Complex Situation in Yemen: Conflicts, Airstrikes, and Radicalization

From September 26, 2015: On this week’s Lawfare Podcast, Gregory Johnsen outlines the current state-of-play in Yemen. Johnsen, who is a writer-at-large for Buzzfeed News, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, and an all-things-Yemen-expert, walks Ben through the byzantine power politics in Sanaa that led to the conflict now engulfing Yemen and he explains why the war shouldn’t be viewed as just another Sunni-Shia fight. Yet while he clarifies that the issues that sparked the war are much more local, he warns that the longer the conflict goes on, the more likely it is to expand. Johnsen also outlines the events that led to the Saudi intervention and whether or not Yemen—which he says is really twelve separate factions now—can ever be put back together again.

Johnsen is the author of The Last Refuge: Yemen, al Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia. Follow him on Twitter for the latest updates on Yemen.

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