Credit: UNDP Yemen

By Magdalena Kirchner
AMMAN, Jordan, Oct 26 2023 (IPS)

For the first time since the beginning of a war that claimed the lives of over 220,000 people, a senior Houthi delegation travelled from Yemen to Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh in mid-September.

The timing of the visit, just before the anniversary of the capture of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, on 21 September 2014 and the subsequent military escalation between the rebels (also known as Ansar Allah) and a Saudi-led military coalition, marks a diplomatic success for the de facto rulers of northern Yemen.

This is despite the fact that their only significant concession so far has been the temporary cessation of cross-border attacks using missiles or drones on neighbouring states such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Some observers cynically suggest that Riyadh’s real motivation is not to create an inclusive and lasting peace in war-torn Yemen but ‘not to disturb the newly bought European football stars with the sound of explosions’. However, the Houthis are showing a genuine interest in continuing negotiations with Riyadh and in exploiting the advantageous momentum of an Iranian-Saudi détente.

With Tehran’s support, they have developed a credible military deterrent in recent years. Neither their internal Yemeni opponents nor the latter’s regional and international supporters have succeeded in preventing or even reversing the consolidation of their rule over large parts of the country and its population.

Yet, with the end of Saudi air strikes in April 2022 and the lifting of air and sea blockades crucial to economic prosperity in northern Yemen, the rebels now lack a key driver for mobilising and securing popular support within their own territory: an external enemy.

Normalisation efforts externally, consolidation of power internally

In the past months, critical voices have grown significantly louder, particularly about the fact that while revenues from taxes, increased tariffs on imports from government-controlled areas and the boosted activity at the port of Hodeida have increased by nearly half a billion US dollars between April and November 2022, public sector employees continue to wait for salaries and pensions that have been overdue for years.

Criticism also came from the ranks of the General People’s Congress (GPC), the former unity and ruling party, to whom, until his surprising ouster by the National Security Council on 27 September, the prime minister of the Houthi government, Abdel-Aziz bin Habtoor, had belonged.

Hence, negotiations and the prospect of a financial peace dividend (i.e. an economic boost a country will get from a peace that follows a war) could be enticing and might buy the rebels time at home — even if it remains unclear how payments from a neighbouring state or the internationally recognised government (IRG) can be reconciled with their own claim to be Yemen’s only legitimate government.

Improving relations with regional states, which could offset reduced or even suspended aid from the West, may help reduce the rulers’ dependencies.

In recent months, the Houthi leadership has therefore taken stronger and more repressive measures to consolidate their rule internally. This has been particularly evident in the area of education and through significant restrictions placed on civil society organisations and women’s freedom of movement.

The latter, in particular, has put the rebels on a confrontational course, especially with Western donor states, whose humanitarian support is the livelihood of more than 20 million people across the country. These tensions are further fuelled by the fact that aid organisations’ ability to prevent the misuse of aid by those in power through independent needs assessments is systematically and sometimes violently curtailed.

Improving relations with regional states, which could offset reduced or even suspended aid from the West, may help reduce the rulers’ dependencies. This also explains why, on the anniversary of the capture of the capital, the Houthi leadership publicly announced that it wanted to address any concerns on the part of Saudi Arabia that might stand in the way of an agreement and stated its intent to double its own combat readiness if an ‘honourable peace’ could not be achieved.

The fragility of normalisation efforts between the former adversaries was underscored when a drone strike on a patrol by the Saudi-led military coalition in the Saudi border area with Yemen killed three Bahraini soldiers on 25 September.

Stuck in the starting blocks: an intra-Yemeni peace process

Although the international conflict dimension has de-escalated, this has not yet been accompanied by significant progress in a potential intra-Yemeni peace. In late September, hundreds of Yemenis commemorating the 1962 establishment of the Yemeni Arab Republic were detained in Houthi-controlled areas.

Although military clashes between the Houthi rebels and the armed forces of the IRG and its allies, assembled in the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), have significantly decreased, attacks on government troops have not ceased. In July 2023, the rebels employed drones, battle tanks and artillery in the southwestern governorate of Ad Dali. However, a new form of economic warfare is hitting the IRG and especially the people living in areas under its control even harder;

Since October 2022, the Houthis have been using drones to launch attacks on critical oil production and export facilities in IRG-held areas. According to its own reports, the IRG has suffered losses of more than $1 bn in revenue as a result. The Houthis have also imposed a ban on importing gas from government-controlled territory and made it difficult to trade goods within Yemen, especially those imported via the port of Aden.

Although Saudi Arabia stepped in to assist the struggling IRG by pledging $1.2 bn in economic aid at the beginning of August, the economic situation remains dire. The national currency, the Yemeni Rial, has lost a quarter of its value against the US dollar in the past year alone. Gas stations have frequently had to close in recent months, and the people in the southern city of Aden had to endure power outages of up to 17 hours — in sweltering heat.

