catching glimpses of the Arabian Sea, and forbidding upland peaks successful the distance. Houthi rebels were dislodged from present conscionable days ago, we were told,” a fighter recounted. In Shaab‑al‑Jinn, Lahj governorate, the soldiers pointed out newly erected sandbagged defenses, fresh lines carved into the sand. “There was dense fighting,” said Tawfiq Al Haboun, a bearded commandant in camouflage uniform. “They person snipers, artillery and ballistic rocket launchers.” The conflict in the remote corners of the Middle East carries worldwide significance. Yemen’s entrenched civil war is now impossible to ignore, forming part of a wider struggle that stretches from Tehran to Riyadh, where missiles slammed into the planetary airdrome this weekend (where missiles slammed into the planetary airdrome this weekend). Yemen’s Houthi fighters—already a threat to global shipping—are expanding their menace to Saudi Arabia and providing leverage for their Iranian backers, Riyadh’s regional rival. Tawfiq Al Haboun gestured to shards of fibre solid and bits of metal at his feet, noting they were fragments of a downed Houthi drone he said was carrying C4 explosives. Commander Al Haboun belongs to the Southern Forces, a component of the loose confederation of groups fighting for Yemen’s internationally recognised government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia and its aerial strikes. The Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, ousting the administration. A year later a Saudi‑led coalition of Arab states intervened in an attempt to dislodge them. Despite years of devastating aerial strikes, the effort has not succeeded. Read the full story at BBC News →