Yemen: Arabia's Game of Thrones Why a Blanket Solution Will Never Work to Bring Sustainable Peace to Yemen

When the Houthis occupied the capital of Sanaa, Hadi and his government were placed under house arrest and some officials were detained. The international community condemned this coup and the UN Security Council issued several resolutions such as Resolution 2140 (which reaffirmed the GCC political transition and established a sanctions regime under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter), and Resolution 2201 (which deplored the unilateral actions taken by the Houthis to dissolve parliament and take over Yemen's government institutions). But most importantly, Resolution 2216, demanding all Yemeni parties fully implement resolution 2201 and impose an arms embargo on Saleh, his son and Houthi leaders. In February 2015, Hadi managed to escape from Sanaa to Aden, and the following month to Riyadh, where he has been staying since. When he managed to flee, Hadi asked Saudi Arabia to help restore the Yemeni state. He justified this claim by stating that Houthis are not only a threat to Yemen's democracy but also to the security of the broader region, especially since they already declared Saudi Arabia to be a threat to Yemen’s stability and have taken over the country’s army and airforce, including long-distance missiles. As a result, the Saudi Ambassador to the US announced the launch of a military offensive against the Houthis, Operation Decisive Storm, in March 2015. 

While the Houthis are supported by Iran, the legitimate government living in exile is mainly supported by the Saudis, and to a lesser extent by the UAE. The UAE has other interests in Yemen than supporting the internationally recognized government; it has created the secessionist-minded Southern Transitional Council (STC), an offshoot of the Southern Movement (Al-Hirak), a movement whose sole objective is to revert to the southern Yemen borders of 1990. The STC is currently controlling most of south Yemen and through its armed militia has launched several offenses against the Saudi-backed legitimate government.

Now eight years in, and despite several rounds of peace talks and three tracks of consultations, Yemen today is furthest from a real and sustainable peace deal than ever. The UN-brokered truce that started in April this year ended on October 2nd without much scope for further renewal because the Houthis didn’t deliver on their end of the truce deal. 

In your opinion, how does the world view Yemen and why has the plight of Yemeni people not generated much interest, compared to similar contexts in the region?

Today, Yemen is considered the worst humanitarian crisis of the century, with around 23.7 million people in need of assistance, including almost 13 million children. Peace processes have faltered and peace talks are currently being mediated by Hans Grundberg, the fourth Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General without much progress. The conflict in Yemen is perceived internationally as a regional proxy war between Saudi, Iran, and other Western players. While this is partially true given these players' political and commercial interests, the roots of the conflict are very much Yemeni. That being said, even among Yemenis, stakeholders in the conflict vary and constantly change. The alliance between Saleh and the Houthis - before they turned on him in 2017 - is a clear illustration of the national dimension of the conflict. Another example is the "love-hate relationship" between the legitimate government and the Southern Transitional Council - for while they are supposedly on the same team against the Houthis, they are also rivals and are parties to intensive armed conflicts, as the recent events in the Shabwa governorate demonstrate.

Before surrendering his powers as president earlier this year, former President Hadi was not able to unite the Yemeni non-Houthi leaders under his wing. If anything, his lack of leadership contributed to the divisions and mushrooming of new militia and warlords each seeking a piece of the cake. In April of 2022, Saudi Arabia took it upon itself - albeit undemocratically - to create a change in the Yemeni leadership and bring the most prominent non-Houthi factions together in what is known as the Presidential Leadership Council. This eight-man council, headed by former Interior Minister and a known political figure Rashad Al-Alimi, is finding it challenging to agree on a unified action plan or even a strategy to move forward. Despite the fact that this Council was created during the UN-brokered truce between the Yemeni government and the Houthis, which expired on October 2^nd, the Council has not benefited from it. The reopening of Sanaa airport as part of the truce deal helped thousands of Yemenis who needed to travel in and out of the country, and definitely created a sense of security and relief for Yemenis in the Houthi-controlled areas who fear the consequences of the Saudi-led air strikes. The latest was the airstrike in January on Sa'ada north of Yemen as a response to Houthis carrying out a drone and missile attack on the UAE. 

However, the truce has not advanced the interests of non-Houthi demographics, especially in putting an end to the siege on Taiz, the country's third largest populated city which has been under siege by Houthis since 2015, and releasing public servants' salaries, despite the fact that these were specifically stipulated in the truce agreement.

