What We Get Wrong About Yemen - Adam Baron - POLITICO Magazine:
Just stay out of it. While the chief combatants in the civil war are
certainly playing the sectarian card to some degree, there is reason to
think that Yemen will not necessarily become part of some regional
sectarian conflict. Regardless of their foreign ties, both the Shiite
Houthis and their Sunni opponents are deeply rooted in Yemen, and they
are motivated primarily by local issues.
The main danger now is
that the Western powers, Saudi Arabia or Egypt will overreact and seek
to intervene, ostensibly to counter Iranian influence or to quash the
efforts of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to gain territory. Yet
foreign intervention could very well be the worst approach now—further
regionalizing what is still a local fight, injecting a stronger
sectarian tone into the conflict while threatening to push Yemen closer
to implosion.