The two-month truce between
the combatants in the Yemen civil war, brokered by the UN on April 2, has been
swiftly followed by dramatic action calculated to bring about a more permanent
end to the hostilities, and even the start of a reconstruction program.
On Thursday, April 7
Yemen’s ineffective, unpopular and largely absent president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour
Hadi, dismissed his vice president and went on TV to announce that he was
abdicating in favour of a new presidential council that had been established for
just that purpose. “I irreversibly delegate to the Presidential Leadership
Council my full powers,” he said.
According to his
statement, the new body will assume the duties of both the president and his
deputy, and will carry out political, military and security duties for
the Yemeni government during what he refers to as a "transitional
period".
No sooner were details
of the unprecedented political changes in the public domain than Saudi Arabia
and the UAE announced a support package for the new Yemeni presidential council
to the tune of $3 billion – a vast sum, but arguably only enough to start the
immense task of repairing the ravages of seven years of conflict.
Seven years of civil war
left Yemen divided between an internationally-recognised government led by Hadi
and backed by Saudi Arabia based in the southern city of Aden, and the Houthis based
in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which they captured back in 2014, controlling a
fair chunk of territory in the west of the country.
The new 8-member Leadership
Council is chaired by Rashad Al-Alimi, a minister during the presidency of Hadis’s
predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Alimi has the support of Saudi Arabia, but he
also has a close relationship with Yemen’s major political group, the Islamist
Islah party.
Yemen’s misery started during the sadly misnamed “Arab spring” of 2011. Its political activists responded to the wave of protest sweeping the Arab world with its own mass protests and a near-assassination of the then president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh was eventually forced to step down in favour of his vice-president, Hadi, who attempted to meet some of the activists’ demands. In 2015 he tried sponsoring a draft constitution which proposed a federal system split between northerners and southerners, but the Iran-backed Houthi rebels rejected it.
The Houthis are a fundamentalist Shia group supported by Iran. Saleh, although a Sunni Muslim, gave up the presidency with great reluctance, and then sought to manoeuvre a return to power in collaboration with his erstwhile enemies. It was through Saleh that the Houthis were able to gain control of most of the Yemeni military, including its air force. As a result, and supported with military hardware from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, they overran large tracts of the country.
Saudi Arabia, determined to prevent Iran
from consolidating a strong presence in the Arabian peninsula, intervened in
March 2015 to beat back the Houthis. The fighting has continued ever since,
with neither party able to gain a clear advantage.
When Hadi took over the
presidency in 2012, he was supposed to be in power for two years and serve as a
transition to a full, inclusive Yemeni democracy. He proved a sad disappointment, and the end
of his period in power is not being mourned by many Yemenis. Hadi never rose to the challenge of being a
wartime leader. He was a silent
president who spoke to his people on camera only a handful of times. As Saudi
Arabia launched its attack on the Houthis in March 2015, he fled to Saudi
Arabia, and holed up in its capital, Riyadh.
As for the new Presidential Leadership Council, seeds of disunity are unfortunately already sown within in. One of the eight members is Aidarous al-Zubaydi, who supports an independent South Yemen and labels himself its president.
To be successful the new
Council will need to set aside their differences and cooperate in the interests
of the nation as a whole. It has clearly
won the confidence of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the task of disbursing its
windfall $3bn to best effect is likely to occupy a good deal of its time and
attention.
As for the Houthis, they
refused to attend the Riyadh talks that preceded the establishment of the
presidential council, and have subsequently denounced it as a foreign and
illegitimate imposition. This reaction
is perhaps not unexpected, but the current two-month ceasefire is a reality,
brought about by extensive Saudi-Houthi negotiation. If negotiations continue, the ceasefire could be
extended into something approaching a truce.
What Yemen needs are
elections, an inclusive government, and a new structure for the state. UN
Resolution 2216 aims to establish democracy in a federally united Yemen. The
Houthis must be given the opportunity to choose. Do they wish to remain an
outlawed militia permanently, or would they prefer to become a legitimate
political party, able to contest parliamentary and presidential elections and
participate in government? The price would be serious engagement in
negotiations aimed at a peaceful transition to a political solution for a
united Yemen.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-703979
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