Yemen's complexity stems from the fact that it is composed of diverse communities each having its own particularities and interests. In that regard, as Yemenis, our sense of national identity is missing. Even in times of relative peace, the community is plagued by classism and discrimination based on geographic and tribal affiliations, such as North vs. South or Sa'ada vs. Sanaa. As such, Yemen as a country was never a truly united nation even during the unification in 1990 when the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) in the north, and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in the south, were united into a single state: the Republic of Yemen. This unity was perceived as being forced and was challenged heavily since the 1994 civil war. Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's authoritarian regime of three decades (between 1978 and 2011) entrenched these differences and used a divide-and-conquer tactic to remain in power. This tactic eventually led to his own demise in the hands of his allies. In this sense, Yemen's history is full of unrest and civil wars, many times between factions of the same geographical region, such as the siege of Sanaa in the north in 1967 between royalists and republicans, and the 1986 war between southern political factions.

This diversity and the geographic terrain with a scattered population has also made it ideal for militias and extremists such as Alqaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) branch to set up camp in 2009 in Yemen, especially in the sparsely populated southern regions. AQAP exploits Yemen's instability but it is also exploited by Yemeni leaders who use its existence to claim anti-terrorism support whether in the form of military support or funding for so-called anti-terrorism operations. The way terrorism is fought in Yemen is mainly the reason why it continues to exist; terrorist groups are Yemeni warlords' cash cows and undercover mercenaries to take out rivals. The Western agenda against terrorism in Yemen contributes to allowing it to thrive because it is based on hard security that supports the global arms industry instead of employing socio-development strategies that could successfully eliminate terrorism for good.

The problem with this logic is that violence breeds violence: a situation of instability means fertile ground for warlords and arms dealers to thrive, who were created because of the conflict, and the vicious cycle continues. Consequently, they will do everything they can so that peace in Yemen never happens. 

Finally, a reason why this conflict is not of great interest to the world is oil, or rather the lack thereof. While Yemen has oil and gas, the known quantity is not large enough, at nearly 22 thousand barrels per day, to attract a stronger intervention such as that seen in Libya and Iraq, producing more than 48 billion, and 143 billion barrels per day respectively. In any case, interest in the entire region is dramatically fading in light of more pressing concerns closer to home such as rising fuel prices, the war in Ukraine, and a looming global recession.

How would you assess prospects of ending the conflict today given the groups' positioning and the UN-brokered truce? What more can be done by the international community? Finally, how do we ensure recovery efforts are owned by the Yemenis and for the Yemenis?

The story of Yemen is like that of any conflict in the world, easy to start but very difficult to end.

Keeping in mind all of what has been mentioned above, the solution to Yemen is twofold. First, interest has to move from the capitals and the conflict zones to the many towns in the peripheries, parts where relative stability exists and that enjoy a relative power balance. Yemen was never one entity, and the solution to Yemen will never be a blanket solution. During the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) in 2013, hundreds of Yemenis representing all types of political factions - including Houthis and the Southern Movement as well as women and independent young activists - came together and worked on a vision for the future of Yemen: one built on equal citizenship, democracy, and national reconciliation. The NDC concluded in a document with remarkable outcomes from which the draft of a new constitution was created in 2015. One of the outcomes was the 30% quota for women in elected and non-elected positions, which was the result of intensive advocacy by women leaders in the NDC and beyond. 

The draft constitution was supposed to go through a national referendum and a new democratic phase of the country was to begin if not for the Saleh-Houthis coup. Today we have an all-men presidential council and two governments, one internationally recognized and the other of the Houthis and both are male-only governments. Even the political delegations from all sides supposedly engaged by the UN and the US envoys are all men.

And this brings us to the second part of the solution for peace in Yemen. In addition to a decentralized local approach, the political process has to include other stakeholders, especially women, as equal partners in the peacebuilding decision process. Research and experience have repeatedly proven that when women are part of the peace-building process, the peace agreements are more likely to succeed and will last longer.

We keep going around in circles in terms of Yemen's peace negotiations and keep repeating methods already employed. A new framing of the Yemeni problem is urgently needed. One that recognizes that there are many stakeholders to the issue, other than those with the guns, and one that considers the solution to Yemen through a decentralized lens rather than a "one-size-fits-all" approach. Yemen's civil society has been working on producing alternative roadmaps such as the Peace Track Initiative, which created a Feminist Roadmap for Peace. This map is a live document and is created through a consultative process, utilizing the expertise of both female and male Yemeni leaders.

This is the only way to pull away the rug from underneath the warlords' and political leaders' feet, take away their power and give it to the communities, who are the ones suffering the most.
 

Copyright: AHMAD AL-BASHA/ AFP