Source: TheLastAmericanVagabond.com
Despite the hopeful comments of Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, the war in Yemen threatens to explode with violence at any moment after a long pause in hostilities. At the centre of prolonging the conflict are Britain and the US, both of which continue to back non-starter positions in backchannel talks to reach a new ceasefire.
Last April the United Nations managed to broker a temporary truce agreement, which was prolonged until October. Since this time, threats of renewed aerial bombardments from the Saudi-led coalition, as well as drone and ballistic missile strikes against Saudi and the UAE have loomed. Yemen’s eight-year-long conflict has resulted in one of the worst, if not the single worst, humanitarian crisis in modern history, also causing the deaths of around 400,000 people in Yemen.
In December of last year, US Senator Bernie Sanders infamously retracted a war powers resolution to end US involvement in the war on Yemen, threatening to bring the resolution to a vote in the future if the White House refused to work to deliver peace. Another month has gone by and little progress seems to have been made, and although it is possible that the conflict may stay in a paused state for now, without a peace deal a renewal of warfare is inevitable. In Davos, last week, during a World Economic Forum meeting, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia offered a glimmer of hope that a deal could be reached between the Yemeni government in Sanaa — led by Ansarallah (the Houthis) — and the Saudi-led coalition, stipulating that they needed more progress and time to conclude such a deal.
On Saturday, however, the foreign ministry of Yemen’s Ansarallah-led National Salvation Government lashed out at the British ambassador to Yemen, Richard Oppenheim. The UK’s Yemen envoy reiterated Britain’s “support to the [Saudi backed] Government of Yemen in the wake of Houthi pressure”, to which the Sanaa-based Yemeni government responded by stating that the UK has been responsible for daily atrocities in Yemen and continue to hinder progress towards peace.
When it comes to concluding the conflict in Yemen, the starting point has to be about ending the Saudi-led blockade on the country and the recognition of the Sanaa based government, headed by Ansarallah. Without this, all efforts will prove futile and the UK, as well as the US, understand this well. The so-called internationally recognized leadership of Yemen, currently sits in the hands of Saudi Arabia and the West. They are illegitimate, unelected puppets that do not actually have any government that operates, they are a government in name only and the goal of the Saudi-led coalition is to impose these corrupt officials on the people of Yemen, in order to restore a neoliberal order in Sanaa.
Saudi Arabia, which owns the so-called Yemeni leadership, comprised of what is known as the Presidential Leadership Council, whose chairman became Rashad Al-Alimi last year, now often referred to as the President of Yemen. For those somewhat familiar with the situation in Caracas, a good comparison here would be the West’s recognition of Juan Guaido as the legitimate President of Venezuela. A key difference here is that, as ridiculous as it was in the case of Venezuela, the Presidential Leadership Council has no base of support at all. It is a grouping of unelected puppets who would fade into irrelevancy if the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UK, and US were to stop supporting them.
On the ground in what was once called Northern Yemen, Ansarallah operates a functioning state model, despite the countless restraints imposed largely due to the ongoing war and blockade. There can be no solution to the Yemen crisis until the West recognizes the reality on the ground, which they continue to refuse to do. This is not by accident, nor is their logistical support or weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and its allies in the war….