Dr Shamlan Al
Yemeni peace talks continued in Geneva for four days without any signs of political breakthrough, but on the contrary a clash broke out at the hands of representatives of the various warring factions in Yemen, and the resolution of negotiations was announced without any mention of another round.
It seems that the new international envoy in Yemen, Ismail Sheikh Ahmed as his predecessor Jamal bin Omar, has failed in his mission. The Arab and Western countries failed in urging Yemenis to resolve their disputes peacefully through the Gulf initiative for national dialogue, the Constitutional Conference, and launching the call for establishing legislative and presidential elections.
After the failure of the Geneva talks, as the estrangement occurred, there is no longer any call for dialogue once again…What is then to be done? How can the Gulf countries get out of the impasse of Yemen, especially since the military campaign waged by the Arab coalition countries led by Saudi Arabia took over two months?
What is certain now is the weakness of the central government and its failure to mobilise its forces in the South to slow down the advance of the Houthis and the troops who are loyal to former President Ali Saleh to the outskirts of Aden.
Arab countries and the Western alliance, led by the United States, pushed to support the moderate forces in Yemen to liberate the south to be a safe ground for liberating the rest of Yemen.
There are new risks that emerge in case Yemen is divided to a north under the control of the Houthis and forces loyal to Saleh, who aspires to return to power again even though the destruction of Yemen will dominate.
This situation will not make Yemen stable, because the majority of the population in the North, numbering about 25 million people, belongs to the Sunni tribes that are following the Shafei school of thought, while there is a Zaidi minority estimated to be a little over 20 percent of the entire population.
The tribal and regional affiliations play a major role in drawing the political map of Yemen. Based on that, Yemenis are one of the nations of the world who carry weapons; every Yemeni house owns weapons that are traded through the heads of tribes!
Then, what about the South, if we assume that the Arab coalition countries have liberated the South from the domination of the Houthis and the army of Ali Abdullah Saleh, will the South be stable in this case?
Certainly not, because a proxy war on behalf of Iran will be fought by the Houthis and Saleh’s supporters against the South that is backed by Arab and Western coalition forces.
The dilemma is that the Gulf Arab countries, as well as the rest of the Arab and Western countries, do not want to immerse their troops in Yemen. They also oppose the intervention of American ground forces after their failures in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is emerging that ISIS forces have embarked on some suicide attacks in Sana’a and some areas of Yemen. The question now is: Can the Gulf countries fight the Houthis, Al-Qaeda and now ISIS in Yemen, especially as the West wants to fight against terrorism embodied in Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Meanwhile, it neither wants to face the Houthis nor Iran!
The writer is a researcher and
a political analyst
