Op-Ed: Saudi Prisoner Swaps Signal Hope for Yemen After Eight Years of War
Saudi-aligned Yemeni negotiators Yasser al-Haddi, Mahmoud al-Subaihi, and Naser Mansour Hadi (the brother of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi) arrive in Aden from Sana’a on April 14. Photo: AFP via Middle East Eye.
My second-ever article for the IR Insider, published over two years ago, in February. 2021, was about Yemen. “US Draws Back Military Support for Saudi Arabia, Citing Yemen,” ran the headline. It began: “Since the Yemeni civil war began in 2014, the U.S. military has walked a fine line between tacit cooperation and outright participation with a Saudi-led coalition in the region.” I have reported on Yemen since then: in November 2022, to update on stalled US efforts to secure a long-term peace deal; about repeated negotiations between the US and Iran. Much has changed in the last two and a half years, but crucially, much has not. And as I write my final articles for this publication, I am revisiting the Yemeni Civil War, which can seem unfathomable and endless in its horrors but which might now be witnessing a glimmer of hope, in the form of the Saudi-Houthi talks that wrapped up their first round last week in Sana’a.
Two-thirds of the country, nearly 20 million people, need humanitarian assistance. More than ten million women and girls needed humanitarian aid in 2021. Seventeen million people, 75 percent of them women, and children face high levels of food insecurity. Yemen has always been a food importer (importing 90 percent of its food in 2023, according to Oxfam), which the war in Ukraine has made more difficult. At various points over the last eight years, those levels have tipped into epidemics of cholera and starvation; from 2014 to 2020, 102,000 people died from fighting and 131,000 from disease and hunger. Intermittent truces from April 2022 onward restored some relative stability, but the status quo is nevertheless defined by poverty, high rates of crime, landmines, drugs, malnutrition, desertification, the intergenerational trauma associated with the use of child soldiers, a lack of teachers and the destruction of schools, and an economy and infrastructure entirely in ruins. The UN regularly cites a death toll above a quarter million people. A horrific, deadly stampede at a food distribution event this Wednesday underscores the desperation of the situation.
Saudi Arabia has been entangled in the conflict in Yemen from the outset, around 2015, which supported President Saleh and then President Hadi against attacks from a mostly Shia rebel group from northern Yemen, the Houthis. Southern separatists, supported by the UAE, often fought against what remained of Hadi’s government and army, although Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the United States, and several European powers were united in a coalition of airstrikes and intelligence-sharing. The United States withdrew from this arrangement in 2021. The UAE mostly pulled out of Yemen in 2019. It now appears that Saudi Arabia – which entered the civil war on its borders in some part because it saw Yemen as a proxy struggle for influence with Iran – is looking for an out.
A map of various regional powers involved in the war in Yemen, especially around 2015, from Al-Jazeera.
The Saudi coalition was repeatedly accused of committing war crimes in Yemen, especially when its air campaign, whether from malice or negligence, repeatedly targeted civilians. From 2016 to 2021, more than 4,000 missiles were intercepted by Saudi air defenses over Saudi territory, presumably launched from Yemen by Houthi forces. President Hadi, in exile in Saudi Arabia, officially ceded power to a presidential council one year ago this month; in exchange, Saudi Arabia announced $3 billion in financial assistance to rebuild Yemen. A rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, negotiated by China in March, provides the domestic cover for Saudi Arabia to cut its losses.
A Saudi delegation reportedly arrived in Sana’a at the start of April to meet with Houthi rebels, alongside an Oman-based mediation team. Although the Saudis did not initially confirm that talks were taking place, sources told the BBC that talks covered a proposal to reopen ports and airports, pay public servants, and organize a lasting ceasefire. Over three days beginning April 14, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis exchanged 869 detainees in a prisoner swap. One hundred more prisoners of war were unilaterally released by Saudi Arabia on Monday. Saudi negotiators left Sana’a after the prisoner swap but made plans to return for more ceasefire talks in May.
The UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg told the UN Security Council Monday that recent weeks have marked the biggest opportunity for a strong negotiated peace in Yemen in years, but “the tide could still turn unless the parties take bolder steps toward peace.” Without continuous pressure from the UN and US diplomatic processes – and from people around the world – to hold the parties to their negotiated terms, this opportunity could be squandered. The war may continue, essentially forgotten, despite its staggering human toll.