Turning point for civil war country?
Yemen’s head of state hands over power to ‘presidential council’
04/07/2022, 5:45 p.m
After years of fighting, there has been a ceasefire in the civil war country Yemen for a few days. Head of state Hadi uses this to make a surprising announcement: he is handing over his power to a “presidential councilor”. The step nourishes the hope that peace will soon come closer.
The head of state of Yemen’s internationally recognized government has surprisingly handed over his power to a newly founded “Presidential Council”. “I irrevocably delegate my full powers to this Presidential Council,” President Abd Rabbo Mansur Hadi said in a televised statement, the final day of peace talks in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. However, these talks had taken place without the Houthi rebels. Hadi has been in Riyadh since 2015. The new council will have eight members and will be chaired by Rashad al-Alimi, a former interior minister and adviser to Hadi. Hadi said he had fired Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar.
The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council welcomed Hadi’s announcement in a joint statement. International Crisis Group Yemen analyst Peter Salisbury tweeted that it was the “most momentous change in the internal structure of the anti-Houthi bloc since the beginning of the war.”
There have always been disputes within the coalition fighting the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Now there is hope that this side of the conflict could appear more united in future negotiations with the Houthis. The Houthis conquered the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2014. In 2015, Saudi Arabia formed a military coalition in support of Hadis.
Two-month truce
Last weekend, this military coalition and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels announced a two-month ceasefire. However, the conflicting parties then accused each other of breaking the agreement.
Yemen has been at war between Arab-backed Hadi troops and Houthi rebels since 2015. According to the UN, around 380,000 people have already been killed in the conflict, and millions more have had to flee. The UN considers the crisis in Yemen to be the largest humanitarian catastrophe in the world. 30 million people in the country are urgently dependent on aid supplies. However, a donor conference for Yemen organized by the UN in mid-March did not even bring in a third of the required $4.27 billion (EUR 3.92 billion) in financial commitments.