Some US officials worried about the decreased effectiveness of drone strikes against al Qaeda in Yemen due to lack of on-the-ground intelligence caused by the US embassy closure back in middle of February (Reuters 2/12/2015). Now, with most of US presence gone from the country, Yemen is becoming an unstable ground for a proxy war between Saudi Arabia-led coalition and Iran (The New York Times 4/1/2015).

The sad part of this continuous escalating conflict is that most major participants of this conflict do not seem to prioritize the welfare of the people of Yemen. This is the war on regional influence, and the foreign participants of this conflict believe that Yemen should become a country of their own vision.

Granted, there are legitimate reasons to why foreign intervention might be justified. First, it is in the best interest of all civilized world that Yemen does not turn into a haven for terror groups to train, coordinate, and launch their terrorist activities abroad. This has been the primary public reason for the US intensive involvement in Yemen. Second, it would be in the interest of protecting basic human rights of Yemenis that the country does not turn into an oppressive totalitarian regime. In order to intervene Yemen with these reasons, an international coalition led by the UN Security Council is needed.

Unfortunately, the current conflict in Yemen has developed into an inter-regional proxy war with opposing coalitions fighting in order to win a sphere of influence in this country. The real victim in this conflict are the Yemenis people, who simply want to live their own lives in stability.

As with any regional conflict, there is the call for the United Nations to act (The New York Times 3/26/2015), but with the ongoing Iranian nuclear talks complicating the matters (ABC 3/29/2015), any significant international intervention is unlikely.

The real question is, how did Yemen came to be like this? The answer is quite complicated.