Daily Times

After UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for talks aimed at achieving an “inclusive negotiated political settlement” to the conflict in Yemen, set to be held on May 28 in Geneva, there remains uncertainty as to which parties will be attending. The rebels have welcomed the talks and their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has said, “The only way to solve the political problem is dialogue in a neutral country.” Yet it remains unclear whether the exiled President Hadi or his government will attend. They have asked for the complete implementation of a UN Security Council Resolution, which placed an embargo on the import of arms into Yemen and called for the Houthi rebels to relinquish the territories that they had captured. While the arms embargo has been implemented, neither the Saudi-led airstrikes against the rebels nor the resolution has succeeded in driving the Houthis from their seized lands. Yemen’s UN ambassador, Khaled Alyemany, seemed fairly certain however, that the Hadi government would attend the talks when he spoke to reporters in New York, saying that President Hadi would send a representative if he does not attend the meeting himself. The UN’s optimism in this case might be misplaced because Yemen’s Foreign Minister, Reyad Yassin Abdullah has stated: “We didn’t get an official invitation. It’s very short notice. If it happens, it shouldn’t be on May 28.” Given the huge mistrust and disagreements between the parties involved in Yemen’s nearly two-month war still posing an impediment to negotiations, postponing the talks and laying the groundwork for them before the date is set is probably the best move for the UN. The failure of the five-day humanitarian ceasefire, which was violated by both the Houthis and the Saudis, is a testament to how uncontrollable this conflict is at this point.

It is also unclear which non-Yemen parties will attend. Saudi Arabia has insisted that Iran should not be a part of the meeting because this should be a Yemen-led peace process. However, the Saudis’ involvement in the conflict and their influence on the third parties trying to resolve it makes this a far cry from an all-Yemeni affair. The death toll in Yemen has reached 1,800, with about half a million people displaced from their homes. While the UN and the Middle East are focused on the Yemen crisis, which is as yet far from being resolved, the growing threat of Islamic State (IS) is not receiving the attention that it deserves. IS is spreading rapidly within the region and as it grows, with terrorist organisations in Africa, Pakistan and other countries swearing allegiance to the self-proclaimed Muslim Caliphate, it is becoming increasingly difficult to thwart. A rapid resolution to this crisis is crucial for both Yemen and the region but the process is going to have to be premeditated and properly prepared, taking the complexities of the issue into account. *