Episode 27: Susanne Dahlgren

Hello friends and comrades, welcome to the Merit Podcast. I'm Jim Ryan, Merit's Executive Director. Today is July 29th, 2026, and on the podcast we have my interview with Suzanne Dogren, a longtime Merit contributor and analyst focused on Yemen. Suzanne is the author of a recent piece in our current analysis section, Yemen After the Saudi Emirati Split, which was published on July 8th. Last December, a series of dramatic events and skirmishes centered on the Hodjamaat region of Yemen saw the Emirati-backed Southern Transitional Council briefly expel Saudi and Saudi-backed militias, only to retreat in the face of Saudi counteroffensives as the Kingdom redirected troops away from the border of Puthi-Helad territory farther north. The result of this skirmish was the dramatic exit of the UAE from the Yemen Civil War, which had been intimately involved in since 2015. Since that time, Saudi Arabia has been working to consolidate its control and influence over the varied groups buying for power in the territory of the former South Yemen on the one hand and holding secret talks with the Houthis on the other. In her piece, Dogren reads these maneuvers as an attempt by the Saudis to establish a modus operandi for managing a frozen conflict from Riyadh and protect its interests in shipping an oil production through the Babel Mandab straight and across the Indian Ocean. Then on July 13th, the Houthis launched a ballistic missile attack on Saudi Arabia that has been followed by drone attacks on oil facilities and attempts to limit shipping through Babel Mandab. What appeared to be a cooling conflict has heated up again. In my conversation with Suzanne Dogren, we discussed why the Houthis were prompted to reopen hostilities, what this turn in the saga has meant for ordinary Yemenis who are facing an extraordinary food insecurity crisis and what the future holds for a conflict that has yet to find a political path forward. As always, the Merit podcast is brought to you without ads or paywalls. We rely on our listeners and readers to help us keep it that way. If you can, please consider a donation today at www.merit.org/donate. Monthly donations are especially encouraged at this time, but any support you can lend is greatly appreciated. We're also always happy to hear from our listeners. Feel free to drop a comment on your podcast service of choice or reach us by email at [email protected]. OK, onto my discussion of the current state of the Yemen Civil War with Suzanne Dogren. This conversation was recorded on June 28th, 2026. OK, welcome to the Merit podcast. I'm really happy to be here with Suzanne Dogren coming to us from Helsinki and author of really interesting recent current analysis piece on Yemen after the UAE Saudi split. Suzanne, welcome. Welcome to the podcast. Great to see you. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure. Wonderful. And so we're here to talk about what's been happening in Yemen mostly since you published your piece, but we want to start with the piece itself on the crux of it, which I found to be a really, really compelling and informative article on what's been happening in Yemen more or less since the end of last year. So in your analysis, again, we published on July 8th, we're recording this on July 28th, 20 days ago. So in that piece, you made a very compelling case that after the UAE exited Yemen, exited the conflict late last year, the Saudis were focusing on a series of maneuvers that were far more focused on consolidating their control rather than confronting the Houthis directly. So I'd like you to explain briefly for our listeners, what were those maneuvers and what sort of conclusions did they help you reach? OK. Yeah. Well, I have been following Yemeni politics, obviously, from the 1980s. It's a long perspective, but going back to the beginning of this year. So basically what happened was that the sudden transitional council was showing sort of danger, science for Saudi Arabia that it's leaving its coalition in Yemen. And that sort of launched this attack's first military attacks against the sudden military forces in the eastern part of the country. And also that the Saudis basically forced the SDC to disband itself from the United. And in my article, I'm trying to sort of make sense of what that actually means for Yemen. And my background is that I have been always sort of quite skeptical about Saudi role in Yemen in both history and in particular today. And my understanding is that Yemenis should never trust Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia is not there in order to secure Yemenis welfare and the security of the country, but rather to keep the country in its own leash and use the weakness of Yemen in order to control the territory itself. And since 2022, at least the Saudis have been actually going, having secret talks with the Houthis, the basic enemy in Yemen on some sort of settlement that would allow the Saudis to exit the Yemen war. And that I think is an important sort of background to that. So this is why the SDC took this, which I view as quite desperate sort of move to announce the establishment of South Yemen in the situation where it clearly didn't have the larger sort of political backing for that political move. So this is in short sort of what I'm describing in that piece. I think that actually in my piece I wanted to add something about how the Houthis were here, this Saudi position. And then the editor told me that it should be a separate article. But I think it's important to say it here that for the Houthis, I think they need to have Saudi Arabia involved in the Yemen civil war because the Houthis are not a government which is there to rule on a steady basis. But rather, it always needs some kind of conflict in order to motivate why it is holding such a large part of Yemen and its role. Yeah, that's an interesting, that does deserve another article. I think I might agree with our editor, Maria