Yemen Peace Talks Concluded: When Will Country’s Humanitarian Crisis End?
YemenExtra
SH.A.
Ahmed Abdulkareem
Although it was the first successful negotiation between Ansar Allah (Houthis) and Saudi-led Coalition, the peace talks held in Rimbo, near Stockholm in Sweden, which could not end three years of war on Yemen, was disappointing to many people in Yemen.
On Tuesday, December 4, The Sana’a delegation, including Houthi negotiators and members of Yemen’s General People’s Congress Party, left Sana’a on a Kuwaiti plane on to attend the U.N.-sponsored peace talks. The delegation was accompanied by UN special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, along with Kuwait’s Ambassador to Yemen, Fahd Saad Almeie, and returned on Friday, December 14. While Saudi`s representatives left Saudi and returned to Riyadh.
In these negotiations, which were not also a shaft of light to many innocent civilians, the Saudi-led coalition and Ansar Allah agreed on a ceasefire in Hodeida and in the Taiz Province of northwestern Yemen, as well as agreeing to a mass prisoner exchange of over 15,000 prisoners and detainees, but they did not agree on the reopening of the Sana’a International Airport and the payment of staff salaries, meaning continued suffering of Yemenis.
Among the discussed issues in Yemen peace negotiations underway in Sweden were potential humanitarian corridors, a prisoner swap, the reopening of the defunct Sana’a International Airport, and the fate of the crucial port city of Hodeida. No, a breakthrough has been achieved except in Hodeida.
A political framework for ending the conflict, reopening of the Sana’a International Airport, government staff salaries payment, and neutralization of the Central Bank were postponed to January 2019. The UN secretary general confirmed that another round of talks is planned for the end of January, causing a rise to great frustration for many Yemenis who hoped an end to the more than three years of war that have ravaged Yemen by Stockholm`s peace talk.
The agreement essentially places the strategic port city under the military control of the UN; and, while Houthi military forces will withdraw from Hodeida city and the port, they will retain political control of the city, on the other hand, Saudi-led Coalition and its local mercenaries will withdraw from all sites in south Hodeida that have been occupied in a last military campaign which began in June, meaning that Houthis have won in this point.
However, Yemeni analysts regard the Rimbo talks as having progressed better than anticipated and see it as an encouraging breakthrough after four years of deadly impasse. While it is hoped this will pave the way to progress on Yemen’s major humanitarian issues, questions over the country’s serious political divides remain unresolved.
Numerous prior negotiations between Yemen’s Ansar Allah and the Saudi coalition have failed, including peace talks in Switzerland earlier this year which failed spectacularly after the Saudi-led coalition refused to allow the evacuation of wounded Houthi personnel to be sent abroad for medical treatment. Previous talks also broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal.
Houthis see the agreement as a victory for the Yemeni nation after Saudi-led coalition were forced to sit for talks with the Ansar Allah movement. Houthi chief negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam says the truce deal a defeat for the Saudis as it stops the aggression, allows existing local protectors who thwarted the Saudi offensive to be in charge of the city, and allows the Yemeni nation to regain access to food, medicine, and other basic supplies.
Despite the truce, the suffering of Yemeni people including children and women continues
Failure to reopen San’aa International Airport means that thousands of innocent civilians, including children in northern districts, will die due to a lack of access to critical medical care a result of the air blockade imposed on Sanaa Airport.
Before the war, thousands of Yemenis were traveling abroad — mostly through the Sana’a airport — for medical treatment each year; 60 percent of these patients were women and children. The ongoing blockade means that the number of patients requiring life-saving overseas treatment will grow.
Supported by the United States and other Western military powers, the Saudi-led coalition forced the closure of Sana’a International Airport, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians as a result of their inability to travel abroad for treatment not available in Yemen.
Eleven-year-old Mohammed Naser died on Saturday as a result of kidney failure. He was a survivor of the Saudi attack. He was suffering from critical fractures around his kidney and pelvis. Like Mohammed about 200,000 patients — including cancer, heart and renal failure patients —felt the need to travel outside of Yemen to seek life-saving treatment.
