For more than a decade, anyone following Yemen has been told the same story. The war, they say, is the result of an ancient conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Ansar Allah is presented as a purely Shia movement. Its supporters are portrayed as motivated primarily by sectarian identity. Every political development is filtered through the same lens.
It is a simple explanation.
It is also a misleading one.
The sectarian narrative became especially useful after the rise of Ansar Allah. Rather than discuss questions of sovereignty, foreign intervention, corruption, economic grievances, or Yemen’s independence from outside influence, the conflict was increasingly framed as a religious struggle between Sunnis and Shias.
Saudi Arabia became one of the principal promoters of this narrative. Through its media networks, religious establishment, political allies, and regional influence, the conflict was repeatedly presented as a battle against a dangerous Shia movement threatening Yemen’s Sunni majority. The objective was clear. Once the war could be understood as a sectarian conflict, questions about Saudi intervention became secondary.
Instead of asking whether a foreign-led military campaign was justified, audiences were encouraged to see the war as a defensive response to a sectarian threat. Political grievances became religious grievances. Questions of national sovereignty became questions of doctrine and identity.
The problem with this narrative is that Yemen itself refuses to fit neatly into it.
If the conflict were primarily about sectarian identity, political loyalties would follow sectarian lines. Yet throughout the war, Yemen’s alliances, rivalries, and political divisions repeatedly demonstrated that the situation was far more complex. Tribes, political parties, military factions, and ordinary citizens often made decisions based on local, national, economic, and political concerns rather than sectarian affiliation.
This is why many Yemenis view the sectarian explanation with skepticism. They have lived through a conflict that has constantly been described from abroad in ways that often fail to match realities on the ground.
The same sectarian framework promoted by Saudi Arabia found willing partners in much of the Western media. Western audiences are often more familiar with stories about ancient religious rivalries than discussions about foreign policy, regional power struggles, or the consequences of intervention. Presenting Yemen as another chapter in a centuries-old Sunni-Shia dispute made the conflict easier to explain and easier to justify.
The result was a narrative that benefited everyone promoting it. Saudi Arabia could present its intervention as protection of regional stability. Western governments could avoid difficult questions about their support for the war. And the underlying political issues driving the conflict received far less attention than they deserved.
The weakness of this narrative becomes even more obvious when viewed through the lens of Palestine.
Palestinians are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims. Yet support for Palestine has consistently crossed sectarian boundaries. Millions of Sunnis throughout the region openly support causes that Western and Saudi commentators routinely associate with Shia movements. Likewise, organizations labeled as part of a “Shia axis” have dedicated significant political and military resources to a predominantly Sunni Palestinian cause.
This reality creates an uncomfortable contradiction for those invested in sectarian explanations. If the region is truly divided into irreconcilable Sunni and Shia camps, such solidarity should not exist. Yet it does.
Support for Palestine demonstrates that political priorities often matter far more than sectarian identity. For many people across West Asia, the central questions are not whether someone is Sunni or Shia, but whether they oppose occupation, foreign domination, and external interference in regional affairs.
This is precisely why the sectarian narrative remains useful. A population divided along religious lines is less likely to unite around shared political causes. A region focused on sectarian disputes is less likely to question foreign intervention, normalization with Israel, or outside influence over its affairs.
None of this means Sunni-Shia differences do not exist. They do, and they have existed for centuries. But the attempt to place those differences at the center of every political conflict serves specific interests. It distracts from questions of power, sovereignty, resistance, and self-determination.
From Sanaa, the picture often looks far simpler than the one presented abroad.
The choice facing the region is not between Sunni and Shia.
It is between accepting narratives designed to divide people and recognizing the political realities those narratives were created to conceal.
A question that needs to be asked is why Israel and all the western countries support the Saudis and promote the sectarian conflict narrative? And why is their support exclusively Sunni?
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📽️ Credit: Mohamed Khaled
