It could be tough to reach a peace agreement between the rebels in Yemen and the government there. What part do Saudi Arabia and the United States play in this situation?
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| [War in Yemen] |
The Yemeni truce, which has been in place since April, was only just just renewed a week ago. Nevertheless, you only have until the beginning of October to take advantage of this offer. The lack of impetus in what might be a peace process is equally attributable to the local authorities and the foreign parties involved.
This adage, which is sometimes credited to the Afghan Taliban, might also be used to represent the current bargaining approach of the Houthi rebels. "You have the clocks, and we have the time," the proverb says. Since 2014, they have controlled the capital city of Sanaa as well as the north of the country, which is home to more than 70 percent of the population, in spite of massive military resistance, particularly from the regional powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which have been involved since 2015. According to reports from the United Nations, more than 370,000 people have lost their lives in the past seven years as a direct or indirect consequence of the war. The fighting, air strikes, and blockades that have taken place have caused the foundation of life for millions of Yemenis to be destroyed and have resulted in an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
After particularly intense fighting at the beginning of the year, the military front in Aden has reached a stalemate between the rebels and the internationally recognized government. As a result, UN-negotiations regarding an at least temporary ceasefire picked up speed and were ultimately successfully concluded. The international environment as a whole was favorable to attempts to de-escalate the war. Stability and improved oil production in adjacent countries might contribute to a reduction in the overall price of energy on a global scale. The military capability of the Houthis to employ drones and missiles to strike crucial infrastructure in the Red Sea and Gulf for international commodities commerce and supply chains constituted a substantial concern here. This risk was posed by the Houthis. However, given that the rebels have not been successful in disarming themselves, there does not seem to be any other option to get a negotiated settlement through.
The ceasefire provides an opportunity for the United States Vice President Joe Biden and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS) to begin mending their fractured relationship, which has been in shambles ever since the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the fall of 2018. It is very unlikely that the United States government's announcement of billions of dollars' worth of weaponry supplies to the Gulf region on the same day as the extension was a coincidence. Riyadh, which Joe Biden planned to make a " pariah " during the campaign for the presidential election in 2020, was classified by the United States State Department as a " power for political stability in the Gulf region " and applauded. After seven years, what was once seen as a chance for the young Saudi defense minister and current heir to the kingdom, MBS, to strengthen Saudi – and personal – leadership in the region is now seen as a catastrophe. This opportunity first arose in 2015 and has since been seen negatively.
Comparable to the considerations made by the United States with regard to the intervention in Afghanistan, Riyadh now faces a choice between the plague and the cholera: the confrontation with the Houthis is not only militarily ineffective but also expensive (sums of one billion dollars are circulated on a weekly basis) and risky, as Houthi missiles and drones have the potential to strike critical infrastructure at any time, undermining the confidence of both existing and potential investors in Saudi Arabia. As a direct consequence of the fighting, Iran's sphere of influence in the immediate neighborhood has actually expanded.
Yes, but on the other side, it would be embarrassing for Saudi Arabia's foreign policy and raise doubts about the kingdom's dependability if they were to remove their military and, in the long term at least, their financial assistance from its friends in Aden. It is possible that Riyadh's backing for the formation of a Presidential Council in April 2022, which was intended to replace the inept and previously Saudi Arabian-sponsored President Hadi, was the first indicator that Riyadh is already taking steps to mitigate the harm caused by this development. That Saudi Arabia is a member of the United Nations Ver Riyadh is able to determine the conditions and time for an end to its own engagement without a formal agreement with the Houthis, who would have to guarantee the protection of withdrawing troops, because there are no actions taken as a party to the conflict and because its own military footprint in Yemen is marginal. This is due to the fact that Riyadh does not take part in the conflict and that its own military footprint in Yemen is marginal.
