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Yemen's collapse back into full war is the week's sharpest deterioration

Yemen has re-escalated into sustained civil war with international dimensions: UCDP's trailing 12-month battle-death count has jumped to 1,644 from 376, the July 2026 Houthi offensive in Hodeidah ended the four-year truce, IOM reports 130,000 newly displaced, and Saudi Arabia now faces Houthi ballistic-missile threats against its capital per a UN Security Council press statement. This compounds an already extreme picture: Sudan's civil war with famine-level hunger for 33.7 million people projected by OCHA for 2026, South Sudan's escalating SSPDF-SPLA-IO war, and Haiti's gangs holding 90 percent of Port-au-Prince while the new UN-backed force stands at 1,000 of 5,550 authorized personnel.

The connections are the story. Yemen's war sits astride the Bab el-Mandeb strait; a full Houthi-Saudi confrontation would layer onto Iran's July collapse of the Hormuz ceasefire, where traffic runs at roughly 15 transits daily against 110 pre-war, squeezing the Gulf states' food-import routes. FAO's August 2026 food price index at 133.3, with oils at near-record levels, means import-dependent crisis states — Sudan, Yemen, Palestine, Haiti — pay more for less. Drought now spans the Horn, the Sahel and the Caribbean basin simultaneously, hitting the exact countries already at war. Ethiopia's seven rebel groups forming a new alliance signals a widening front in the Horn of Africa.

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