There are certain geographies in history whose geopolitical weight bears little relation to the size of the territory they occupy on the map. Afghanistan is one of them. Yemen is another.

The former is a mountainous, landlocked country at the heart of Asia. The latter lies at the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, astride the maritime routes connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. Yet they share one fundamental characteristic: throughout history, both have transformed the power of their geography into a capacity for resistance against those seeking to impose their will upon them.

The First Era of Afghan Resistance

To understand Afghanistan’s destiny, one need only begin with the map. It lies at the center of the Heartland, with the Indian subcontinent to the south, the mountain systems extending towards China to the east, and Iran to the west. The Hindu Kush divides the country. The Khyber Pass is one of the historic gateways between Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent, while the Salang Tunnel through the Hindu Kush constitutes a strategic artery connecting north and south.

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Map of Afghanistan (Source)

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It was this geography that turned Afghanistan into an arena of imperial rivalry between Britain and Russia during the nineteenth century. For London, the possibility of Russian expansion southwards towards the Indian Ocean was unacceptable. The fundamental objective of British strategy was therefore not so much to control Afghanistan as to prevent another great power from controlling it.

Britain entered Afghanistan in the nineteenth century because of its geopolitical rivalry with Russia, a struggle that became known to history as the Great Game. London’s principal objective was to preserve Afghanistan as a buffer zone between the two empires. Yet the attempt ultimately turned into a disaster for the British.

The First Anglo-Afghan War, which began in 1839, culminated in 1842 in one of the gravest military catastrophes in British imperial history, when the force retreating from Kabul was almost destroyed. During the winter of 1842, a British Indian column of approximately 16,000 soldiers, camp followers and civilians withdrawing from Kabul towards Jalalabad was virtually annihilated in the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush. Dr William Brydon, who reached Jalalabad alone from the retreating column, became the enduring symbol of one of the British Empire’s greatest disasters in Afghanistan.

Britain returned to Afghanistan in 1878. At the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, it secured considerable influence over the country’s foreign affairs, but once again failed to establish direct rule over Afghanistan. The Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 finally secured Afghanistan’s independence in the conduct of its external relations.

The British Empire ruled the oceans. Yet it could not establish a permanent presence in the valleys and mountains of the Hindu Kush.

The Second Afghan Resistance

Sixty years later, another great power entered Afghanistan—this time the Soviet Union. The Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 and rapidly established control over Kabul and the major urban centers. Yet in the countryside and mountainous regions, it encountered an expanding resistance led by the Mujahideen.

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Mujahideen in Kunar, Afghanistan (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Afghanistan’s culture of resistance to foreign powers, rooted in the nineteenth century, had re-emerged, sustained by its mountainous geography, tribal structures and strong local identities. The Soviet occupation, however, marked a profound turning point that altered the very character of this historical tradition of resistance. What had previously been shaped primarily by the defense of homeland, tribe and locality against foreign occupation gradually acquired a religious and ideological character under the conditions of the Cold War. Islam was no longer merely the faith of Afghan society; it was increasingly transformed into the unifying ideology of the struggle against Soviet occupation and communism.

The consequences of this transformation would extend far beyond Afghanistan. In the decades that followed, Afghanistan itself would suffer a profound social and civilizational regression, while the forces unleashed during the war would contribute to major security crises across the world, causing the death and suffering of millions.

The United States Arms the Mujahideen

The United States quickly recognized the geopolitical value of this transformation. Washington’s principal objective was neither the modernization nor the democratization of Afghanistan. It was to draw the Soviet Union into a prolonged, costly and debilitating war.

Through a support network centered on the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—and involving the CIA and their regional intelligence partners—the Afghan resistance was armed and financed. With substantial Saudi financial support, the struggle was increasingly embedded within a radical Islamist ideological framework heavily influenced by Wahhabi-Salafi currents. The madrassas of Pakistan, Saudi financing and the arrival of radical Islamist fighters from different parts of the world provided the infrastructure through which a traditional Afghan resistance movement was gradually transformed into an international “jihad.”

As Mujahideen commanders gained power, a new religious-political warrior elite emerged alongside Afghanistan’s traditional tribal authorities. The historic Afghan culture of resistance to foreign occupation was thus transformed, in accordance with the strategic requirements of the global Cold War, into an instrument of an Islamist ideological and military proxy war.