In point of fact, some of the criteria that were connected to the ceasefire have been carried out over the course of the last several months, which should also be to the advantage of the local community. According to a study published by Oxfam in March, the price of gasoline had increased by 543 percent since 2019 and had quadrupled in only the first quarter of 2022 alone; the occurrence of days spent waiting in line at gas stations was not an exceptional incident. In comparison to the total amount of 470,000 tons that were landed in Hodeda for the whole of 2021, the embargo that was eased around the Houthi-controlled port city of Hodeda enabled for more than 720,000 tons of oil to be landed between the months of April and the end of July. The allocation of the increased money, however, gives rise to a fresh disagreement. As part of the agreement reached in Stockholm in 2018, the Houthis made a commitment to send any profits they made to the country's central bank. This would make it possible for public sector workers to receive salary payments that had been overdue for years. The fact that this has not taken place up to this point has increased the level of frustration felt by the other parties involved in the negotiation process. This is the case despite the fact that the UN envoy Hans Grundberg is optimistic that, in accordance with the proverb "All good things come in threes," a mechanism that is both transparent and effective will soon be discovered.
As a result of the restoration of aviation operations at Sanaa Airport, which was also agreed upon, more than 8,000 passengers were able to benefit. Additionally, the government had promised that Houthi rebel passports would be valid for travel to and from Sanaa in the event that they were issued. However, this did not stop the Houthis from severely restricting women's freedom of movement while simultaneously preventing representatives of civil society from taking part in international conferences, for example. They also did not stop them from preventing civil society representatives from participating in international conferences.
The government has recognized the ceasefire but has shown little interest in actually implementing it since then. The lack of progress around the strategically important city of Taiz, which is after all the third largest in the country and has been under siege by the rebels since 2016, continues to be the biggest stumbling block for a political agreement. As the Yemeni author Ibrahim Jalal aptly put it, an absurd situation has arisen in recent months in which thousands of Yemenis can buy expensive plane tickets to neighboring countries or to Sanaa, but for the three million inhabitants of Taiz province, they can even take short bus rides in farther away locations. This is in contrast to the situation in which thousands of Yemenis can take even short bus rides in further away locations.
The internationally recognized government, the European Union, and the United States have all voiced their disapproval of the Houthis' decision to literally blockade the country. On the streets of Taiz and Aden, people are voicing their concerns that the peace dividend will be handed out in a manner that is not cooperative, and that the Houthi movement's threats to walk away from the negotiation table should not be answered with more concessions. The government in Aden is in a difficult position because of its own weakness and its reliance on foreign funders. This puts it in the same position as the republican government in Afghanistan following the Doha Accords from the year 2020: It has two options: it may either keep to a ceasefire, which would help its opponent far more but would also damage its own legitimacy in the eyes of the populace; or it can continue fighting. Alternately, it may go against the expressed intent of its financial and military backers and continue to fight a struggle that it cannot win. Because the Houthis continue to have a dominant influence on the escalation, it is quite doubtful that there would be a significant breakthrough in the talks at this third round.
However, despite the truce, the suspension of bombings, and a notable drop in the number of civilian fatalities, the reality that violence is still the rule of the day in many regions of the nation cannot be hidden. Since April 2, more than 1,800 events, the most of which were instigated by the Houthis, have been reported; as a result, over 300 individuals have lost their lives thus far. At the same time, there are allegations that the parties involved in the war are utilizing the truce to do things such as increase their military positions around the city of Marib, which has been the focus of a significant amount of fighting in recent times.
It is now up to the negotiators, mediators, and international partners of Yemen to find a way to square the circle so that the ceasefire does not become an end in itself. On the one hand, they must work to prevent another armed conflict, for example by expanding previous humanitarian aid to structure-building measures; on the other hand, they must make real concessions to the Houthis through a ceasefire beyond that, which also improve the realities of life on the "other side." In other words, they must In the alternative, there is a risk of a deal that is analogous to the Doha Agreement, without any achievements in the peace process, without concessions with regard to human and particularly women's rights in the areas they control, and without a common vision among all Yemenis regarding the direction in which the journey should go.
The author Dr. Magdalena Kirchner heads the offices of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation for Jordan and Yemen, based in Amman.