The MED This Week newsletter provides expert analysis and informed comments on the MENA region’s most significant issues and trends. Today we turn the spotlight on Yemen, where a nationwide truce serves as the backdrop for the inauguration of a new presidential council tasked with managing the country and leading the peace efforts with the Houthis.
As the conflict in Yemen drags on, an interesting dynamic has marked the last year of war: the rise of popular protests in many Southern regions, the areas which are not directly hit by airstrikes and fighting. Demonstrations are mainly driven by worsened economic conditions: Yemenis peacefully take to the streets, organise sit-ins or go on strike to express their dissent against unstoppable inflation, lack of public salaries and services, electricity shortages and limited access to clean water.
Dopo sette anni il conflitto in Yemen non ha ancora trovato una risoluzione politico-diplomatica. Le istituzioni statuali, a cominciare dal governo riconosciuto dalla comunità internazionale, sono sempre più deboli, mentre la crisi economica e quella umanitaria peggiorano. L’approfondimento, dopo una cronologia dei principali eventi e una sintesi dell’attualità yemenita, analizza strategie e obiettivi degli attori interni e regionali, ponendo l’accento sull’evoluzione dei loro interessi e politiche, nonché sulle dinamiche emergenti.
Yemen’s Houthis attacked Abu Dhabi twice in a week. For the United Arab Emirates (UAE), risk perception has dramatically increased: things will never be the same. The Emirati leadership, a master of strategy, suddenly came to realise how difficult it is to balance national security and regional ambitions. Despite a correction course in foreign policy, the UAE now stands in the eye of the storm. After a decade of assertive military posture in the Middle East, it could be too late for the UAE to avoid backlashes.
The “Abraham equation”, which refers here to the developing cooperation among the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Israel, and the United States, strengthens regional maritime alliances in the Middle East, especially in the Red Sea. The main goal is still to counter Iran, its allies — such as Yemen’s Ansar Allah (the Houthis)— and proxies. However, the UAE, to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia (who did not normalise relations with Tel Aviv), and Israel increasingly show different perceptions and policies as regards Tehran.
In Yemen la strada della diplomazia è sempre in salita e gli yemeniti sono “bloccati in una condizione di guerra indefinita”.[1] Il 5 settembre 2021, giorno in cui il nuovo inviato Onu per lo Yemen, lo svedese Hans Grundberg, è entrato ufficialmente in carica, gli huthi (gli insorti sciiti zaiditi del nord, sostenuti dall’Iran) hanno intensificato il lancio di missili e droni contro l’Arabia Saudita, colpendo obiettivi civili.
Saudi Arabia’s rebalanced alliances within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are producing recalibrated power relations in Yemen, too, as the new United Nations Special Envoy — the Swedish diplomat Hans Grundberg — has been appointed. In fact, three external factors contemporarily affect Yemen’s peace prospects and war dynamics, which could alter the diplomatic stalemate that paralysed negotiations in the last couple of years, though the mediation outlook remains complicated.
Sulla guerra in Yemen, i principali attori del conflitto non sono sincronizzati: segnali tendenzialmente positivi dalle potenze internazionali e regionali, segnali fin qui negativi dai protagonisti yemeniti. Si apre dunque qualche spiraglio diplomatico per lo Yemen, ma il conflitto prosegue. Mentre l’amministrazione statunitense spinge per una soluzione politica, l’Arabia Saudita offre agli huthi un cessate-il-fuoco nazionale, con qualche apertura inedita su aeroporto di Sanaa e porto di Hodeida, ovvero i collegamenti aerei e marittimi dei territori controllati dagli insorti.
The decisions taken by the Biden administration to end the war in Yemen have ironically yielded the opposite effect: an unprecedented military escalation, more victims, and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
The Houthi Movement, known officially as Ansar Allah, is a Zaydi revivalist movement that takes its name from its eponymous founder, Hussein al-Houthi. Leadership of the movement remains in the hands of the al-Houthi family and especially Abd al-Malik al-Houthi.
The 2011 Yemeni uprising opened up new political spaces of contention against the existing structures of power.
