OF THE
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Conflicts gain sustained American attention only when they provide a compelling story line that appeals to both the public and political actors, and for reasons beyond the human toll. That often requires some combination of immediate relevance to American interests, resonance with American political debates or cultural issues, and, perhaps most of all, an emotionally engaging frame of clearly identifiable good guys and bad guys.Those are good observations. But they themselves are part of the process they describe. They artificially create "good" and "bad" and are driven by "interests". (Side note: I doubt the sweeping claim "Yemen's death toll is lower than Syria's". The famine in northwest Yemen is very severe. The number of dead is simply not known yet but like in the hundred-thousands.)
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Yemen's death toll is lower than Syria's, and although Al Qaeda does operate there, Yemen's conflict has not had the kind of impact on American and European interests that Syria's has. There is no obvious good-versus-evil story to tell there: The country is being torn apart by a variety of warring factions on the ground and pummeled from the air by Saudi Arabia, an American ally. There is no camera-ready villain for Americans to root against.
Comment: This all happened before in 2014 against France's BNP Paribas bank: BNP Paribas agrees to record $8.8bn settlement for US sanctions violations as blackmail for Paris to cancel Russia deal fails