During the Soviet occupation and the accompanying internal turmoil, roughly one million Afghan refugees, most of them Pashtuns, crossed into Pakistan. From among these refugee communities, men were recruited and turned into fighters. Money and weapons began flowing to the Mujahideen through Pakistan. Saudi Arabia contributed not only financing; radical Islamists, including opponents of the Saudi regime, were also channeled towards the Afghan battlefield.

For the Americans, the strategic equation appeared extraordinarily favorable: a relatively small investment in the Afghan resistance could inflict disproportionately large costs on the Soviet Union.

The Third Afghan Resistance

Following the attacks of 11 September 2001, it was now the United States—the seemingly unchallenged superpower of the unipolar world—that entered Afghanistan in an attempt to eradicate a malignancy that, to a considerable extent, had grown out of the geopolitical environment Washington itself had helped create over the preceding two decades.

The Taliban regime was overthrown within weeks, Kabul was captured and following the first invocation of Article 5 in NATO’s history, the war gradually evolved into a large-scale international military campaign. From 7 October 2001 onwards, the United States had established itself in the very heart of Central Asia. NATO followed. On 11 August 2003, the Alliance assumed command of the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), placing itself at the center of the international military presence in Afghanistan.

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A Tomahawk cruise missile is launched from the USS Philippine Sea in a strike against al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban military installations in Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 (Public Domain)

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An alliance originally created for the defense of the North Atlantic had now reached Central Asia—the very depths of what NATO terminology had once described as the “out-of-area” domain. The neoconservative architects associated with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) had, in geopolitical terms, planted themselves in the middle of the Heartland.

Yet during the twenty years that followed, until the summer of 2021, even a U.S.- and NATO-led military presence that at its peak approached 150,000 foreign troops proved incapable of eliminating the forces unleashed by the previous decades or of constructing a viable new Afghan state. Afghanistan’s own internal dynamics ultimately prevailed.

American dollars, baseball caps and McDonald’s hamburgers were not enough to transform either Afghan society or the Afghan state. Military superiority could overthrow a government. Financial power could sustain institutions. Western cultural symbols could enter the cities. But none of these, individually or collectively, could fundamentally remake a society whose political structures, historical memory and social organization had been shaped over centuries by an entirely different geography and historical experience.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s growing geopolitical alignment with China, together with the emergence of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a potential game changer in the region, contributed to a profound transformation of the strategic environment surrounding Afghanistan. Washington was increasingly compelled to reassess its regional priorities.

In August 2021, the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed with extraordinary speed. The Taliban returned to Kabul, and the final American forces left the country amid humiliating scenes that inevitably evoked memories of the fall of Saigon in 1975. After twenty years of occupation, war and state-building, Afghanistan was effectively handed back to the very movement from which it had been taken in 2001. In strategic and political terms, this was an outcome of almost scandalous historical proportions.

First came Britain, the global empire of the nineteenth century. Then came the Soviet Union, the continental superpower of the twentieth century. Finally came the United States, the seemingly unrivalled military power of the post-Cold War era. All three were drawn into prolonged and costly wars in the same geography. The mountains, valleys, caves, tunnels and passes remained where they had always been. More importantly, the character of resistance forged by this harsh and unforgiving geography did not disappear.

Yet Afghanistan’s secret lies not merely in the fighting character of its people. When mountains, tribal structures, local loyalties, religion, strategic passes, valleys, caves and the persistent limitations of central authority are considered together, they form an exceptionally resilient defensive ecosystem.

Modern technology has reduced the protective advantages provided by this geography. Precision weapons, satellites, drones, electronic surveillance and air power have penetrated spaces that were once inaccessible to foreign armies. But technology has not abolished geography. And Afghanistan remains one of history’s most powerful demonstrations of that reality.

Yemeni Resistance: The Strategic Lesson of Five Centuries of History

To interpret what is happening in Yemen today solely through the prism of Ansar Allah, Iran, Saudi Arabia or the latest confrontations in the Red Sea would be a serious failure of historical perspective. Behind the current crisis lies a deeper strategic reality that has repeatedly asserted itself for nearly five centuries: it is possible for an external military power to enter Yemen and seize its coasts, ports and cities. But establishing permanent external control over the mountainous social heartland of northern Yemen is an entirely different matter. To understand the war in Yemen today, therefore, one must go back to the sixteenth century.

The Ottoman Entry into Yemen

For the Ottoman Empire, Yemen was never merely a distant province. It was a strategic forward position essential to the security of the Red Sea, the defense of the Hejaz and the Holy Cities, and the protection of the maritime trade routes of the Indian Ocean.

