Yemen’s exiled president Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi resigned on Thursday in favor of an eight-person council amid UN-led peace talks that have secured a ceasefire in the war raging in the country. seven years ago.
The poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula and a neighbor of the powerful Saudi Arabia, Yemen is the scene of a conflict between forces loyal to the Yemeni president elected in 2012 and the rebels of the political group of the Houthis, backed by Iran, who took power in 2014 by taking over. control of the capital Sanaa.
Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has led an anti-Houthis military coalition, which sparked a proxy war involving two of the main Middle East powers and which caused what the UN (United Nations) considers one of the most serious humanitarian crises. of the world.
“I irreversibly delegate to the Presidential Council my full powers under the Constitution,” Hadi told state television. Exiled to Saudi Arabia, however, he already had little authority in the country.
Hadi also sacked vice president Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar in what was seen as a nod to peace efforts. The deputy, a general linked to Islamic political groups, is targeted by the Houthis for the military campaigns he led against the rebels and for his role in the civil war between the former states of North and South Yemen in 1994.
However, Mohammed Abdulsalam, the Houthis’ chief negotiator, called the resignation a farce and a “desperate attempt to restructure the ranks of mercenaries to force further escalation.” [nas tensões]”, he said.
This is because the delegation of powers to the new presidential council was also seen as a way to unify the anti-Houthis ranks, giving space in the command of the country to different political currents.
The eight-member council will be led by Rashad al-Alimi, a former interior minister who has close ties to Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s main Islamist Islah party. Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman appeared alongside the new council in a video shown on state TV.
The body also includes leaders of groups supported by the United Arab Emirates, such as Aidarous al-Zubaidi, of the separatist Southern Transitional Council, an opponent of Islah and which has an interest in controlling Aden, a port city in the south of the country where oil refineries operate. .
Gregory Johnsen, who sat on the UN expert panel on Yemen, said this is “perhaps a last-ditch effort to build close unity within the anti-Houthi alliance,” he wrote on Twitter. “The problem is that it’s not clear how these various individuals, many of whom have diametrically opposed views, can work together.”
“In theory, I understand how this is supposed to work: bringing together several military units under one giant umbrella to defeat the Houthis. But in practice I don’t see how these actors will be able to put aside their many, many differences to unite against an enemy. common,” he concluded.
Elisabeth Kendall, a researcher at the University of Oxford, told the AFP news agency that “a major shift had to take place to bring the warring parties into a political process” because, according to her, “the status quo was getting nowhere. “. “We often think that being against the Houthis means being with the government. But during Hadi’s term it was not like that. His government was weak, incompetent and without legitimacy,” she said.
Hadi never managed to prevail over Yemen after he came to power in 2012, with 99.8% of the vote, in elections in which he was the only candidate, as part of a transition plan supported by the Gulf countries after protests that toppled President Ali. Abdullah Saleh during the Arab Spring.
The change of government comes amid a ceasefire agreed last week, which established a two-month truce since last Saturday (2), in the first such agreement since 2016, which was seen as one of the most important advances in years in the peace negotiations.
In parallel, UN-backed peace talks have been taking place in Riyadh, but without the presence of the Houthis, who have refused to enter “enemy” territory. In his speech on Thursday, Hadi said the new council is tasked with “negotiating with the Houthis for a lasting ceasefire”.
The conflict in Yemen has caused hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect deaths. On Thursday, Gulf countries announced $3 billion in financial aid to the new government, which takes over a war-torn economy. The central bank has split under rival authorities, and the devaluation of the Yemeni rial, the country’s currency, has taken basic goods out of the reach of many.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have announced that they will inject US$ 1 billion into the Central Bank of Yemen, in addition to investing another US$ 1 billion in the country’s oil sector.
Riyadh also announced a further US$300 million in donation for UN humanitarian aid, which in March managed to raise less than a third of the US$4.27 billion requested.