Frustration among the population is running high, and there have been repeated roadblocks, injuries and even deaths during protests. Despite increased efforts by European partners to bolster the IRG through more frequent visits and a greater presence in Aden, the glaring weakness of state institutions and lack of unity among key actors in the south remain the government’s biggest Achilles heel.

Former allies become estranged

These intra-Yemeni dynamics make Saudi Arabia’s current negotiating strategy, as well as the support it receives from most international actors, all the more problematic. A statement by the US government on the Riyadh talks failed to mention the IRG or the fact that they, along with the United Nations, other conflict parties and civil society actors, are excluded from these ‘efforts for peace’.

The UAE, the second major regional power with high stakes in the conflict, might feel equally left out. Its allies, such as the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which pursues the goal of southern statehood, could perceive their own interests as being at risk. The once-close relationship between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed is now widely considered to have broken down. At the same time, the former allies now find themselves separated by the tangible geopolitical conflicts of interest in Yemen and the strategically important straits surrounding the country.

The talks in Saudi Arabia offer hope for a peaceful future for Yemen as they shed light on the real political interests of the Houthis, especially in the area of economic cooperation.

It should come as no surprise then that the President of the STC, Aidarus Al Zubaidi, publicly expressed sharp criticism of Riyadh’s actions on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. In his view, a ‘bad deal’, which could ultimately pave the way for a complete Houthi takeover, would primarily lead to Iran gaining control not only of Yemeni oil resources but also of strategically important trade routes.

He firmly rejected the notion of unilateral participation by the Houthis in the state revenues generated in the south – particularly in light of the current emergency situation in the region – as well as concessions related to salaries, seaports or the withdrawal of foreign forces in response to what he sees as blackmail tactics by the Houthis before an actual ceasefire is reached.

The talks in Saudi Arabia offer hope for a peaceful future for Yemen as they shed light on the real political interests of the Houthis, especially in the area of economic cooperation, providing a basis for substantial leverage in longer-term negotiations.

However, as long as Saudi Arabia’s primary objective remains limited to a face-saving exit from its involvement in the war and to securing its own border, there is a growing risk that former allies may disrupt the peace process. Additionally, the danger of new military expansionist efforts by the rebels, with potentially dramatic consequences for an already suffering civilian population, increases.

In view of these scenarios, international actors such as the German government should intensify their efforts to promote Yemen-Yemeni reconciliation, including in areas related to development and economic policy, and enable political institutions to regain the trust of an increasingly disillusioned population.

Dr Magdalena Kirchner heads the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s offices for Jordan and Yemen, based in Amman. Previously, she was the FES representative in Afghanistan.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

IPS UN Bureau

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Humanitarians seek $1.3 billion to help millions in war-weary Afghanistan. Homes for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. January 2021. Credit: OCHA Afghanistan/Fariba Housaini

By Magdalena Kirchner
NEW DELHI, India, Jan 20 2021 (IPS)

When the Doha talks were launched in September, the Afghan people’s hopes for an end of war and violence were high. So far, many have been disappointed as the negotiations have not done much to improve the security situation.

The Taliban continue to reject any ceasefire before the talks’ conclusion, and the ongoing troop withdrawals have only encouraged them to step up the military pressure. In the first four weeks after talks began, the Taliban carried out attacks in 24 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces on both security forces and civilians. In October, the United Nations counted more incidents in a month than at any time since 2007.

The increasingly confusing conflict situation is also afflicting Kabul, the capital city, as brutal and complex attacks, including those claimed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State, have occurred regularly in recent months.

Civilian targets included a Sikh shrine, a maternity clinic, Kabul University and other educational institutions. In 2020, at least 10 Afghan journalists lost their lives and reports of attacks and assassination attempts on officials, representatives of civil society, clerics, and opposition figures, many of them by unknown gunmen and assailants, surface almost daily.

Some observers compare the situation with the civil war in the 1990s; others point out that the lines between political violence and organised crime are becoming increasingly blurred.

And while the government is keen to present itself as the guarantor of the progress Afghanistan made since 2001, these developments undermine its legitimacy and weaken much-needed cohesion among critical constituents of the Republic. It appears that, for Kabul’s international partners, to prevent a total collapse of political order, there is hence no alternative to maintaining support for the Doha process.

Magdalena Kirchner

After years of heated discussions, the understanding that the Taliban’s exclusion from the Bonn negotiations on Afghanistan’s future in 2001 was a principal defect of the intervention and subsequent state-building efforts, is widely acknowledged.

Although 85 per cent of participants in the 2019 Asia Foundation Survey on Afghanistan expressed no empathy for the Taliban’s resort to violence, more than half of them supported their inclusion into the government.