According to a group of NGOs, including the International Rescue Committee and the Norwegian Refugee Council, over 10,000 people seeking life-saving treatment abroad have died from critical health conditions since the Sana’a Airport was closed.
Life-saving treatments are indeed seldom available inside Yemen, as most of the country`s medical infrastructure has been destroyed since the Saudi-led coalition war began in March of 2015. According to the Legal Center for Right and Development, The U.S.-backed coalition has destroyed 316 hospitals and health centers.
The Health Ministry also confirmed that the Sana’a airport closure led to the deaths of tens of thousands of children as a result of their inability to travel abroad for treatment not available in Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition forced the closure of the airport in August 2016, also depleting Yemen’s supply of life-saving medicine.
Saudi coalition representatives, who include Yemen’s former Saudi-backed government, have insisted on turning Aden to be home for the country’s main airport, relegating the Sana’a International Airport to local use instead of reopening as an international airport in Yemen’s capital.
Houthis have offered to have Yemeni planes inspected in Jordan and Egypt as Saudi coalition-controlled Aden is considered unsafe for opponents of the coalition, saying that reopening Sana’a International Airport, is an important humanitarian objective necessary to transport sick and wounded residents as well as food supplies.
Many civilians are unable to return to Yemen through the southern districts that under Saudi-led coalition control under the pretext that they have supported Yemen’s resistance and opposed the presence of the coalition in Yemen. Some patients traveling to seek medical treatment have been prevented from returning home and others have been detained by the coalition.
Ansar Allah fears arbitrary arrests and assassinations of its members or supporters in Aden. Well-known Yemeni doctor, 70-year-old Mustafa al Mutawakil, was recently arrested by the Saudi-led coalition while returning from Morocco, on charges of supporting Yemen`s resistance and opposing the presence of the United Arab Emirates in Yemen. So Houthis rejected the proposal. Humanitarian crisis will deteriorate next days.
Peace talks in Sweden have not reached the paying of government staff salaries, and the neutralization of the Central Bank needed to spare the population from further hunger, meaning that the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, already the worst in the world, will deteriorate next days.
“The country with the biggest problem in 2019 is going to be Yemen,” said Mark Lowcock, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in a press conference in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday. More than 50% of Yemen’s population facing severe acute food insecurity
On the contrary, analysts say the flexibility of the warring parties does, however, reflect their zeal for ending – or at least alleviating – the suffering of people in Yemen. They have agreed to de-escalate in Hodeida and implement a ceasefire, as well as a prisoner swap.
On the field is an escalation, not the truce
Despite Hodeida`s truce, the Saudi-led coalition continues to escalate its military offensives across the country. The Saudi coalition has refused to agree on suspending military operations on all fronts in the war.
After Sweden`s peace talk, Saudi-led Coalition has escalated its attack against more 10 battlefields including Jizan, Asir, Najran and Nihm districts, 40 km (25 miles) east of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. Fierce battles and bombing are ongoing in these districts, also artillery fire could be heard and an exchange of fire every 5 minutes.
In Nihm only, district residential area in the suburbs of the capital Sana’a, the Coalition warplanes have launched over 40 airstrikes. The airstrikes were accompanied by intensive artillery and missile fire. Houthi military sites in all frontlines, as well as other nearby areas, were also targeted.
Moreover, the Saudi-led coalition did not respond to a ceasefire in Hodeida, the Coalition has conducted 21 airstrikes over the past 24 hours in violation of a truce reached on Thursday. Also, Saudi artillery had fired more than 100 mortar shells Hodeida`s residential areas. As well as Saudi mercenaries tried to infiltrate Hodeida from the west coast, but Yemeni fighters foiled their attempt.
The Hodeida agreement stipulates that an “immediate ceasefire” should come into effect in Hodeida and the three ports upon signing this agreement, and this will be followed by a “mutual redeployment of forces to agreed-upon locations outside the city and the ports”.