For much of 2018, Yemen's civil war ground on, with the Saudi Arabian-led coalition backing the country's internationally recognized government on one side and rebels from the northern Houthi movement, who have received support and arms from Iran, on the other. The United States, through military support and funding, continues to back the Saudi coalition's efforts to dislodge the Houthis, a traditional Saudi adversary, from Sanaa, the country's ostensible capital. But support for the Saudi war effort in the U.S. Congress has been eroding in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, putting pressure on the coalition to cease hostilities.
As the year wraps up, the combatants in Yemen have been engaging in the first meaningful peace talks over the civil war in two years. Whether or not the country can find a political solution to the disputes that created the conflict, the pause in hostilities is opening space...