Famine, Houthis, and Peace Talks Confront Yemen

Posted: April 23rd, 2017

By Eric Pelofsky

Eric Pelofsky is a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for North Africa and Yemen at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2017.

The Yemen peace process has been on life support since late December, even though the nation is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. G-7 foreign ministers all but threw up their hands at their meeting last week in Lucca, Italy, with a nearly rote statement calling for a renewed ceasefire and peace talks. With the war in Yemen entering its third year, there is ample blame for the impasse to go around. The Houthi rebels, Yemenis aligned with former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the internationally recognized government led by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi all share responsibility for the current predicament.

The Hadi government and others believe the stalemate can be broken by an amphibious assault against Hudaydah, a critical Red Sea port providing food and medicine to millions of Yemeni civilians caught in a brutal civil war. It won’t, though, and risks tipping Yemen into a terrible famine.

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