WorldPoliticsReview.com: As Civilian Toll Rises in Yemen, Houthis and Saudis Just Dig In

The war in Yemen has pushed the country to the brink of famine, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program, while Yemenis are dying daily because of a lack of access to clean water supplies, basic medicine and even affordable transport to medical facilities.

Yet despite a mounting international outcry, the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen is unlikely to have much of an impact on the calculus of the main players in the conflict, or their foreign backers. In truth, a solution to Yemen’s humanitarian crisis will only come once the warring parties believe a political solution works in their favor, or that the cost of continuing the war is too high.

Yemen was the Arab world’s poorest country before the war, which was sparked by the expansion of the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite revivalist movement turned militia, into the south of the country last March, after they seized the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. Speculation was rife before the war that Yemen’s Finance Ministry would soon be unable to pay its bills and that the country could run out of foreign currency. This was particularly worrying given that Yemen relies on imports for 90 percent of its food and fuel—and because its water supply is highly dependent on water drawn from underground aquifers using diesel pumps.

The formal economy has effectively collapsed since the war began, and the supply of basic goods has been limited by a blockade of Yemen’s ports initiated in April by the Saudi-led coalition formed to oust the Houthis and reinstate President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), just 2.1 million tons of food and 821,600 tons of fuel have entered the country through legal channels since April, a fraction of the country’s needs. In September, OCHA believes, only 544 tons of fuel entered Yemen via its main ports, 1 percent of the amount required every month to provide fuel for transportation, electricity generation and the regular water supply.

Well-established smuggling networks have prevented Yemen from running out of food and fuel, but the sharp increase in prices for basic goods, coupled with a collapsed economy that provides few work opportunities, has left the more than 50 percent of Yemenis who already lived in poverty before the war in an untenable position. They have little to no income, while the goods they need to live are some 45 percent more expensive than they were before the war, again according to OCHA.

The impact of the blockade has been compounded in the central Yemeni city of Taiz, the country’s industrial hub, which has been subject to a Houthi-led siege for the past several months. Residents of Taiz have long complained that the Houthis were not allowing food to enter the city; since late September, they have blamed water shortages on the Houthis preventing water tankers from entering as well. The use of similar tactics in the southern port of Aden in a Houthi-led siege, which was only lifted when the Houthis were pushed out of the city and its environs in July, led to a spike in cases of waterborne diseases, including but not limited to dengue fever.

The U.N. says it simply cannot provide the basic needs of a country of more than 26 million people and that the only way to avoid famine is to restore trade. It has called for the Saudi-led coalition to allow goods to flow freely into Yemen and is in negotiations over a U.N.-overseen verification system to allow cargo to enter the country freely. But Saudi Arabia has dragged its feet on actually implementing that: After several months of talks, ships entering Hodeida port in northern Yemen have still been delayed by 18 days or more.

Neither the Houthis, their backers—loyalists of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh—or the Saudi-led coalition has shown any interest in accepting responsibility for the current situation. Instead, each seems content to blame the other for intransigence, rather than attempt to broker a meaningful solution that might pull the country back from a devastating famine. Riyadh regularly denies accusations that the coalition is adding to human suffering in Yemen. The Houthis, who have enough food and fuel to prosecute their war thanks to thriving smuggling networks and a bustling war economy, are similarly happy to promote a narrative of a crisis that is purely the fault of the coalition.

And neither the Houthis nor the coalition have been willing to accept responsibility for what human rights organizations, backed by an increasingly voluminous body of evidence, say are war crimes committed by both sides. In the southern port city of Aden and in Taiz, where brutal fighting still rages on, the Houthis and their allies have indiscriminately shelled civilian areas. The coalition, meanwhile, continues to deny charges that its aerial campaign has, by accident or design, killed hundreds if not thousands of civilians and targeted vital civilian infrastructure.

Of all civilian deaths caused by the war—more than 2,300 according to the U.N., although this is widely held to be a lowball figure—the U.N. estimates that the majority are the result of air strikes rather than fighting on the ground. Again, Riyadh has employed a blanket strategy of denying culpability in the event of civilian deaths. Last month, it denied that coalition airplanes were flying in the area where a water bottling plant was bombed in northern Yemen, killing 13 workers. Weeks later, it offered a similar denial when a wedding party on Yemen’s Red Sea coast was hit by a coalition air strike, killing at least 70 civilians.

The United States is said to have become increasingly disillusioned by its Gulf allies’ war, worried about the damage being done to an already battered U.S. reputation in Yemen and the region by its support for the Saudi-led campaign. But Washington values the maintenance of good relations with Riyadh too highly to risk upsetting its Saudi partners by pushing more aggressively for an end or reduction in the intensity of the aerial campaign. Last month, after backing calls for a U.N. inquiry into human rights violations in the war, the U.S. did not push back when Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies spiked the planned U.N. Human Rights Council resolution.

It is all too clear that Yemen’s worsening humanitarian situation won’t be a point of leverage in the U.N.’s attempts to end the fighting. The conflict will come to a halt only because of internal political pressure. Rumors have swirled that some factions of the Saudi family have become disenchanted with what is seen as King Salman’s war, while tension has long been reported between the Houthis, northern Yemeni tribes and Saleh loyalists. That rising discontent could push the two sides toward a deal.

But with the coalition gaining territory, it is unlikely that King Salman would choose to pursue a negotiated settlement, given the boost to his popularity that an outright military victory would bring. For the Houthis and their allies, the war is seen as an existential issue: A defeat or unfavorable peace deal, they worry, could lead to violent retribution at worst or deep political marginalization at best. And until the political incentives for a deal change, Yemen’s poor will suffer the most.

Peter Salisbury is an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. A journalist and analyst, his work appears regularly in the Economist, Financial Times, Foreign Policy and Vice News, among many other publications.