Regional and International influence on the Yemen Crisis and the failure of the peace process How has regional and international relations impacted on the Yemen Crisis? Hend Omairan International Relations Dept. of Global Political Studies Bachelor programme – IR103L 15 credits thesis Thesis submitted Spring 2021 Supervisor: Johan Modée Abstract The factors behind the crisis in Yemen are intertwined and complicated to a large extent, and the war has completed its sixth year and is still raging without any political solutions or sustainable peace being found, as the crisis is rooted from decades and many internal and external factors have branched out and intertwined to make the scene go on a path other than evident to stop the war. Therefore, it finds a dilemma in finding regional and international influence and role in resolving the crisis in Yemen. This thesis sheds light on the direct and indirect effects of conflict, the events that took place before the war in 2015, and the extent of their impact on the current crisis, by analyzing the qualitative content according to interviews with local and international parties. International experts and this study seek to systematically process tracing events after the post- colonial, the impact of political regimes, the geographical distribution between North Yemen and South Yemen, unity in 1990 and the civil war in 1994, and the impact of political factors, conflicts, the Arab Spring 2011, outcomes of the national dialogue2014, and regional and international interventions to stop war and failure of the peace process. Keywords Yemen, conflict, Saudi Arabia, Iran, STC, political parties, impact, political system, Government, Colonialism, crisis, peace process, regional, international interference. Word Count: 13930 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS PDRY People's Democratic Republic of Yemen YAR Yemen Arab Republic GCC Gulf Cooperation Council STC Southern Transitional Council UAE United Arab Emirates UK United Kingdom USA United states of America UN United Nation UNSC United Nation Security Council Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 2. Literature review .................................................................................................................. 3 1.1 Internal civil war .............................................................................................................. 3 1.2 External proxy war ........................................................................................................... 5 1.3 The failure of Peace process............................................................................................. 7 2.4 Theory .............................................................................................................................. 9 2.4.1 Independence and Ideology ...................................................................................... 9 2.4.2 Identity and religion (Social constructivism) ............................................................ 9 3. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 11 3.1 Process tracing .................................................................................................................... 11 3.2 Qualitative content analysis (QCA) .................................................................................... 13 3.2.1 Selection of Data .......................................................................................................... 14 3.2.2 Reflecting my influence as a researcher ...................................................................... 16 4. Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 17 4.1 History and background ...................................................................................................... 17 4.2 The impact of post- colonialism ......................................................................................... 18 4.2.1 The impact of previous political system (YAR and PDRY) ........................................ 20 4.2.2 Impact of Unification 1990 between YAR and PDRY ................................................ 22 4.2.3 the impact of the civil war 1994 .................................................................................. 24 4.2.4 The impact of the Arab Spring..................................................................................... 26 4.2.5 National Dialogue Outcomes 2014 .............................................................................. 27 4.2.6 The Regional and international Interference................................................................ 28 4.3 Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 32 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 35 6. Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 36 7. Appendix .............................................................................................................................. 40 1. Introduction International relations explain the influence between inter-states and policies, and it is important on the international arenas, whether indirectly or directly for security, diplomatic and political interests (Lamont, 2015, p. 12). International relations theorists argue that the study of war is a sub-part of international relations, and this study analysis enable the interaction between variables that are based on three levels, starting from the international level, then the regional and local level, and the end of which is the individual level (Johnson, 2017, p. 1). Since transnational issues and international conflicts are one of the focus of International Relations (IR), the wars in the Middle East took a large place in international relations, including the war in Yemen because it is a civil war and then turned into a regional and international external war. The Yemen war is the subject of this thesis. There are various explanations and understandings of the Yemen war, some believe that it is just escalation since the revolutions of the Arab Spring and others that it began since the establishment of the Yemen unity between South Yemen and North Yemen and the civil war since 1994, as well as some that differences existed after the independence of British colonialism in South Yemen and the independence of Ottoman empire from North Yemen (Subhi, 2018). In past three decades and the Yemen unification under the conflict and continuous internal wars that have led to concern in destabilizing the Arab national security and instability in the Arabian Peninsula, and this is what allowed certain countries such as Saudi Arabia to intervene militarily in Yemen to protect its borders came in 2015 when the Houthis turned against the state of Yemen with the support of Iran (BBC, 2020). There is a difference in the vision and discourses of internal and external parties about the war, how it began, and the old and new causes of the conflict. There are those who describe interventions to preserve Arab national security from Iran and there are those who say that one of the goals of the intervention is to restore Yemeni legitimacy, stop the war and find alternative solutions to the Yemen crisis. When the Houthis took over the capital of Yemen, Sanaa, in 2014, the war began with the Houthis entering Aden in March 2015, and it was difficult to define and describe it due to the many parties and factors and the multiplicity of conflict parties that participated in the war at the local level on the one side, and the international and regional on the other side (Brehoney, 2020). Some scholars (Hill 2017, Schmitz 2014, Helen 2019, Young et all. 2012) interpret the war as a civil war 1 in Yemen. However, other scholars (Juneau 2020, Pack 2019, Bachman, 2019, Salisbury 2016, Schulpen et al. 2020) view it as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia which has a Sunni majority, and Iran Shia majority in the region on the Yemen territory, due to ideological, religious and political differences. Reflecting on the continuum war in the Middle East, particularly in Yemen, and there are direct regional and international effects on the crisis for more than six years, the complications in finding solutions and supporting the parties to the conflict through many escalations in the war raise the puzzle: “what makes the war in Yemen remain unsolved despite the intervention of the regional and international actors?” Thus thesis investigate how certain individuals in Yemen understand the Yemen war. However, analyzing the continuum of war in Yemen raises an interesting research question: “How has regional and international relations impacted on the Yemen Crisis?” The thesis examines the war in Yemen and the regional external interventions by the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia to support the Yemen legitimate government as well as the support that Iran provides to Houthis in Yemen and how the IGOs and UN have intervened to find out the solutions to the Yemen crisis. The study argues that the peace process failure is related to colonial impacts, and a lack of knowledge of the roots of war and