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Map of Yemen (Source)

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Following Portugal’s passage around the Cape of Good Hope, its penetration into the Indian Ocean and its growing presence near the approaches to the Red Sea, the Ottomans began establishing control over Yemen from 1538 onwards.

The coastal regions were brought under Ottoman authority. But controlling the coast did not mean controlling Yemen. The highlands of northern Yemen, their narrow valleys, powerful tribal structures and deeply rooted Zaydi tradition severely restricted the reach of central authority. In 1597, the Zaydi Imamate, strengthened under the leadership of al-Mansur al-Qasim, launched a prolonged resistance. Ottoman authority gradually receded, and by 1635–1636 Ottoman forces had withdrawn from most of Yemen.

Yemen’s Two Geopolitical Axes

In the nineteenth century, following the Industrial Revolution, Yemen once again became an arena of great-power competition. Britain’s seizure of the strategically vital port of Aden in 1839 represented a major geopolitical turning point. Situated astride the route to India, Aden developed into one of the key bases of the British maritime empire along the Indian Ocean–Red Sea axis. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 further magnified the strategic importance of the region. Yemen consequently developed along two distinct geopolitical axes.

In the north emerged land-based geopolitics rooted in mountains, tribes and the Zaydi political tradition. In the south emerged maritime geopolitics centered on Aden and its connection to the principal sea lanes of global commerce. The interaction between these two axes would become one of the fundamental reasons why Yemen could be invaded yet remained extraordinarily difficult to control.

The Ottomans returned to Tihama in 1849 and to Sana’a in 1872. Yet the fundamental problem they had confronted three centuries earlier remained unchanged. Cities could be occupied and administered, but permanent control over the mountainous regions of the north remained elusive.

Moreover, the cost of warfare in Yemen was not measured solely in battlefield casualties. Disease, climate, terrain and extended supply lines consumed military forces as effectively as combat itself. Yemen consequently entered Turkish historical memory as one of those distant geographies associated with the tragic sentiment that “those who go do not return.”

Resistance against Ottoman rule under the Zaydi Imam Yahya eventually led to the Treaty of Da’an in 1911. The Ottoman Empire was compelled to recognize Imam Yahya’s extensive authority in the Zaydi highlands. Ottoman rule finally came to an end in 1918.

The Ottoman withdrawal, however, also consolidated the conditions for Yemen’s subsequent division between north and south. In reality, the foundations of that division had already been laid during the nineteenth century. While Britain established its position in southern Yemen around the port of Aden after 1839, the northern regions remained within the Ottoman sphere. Following the Ottoman withdrawal at the end of the First World War, North Yemen emerged as an independent kingdom. The overthrow of the monarchy in 1962 led to the establishment of the Yemen Arab Republic, or North Yemen.

Britain withdrew from Aden and the surrounding territories in 1967, allowing South Yemen to achieve independence. From 1970 onwards, it became the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, a Marxist state closely aligned with the Soviet Union.

Thus, throughout much of the Cold War, two separate Yemens existed: North Yemen, centered on Sana’a, and South Yemen, centered on Aden.

On 22 May 1990, the two states united to form the present-day Republic of Yemen. Political unification, however, could not erase nearly a century of divergent political, economic and geopolitical development. The historical fault line between north and south survived unification and remains fundamental to understanding both Yemen’s present conflict and the persistence of separatist movements in the south.

There is also a striking historical dimension to the relationship between the Zaydi highlands and outside power. During the First World War, while many Arab forces and political actors elsewhere in the region aligned themselves with Britain against the Ottoman Empire, the Zaydi leadership in Yemen did not follow the same path. Imam Yahya maintained his accommodation with the Ottomans until the end of the war. That historical memory deserves attention today.

Ansar Allah, commonly known as the Houthis, emerged from the same northern Yemeni Zaydi social and geographical heartland. It cannot simply be equated with the historical Zaydi Imamate, nor does it represent all Zaydis. Yet its capacity for resistance cannot be understood without recognizing this historical continuity.

Today, Ansar Allah presents itself as a force resisting external intervention, Western hegemony and Israel. Whatever one’s political assessment of the movement, its endurance cannot be explained solely through Iranian support, missiles or drones. It is also rooted in a much older strategic reality: the mountains, tribes, political traditions and historical memory of northern Yemen have repeatedly generated resistance against external control.

Nasser’s “Vietnam”

Image: President Gamal Abdel Nasser | by Kodak Agfa

The civil war that followed the overthrow of the monarchy in North Yemen in 1962 marked another major turning point. Egypt, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, deployed tens of thousands of troops to Yemen in support of the republican forces. Despite its overwhelming superiority in conventional military power, the Egyptian Army found itself drawn into a prolonged and exhausting war in the mountains.

