A delegation from Yemen’s Houthis could attend talks sponsored by the United Nations in Sweden if safe exit and return is guaranteed, the Head of the Houthi’s supreme revolutionary committee, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, said on Thursday.
Britain’s ambassador to Yemen said the talks that seek an end to Yemen’s war will start next week in Sweden.
As humanitarian calls intensify for peace in embattled Yemen, the world will have to wait to see whether UN-led negotiations set for December in Sweden actually materialize. The last time negotiations were scheduled — in September in Switzerland — the Houthi rebels didn’t attend.
But UN Special Envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths has made a flurry of visits to rally support for the December peace talks. He arrived Nov. 26 in Riyadh after visiting Houthi leaders in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa on Nov. 22 and Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah on Nov. 23. The situation is still volatile in Hodeidah, where some of the fiercest battles have been waged. The international community is warning that the port, which is the only entrance for relief material and merchandise to the Houthi-controlled governorates, could cease operations.
Yemen’s civil war has been raging since March 2015 between the Houthis (Ansar Allah) and the internationally recognized government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The Houthis are backed by Iran, while Hadi’s government enjoys military and political support from a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
US Secretary of Defense James Mattis has called for all parties involved to meet in December. Mattis said Oct. 27 during the International Institute for Strategic Studies Manama Dialogue that any settlement in Yemen would have to be based on dividing the country into areas of self-rule — “the traditional homelands for the traditional peoples, for everyone to be in their own area” — and to provide Houthis with “some degree of autonomy.”
His statements were denounced by many in Yemen.
Houthis flatly reject Mattis’ proposal, though it could give them some chance for autonomy. However, Mattis failed to clarify whether this self-rule area would be limited to the Saada governorate, where the Houthis’ stronghold lies, or whether it would include areas under their control since they took over power in early 2015.
Houthis control the densely populated northern governorates where 9 million people live, according to the latest (2004) government census statistics, as well as parts of Al-Jawf, Marib, Hodeidah and Taez. Although Houthis have wide control in those regions, not everybody is loyal to them.
Abdul Malek al-Ejri, a member of Ansar Allah’s politburo, commented Oct. 29 on Twitter about Mattis’ statement. “Talk about self-rule areas reveals separatist intentions,” Ejri said.
“It is as though Ansar Allah is a national ethnicity and Yemen is a multiethnic country, or the conflict is social rather than political. Mattis has forgotten Yemen is a united country that is culturally homogeneous and that Ansar Allah is a national element, while the conflict is political,” Ejri added.