Hanoon there. But I think it also helps us underscore how seemingly intractable this conflict has become and how geared towards conflicts so many of the actors are. And that might explain a good deal, why we saw four days after we published this piece as a sort of re-ignition of the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. But before we get there, I think there's another really important element of your piece, which is that you do a very nice job of explaining the intricacies of the, as you put, the Southern cause. So there are so many different groups sort of vying for influence and they each have their own particular contentions with the Houthis that stand apart from the foreign actors and the conflict. So could you explain for our listeners what the state of play has been in the South leading up to July 12th? Well, yeah, that's, as I said earlier, that the Saudi sort of pushed members of the SDC to dissolve the organization in January. And since then, of course, I mean, the leadership of SDC has announced that it's not dissolved. But in actual fact, it is dissolved or sort of divided into two sections. And one of the sections decided to stay with the Saudi government. And in that sense, this what happened. näköisesti nuja sitä kolme PUV. Mutta THC ei ole jäi hi��äli kyberloaduja. 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Tאתa jusquindani häthsen on ei seure sería ja vestaanherevää tiedściąitsää, siksi ettähe vohti nyt pel初ista koti puipuknessaan. - Right, so I think this is again the hard thing for some folks to understand is that, you know, there are actions that has pull up or the Houthis take that are in coordination with the Iranian strategy. And then there are actions that they take that are not in coordination with the Iranian strategy and totally up to their own, you know, particular strategic interests. They're not, you mean, they're not puppets like in that sense. But I also kind of keep inside this frame a little bit because again, I agree with you that there's a lot of action. a lot of danger to misunderstand this conflict inside of that frame. I mean, we, you know, in the major coverage, you know, we've been so focused on Hormuz and then we hear, oh, Bob Almond, well, another straight is closing, you know? (laughs) Let's just talk about that. But I do, you know, wanna ask you how, 'cause you also addressed in your piece too, like the interest that the UAE had and Saudi have in, you know, keeping these shipping lanes open through Bob Almond, there's a Cautera. You know, to what extent, you know? And of course, also, I should mention, you know, we've just seen the US sign this nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia in the last few days. I just read this morning that the UAE is opening up diplomatic relations with Iran, right? There is some reconfiguration happening here. So how do you, how do you read Houthi strategy in this moment? You know, is it simply the retaliation for the attack on the airport in Sanaa? Or at this point, is it pushing, you know, is it, do you see it pushing the ball forward for them in any other way, you know, disrupting, you know, the Saudi move perhaps on nuclear enrichment or other energy concerns? Well, the Houthis are accusing Saudi Arabia to hold a siege in around Yemen, meaning that the Saudis, as they have done earlier, to block sort of maritime traffic to Yemeni ports in particular, those ports, which were controlled, operated by the Houthis. And then Sanaa airport has been closed for some time earlier. So the Houthis are saying that there is an actual siege that Saudis are imposing on the Houthis and Houthi Yemen. And that's why they sort of are retaliating by imposing a similar sort of siege for maritime traffic of, in particular, the Saudi shipment of oil imports. So that's the sort of framework where the Houthis are narratively sort of moving. But then, because in international media, there is a lot of talk about that now also bubble mandab is closed. And then that's not true. And the Houthis actually, they are not in control of bubble mandab. It's under the control of Tarek Saleh, who is the nephew of the former president, Ali Abjal Saleh, who has been one of these militias, who have been successful in pushing Houthis North. And was actually quite successful together with the Southern forces in trying to capture Hodeida, which is the most important port in Yemen in 2018, when the UN sort of imposed the ceasefire and after that the Houthis took control of that port. So there is, and today I could read that actually the traffic in on or inside bubble mandab has increased today. So there was 28 vessels passing it while on normal days earlier it was a number of 46 or something. And these figures come from this shipping monitor company. So nobody knows maritime traffic buildings in these sort of threats that bubble mandab is now closed also. And besides it's quite interesting that the Houthis actually allowed one Saudi all-tanker to pass bubble mandab. And there has been some speculation about that it's not the first time that the Houthis are using this kind of escalated conflict in order to gain something that they need. And the background is that currently Yemen is one of the countries which is hit very hard by the Iran War because of, first of all, because of the restrictions on maritime traffic and Yemen is fully dependent on this outside food supplies that mostly arrive in the ports. And also that the Houthis have lost the sort of flow of Iranian oil to their use. And that means that currently there is a very severe food insecurity and it's even worse in the Houthi areas currently than in the other parts of Yemen. And meaning that people who are against the Houthis in Yemen they accuse that the Houthis need this conflict now. It's all the area I know that the pre-directed attention of the own people from the economic catastrophe where they are now. So that's one of the sort of backgrounds that some