Arab News | Yemen and the battle for the state

The Houthis surged toward the Bab Al-Mandab Strait after bleeding Yemen, exhausting Yemenis and unsettling the neighborhood. More than one opportunity for reconciliation within the embrace of the state was offered to them but they insisted on residing atop the rubble of its institutions, placing their regional program before their country’s interest. They left Yemen’s legitimate authorities no option but comprehensive action against them, which is what President Rashad Al-Alimi announced on Sunday.

The decision to begin military operations “to recover what remains of the republic’s territory and extend the authority of the state” came after the opportunities for de-escalation had been exhausted, as Al-Alimi made clear. The Houthis met the opportunities for peace with further escalation and more attacks on Yemenis, on neighboring states and on international waterways.

The Houthis, who became embroiled in certain events following the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Flood, are now paying the price of their rush toward Bab Al-Mandab in order to link it with the Strait of Hormuz in an attempt to strangle the global economy. They are paying the price of harassing their neighbors and of joining the war of straits and sea lanes.

The Houthis were unable to offer any convincing model inside Yemen. The ordinary Yemeni felt he was living on the embers of illusions. No reconciliation and no development. The absence of even a minimal acceptance of the other. They treated anyone who differed as though he were an enemy and regarded every piece of advice with suspicion. Instead of drawing strength from people’s sympathy, they chose to lean on the arsenal. Poverty doubled, services declined and fear prevailed. In the areas under their control, the Houthis showed no serious knowledge of the realities of Yemen’s composition. They chose a policy of subjugation and of breaking the will of the people.

The Houthis met opportunities for peace with more attacks on Yemenis, neighboring states and international waterways

Ghassan Charbel

Externally, the Houthis showed no respect for international rules and norms. They imagined that a militia could break the balance of power by relying on a regional program that kept pumping slogans of extremism into their veins. They imagined they could address their neighbors with missiles and drones. They misread their neighbors’ adoption of a policy of patience and wisdom and their wager on the group turning back from its adventurist course.

Yemen cannot allow its fate to be held hostage by a group that has deepened Yemeni divisions. And the region’s states cannot accept a group of this ilk controlling a vital waterway such as Bab Al-Mandab. And if the world does not concede to Iran the right to control the Strait of Hormuz, how could it accept placing Bab Al-Mandab in the custody of the Houthis?

Every attempt to draw the Houthis into the language of serious dialogue has failed. It was established conclusively that they hold a position hostile to the very idea of a state with room for them and for others. Their dictionary has no place for the idea of the state and its institutions. They appeared as people commissioned for a mission larger than Yemen — a mission that exported fire and imported fire.

Yemen does not need more adventures. It needs a dose of stability: legitimate security institutions and a government that gathers up the Yemeni fragments and relaunches hope.

Yemen cannot be left an open wound in the custody of warmongers who multiply the suffering of Yemenis

Ghassan Charbel

What Al-Alimi announced is the battle to recover the state. Yemen cannot be left an open wound in the custody of warmongers who multiply the suffering of Yemenis, which is already great.

The battle for the state is a new page in Yemen’s life. The suffering has been long and so too the waiting. Yemen has the right to leave the regional game and return to Yemen. It has the right to dress its wounds, of which there are many. And Al-Alimi was clear that the battle for the state is a battle of truth and justice, not a battle of vengeance or subjugation.

Al-Alimi stressed that the mission “is not only to recover the land but to return the state to it,” affirming that the new phase aims at returning weapons to “their natural place under the authority of the law.” In this, he echoed the concerns of the other countries reached by the aftershocks of the “flood,” which is nearing its third anniversary. The file of the factions and of confining their weapons to the hands of the state is open from Gaza to Iraq, by way of Lebanon, after they loaded their countries with more than they could bear and their regional roles exploded in their faces and those of their maps.

The flood struck the region and then rebounded on the so-called Axis of Resistance. The Middle East cannot bear to go on being a region booby-trapped with militias, wars, floods and occupations. Nor can the world.