Yemen has been suffering under a brutal civil war for over a decade, but newfound factors are exacerbating one of the Middle East's most dire humanitarian crises. Continued pressure from Yemen's Houthis, who are engaged in conflict with U.S. forces, is making recovery a difficult task.
American bombs began falling on the Iran-backed Houthis, the terrorist group controlling northwest Yemen, on March 15. This bombing campaign, spearheaded by President Donald Trump, has had limited success, but it could cause the country's humanitarian crisis to spiral.
Recent fighting
Yemen has been dealing with a humanitarian crisis since it devolved into civil war in 2014, but the recent campaign against the Houthis has "killed civilians and brought further destruction and uncertainty to the poorest country in the Middle East," said The Guardian. As part of their pushback against the U.S., Houthi fighters are reportedly blocking off bomb sites, but towns are being "hit in the middle of the night, which is a sure-fire way to kill civilians," said Niku Jafarnia, a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch, to The Guardian.
While Trump has claimed that the Houthis have been "decimated by the relentless strikes," that is "not what Pentagon and military officials are privately telling Congress and allied countries," said The New York Times. These officials have "acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis' vast, largely underground arsenal," while at the same time potentially bombing civilians.
'You never know which way things will go'
With the bombings ramping up, aid workers "never know which way things will go," Siddiq Khan, a director for the aid organization Islamic Relief, said to The Guardian. These attacks have "further scared the organizations," causing a "huge vacuum" of aid workers.
Compounding this is Trump's slashed funding for foreign aid, including the nation's primary civilian foreign aid group, USAID. The U.N. also "suspended its humanitarian operations in the stronghold of Yemen's Houthi rebels" in February, said The Associated Press.
The U.S. needs to "avoid targeting civilian infrastructure," said Yemen analyst Mohammed Al-Basha to PBS News. It should also minimize civilian casualties, which will "avoid giving the Houthis any means or tools to use as propaganda." The "regional powers and the anti-Houthi coalition in Yemen need to sit down and figure out" a long-term policy. | 