The intervention, which continued until 1967, would later frequently be described as “Nasser’s Vietnam” or “Egypt’s Vietnam.” Half a century after the Ottomans, another major regional power had encountered the same strategic reality.

2015: A New War in the Same Geography

Half a century after Nasser, history tested another regional power—this time the Saudi-led coalition. The Houthis, rooted in Yemen’s Zaydi tradition, seized the capital, Sana’a, in 2014. Their subsequent advance southwards, and the prospect that they might capture Aden and extend their control over much of the rest of the country, created an unacceptable security scenario for Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia regarded the emergence on its southern frontier of a powerful Houthi-led authority—with close ties to Iran and access to significant elements of the Yemeni state’s military arsenal—as a strategic threat. As the Houthi advance forced President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi to retreat to Aden and request military assistance from the Gulf states, the Saudi-led coalition launched its intervention on 26 March 2015.

The objectives were clear: to halt the Houthi advance, restore the Hadi government to power, and prevent the balance of power in Yemen from shifting decisively against Riyadh. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates possessed modern combat aircraft, precision-guided munitions, sophisticated intelligence capabilities and vast financial resources. Yet years of air strikes failed to dislodge Ansar Allah from the mountainous heartland of northern Yemen.

More importantly, Ansar Allah did not merely survive. It evolved and grew stronger through the war itself. Initially a predominantly local armed movement, it gradually developed an increasingly sophisticated arsenal that included ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and weapons capable of striking maritime targets.

Nearly five centuries of history had therefore demonstrated the same strategic reality once again: it is possible to enter Yemen. It is possible to bomb Yemen. It is possible temporarily to seize its cities and ports. But establishing lasting external military control over Yemen’s mountainous social heartland is an entirely different proposition.

One of the principal reasons is the exceptionally rugged geography of northern Yemen, which constrains the ability of technological superiority to produce decisive effects on the ground. Deep and narrow valleys, high plateaus, caves embedded within mountainous terrain and dispersed settlements provide the defender with natural protection. At the same time, they make it extremely difficult to translate the advantages of air power, precision weapons and modern surveillance systems into permanent territorial control. But geography alone is not sufficient to explain this resilience.

It must be considered alongside northern Yemen’s centuries-old Zaydi political and religious tradition, its powerful tribal structures and its deeply rooted culture of resistance to centralized and external authority. Together, these factors create a social and geographical environment exceptionally resistant to outside control.

Ansar Allah is not a movement artificially created from abroad. It is an indigenous Yemeni force with its own social base, geography, political objectives and historical memory. Iran has undoubtedly played an important role, particularly as the war progressed, in assisting the development of the movement’s missile, unmanned aerial vehicle and other military capabilities. But Iran did not create northern Yemen’s tradition of resistance.

That tradition existed centuries before the establishment of today’s Islamic Republic of Iran. It was already deeply embedded in the political and social fabric of northern Yemen. To explain Ansar Allah’s resilience solely through Iranian support is therefore to overlook Yemen’s geography, its history and, above all, its own internal dynamics. Iran may have strengthened the weapons of the resistance. It did not create the geography, the historical memory or the social foundations that made resistance possible.

Conclusion

Afghanistan and Yemen are geographically very different countries. Yet their military histories intersect at one crucial point. In Afghanistan, the British in the nineteenth century, the Soviets after 1979, and the United States and its allies after 2001 all experienced the difficulty of translating technological and conventional military superiority into lasting political control. In 2021, the United States ultimately withdrew from Afghanistan under deeply humiliating circumstances. In Yemen, the Ottomans, Nasser’s Egypt and, most recently, the Saudi-led coalition encountered variations of the same strategic problem.

The fundamental geopolitical factor that distinguishes Yemen from Afghanistan, however, is the sea. Afghanistan is a landlocked continental state. Yemen, by contrast, occupies a critical position along the global maritime artery connecting the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea. Geography therefore gives Yemen a strategic dimension that Afghanistan does not possess.

Ansar Allah has consequently evolved beyond a land force capable of exploiting mountainous terrain to wear down external intervention. Through ballistic and cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, mines and shore-based anti-ship weapons, it has developed an increasingly significant Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD) capability. Yemen’s strategic power can thus be summarized in two dimensions: the ability to resist in the mountains and the ability to influence the security and cost of global maritime transportation from the coast.

