An encapsulated vision that is not without bias
Aden - The UN envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg , began the second week of his consultations with the Yemeni components in the Jordanian capital, Amman, with a meeting with a delegation from the Southern Transitional Council, after a previous tour that included a meeting with components and forces participating in Yemeni legitimacy such as the General People's Congress, the Yemeni Reform Party (Brotherhood) and the party The Yemeni Socialist and the Nasserist Popular Unionist Organization (National).
Sources close to the consultations said that the envoy will receive, in the next few days, delegations from the Political Bureau of the National Resistance Forces led by Brigadier General Tariq Saleh and other components not participating in the Yemeni government, with the aim of expanding the circle of participants in the political dialogue to include active forces from outside the circle of traditional components.
The movements of the UN envoy to Yemen come in light of frequent information about the start of preparations in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to launch a second version of the “Riyadh Conference”, which was held in May 2015 after the launch of Operation Decisive Storm and Restoring Hope. “Al-Arab” sources indicate that the new version of the conference will work to rebuild the list of political and military priorities in the legitimacy camp, evaluate and remedy mistakes, and expand the circle of forces participating in the political decision.
The sources indicated that the Grundberg consultations will include components from the Houthi camp, with the aim of developing a new framework for the envoy’s plan, which is based on the principle of parallel tracks and which, according to “Arab” sources, relies on the approach of dividing files and exiting with partial agreements such as the economic truce, the prisoner exchange file and some arrangements related to the truce. Military and humanitarian activity, while the most complex files in the political and military aspects will be transferred to a later stage.
Observers of the Yemeni affairs believe that Grundberg is following the path of his predecessor, Martin Griffiths, in the early years of his appointment as the UN envoy to Yemen, a task that culminated in the signing of the Sweden Agreement in the year 2018, before it ran into many difficulties and obstacles that brought Griffiths to a dead end, as a result of his failure. In making any real progress on the ground, including the implementation of the humanitarian aspect and the ceasefire in the Sweden agreement, as a result of the intransigence of the Houthi militias and the failure of the envoy’s bets to focus pressure on the side of the legitimate government, which showed great adherence to UN Resolution 2216 and the three references to the solution contained in the resolution.
The data on the reasons for the possible faltering of the envoy’s efforts indicate that Grundberg relied on the same working group that drew the course of the previous envoys’ work, and whose unilateral, rigid and inflexible vision of the Yemeni crisis dominated the activity and movements of the Office of the Special Envoy to Yemen, which, according to observers, was dominated by personal positions and relations The private sector, the absence of political imagination, and the unconventional prospects for a solution.
Experts confirm that changing the UN envoy to Yemen is not enough to change the way the United Nations deals with the Yemeni crisis in a more realistic way, as bringing about such a positive transformation requires a comprehensive change for the members of the envoy’s work team, especially the local ones, who are now dealing with the crisis through their own vision that encapsulates their positions. Ideology and politics towards the Yemeni file, which is not without bias.
Commenting on the consultations conducted by the UN envoy on the Yemeni file, Izzat Mustafa, head of the Fanar Center for Policy Research, described the meetings held by the UN envoy with the Yemeni components in Jordan as “formal and preliminary meetings to present his framework for the political process he is working on to President Hadi and the Houthis.”
Mustafa considered in a statement to “Al-Arab” that “its main objective is to exclude the components that he meets in the Jordanian capital from the contents of the first phase of his plan, and to be satisfied with disbursing promises to these components to absorb them within the subsequent stages of the political settlement that seems ready in the dossier of the UN envoy,” pointing out that “The success of this plan and reaching its signature are not guaranteed because the features of this settlement and the method of work to reach it are consistent with the failed experiments that the former envoy Martin Griffiths worked on.”
So far, it is clear that the components with which the envoy met have dealt with the meetings in a different way; The political parties went to support the position of their fragile political alliance in order to ensure their limited absorption in the consultations within the division between them, which will be determined under the auspices of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and the components that were excluded in previous periods are trying to persuade the envoy to absorb them, and this is unlikely to be achieved through the envoy.
On the other hand, the Southern Transitional Council meets with the UN envoy as a routine procedure and in response to the invitation addressed to it, because it realizes that its participation in the final consultations is linked to the implementation of the Riyadh Agreement between it and the Yemeni legitimacy. In the final consultations.
Mustafa considers that “this cannot be achieved through the UN envoy, but rather is resolved by bilateral understandings with legitimacy under the regional sponsorship of the Arab coalition, mainly Saudi Arabia, which sponsored the Riyadh Agreement, or through a new version of the 2015 Riyadh Conference, among its outputs, determining the shares of the parties that will participate in the consultations in a delegation.” Legitimacy and may include among its outcomes considering the 2019 Riyadh Agreement as one of the references for a political solution.”
For his part, Yemeni political researcher Saeed Bakran said, “All indications confirm that the efforts of the UN envoy and with him the American envoy are surrounded by failure from every direction and for many reasons, in light of what is raging today in the international conflict between the poles of the influential international action, and the repercussions of this have reached the extent of suspension Conclusion of the Iran-Western nuclear deal.
Bakran said in a statement to "Al-Arab" that all negotiating efforts have become dependent on the results and interactions of the international situation, "and from this standpoint the fate of the negotiating efforts led by the UN envoy as a representative of the Western camp with the Houthis linked to Iran and the Russians can be judged."
Regarding the leaks about moves in Riyadh regarding the rearrangement of legitimacy papers, Bakran added, “I think the time is right for Riyadh to present a clearer vision to the parties to the legitimacy and push them towards gathering ranks and rearranging the situation because the dangerous and completely changing international situation requires reformulating legitimacy and arranging its papers to meet the internal and external needs.” .
In the same context, Yaqoub Al-Sufyani, director of the South24 Center for News and Studies in Aden, considered that the United Nations’ pursuit to achieve progress in the peace process in Yemen and the comprehensive political process is linked to the United Nations and its special envoy to Yemen being behind this progress, noting that this international approach explains Clearly the timid support shown by Martin Griffiths and after him Grundberg for the Riyadh Agreement between the Southern Transitional Council and the Yemeni government.
Regarding the news of the upcoming Riyadh conference, Al-Sufyani said in a statement to the Arabs, “Talk about holding this conference preceded the bilateral meetings of the UN envoy with the Yemeni parties in the Jordanian capital, Amman. In Yemen, the United Nations is in the hands of the United Nations, although it has not achieved much in this field over the past years.”
He continued, "Even the partial Hodeidah agreement became a large part of the problem with the Houthis when the United Nations was unable to bind them to it, while the United Nations adheres to the comprehensiveness of the political process and is apprehensive about any rapprochement between the anti-Houthi parties, believing that this may push towards more war against the group."