By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Time To Move On In Yemen?

On June 21, Yemeni media announced that Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebel movement had exchanged the bodies of 64 fighters along Yemen’s northern border in what has been celebrated as a positive development in relations between the two principal belligerents in the country’s eight-year civil war. Yet it remains unclear whether they can make more substantive progress on reaching a comprehensive cease-fire. Since April, the Houthis have negotiated with the Saudi-backed Yemeni government. Still, they have struggled to reach an agreement on such exchanges, let alone on ending the terrible conflict that has torn the country apart, killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, and produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

In part, the lack of progress stems from the intransigence of the two sides. In backing the Yemeni government, the Saudis seek to maintain a weak and docile Yemeni state that will not threaten Saudi Arabia’s southern border. In turn, the Houthis have refused to enter true cease-fire negotiations until Saudi Arabia unilaterally ends their war, withdraws all Saudi-led military forces, fully ends its blockade of Yemen’s air and naval ports, and commits to open-ended reparations to the Houthi government. In short, the Saudis want the Houthis to give up power, and the Houthis want the Saudis to hand them the entire country on a silver platter.

A larger issue is the lack of legitimacy of the parties themselves. Consider how the Saudis are seen in much of Yemen. In April, when a Saudi-Omani delegation arrived in Sanaa, the capital, to begin the talks with the Houthis, hardly anyone greeted them as peacemakers. Instead, Houthi media portrayed the delegates as the principal aggressors in the conflict. At the same time, the Saudi-allied Yemeni government was described as having been trivialized by a powerful foreign neighbor that has waged a brutal war for its ends.

But the Houthis are hardly more popular. Since seizing the capital in 2015, they have established a dictatorial regime and have been accused of widespread repression, human rights violations, endemic corruption, and open discrimination. Moreover, like the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, the Houthis appear to have accepted foreign support from Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shia group, and especially Iran. The two sides in the current negotiations have in common, then, that they are both unpopular among the broader Yemeni population and have become inseparably enmeshed with regional power alliances.

This is not the first time in Yemen’s history that the country has been caught between two deeply unpopular, foreign-dominated factions. When a similar civil war followed the founding of the Yemen Republic in the 1960s, it took the emergence of a third party to end years of violence and establish a stable, compromised administration with popular legitimacy. If Yemen’s current exile government and the Houthi rebels reach a more lasting settlement, they would learn from this history and include other leaders with greater popular legitimacy in their talks.

 

Neither Cairo Nor Riyadh

In 1962, Yemeni revolutionaries overthrew the country’s centuries-old Zaydi Shia imamate to found the Yemen Arab Republic, an Arab Nationalist state in the northwestern half of present-day Yemen. But a significant population in the north—including the same tribal groups that currently support the Houthi movement—remained loyal to the deposed imam. The revolutionary leaders immediately found themselves at war with a militant opposition.

Unable to defend the nascent republic independently, the revolutionary leaders appealed to the Egyptian government for assistance, and Cairo ultimately sent 70,000 troops and one-third of its air force. By backing the republic, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser saw a way to burnish his regional credentials as a champion of pan-Arabism. The northern tribal opposition, in turn, sought support from Saudi Arabia, which feared Nasser’s destabilizing presence on the Arabian Peninsula. To assist the northern tribal militias, Riyadh opened its territory as a haven and supported them financially.

By 1963, Yemen’s new leaders struggled to contain the Saudi-backed insurgency and required increasing Egyptian support to prevent the republic from collapsing. At the same time, the more Egypt’s military presence in Yemen grew, the more public support for the republic eroded. Egyptian officials had little confidence in Yemeni military commanders or politicians, so they assumed principal responsibility for conducting military operations and administrating the country’s finances. In other words, Egypt had transformed its initial offer of military assistance into what increasingly amounted to a colonial administration, the onerous costs of which had begun to affect Egypt’s economy and diplomatic standing in the developing world.

Meanwhile, Riyadh was calculating the extent of its involvement with the northern tribes. In keeping with the regional foreign policy it had followed since the 1930s, the Saudi government was only interested in preventing a complete Egyptian triumph: it did not seek a full restoration of the Yemeni imamate, which had a history of conflict with Saudi Arabia. Thus, the anti-Egyptian northern tribal forces were offered enough support to maintain a stalemate but not to ensure an Egyptian defeat.

Amid this growing meddling in the country by outside forces, many Yemenis grew disillusioned with the republic and the northern opposition. As they came under the sway of regional powers, both sides fell out of touch with the population's needs. As a result, by 1965, a small but growing political opposition movement known as the Third Force began to emerge within the Yemeni Republic. Its supporters were driven to increase Yemeni autonomy and end foreign intervention. The following year, Nasser invited 50 prominent Yemeni politicians aligned with the Third Force to Cairo, ostensibly for political negotiations over the timing of Egypt’s withdrawal from Yemen. But when the group arrived at the Cairo officers’ club for the meeting, Nasser had them all arrested and barred them from returning to Yemen. With this single treachery, Nasser managed to neutralize internal opposition in Sanaa to the Egyptian-led Yemeni republic and forestall the increasingly real possibility that the Third Force would stage a military coup.

As part of the Khartoum resolution of September 1967, Egypt and Saudi Arabia agreed to end hostilities and withdraw from Yemen. A month later, Egypt released the Third Force politicians, who returned to Sanaa, deposed the pro-Egyptian leadership, and appointed the well-respected Muslim jurist Abd al-Rahman al-Iryani as Republican president. By the end of November, the last Egyptian soldier had been withdrawn from Yemen, leaving the republic in the hands of the Third Force. After emerging triumphantly from an extended siege on the capital city, Iryani declared victory for the republic and negotiated a compromise with the northern groups, who were granted equal representation in the National Assembly and other republican institutions.

