One of the richest countries is losing the war against barefoot rebels
Saudi Arabia decided to put an end to the long-term Yemeni conflict and invited the Yemeni Houthi rebels to Riyadh for peace talks.
This was announced by the Saudi Ambassador to Yemen Mohammed al-Jaber, writes Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
“We are committed to our idea of de-escalation,” the Saudi diplomat said, expressing readiness for a ceasefire throughout Yemen, where Riyadh supports one of the parties to the conflict.
Experts admit that Riyadh’s readiness for the negotiation process could be affected by the fall in oil prices, but note that this is unlikely to be the main factor. Thus, senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the Higher School of Economics, Grigory Lukyanov, draws attention to the fact that over the past few months, the military-political situation in Yemen has changed greatly.
“Pro-Saudi forces – the troops of President Hadi – suffered significant military and political defeats in the Yemeni provinces of Jawf and Mareb.” The latter is an important logistics and economic center,” Lukyanov noted.
According to him, the successes of the Ansar Allah movement are not only converted into political opportunities for the rebels, but also force Saudi Arabia to spend money on maintaining the situation in Yemen.
“The crisis at the end of February - beginning of March in the province of Jawf, when it turned out that the 80 thousand government soldiers who existed on paper were no more than 15 thousand, that all the Saudi money allocated for them went to field commanders and leaders of the Islah party, an ally of Saudi Arabia Arabia, and there is no one to hold the front. All forces of Hadi’s supporters were forced to retreat to neighboring regions,” the expert said.
He clarifies that as a result of the military activity of the rebels, the most important transport arteries and oil fields were vulnerable, and important channels for supplying aid to other units of the Hadi army were cut off.
“Amid this chaos on the ground, Saudi Arabia’s attempts to return the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the active phase of countering the Houthis ended in almost nothing. The UAE, which effectively withdrew from the conflict in 2019, blamed Saudi Arabia for the operation. In the current conditions, all this makes the Yemeni campaign in its current form not just burdensome for Riyadh, but unbearably burdensome,” the political scientist emphasized.
All this, he says, led to the fact that some Saudi politicians may have become willing to accept the fact that the time has come to negotiate with the Houthis.
“This is a painful issue for the reputation of the prince, his cabinet, and those around him, but in the current conditions, pouring new funds into the Yemeni conflict, even to maintain the status quo, seems an insurmountable burden for Saudi Arabia,” Lukyanov is convinced. “This conflict is costing too much.”
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