The Yemeni civil war is nearing the end of its second year with no real prospect of peace in sight for the poorest country in the Middle East. The warfare intensifies while the humanitarian crisis is growing more serious by the day. The current lack of interest in the US in promoting a settlement in Yemen has diminished hopes for peace and left the situation prey to the dynamics of a conflict between the various Yemeni parties and between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Although former US secretary of state John Kerry proposed a peace plan, it sparked no interest among stakeholders in the conflict in which more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in air assaults by the Arab Coalition led by Yemen's Saudi neighbour. Millions of people have been displaced and hundreds of thousands have been turned into refugees. However, last week UN special envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed attempted to kickstart a new round of talks, beginning with a meeting with the internationally recognised President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Ould Cheikh Ahmed presented Hadi with new information regarding the Kerry plan that the latter had rejected in November on the grounds that it “rewarded the Houthi coup-makers,” a reference to the Houthi Movement that now controls most of northern Yemen. Ould Cheikh Ahmed wrote on his Facebook page that he had asked Hadi to respond “quickly and constructively to UN suggestions for creating an environment conducive to peace”. He added that “I discussed with President Hadi the key elements of a comprehensive agreement, based on the Kuwait consultations, which will help bring an end to the war and Yemen's return to a peaceful and orderly transition… I asked the president to act swiftly and engage constructively with the UN's proposal for the sake of the country's future.” Hadi had rejected the Kerry plan, which was adopted by the UN, because it called for the dismissal of his influential Vice-President Mohsen Al-Ahmar and granted the president an only honorary role following the Houthi withdrawal from the capital Sanaa. It is not clear whether Hadi and Al-Ahmar were consulted about the plan. However, in the past their supporters have insisted that any agreements must recognise Hadi as the Yemeni president. The new plan states that “upon the signing of the complete and comprehensive agreement, the current vice-president shall sign and President Hadi will appoint the new vice-president named in the agreement. When the withdrawals from Sanaa are complete and heavy and medium weapons are handed over (including ballistic missile launchers), Hadi shall transfer all his powers to the vice-president and the vice-president shall appoint the new prime minister.” The Houthis insist that the surrender of their heavy weapons should not take place before the formation of a national unity government, the first step with which the new prime minister is tasked. The internationally recognised government insists that the Gulf Initiative, the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions and the outputs of the National Dialogue remain the frames-of-reference for any solution. The Houthi Movement rejects these. Neither political forces in Aden nor Houthi officials in Sanaa have issued any official response to the new Ould Cheikh Ahmed proposal. There is no sign of a breakthrough that might end the stalemate on the ground. At present, the forces of the Houthi-Saleh alliance control the ground in much of Yemen, and Saudi-led Coalition bombers control the air. The Houthi-Saleh forces, made up of the Houthi Movement and forces loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, control what was known before 1990 as North Yemen. The area of Maareb in North Yemen, inhabited by Sunni tribes, is not under Houthi control, and some of the tribes are collaborating with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the local franchise of the terrorist organisation. AQAP also threatens most of the cities controlled by Hadi in the south of the country, especially the port of Mukalla. It has also carried out attacks in Aden, which the Hadi government uses as a capital. Although there are no precise figures on the demographic makeup of Yemen, northern Yemen with its predominantly Zaidi Shia population is both the most populous and the wealthiest part of the country in terms of resources. Most commentators say that in the unified Yemen that has existed since 1990, the Shafie Sunni population is roughly equivalent to the Zaidi Shia population. Kamal Kateb, a former professor of history at the University of Aden, maintains that the reason behind the Ould Cheikh Ahmed proposal is that the recognised government has been unable to achieve a military breakthrough against the Houthis in spite of the air support from the Gulf for 22 months since the beginning of the Arab Coalition's campaign in Yemen. “This war, in which the Houthis control the ground and the Saudi-led Arab Coalition controls the air, will never reach an end in which one side can dictate its conditions to the other,” Kateb said. “If the political solution does not respond to the Houthis' numerical strength and the Gulf countries' vital interests, it will never survive the fluctuating conditions in the country,” he added. Hadi's forces backed by the Arab Coalition recently opened a new front on Yemen's Red Sea coast in a bid to march on Sanaa. Commenting on developments on the ground, Ahmed Bilal, who fought with Egyptian forces in the Yemeni War in the 1960s, said that the war in Yemen could not be won in the air. “This attempt is doomed to failure, just like the attempts to invade the capital from the east from Maareb or from the south from Taiz. Hadi and coalition forces have not even been able to wrest predominantly Sunni-populated Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city, from Houthi-Saleh control in the two years since the aerial bombardments began. How are they going to recapture Sanaa,” Bilal asked. “If there is no political solution, the humanitarian situation will worsen. This alone is a source of major pressure on the international powers and the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia.” Saudi Arabia is under considerable stress due to its ongoing involvement in the Yemeni war. The aerial campaign it has led has been responsible for more than two-thirds of the casualties in the past two years, and the war has also been a constant financial drain, especially given the sharp decline in oil prices, Saudi Arabia's chief source of income. The Houthis are taking advantage of the Saudi situation and the victories that the Syrians and Iraqis have scored against the Islamic State (IS) and other Islamist militias to continue the war, Kateb said. Sultan Al-Atwani, a Yemeni politician close to the Hadi government, said that the Houthi strategy was short-sighted, however, “because it presumes that the Saudis are not pleased by the victories of the Iraqis and the Syrians. But on the basis of that assumption, the Saudis would want to work harder to achieve a victory in Yemen so as not to lose all their cards.” “Ultimately, Saudi Arabia wants the war to end today, not tomorrow,” al-Atwani continued. “It realises that a stable Yemen is in Saudi interests, while a rocky Yemen jeopardises the vital interests of Riyadh.” Bilal observed that Hadi's forces were divided between southerners affiliated with the separatist Southern Movement, militias belonging to the Islah Party (the political wing of the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood) and Shias “who have no place with Saleh”. This division “is a major reason why Hadi's forces have been unable to benefit from the Gulf countries' air support, in contrast with the situation in Syria where the Bashar Al-Assad regime and its allies have been able to build on their gains when the Russians initiated their aerial intervention in the Syrian civil war,” he concluded.
