While the Houthis continue to control Yemen’s capital Sana’a, Presidential Leadership Council members operate on survival mode as the economic crisis deepens, and instability grows across liberated provinces, wrote Fernando Carvajal on The Middle East Forum website.
Carvajal, who served on the United Nations Security Council Panel of Experts on Yemen from April 2017 to March 2019 as a regions and armed groups expert, suggested that “Time is not on the Internationally Recognized Government’s side. Without any constitutional framing, the Presidential Leadership Council’s primary source of conflict has been weak legal authority”.
Three years after Saudi Arabia brokered the creation of the Presidential Leadership Council, rumors emerged in April of preparations for an 80,000-troop force to launch a ground offensive against the Houthis. While the November 2019 Riyadh Agreement initially envisioned this force, it never materialized because the rivals failed to bury differences and unite security and military forces against Houthis.
Political disputes in the interim capital Aden, in Hadhramaut, Marib, Shabwah and Ta’iz have hindered hopes for any cohesive force to retake Sana’a since September 2014. Political parties share few interests and, while the status quo limits Houthis to territory they have controlled since early 2021, millions of Yemenis suffer without salaries and basic services.
To gather a significant force to push Houthis out of any province, parties would have to deploy forces from their territories and trust rivals will not recruit agitators to destabilize their strongholds.
Yemen’s neighbors are also reluctant to disrupt the status quo as Houthis threaten to strike their territories. Absent shared interests, each party simply waits for others to weaken or fall while their own limited security role keeps them relevant.
The future, then, does not look bright. Unless Yemeni leaders themselves find a path toward reconciling their differences or a recipe for cooperation toward re-establishing a central state, or federation, millions will continue to suffer as the international community turns their focus to other crises.
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