In 1970, the last imam of Yemen and his extended family were sent into exile, following in the footsteps of the pro-Egyptian Republican leadership, which had already been exiled with the return of the Third Force in 1967. Thus, with the effective withdrawal of Egyptian and Saudi forces and the disengagement of the belligerent parties, the modern Yemeni republic emerged with a compromise candidate at its helm. This ushered in an era of stability for the country, marked by the creation a modern political infrastructure and a period of economic growth and development funded by the remittances of Yemeni workers in the Gulf. Iryani’s ability to end the civil war and form a coalition government ultimately united the country and came to define the modern state of Yemen.

 

A Leader From Within

Fifty years later, Yemen is in a situation remarkably similar to the 1960s. Once again, a republican government is fighting a northern tribal opposition on the battlefield, and although the allies are different, each side is backed by outside forces. The belligerents also face many of the same political challenges as their predecessors. As with the Egypt-backed revolutionary government and its Saudi-backed foe in the 1960s, after years of fighting, neither the current Yemeni government in exile nor the Houthi rebel movement has achieved a decisive victory. And both are tainted by their involvement with regional powers and lack sufficient ruling legitimacy to lead to a durable peace. Despite these shortcomings, the two sides are the only ones invited to the UN negotiating table. As a result, the talks have yet to make any progress.

Ignored in this stalemate is the lesson of the Third Force and the importance of including groups that more closely represent the interests and concerns of the population. Several smaller Yemeni political actors today are independent of both sides and could serve as crucial voices in the transition from war to peace. In April 2022, to capture some of these minority voices in the Yemeni political scene, Saudi Arabia appointed an eight-member Presidential Leadership Council, which included four prominent local Yemeni figures. But the council has failed to produce a united leadership and, if anything, has brought about further infighting between rival factions, who begrudge the unfortunate reality that Saudi Arabia remains entirely in control of Yemeni republican politics as it attempts to craft a face-saving exit from the country.

Principal among the candidates for a possible third voice in negotiations is the Southern Transitional Council, one of the country's most powerful military and political forces. Although the STC also has close ties to an outside power—the United Arab Emirates provides significant military and financial support—it enjoys a degree of local legitimacy that the Yemen government in exile lacks. Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the leader of the STC, has rejected the notion of a Houthi government controlling the population and resources of southern Yemen. He has also repeatedly argued that Yemeni identity should not be defined solely by Sanaa and that representatives of the southern population should have a strong part in the national leadership as well.

In recognizing the political influence of the STC, the Saudi government officially added Zubaidi to the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council last year, potentially creating an opening for greater STC participation in negotiations. But until now, the STC has not been given a seat at the table. And the close financial and military relationship cultivated by the UAE with the STC has raised doubts as to whether Zubaidi can act independently in Yemen.

Another potential third voice is Faraj Salmeen al-Bahsani, the governor of Yemen’s eastern Hadramawt region, who was also named to the Presidential Leadership Council. The desert Hadramawt region of east Yemen has been a zone of relative stability during the conflict, benefiting from a functional Hadrami government and organized local military. Known for centuries for their Indian Ocean trade and migration, Hadramis have long enjoyed a certain autonomy within Yemen and distanced themselves from Sanaa's political turmoil. Some Hadramis have even discussed the prospects of a permanent split from the Yemeni state. Moreover, except for military aid from the UAE, Hadrami officials remain relatively independent from the foreign powers destabilizing the country and could potentially serve as a compromise party in negotiations.

Yet another possibility is Tareq Saleh, the nephew of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has emerged as one of the most effective military commanders in the country. Based in the port city of Hodeidah, his Guardians of the Republic, consisting of remnants of his uncle’s elite military units, continue to exercise control over the western coastal regions of the country and defend against further Houthi territorial expansion. Tareq Saleh, himself a member of the Presidential Council, has called for restoring his uncle’s nationalist political party, the General People’s Congress, which could serve as a potential vehicle for unification and reconciliation. However, Tareq’s prominent family name is both a blessing and a curse. It has helped him retain the loyalty of his uncle’s supporters. Still, it also reminds the public of his proximity to the Saleh family, which is widely known in Yemen for its corruption and abuse of power.

 

From Reconciliation To Legitimacy

Each potential leader has significant flaws, and none of them may be able to forge the broad support that Iryani enjoyed 50 years ago—as someone mutually respected by all parties. At the same time, Iryani’s success depended on his ability to end the war, oversee the withdrawal of foreign forces, and form a compromise government that included members of all parties. To repeat that feat today will require justice and reconciliation that cuts across all segments of Yemen’s political leadership. Nonetheless, Yemen has a crucial opportunity to draw from groups with greater popular legitimacy to find someone who could serve as a compromise candidate.

In the end, any effective leader of a postwar Yemen will need to show the population that the government is representative of the people and not beholden to outside powers whose ravages will need to be addressed. Saudi Arabia and Iran will ultimately need to be held responsible for contributing to war and a humanitarian crisis that has led to the deaths of more than 300,000 Yemenis—reparations that could take the form of support for the country's post-war reconstruction. As long as the country remains torn between two divisive and tainted political entities, none of this can happen. There will eventually come a time when mediators, aggressors, and civilians finally agree that it is time to move on and establish their Third Force.

 

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