| Top US officials this week called for a ceasefire in Yemen, where the civil war has claimed thousands of lives. How did we get here? Robert Worth suggests in The New York Times that Saudi Arabia should look in the mirror. The Houthi "movement was born, three decades ago, largely as a reaction to Riyadh's reckless promotion of its own intolerant strain of Salafi Islam in the Houthi heartland of northwestern Yemen. Since then, the Saudis—with the help of Yemen's former ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh—have done all they could to corrupt or compromise every political force strong enough to pose a threat," Worth writes. "The Houthis are a result…They have recruited child soldiers, used starvation as a weapon and have allowed no dissenting views to be aired in the media. They have little will or capacity to run a modern state, and at times have seemed unwilling or unable to negotiate for peace. But this, too, is partly a measure of Saudi Arabia's fatal arrogance toward its neighbor, a long-term policy of keeping Yemen weak and divided." "That policy may now be bringing the Saudis' worst fears to life. Houthi officials say they have studied the Viet Cong's tactics, and routinely refer to the war as the quagmire that will bring down the House of Saud." | 