people claim that there is. And also that there is discussion now. I heard that there's a discussion in the Boat in Washington and in Reard about monetary compensations for the Houthis in order to stop these operations against Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I meant to ask about the aid issue. I mean, when I had Helen Lackner on almost a year ago to talk about Yemeni or Houthi involvement in the war with Israel, she also mentioned the sort of dire state of food insecurity in the country. And stemming mostly from the dismantling of USAID, along with several other issues or several other contributing factors to the collapse of aid. And I can only imagine the Iran wars made this so much worse because of closing of shipping and the increase of expense for food and all that. So I do want to ask, could you have any information on exactly what the state of food insecurity is like? I mean, this was eight, ten months ago, something like that. We were talking about on the doorstep of a famine in Yemen. Have we reached that point? Are we getting to that soon? And is famine relief at all part of this, could it be part of this discussion that the US and Riyadh are having vis-a-vis Houthi, like as you put it almost, buying the Houthis out of this conflict somehow? Yeah, I think it's one of the issues there. But I mean, at the same time, the thing is that the Houthis need this kind of financial transactions in order to continue in power. So that's one of the points. But I think there's also very special reason for this agony that people in the Houthi controlled areas are facing. And that's that the Houthi regime has been kidnapping members of UN and other international organization staff. So there are tens of these people who are detained and imprisoned by the Houthis with the allegation that these people are spying or something like that. So a number of international organizations had to pull out from Yemen because of the violence that took place against their activities there. So this is one of the causes of the misery also, that one has to take into consideration. But I would suspect that I have difficulties to understand that for Trump administration, hunger in Yemen is a motivation to move and pay the Houthis out. But instead, I would say that because Americans were involved during the Gaza war, Americans were directly involved in bombing Yemen. And then suddenly it was last year that maailman pitäisi kertaa. Noin se on kertaa, mitä se on saada. Mutta minun kanssa on tärkeää, että se on tärkeää kertaa, - että se on saada kertaa, että se on saada - pahdella ja kertaa, että se on kertaa. Mutta minun kanssa on tärkeää kertaa, - kertaa, että se on saada kertaa, että se on saada kertaa. Ja, se on tärkeää, että se on saada kertaa, - kun se on saada kertaa. Se on se, että se on saada kertaa, että se on saada kertaa, - että se on saada kertaa, että se on saada kertaa. Ja se on saada kertaa, että se on saada kertaa, - että se on saada kertaa, mutta se on saada kertaa, - mutta se on saada kertaa, mutta se on saada kertaa, - ja se on saada kertaa, ja se on saada kertaa, - ja se on saada kertaa, ja se on saada kertaa, - ja se on saada kertaa, mutta se on saada kertaa, - ja se on saada kertaa, ja se on saada kertaa, - ja se on saada kertaa, ja se on saada kertaa, - järjestelmätä, jotka ovat koko ajan. from understanding Yemeni politics. - I mean, I couldn't agree more there. I have a real appreciation and solid insistence honestly and the things that we publish here at Mera being from people who have on the ground experience in the places that they're writing about. You can, I mean, whenever I'm reading something, that is as you say, like geopolitically oriented without on the ground experience, you could smell it right off the page in so many ways. We'll gather up some of the, I may follow up with you to get a couple of specific suggestions on places, but definitely I'll, if there's a few accounts or things like that, I'll follow up with you and we'll post links to all of that on our show page under the further reading segment. Suzanne, thank you so much once again for joining us. I look forward to having you back sometime. This is absolute story. We've been following, we're gonna continue to follow because it is, I think, critical for understanding what's happening in the region. It's out of largely the spotlight of the Western media. And as we pointed out, there's a huge, huge, huge humanitarian component to what's going on here when it comes to the food insecurity in both parts of Yemen. So Suzanne, thank you once again. - Thank you very much, it was a pleasure. (upbeat music) - That was my conversation with Suzanne Dogren on the state of the Civil War in Yemen. You can read her piece, "Yemen After the Saudi Emirati Split" in the current analysis section of our website. And you'll find a link to that and any of the other pieces we recommended on our show page. Many thanks to Merrups editorial team, Executive Editor, Billie Jean Brownlee, Manjaging and her Marriha Hnoon and Senior Staff Editor, Michelle Woodward for shepherding this piece out into the world. You can email us with any thoughts or questions at [email protected]. And please consider supporting our work with our donation at www.merrups.org/donate. Every bit helps. And one final note, the podcast will be taking a little break over the next few weeks as some of us go on vacation and we prepare for the release of a really exciting new issue on art and cultural production that is due mid-August. We'll be back with you in late August and early September but we'll be publishing plenty of material on our website during that time. If you're not already on our newsletter, just go to our homepage where you can sign up to receive timely updates on all of our publications and podcasts as well as news about the organization. It's a really exciting time to be part of this organization and I hope you'll stick with us. Till next time, I'm Jim Ryan.