On land, however, the similarity between Afghanistan and Yemen cannot be reduced simply to the fact that both possess mountainous terrain. The deeper parallel emerges when rugged geography combines with fragmented social structures, strong local and tribal identities, historical memories of resistance to foreign intervention, and indigenous actors capable of bearing the costs of war far longer than the external powers confronting them.

Under such conditions, technological and conventional military superiority may provide enormous advantages on the battlefield, but it does not guarantee the desired political outcome. For an external power, a prolonged war eventually becomes a calculation of costs and benefits. Casualties accumulate. Financial burdens increase. Domestic political pressures intensify. As the original strategic objectives become more difficult to achieve, the political willingness to continue paying the price gradually diminishes.

For the local actor, however, the same war is often perceived in fundamentally different terms. It becomes a struggle to defend territory, political power, identity and, ultimately, existence itself. The two sides therefore experience time differently. For the external power, time multiplies the cost. For the local force, time becomes a strategic weapon.

This is precisely where the common lesson of Afghanistan and Yemen emerges. In prolonged wars, time does not necessarily favor the side possessing superior technology, greater firepower or larger financial resources. It often favors the side that can remain rooted in the geography, absorb punishment and continue the struggle. Years ago, I came across a remark in Time magazine attributed to an Afghan fighter addressing American soldiers. I have never forgotten it: “You have the watches. We have the time.”

That sentence captures the strategic lesson of both Afghanistan and Yemen. Empires measure wars in budgets, election cycles and operational timelines. Peoples fighting on their own terrain can measure them in generations. In wars of resistance, geography provides the fortress. But time can become the decisive weapon.

Lessons from Yemen for Türkiye

For Türkiye, the principal strategic lesson of Yemen is that the security of the Red Sea must be clearly distinguished from military involvement in Yemen’s internal war. Keeping the Bab el-Mandeb open and safeguarding freedom and security of maritime navigation are unquestionably in Türkiye’s interests. But these objectives must not turn Türkiye into a party to the war in Yemen. Direct or indirect Turkish involvement in a military confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Ansar Allah would constitute a serious strategic mistake.

Although Ansar Allah does not control the entirety of Yemeni territory, it possesses a substantial social and political base in the densely populated areas of the north and west. To interpret the Yemeni conflict merely as a confrontation between an Iranian-backed armed movement and Saudi Arabia would therefore be to disregard Yemen’s own social, historical and political realities.

Türkiye should assess the obligations arising from the Mecca Pact considering these realities. The agreement must not be interpreted as implying automatic Turkish participation in Yemen’s civil war or in any ground campaign directed against Ansar Allah.

Türkiye’s fundamental position should therefore be to avoid becoming a military party in a confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Yemen and to preserve its neutrality to the greatest extent possible. Ankara can maintain and develop its strategic relations with Riyadh while simultaneously defending the principle that Yemen’s political future must ultimately be determined by the Yemenis themselves.

Türkiye’s role should not be to become another belligerent. Rather, where circumstances permit, it should contribute to keeping diplomatic channels open and supporting ceasefire efforts and the search for a political settlement. Five centuries of Yemeni history offer a powerful warning in this respect.

It is possible to send troops into Yemen. It is possible to establish air superiority. It is possible temporarily to control its coasts, ports and cities. But once an external power enters the mountains, it may no longer be that power which determines the timetable of the war.

What Türkiye must preserve in Yemen is not a front line, but its strategic freedom of action. The Mecca Pact must not become a mechanism that draws Türkiye into the mountains of Yemen. The distinction is fundamental: protecting maritime security in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb is one strategic objective; becoming entangled in Yemen’s land war is another. Türkiye must not confuse the two. Because Yemen is not merely Yemen. Yemen is Bab el-Mandeb. Yemen is the Red Sea. And Yemen is the southern gateway to Suez.

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This article was originally published on Mavi Vatan.

Ret Admiral Cem Gürdeniz, Writer, Geopolitical Expert, Theorist and creator of the Turkish Bluehomeland (Mavi Vatan) doctrine. He served as the Chief of Strategy Department and then the head of Plans and Policy Division in Turkish Naval Forces Headquarters. As his combat duties, he has served as the commander of Amphibious Ships Group and Mine Fleet between 2007 and 2009. He retired in 2012. He established Hamit Naci Blue Homeland Foundation in 2021. He has published numerous books on geopolitics, maritime strategy, maritime history and maritime culture. He is also a honorary member of ATASAM. 

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from the author

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