Yemen crisis: Peace plan boosts Houthis’ influence

SANAA: 2024 heralds a good chapter for war-torn Yemen, hopes Hans Grundberg, the United Nations special envoy for the country. “Thirty million Yemenis are watching and waiting for this new opportunity to provide for tangible results and progress towards lasting peace,” he said in a statement this week.

Yemen has been at war since 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels ousted the Yemeni government. In 2015, the situation escalated when a Saudi-led coalition of nine countries intervened in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government, which has meanwhile turned into the Presidential Leadership Council. The conflict is widely seen as proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The reason for Grundberg’s present optimism is the outcome of the UN-led negotiations with Saudi Arabia, the Presidential Leadership Council and the Houthi militia over provisions for a nationwide ceasefire, improved living conditions for the suffering population and an inclusive political process under UN auspices.

However, a precise timeline has yet to be published. Observers, however, are much less enthusiastic. “It is not a peace process, and it will not lead to peace, development and stabilization in Yemen,” Thomas Juneau, associate professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, told DW. For him, the latest talks resemble instead a “political process whereby the Houthis and Saudi Arabia are negotiating Saudi Arabia’s defeat and its eventual withdrawal from Yemen,” he said.

When Saudi Arabia launched its military intervention in Yemen, the objective was to roll back the Houthis, Juneau said. “Almost nine years later, what we see is that not only have the Houthis not been rolled back, they are far more powerful than they were almost nine years ago,” he added.

Today, the Houthis control much of the country’s north and west, they have the capability to significantly disrupt maritime shipping in the Red Sea. They have been able to target Israel, almost 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away, with missiles and drones, which were intercepted by the Israeli army.

After nine years of fighting, Saudi Arabia’s level of commitment has changed. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been open about his wish to exit the costly war, even more after Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities in 2019 exposed the kingdom’s vulnerability.

In 2023, Saudi Arabia and its former archenemy Iran also improved their ties. “The Saudis are using the umbrella of the internationally recognized government to negotiate an exclusively bilateral agreement in which the Houthis will stop firing missiles at Saudi Arabia,” Sami Hamdi, managing director of the London-based consulting company International Interest, told DW.

In addition, Saudi Arabia and Israel had been on a fast track to normalize relations, until the October 7 attacks by the terror group Hamas on Israel and the resulting war in Gaza put that rapprochement on ice.

Saudi Arabia has even intercepted Houthi missiles en route to Israel. “Saudi Arabia is in an awkward position whereby it is seeking warmer ties with the Israelis, in the hope that it can convince the US to offer a NATO-style security agreement through which Saudi Arabia will seek to resist Iran and its proxies in Iraq and in Yemen,” Hamdi said. “At the same time, Saudi Arabia is trying not to be seen to be too closely associated with Israel.”