The new detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran is likely to have significant implications for the civil war in Yemen, possibly speeding up peace talks between Riyadh and the Houthi movement, but it also risks locking out other groups, including the main separatist faction, women and western governments.
Saudi Arabia has been holding private direct talks in Oman with the Houthi movement since October but the main separatist group, the Southern Transitional Council (STC), has said it will not feel bound by any deal if it extends to issues of the administration, security or distribution of resources in the south of the country.
The council said it had “no clue and no briefing” about the talks to end the near decade-long war, and that Yemen could be presented with a fait accompli. The special representative to the STC president on foreign affairs, Amir al-Bidh, said: “We hear a deal is coming, but we do not hear it from any official channel.”
The STC is the main group calling for Yemen to be split between north and south, reinstating a division that existed before 1990. It has seats on the eight-strong Saudi-formed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), the body governing the internationally recognised government.
The landscape for a potential peace deal in Yemen, which is approaching the eight anniversary of the Saudi military intervention in the country on 25 March, has been radically changed by the surprise agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to re-engage diplomatically, announced in China on Friday.
Iran has been arming the Houthi movement for years, and the group has been launching attacks over the border into Saudi Arabia as well as fighting to win control of the whole of Yemen, most recently by attacking the oil-rich province of Marib.
It is unlikely that Saudi Arabia would have reached a deal with Iran unless there was some understanding that Tehran’s supply of arms to the Houthi movement would end, especially since the agreement contains a clear clause pledging not to interfere in one another’s affairs.
That would not spell the end of the movement’s ability to fight because it is well stocked with arms, but if Iran genuinely holds back supplies, a negotiated end to the war is more likely. Saudi Arabia is keen to extricate itself from a war as long as its borders are protected. A six-month-old ceasefire broke down in October.
The STC said it had no objection to the secret Saudi-Houthi talks if they are confined to confidence-building measures or the security of the border between Houthi-held Yemen and Saudi Arabia, but Bidh said he feared the talks were going “much deeper”.
In the talks, in exchange for an extended truce the Houthi movement wants an end to restrictions on Sana’a airport and Hodeidah port as well as Saudi payment of all state salaries, including to their military and security services. They also want Riyadh to withdraw from the war, cease supporting the internationally recognised government based in Aden and pay for reconstruction.
Houthi efforts to disrupt the Saudi oil industry using drones have unnerved Riyadh, even though the attacks have only been partially successfu. Saudi Aramco reported record $161bn (£134bn) profits for 2022 on Sunday, up 48 % on the previous year.
The Sana’a Centre, Yemen’s forefront thinktank, joined the STC in warning of the dangers of exclusively Saudi-Houthi talks in an editorial published at the weekend. It said that “left to their own devices, there is every possibility the Houthis and Saudis will make a deal that suits their interests alone, and not those of Yemen and its citizens. Instead of peace, the result might be the institutionalization of an unstable political configuration, which will ultimately invite further violence”.
It adds the current format “openly delegitimises the internationally recognised government. While hardly a representative body, further emasculating the fragile domestic coalition is an invitation to further dissolution and disaster”.
At the same time, Oxfam published a report spelling out how women have also been systematically excluded from the talks process. It points out that “women have enjoyed little to no representation in the formal peace negotiations among the parties to the conflict in the past eight years”.
At a UN-sponsored national dialogue conference in 2013, women made up fewer than 30% of the delegates and only six of 37 members on the organising committeeOnly one of Yemen’s 301 MPs is a woman, and only two of 38 ministers.
There is no woman on the PLC or in the Houthi negotiating team, adding to the lack of information flow to women’s groups about what is happening.
Wedad Al Badwi, a journalist and member of Yemeni Women’s Pact for Peace and Security, said: “Do we have to carry weapons and participate in war to be taken seriously by the UN and the warring parties and to be granted a seat at the table?”
