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Here's the background to the devastating Yemen conflict, and the way to a resolution if the current peace negotiations are carefully managed.
The world now knows that Yemen has become a vast battlefield, the scene of unending armed conflict. As a result the civilian population is in the throes of what is universally described as “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.” On the brink of famine, the nation faces mounting rubbish, failing sewerage and wrecked water supplies, all of which have led to the worst cholera outbreak in recent history. The UN reckons three-quarters of Yemen’s 28 million people need some kind of humanitarian aid.
The world now knows that Yemen has become a vast battlefield, the scene of unending armed conflict. As a result the civilian population is in the throes of what is universally described as “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.” On the brink of famine, the nation faces mounting rubbish, failing sewerage and wrecked water supplies, all of which have led to the worst cholera outbreak in recent history. The UN reckons three-quarters of Yemen’s 28 million people need some kind of humanitarian aid.
What has
led to this catastrophic state of affairs?
Even more relevant, of course, is what can be done to bring it to an
end?
On one
level, the situation in Yemen is just one instance of the fault line that runs
through Islam – the Sunni-Shia divide.
The main protagonists are, on the one hand, Saudi Arabia and its eight-nation
Sunni Muslim coalition, and on the other, Shi’ite Iran supporting the Shia
Muslim Houthi rebels. However historical
issues and political considerations complicate the situation, sometimes
obscuring, sometimes overriding the religious imperatives.
The
Houthis, for example, while certainly on the Shia side of the great Islamic
gulf, are in fact a minority group within that Islamic Shi’ite minority. They are Zaydi Shi’ites,
or Zaydiyyah, taking their name from Zayd bin Ali, the great grandson of
Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, and they differ
significantly in doctrine and beliefs from the Shi’ites who dominate in
Iran.
It was in
the ninth century that followers of Zayd established themselves in the
mountains of north Yemen. For the next thousand years they fought with varying
degrees of success for control of the country. Finally, with the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire in 1918, a Zaydi monarchy took power in North Yemen. So
there are long-established precedents for the North Yemen Zaydiyyah fighting
for control of the country as a whole.
Conflict
between North Yemen and Saudi Arabia is also nothing new. The Zaydi monarchy fought
and lost a border war with Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, ceding territory to the
Saudi state.
In fact,
turmoil is the predominant theme of Yemenite history. The monarchy was replaced
by a republic, and the republic by a virtual dictatorship under Ali Abdullah
Saleh, who ruled Yemen for 33 years, surviving a Saudi-backed civil war in
1994.
But Zaydi
resistance continued to smoulder up in the north, and from its midst emerged a
charismatic leader named Hussein al Houthi.
Soon Zaydis, intent on resisting Saleh and his increasingly corrupt
regime, were calling themselves Houthis. In 2004 al-Houthi was killed in one of
the Saudi-backed military campaigns launched by Saleh in an attempt to destroy
them.
Saleh himself
became a victim of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. Mass popular protests and
pressure from neighbouring states forced him to step down in 2012 in favour of
his vice-president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. But Saleh had given up the keys of
office with a very bad grace, and was quite prepared to ally himself with his
erstwhile enemies, the Houthis, in an attempt to manoeuvre his way back to
power. The Yemeni military had remained
largely loyal to Saleh, and it was through him that the Houthis gained control
of most of Yemen’s fighting force, including its air force. As a result, and
supported with military hardware from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, they overran
large tracts of the country, including the capital city, Sana’a.
The subsequent turn of events seems depressingly familiar in the
context of Yemen’s long history. Saudi Arabia, determined to prevent Iran from extending its
footprint into the Arabian peninsula, intervened in March 2015 to beat back the
Houthis. Saudi’s Crown
Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, assembled a coalition of Arab states, obtained the
diplomatic backing of the US, UK, Turkey and Pakistan, and launched a series of
air strikes against the rebels.
The
unconventional Saleh-Houthi partnership came to an abrupt end on December 2,
2017, when Saleh – a modern manifestation of the Vicar of Bray − went on
television to declare that he was splitting from the Houthis and was ready to
enter into dialogue with the Saudi-led coalition. This volte-face was to end
in tragedy. On December 4, Saleh's house in Sana'a was besieged by Houthi
fighters. Attempting to escape, he was
killed.
The
Houthis were emboldened. Using Iranian hardware, they started firing ballistic
missiles into Saudi Arabia itself. Although responsible for initiating the
turmoil, it is not the Houthis but the Saudis and their coalition receiving the
world’s opprobrium for the subsequent humanitarian devastation. It is not
surprising that Prince Mohammed is said to want to cut his military losses and withdraw from Yemen in exchange for some diplomatic arrangement.
What Yemen
needs is a return to a unified structure, democratic elections, and an
inclusive government – a process that had actually begun in 2011. So far the Houthis have been reluctant to
share power. But the future of Yemen largely depends on them. 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?
UN
Resolution 2216 aims to establish democracy in a federally united Yemen. Although trenchant in its criticism of the
Houthis, it could nevertheless be the basis for a peace initiative. Backed by a UN peace-keeping force, with Iran
deterred – by new sanctions if necessary – from sustaining the Houthis, a
lasting political deal would involve the end of the Saudi-led military
operation, and probably a major financial commitment by Saudi Arabia to fund
the rebuilding of the country. Can the enmities of centuries finally be put to
one side? Negotiations aimed at a
peaceful transition to a political solution for a united Yemen − a long shot, but one eminently worth
attempting.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/02092018-peace-in-yemen-it-all-depends-on-the-houthis-analysis/
Published in the MPC Journal, 4 September 2018:
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2018/09/04/peace-in-yemen/
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