300,000 Uprooted: Yemen's New War on the Red Sea Chokepoint, and Why America Should Care

The UN migration agency says more than 300,000 Yemenis have fled fighting in just two months as Iran-backed Houthis battle the Saudi-backed government near one of the world's vital shipping lanes.

By Clara Hughes

Yemen's long war has roared back to life, and the human toll is mounting fast. More than 300,000 people have been forced from their homes by escalating fighting in western Yemen, almost all of them in the past two months, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on November 1. "After years of conflict, families in Yemen are being forced to flee yet again, often with little more than the clothes on their backs," said Abdusattor Esoev, IOM's chief of mission in Yemen. This is not a distant tragedy without consequences for Americans. The fighting is being driven by the Iran-backed Houthis, it sits beside the Bab al-Mandab strait, a chokepoint for global shipping, and it has spilled into Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude exporter. Keep reading with Altas Premium. Below: how the new war started, the siege of Taiz, the