Yemen and The 'Potholed' Road to Peace 

Its all positive, or seems to be! The seven-year war in Yemen, started in 2015 could now be winding down. It has been a bloody mess with hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced according to United Nations figures. But the war - the Houthis, one the one side who had taken over the legitimate Yemeni government in 2014 and the Saudi-led coalition on the other - may now be heaving its last breath.

Everyone, not least of all the United Nations, their negotiators and the Yemeni people, the men, women, young, old and the infirm and sick, are hoping for the best - no more war, no more killing, no more starvation and opening up the country and linking it to its natural geography and areas previously cut up and dissected by different warring parties and factions opposed to one another. 

But its early days yet. The two-month truce - meaning the cessation of fighting and the stopping of all offensive ground, aerial and maritime military operations, hitched up on 2 April and now extended till 2 August under UN auspices is a blessing in disguise. This is the first time the warring parties have been able to come thus far and agree to stop their deadly and bloody offensives with both sides willing to go the extra mile and give it a go. 

The newly-appointed UN envy to Yemen Hans Grundberg in 2021 certainly proved a breakthrough for the United Nations who had been trying to get the two sides to stop warring and get to the negotiating table. He is proceeded by three other UN envoys that started in 2011 but have had no success despite their hard work. Grundberg maybe succeeding however because of two factors:

First the warring parties - ousted government, Houthis, Saudis, Emirates, and different armed factions on the ground - fatigue has long set in and they have been looking for a way out despite their fighting in different parts of Yemen regardless of the Houthi control of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. 

Second, Grundberg, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who is taking a personal interest in the Yemen conflict and the Security Council led by the United States and the Biden administration, and this is despite the fact they are supplying the Saudis with weapons together with the French and British, have been working with regional states on the ground to push for a final peace settlement despite the hardships they faced. 

The UN envoy has long been tireless in his approach, talking to such parties as the Omanis who wanted to settle the conflict from the start, the Saudis, Kuwaitis and now the Jordanians and even the Egyptians to try and push the two sides together. 

It had been constant world and regional diplomacy staring from Washington to holding talks in Kuwait, Omanis behind-the-scenes with their shuttle diplomacy as well as the Jordanians, who has had a role in mediation in Yemen since the early 1990s when there was an eventual agreement to unite the country was after it had long been split into two: North Yemen and South Yemen. Now, with the truce, Amman is serving as a hub for the Houthis and members of the internationally-recognized government to produce and build a sustainable ceasefire that everyone hopes would lead to a permanent peaceful solution and the end of war.

There is a "softly-softly" approach that is being adopted by Grundberg and his team. At the start of the first truce from April onwards, two things were finally established and included the opening up of the Sanaa International Airport and the start of regular air-traffic with the first plane being from the Yemeni capital to Amman as of 16 May. Since then, there has been regular weekly flights including the transport of sick and infirm Yemenis who are now coming to the Jordanian capital for treatment.

 
As well, an operational air route was opened, for the first time since 2016 between Sanaa and Cairo starting on 1 June. This traffic route is expected to continue as well, subject to the progress in the on-going negotiations. The Sanaa Airport had been effectively closed from the air by the Saudi-lead war coalition over the past years but no longer. These are seen as part of the renewed "confidence-building" measures to establish a way forward. 

Part of these measures as well has been to build the opening up of the Hodeidah Port to ships which is controlled by the Houthis and allowing of the entry of badly-needed fuel into the country which had previously been banned.

This time, Grundberg had been able to get the Houthis to agree to this, but it should be realized the "ground work" for the latest agreement was the result of work done by his predecessor Martin Griffiths who took over in 2019 as UN Yemen envoy and spent his time diplomatically, trotting from one capital to the next and even convinced the parties to meet in Sweden and got the Stockholm Accord drawn up as a way of solving the Yemen conflict. 

Somehow it fizzled out and now it looks as if its working by non-other the Grundberg who is himself a Swede. But there is still a long way to go for this young diplomat appears to be using the truce, which he himself affected to draw  a "piece-meal strategy" to get the parties together to agree for a final peaceful solution. One is the opening up of the Sanaa Airport, the second is the opening of the Hodeidah Port to goods and other shipping made slowly and methodically through negotiations. 

The third strategy deemed  the most ambitious so far is to get the Houthis to lift their long-term siege of Taiz due to its strategic location in southwest Yemen. Negotiations are going on in Amman about the lifting of the blockade imposed at around in 2015 on a city deemed third largest in the country with a population standing at around 600,500.

However, this is not as easy as it is thought, one party wants the total siege lifted but the Houthis, as yet will only allow no more than few roads to be lifted with the argument between the two sides continuing till today. However, with the way things are going, it is expected the siege on Taiz will be lifted soon judging from the previous two actions that took a considerable amount of negotiations air traffic and the port opening before it actually happened. 

With the new truce lasting till August - and despite on-going violations that seems to be manageable - the negotiators in Amman still seem to have a considerable length of time for the United Nations want this to work for Yemen is having a considerable drain on their resources which their officials describe as the biggest catastrophe in the world. 

Feeding a population of 29 million, especially since two-thirds of the people depend on aid to survive is a considerable challenge especially with the changing international situation and the bloody conflict in Ukraine, a country that has long become the breadbasket of the Arab world. If its no longer able to bring the wheat for the bread then many are expecting the worse because the aid agencies will find it extremely hard to guarantee cheep food for its bleak estimations that  over 16 million will shortly experience hunger and about 400,000 children may starve to death.