Another war slips by our notice

Rising tensions: Houthi supporters hold weapons during an anti-Saudi gathering to mobilise more fighters into multiple Yemeni battlefronts, in Sana’a, Yemen. — EPA

DURING the Cold War, a few countries were famously divided along pro and anti-Communist lines. Three are celebrated cases and I am happy to have visited a reunited Germany and Vietnam in recent years, although one can hardly say North and South Korean relations are at their warmest. By far the least known case is that of North and South Yemen.

Yemen has always been under the radar and perhaps that’s part of the reason the war in Yemen has been raging so quietly. In fact, I was going to call this particular article the hidden war until I realised while doing research that roughly half the articles I read about it were called just that!