Yemen’s truce is good news for the wider world
Do we dare hope for Yemen? A truce called at the start of the month has held for three weeks, far longer than any previous cessation of hostilities. The United Nations envoy to the country, Hans Grundberg, who brokered the deal, has told the Security Council that there is “a chance to steer Yemen in a new direction.”
Yemenis will be grateful for even the slimmest of chances. The people of the Middle East’s poorest country have endured war for nearly seven years. The United Nations reckons nearly 400,000 have died as a result, and more than 3 million have been displaced from their homes. More than 24 million people, or 80% of the population, need humanitarian assistance, and two in five people are at high risk of starvation.
The wider world has long since stopped paying much attention to the unfolding catastrophe. Even before the war in Ukraine came to dominate the headlines, the fighting in Yemen — which pits an Iranian-backed rebel militia known as the Houthis against the government, backed by a Saudi Arabia-led coalition — had been consigned to the inside pages.
A country that gets little attention inevitably gets little aid. The U.N. has been unable to raise the money needed to alleviate Yemeni suffering.
The outside powers involved in the conflict have canceled each other out. After his two predecessors paid only lip service to the need for peace in Yemen, President Joe Biden suspended U.S. military support for the Saudi-led coalition. But Iran used this as an opportunity to increase its assistance to the Houthis, who ramped up their rocket and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
That the warring parties agreed on a truce when the world wasn’t watching may, counterintuitively, be the best reason for optimism. Outside pressure can be an important factor in ending conflict, but it is so much the better when the combatants independently conclude that it is in their interest to stop fighting.
The Saudis recognize that they need to get out of a quagmire that has cost them tens of billions of dollars and earned them international opprobrium. The Yemeni government, in exile since the rebels took the capital Sana in 2014, realizes it cannot return in a military triumph. And the Houthis, having experienced their first major loss of territory this year, seem to have accepted they cannot achieve complete domination of the country by force of arms.
Belated as it is, the acknowledgement of these realities by the principal protagonists is good not only for Yemen but also the wider world.
Among other things, it removes a persistent threat to the supply of fossil fuels at a time when much of the global economy is struggling to cope with the loss of Russian oil as a result of the war in Ukraine. Only last month, the Saudis warned that their exports could be disrupted by continued Houthi attacks on the kingdom’s oil infrastructure.
So, quite apart from humane considerations, most of the world has a vested interest in the success of the truce. That includes the Biden administration, which additionally should be glad it didn’t have to expend much diplomatic or political capital to get the protagonists to this point.
The first test of the truce is whether it lasts the full two months agreed by the parties.
The process undoubtedly will be protracted and contentious, and all sides will need to help things along with gestures of good faith. The Saudis and Emiratis have shown some by pressing Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi to hand power to a governing council. The Houthis, having refused to talk to Hadi, must now reciprocate by agreeing to negotiate with the council.
For good measure, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have pledged $3 billion of aid to begin the repair of Yemen’s wrecked economy. Under the terms of the truce, the Sana airport will be reopened for commercial flights, which should allow some emergency aid to be flown in. The port of Hodeidah will be opened for shipments of much-needed fuel.
Trickier compromises lie ahead, including the exchange of prisoners and the ending of the Houthi siege of the city of Taiz.
There is always the possibility that the truce will end without any progress and the fighting will resume.
And finally, there’s a risk that the Houthis’ patrons in Tehran will lean on them to return to the battlefield. Iran would gain doubly from a resumption in hostilities. Its traditional enemies, the Saudis, would continue to bleed resources. And any spike in oil prices would allow the Islamic Republic to squeeze more revenue from its own sanctions-limited exports.
So there’s a great deal that could yet go wrong in Yemen. But, at long last, there’s at least the prospect of something going right.