Analysis: Does Saudi Arabia take the Leadership Council’s warnings about the Houthis seriously?

It is not the first time that the Presidential Leadership Council has warned of the danger of making concessions to the Houthi Imamate militia, even though the largest concessions obtained by the Houthis were made since the beginning of the Council’s era in managing the country’s affairs.

A glimpse at the concessions and negotiation path

The most prominent concessions made by the Presidential Command Council to the Houthi militia were the opening of Sanaa Airport to commercial flights and the lifting of restrictions on the port of Hodeidah.

Not even seven months had passed since the April 2022 truce, the Houthi militia bombed the oil and gas export ports in Hadramaut and Shabwa, and demanded the sharing of oil revenues. After this crime against the national economy, the Sultanate of Oman moved the course of the mediation efforts it was leading, from negotiation between the Houthis and the legitimate government under the auspices of the United Nations to negotiation between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia directly, which gave the Houthi militia the impression that its alleged military power and the political support provided to it by Iran and the Sultanate of Oman, They are guaranteed to successfully blackmail Saudi Arabia and the UAE with humanitarian files and impose more impossible conditions.

However, restrictions on the activity of the port of Hodeidah were gradually lifted after the 2018 Stockholm Agreement in Sweden, and an account was allocated in the Central Bank of Hodeidah branch to supply the port’s revenues to it and then disburse them as salaries to government employees in areas controlled by the Houthi militia. But the militia leaders violated that agreement and withdrew money from the salaries account to spend it to finance their war and sectarian activities. Instead of holding them accountable for this, they were given more concessions, and the militia directed its fighters and heavy weapons towards Marib Governorate in an attempt to control the oil fields.

After making one concession after another, the Houthi militia felt that it was able to achieve more military successes, especially after the coalition warplanes stopped bombing its military sites and the commitment of government forces and the parties represented in the Presidential Command Council to the calm imposed by the truce agreement, which the Imami militia did not respect and its violations of the truce caused Dozens of civilians and soldiers from the ranks of the legitimate forces were killed. Instead of maintaining the negotiation process between the militia and the Presidential Command Council, the developments of events took it towards deeper discussions between the militia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia about the humanitarian file, which the militia reduces to paying employee salaries, the reconstruction budget, and compensation, while the closed roads in Taiz and other governorates remain a secondary detail in the talks.

Alarm bells over the years

For two decades, the Yemeni state has tried the Houthi militia’s method of circumventing the truce agreements, since the six Saada wars, during which the subsequent years revealed that the state was actually facing the rebellion of a coup group that wanted to restore the Hashemite Imamate as a ruling system after the overthrow of this regime in the revolution of September 26, 1962. Since 2004, the militia has wrapped its ambition to restore the Imamate in the guise of oppression and the right to sectarian diversity, then it exploited the events of the popular protests in 2011 and infiltrated the ranks of young protesters whose age or knowledge of Yemen’s political history did not help them reveal the Houthi’s distant ambition. As a result of the political vacuum that followed the events of 2011 and the transitional period following the peaceful abdication of power by the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh to his deputy Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, the Houthi militia found its opportunity to seize power during the era of the weak president and the escalation of the disputes between the Republican factions. The agreements that the Houthi militia concluded with the state and tribal leaders during that stage still bear witness to the nature of the militia rooted in violating covenants and covenants, the most prominent of which is the Peace and Partnership Agreement.

Leadership Council warnings

Since its formation on April 7, 2022, this is perhaps the first time that the tone of the Presidential Leadership Council has escalated in warning against the Houthi nature of violating covenants and charters. In his speech at the 78th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, Council President Rashad Al-Alimi said that hopes for achieving peace in Yemen will be renewed only when “the Houthi militias submit to the popular, regional and international will and recognize the fact that the state is the guarantor of rights, freedoms and the rule of law on the basis of justice and equal citizenship.” She alone will make our country safer, more stable, and more respected in its regional and international surroundings.”

In a clear tone that the Leadership Council is supposed to build upon in dealing with developments in the peace negotiations now and in the future, Al-Alimi warned of the danger of recognizing the Houthi militia even as a de facto authority, and that “any inaction on the part of the international community or dealing with the militias as a de facto authority would make the practice of Oppression and violation of public freedoms is a behavior that cannot be eliminated under any circumstances.” He added, "Any peace initiative or confidence-building measures should be able to achieve tangible and immediate results to alleviate the suffering of the Yemeni people and benefit the victims of the conflict, especially women and children."

Perhaps President Al-Alimi’s speech at the United Nations lacked a mention that any peace initiative’s negotiating framework should include serious discussions of the southern issue and the development of decisive solutions to it, but perhaps he was satisfied with the presence of Leadership Council member Aidaroos Al-Zubaidi at the General Assembly meeting as a prelude to taming the international community and the United Nations to take up the issue. The South is considered a pivotal issue in the path to building peace in the country.

The direct role of taking these warnings remains for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia within the framework of its bilateral negotiations with the Houthi militia, considering the latter an arm of Iran in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. Despite the declared Houthi optimism regarding the Riyadh discussions between the militia delegation and the Saudi side, as well as the Saudi Foreign Ministry’s description of the talks as positive, within the Saudi Foreign Ministry’s statement and the tweets of Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Kingdom’s Minister of Defense, after the Houthi delegation left Riyadh, this indicates that Saudi Arabia will not deviate from the framework of the Gulf consensus. Regarding the settlement in Yemen, first and foremost its compatibility with the United Arab Emirates, its partner in the Arab coalition against the Houthi militia. The Kingdom still stresses the necessity of holding a Yemeni-Yemeni dialogue in order to reach lasting peace in Yemen, a principle supported by the Gulf Cooperation Council and Egypt and supported by the international community and the United Nations, and it does not seem that the Houthis’ evasion of this dialogue will continue indefinitely.

Possibility of heeding warnings

Based on the experience of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the volatile nature of the Houthi militia since the Fourth Saada War and during the current war extending from 2015, and through the Kingdom’s awareness of the complexity of the Yemeni crisis locally, regionally and internationally, its options for achieving an agreement between it and Iran’s arm in Yemen must be limited to the controversial issues between them. And among the militia, which was confirmed by UN envoy Hans Grundberg last week. As for the Kingdom’s options for negotiating with the militia on controversial issues between it and the Yemeni parties opposing it, perhaps they will become clear in the coming months, and it is an opportunity for the legitimate government and the parties represented in the Presidential Leadership Council to arrange their negotiating papers, including the southern issue and the abolition of the principles of Imamate rule and other features of the Yemeni state And its institutions.

المصدر: نيوزيمن