The Houthis have a poor track record in negotiations. But giving up on negotiating with them isn’t an option.
Two years after the signing of the Abraham Accords, progress in developing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors has achieved mixed results, opening up some greater cooperation in the security sphere but failing to change Arab publics’ minds due to the lack of movement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Now in the fifth month of a ceasefire, what are the prospects for a negotiated end to the Yemeni Civil War, and the beginning of a sustained peace? MEI Distinguished Sr. Fellow on U.S. Diplomacy and Director of the Arabian Peninsula program Gerald Feierstein discusses these questions with two outstanding scholars who have followed and written extensively about Yemen over the years. Fatima Abo Alasrar is a nonresident scholar at MEI and a Senior Analyst for the Washington Center for Yemeni Studies.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The battle for control of the Yemeni heartland and its energy resources has reached a turning point. Yemen’s internationally recognized institutions are, once again, in crisis. In fact, the current infighting within the “government camp” threatens both the long-stalled implementation of the 2019 Riyadh Agreement and the political legitimacy of the newly-established Presidential Leadership Council.
There is no shortage of U.N. interest in Taiz or concern over the Houthis’ blockade and truce violations in the city, but pressure on the Houthis to commit to relieving the humanitarian suffering of the Taizi people remains lacking.
After achieving respectable growth in 2021, the GCC member states now face the risk of monetary (over) tightening due to the need to follow the U.S Federal Reserve’s interest rate adjustments. These increases are not warranted, however, as the GCC economies currently face relatively moderate inflation. Instead, they should use the available fiscal space to mitigate the negative fallout of monetary tightening and make greater use of PPPs for future infrastructure development.
Although the latest two-month extension of the Yemeni cease-fire was welcomed by all, the conflict will not end until meaningful pressure is applied on the Houthis to deny them a military victory and force them to accept a political resolution to the war they launched in 2014.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The U.N.-sponsored truce of April 2022 is the longest pause in fighting Yemen has experienced since the Houthi armed rebellion broke out in September 2014 and the Saudi-led coalition forces intervened six months later. But although there is strong external interest in both extending and expanding the truce given the scale of turmoil in the global arena, credible progress remains lacking, while serious obstacles persist.
The last few years have seen a lot of consolidation in Gulf financial sectors. Not only do these mergers create economic benefits, the merged entities also become potent tools for economic development. The mega-funds and other major financial institutions are part of a trend where Gulf political elites sidestep ossified bureaucracies and instead centralize power in private entities over which they have even more control.
Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.
Efforts to restore confidence between the U.S. and the Arab Gulf states took a first step with the recent formation of a new naval task force, known as the Combined Maritime Forces-153 (CMF-153), to improve maritime security in the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Aden, including the hotspot of Yemen. Established in mid-April, the new task force intends to target weapons smuggling for Ansar Allah, as the Houthi militias are officially known, as well as human trafficking and the drug trade.
At the conclusion of a week of Yemeni-Yemeni internal deliberations hosted by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh, the government of Abdo Rabo Mansour Hadi announced sweeping changes meant to clear away obstacles to cooperation among the anti-Houthi forces in the country and, perhaps, open the door to negotiations to end the civil war now in its eighth year.
تعكس المنشورات السياسية التي تحتفظ بها مكتبة عمان لحظة مفصلية في التاريخ اليمني، في الوقت الذي خضعت فيه اليمن لإصلاح اجتماعي وسياسي كبير ناتج عن الوحدة اليمنية في مايو ١٩٩٠، والتي وحدت شمال اليمن وجنوبه.