Over a decade after his inauguration, President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s two-year term in office has finally officially come to an end, with an agreement to hand over power to a temporary leadership council.
This is raising hope for the peace process, as Saudi Arabia committed $2 billion to the new council, and the UAE chipped in another $1 billion. The two sides are calling on the council to start negotiations to end the war.
President Hadi was a product of the Arab Spring, and the last Yemeni with even the pretense of being elected president, albeit elected in a very dubious vote. His “legitimacy,” such as it was, served as a primary pretext for the Saudi-led war of the past seven years.
A top military figure during the Arab Spring uprising, Hadi came to power as the result of a US and Saudi intervention, talking President Saleh into stepping down in early 2012, then orchestrating an election.
The “election” saw Hadi as the only allowed candidate on the ballot, and no option to vote against him. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in a 100% vote for him to serve a two year term. In the past Yemen presidents served four year terms, and Hadi was only meant to oversee the drafting of a new constitution and hold free elections.
This never got done, and by early 2014, when his term was coming to an end, Hadi unilaterally tacked on another year for himself. By early 2015, it was clear he intended to stay in power.
This led to protests by the Houthis, forcing Hadi to resign and flee. The UN issued a statement calling for calm and declaring Hadi the legitimate ruler. The Saudis formed a coalition and invaded, vowing to reinstall Hadi.
Which was the past seven years. Saudi-led forces occupied Aden as a temporary capital, failed in attempts to march up the coast of Sanaa, and then fought increasingly bloody battles over the interior of Yemen.
The war has gone much worse than expected, and there is interest in finding a negotiated settlement where a military solution has failed. Hadi long resisted any settlement that shared power, either with the Houthis or with the sometimes-allied separatists.
There had been persistent reports that the Saudis were growing weary of Hadi, and even that he was sometimes under “house arrest” in Riyadh. That he was put aside for a council and they were immediately bankrolled by the Saudis seems to confirm this is the change they wanted.
Moreover, the timing shows Saudi involvement. Efforts to bring the Houthis into peace talks failed when they asked for a neutral site, and the Saudis still insisted on Riyadh. The location may have been part of an attempt to retain control of the situation, and sideline Hadi before the Houthis became involved in the talks.
Hope is that this would be a big step toward settlement and election, the things Hadi was meant to have gotten done a decade ago. Here too, the Saudis are likely to be calling the shots, at least to some extent, and their interest in extricating themselves from a costly war may finally get some forward progress, if the council can avoid the mistakes of the past.
Sounds more like a Saudi backed junta to me. I hope they back out of this massacre, but I doubt they’ll go quietly into that good night without a major catch.