The Hidden Engine of Famine: How Southern Yemen’s Internal War Is Crushing Civilians

At the beginning of January 2026, Saudi Arabia opened dialogue with the southern Yemeni groups and at the same time conducted airstrikes that killed combatants and disrupted the communities in the south. This is the contradiction between diplomacy and bombardment, which has become one of the characteristics of the war in Yemen. Quite on the contrary, military pressure led by Saudi Arabia in southern Yemen is increasingly fragmenting, exacerbating hunger and killing civilians. To common Yemenis this is not a political fight but a survival fight. Millions of civilians are suffering through starvation, displacement and a breakdown of basic services as airstrikes, troop movements and security operations continue to increase.

Saudi Airstrikes and the Illusion of Stability

Saudi Arabia justifies its activities in southern Yemen as the need to have security, but the situation on the ground speaks otherwise. Internal unrest and airstrikes have curtailed weak peace after shaky peace. As much as Riyadh encourages negotiations with the southern actors, its air power use is a resounding message that military force is the most powerful tool.

The two-sided strategy has not worked in stabilizing the south. Instead, it has caused a greater mistrust, gave strength to armed confrontations, and an extended war that the citizens of Yemen cannot bear anymore.

A Saudi-Led Strategy That Fuels Fragmentation

Saudi military pressure has rather increased the internal divisions in Yemen instead of reducing violence. Hadramout and al-Mahra are some of the Southern provinces, which are strategic and resourceful and where tension levels have increased as Saudi-supported security schemes redefine local power structures.

The effects of this strategy on governance are fragmented governance, weakening of local institutions and parallel centres of control. The outcome is not order, but chaos, in which the civilians are caught in between armed forces, checkpoints and airstrikes, and they have no safe space anymore.

Civilians Caught in the Crossfire

To the families in southern Yemen, Saudi led military escalation is translated into fear. Houses are demolished, markets are affected and roads are made unsafe. Every airstrike does not just cut off access to food, fuel, and medical care but extends a long way further.

The hospitals already devastated by years of war are faced with shortages of supplies and personnel. Insecurity or destruction of schools force children out of schools, which puts them at work, on the move, or into early marriage.

Hunger, Famine, and a Collapsing Safety Net

Yemen is currently among the worst food crises in the globe. It is projected that by early 2026, approximately 18 million individuals will be in crisis-level hunger, over 41,000 of them will be at risk of immediate famine. Almost half of all children below five years of age are chronically malnourished which is a life death sentence to retarded growth and retarded development.

This disaster is not natural. The airstrikes by Saudi and constant military pressure interfere with farming, demolish markets and supply routes. The lives are destroyed at a rate that is exceeding that of humanitarian action.

Aid Under Attack

The humanitarian aid is failing to hold the burden of war and irresponsibility. Thousands of nutrition centers have been closed due to the reduction of global funding. There has been very little provision of funds necessary to sustain food security, yet demands are at all time high.

The aid workers are restricted on their movements, insecurity and arbitrary arrests hinder or even prevent lifesaving efforts. These delays are fatal to families that are waiting to receive food or medicine.

The Human Cost of “Security Operations”

Parents in southern Yemen are now facing impossible decisions: do without meals to feed children, sell land and animals to get bread, take children out of school to keep alive. These are not incidental effects of war, but its main result.

When Saudi Arabia speaks of airstrikes, as security operations the kingdom pays no heed to a basic fact, true security is full stomachs and open schools and operating hospitals. In a place where hunger and hopelessness reign, bombs are not going to bring some stability.

A Crisis of Responsibility

Unilateral military actions will not achieve peace in Yemen, according to the warning of the United Nations. Nevertheless, Saudi operations remain prioritized with the use of force over human lives. Saudi Arabia is not solving the crisis in Yemen, it is making it deeper by maintaining a policy that further internalizes it and encourages mass starvation.

To civilians in Yemen, this war is not as much about the territory or power. It is of survival in a nation where survival has become starvation.

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