A similar pragmatism can be observed amid critical regional players. Moscow, Beijing, and Teheran have publicly opened their ears and doors to the Taliban. Even in New Delhi, the previous taboo on direct communication channels is openly questioned.

Amid the current domestic climate in most contributing states and realities on the ground, military measures to pressure the Taliban to agree to a ceasefire or even into a credible commitment to democracy and equal rights are obviously exhausted.

Even though the Taliban have not yet managed to rid themselves of international sanctions, meetings with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and high-level EU, UN and NATO representatives signal entrenched normalisation and active exchange instead of isolation and cold-shoulders.

To advance the political process, US officials repeatedly risked alienating President Ashraf Ghani’s government to get the Taliban to de facto recognise Kabul as a negotiating partner.

Critics of this dynamic argue that the Taliban’s political recognition might be tantamount to selling out hopes for democracy and equal rights in Afghanistan for the sake of a graveyard peace.

Even without invoking the many setbacks on making them a permanent reality of Afghans in the past decades, the uncomfortable truth is that democracy and equality will remain out of reach also in the future if Afghanistan continues to be forced to spend ten times as much as other low-income countries on national security.

Continuing war prevents real progress in virtually every area of social and state development. At the same time, it is also true that external recognition, especially when tangible support is attached to it, represents real political power in a state so dependent on international aid.

Therefore, it will be of utmost importance how Afghanistan’s international partners will use this leverage when shaping their relations with the group.

A withdrawal in the making

Amid the current domestic climate in most contributing states and realities on the ground, military measures to pressure the Taliban to agree to a ceasefire or even into a credible commitment to democracy and equal rights are obviously exhausted.

After the February 2019 Doha Agreement between the Taliban and the US, then-secretary of defence Mark Esper had hinted that withdrawal might be reconsidered, if conditions weren’t met. Accelerated troop reductions repeatedly undermined the credibility of such assurances.

The US Congress has taken action to slow down further withdrawals in its National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2021. However, many lawmakers see the need to act to ensure enhanced transatlantic cooperation and to prevent a rerun of what happened in Iraq in 2014, where terrorist organisations exploited a breakdown of state structures to harm US-interests.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan itself is hardly called into question, especially not by the President-elect and his incoming administration. In August 2020, Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan named a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan a goal for the first 100 days of Biden’s presidency.

This stance is reinforced by concerns that the Taliban could consider a politically motivated delay or reinterpretation of the Doha Agreement, for example, by maintaining a counterterrorism presence, as a breach of the deal and abandon the negotiations. Also, the much-needed support of neighbouring states such as Iran, China and Russia might falter if they got the impression that the US presence would be permanent.

Europe’s foreign and security-policy interests will remain closely linked to the country’s future, even when the military mission comes to an end.

On the other hand, experts and representatives of the same regional actors caution against ignoring dynamics on the ground and sticking rigidly to the deadlines established almost a year ago.

A hasty withdrawal could result in further escalation or even outright civil war. Amid all this uncertainty and Gordian knots ahead, a (cautious) extension or even further transformation of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission in February 2021 should not be prematurely ruled out.

Can development carrots achieve more than military sticks?

Notably, the US–Taliban agreement featured a shared interest in future economic cooperation after a military withdrawal. Over the past year, European officials, too, have begun to nurture hopes that the Taliban might agree to a ceasefire and even look more favourably on democracy and women’s and minority rights to ensure international support after a political settlement and power-sharing agreement.

In this context, even participation of Taliban representatives in the November 2020 Geneva donor conference had been discussed to familiarise them with international expectations. At the same time, a declaration by Afghanistan’s largest donors clearly addressed an Afghan government whose composition could change in the next years when making, for example, the adherence to the country’s international obligations a condition for ongoing support.

Could financial and development-policy incentives prevail where military force has failed? Can a transactional approach yield transformative results?

Bearing in mind the consequences of further destabilisation and its effects on Afghanistan’s fragile neighbourhood, would the EU take a clear stance if a return of the Taliban to power was accompanied by the systematic human rights violations?

And if the Taliban would prove unwilling to compromise, how to mitigate the risk that the Afghan people would eventually pay the price of aid cuts, isolation or even the exodus of international organisations? In turn, what promises and assurances can be given to the conflict parties amid uncertainty about the future of international engagement?

While remaining committed to the fragile but indispensable Doha process, Europe needs to develop and formulate a new strategy for its stabilisation efforts in Afghanistan that addresses these questions.

Europe’s foreign and security-policy interests will remain closely linked to the country’s future, even when the military mission comes to an end. To coherently support the process of intra-Afghan deliberations on how to achieve a peaceful future beyond 2021, European partners should use coordinating mechanisms like the recently initiated EU Strategic Compass, regional platforms shaped in Afghanistan’s neighborhood in the past years and transatlantic initiatives likely to be revived after 20 January.

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