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June 22nd, 2016 
Awake Goy Alwaght- Thirteen months after Saudi Arabian attacks on the neighboring Yemen which killed and injured tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians, the intra-Yemeni peace negotiations were started in Kuwait, seeking a full cessation of hostility and a political deal to the crisis in Yemen.
Following a truce, on April 11 several rounds of talks were launched to pave the way for a roadmap for political dialogue to be held in Kuwait between the Yemeni delegation comprised of the Ansarullah movement, General People’s Congress, and Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former Yemeni president, and the resigned Riyadh-based Yemen’s government led by Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
In the beginning of negotiations, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN special envoy to Yemen, has described the gaps between the two opposing sides as remarkably deep, but he added that both sides were in favor of peace and worked hard to make an agreement possible to end the conflict. Earlier, Cheikh Ahmed had said that the meetings focused on three points of holding the fire, working out a mechanism for the upcoming peace talks and forming transitional committees.
At first, both opposing parties agreed to each side chooses and appoints a negotiator to hold talks on ways to keep the ceasefire in place. However, meanwhile AbdulMalik al-Mekhlafi, the foreign minister of the resigned Yemeni government accused Ansarullah delegation of refusing to negotiate key issues. This came while Ansarullah argued that without cessation of Saudi airstrikes on the country the ceasefire made no sense, and so it could not make an incentive for starting serious peace process.
Although a temporary halting of Saudi air raids and both sides’ involvement in negotiations is an influential step to slow down massacring and devastation, it appears that hopes could not be set on the talks to yield any results at least in short run.
Most of the stumbling blocks are about the implementation of 5 points. They are going to be discussed in order of significance as follows.
Heavy and mid-weight weapons handover
Yemen could be described as the world’s source of arms. There is a gun per person in Yemen. This abundance of weapons is unequally distributed between the government’s forces, the popular committees, Ansarullah, tribes, Southern Movement, and the terrorist group Al-Qaeda. In fact, one of the major pushes for Saudi air campaign in Yemen is the heavy weaponry in the hands of revolutionaries especially after a coalition was established between the armed forces and the party of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Actually, some of essential demands of Riyadh delegation were handover of heavy weaponry, retreatment of the revolutionary forces from the captured regions and releasing the prisoners by the Yemeni delegation. These are major sticking points ahead of any agreement between the warring sides.
Meanwhile, hinting to agreement with heavy arms handover in line with demand of UN Security Council’s resolution 2216 adopted on April 14, 2015, under the UN Chapter VII, the spokesman for Ansarullah movement Mohammed Abdessalam asserted that Ansarullah was against distribution of weapons out of hands of the government. These Abdessalam remarks are in fact a reiteration of Ansarullah’s stance announced through an official letter in early October 2015 to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. But the point is that the arms handover process must take place during a political deal to offer Ansarullah and Ali Abdullah Saleh the needed assurances to continue negotiations in such critical conditions. To put it another way, the Yemeni delegation wants stopping of the strikes and forming a coalition government before any handover of weapons.
Retreatment from the cities
Another demand, which is according to Riyadh delegation decisive, is Ansarullah’s and Saleh’s forces retreatment from the cities during the popular uprising which caused Saudi aggression. In fact, another precondition of Riyadh-based delegation before any agreement is pulling out of the captured regions and cities. Representatives of Mansour Hadi urged the Ansarullah forces out of major Yemeni cities including the capital Sana’a. Ansarullah and Saleh-led militant coalition are jointly holding a majority of the country’s northwestern and western cities.
The strategic cities of Al Jawf— shares borders with Saudi Arabia —, Sana’a and Saada are strongholds of Ansarullah. Furthermore, Amran, Ibb, Al Hudaydah، Dhamar, Al Mahwait District, and Hajja are also in full control of the revolutionary movement. Some parts of Taiz and Al Bayda are witnessing heavy and decisive clashes between Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces with the revolutionary forces.
The Riyadh delegation seeks limiting Ansarullah to such provinces as Saada and some parts of Sana’a. It aims at checking the movement’s advances towards the southern coast, especially Aden province. This issue, which is a battlefield reality, stands as a strategic difference foiling the negotiation process.
Drawing the main principles for forming agreed-upon government
Ansarullah’s key request is a ceasefire and formation of a national unity government. The movement believes that the political process and formation of national unity government is an overarching end and needs to be prioritized. Mohammed Abdelsalam, who is also the spokesman for the negotiating Yemeni delegation, said that the security conditions in many Yemen’s southern regions were more complicated than before due to spread of weapons and absence of rule of law and government, so, the opposing sides needed a clear political deal to guarantee requirements of establishment of a government in the country— an issue that is believed to be disregarded by Riyadh delegation again as it ties any agreement with the other side to weapons handover and retreatment from the cities.
Prisoners swap
Another demand of Riyadh delegation and also Ansarullah is the exchange of captives. In fact, it seems that this case is very important for Riyadh-backed side, especially such prisoners as Major General Mahmoud Salem al-Sobaihi, the defense minister of Mansour Hadi government, Brigadier General Faisal Rajab, a pro-Mansour Hadi figure, and Nasser Hadi, the brother of Mansour Hadi. Ansarullah noted that these figures’ and other captives’ cases were in process of settlement as part of negotiations.
Deciding on roadmap for continuing the negotiations
Although this is a second-hand element of peace process, agreement over it could push the course of dialogue into an influential direction. In this framework, an agreement on consolidation of the presently-fragile truce could help finalizing a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire. This could also present a transformation pattern to the negotiating sides while deep gaps remain in place between them.
All in all, it must be noted that hopes for reaching a political agreement in Kuwait peace talks as a result of several rounds of negotiations are stronger than any other time. Such an optimism is an outcome of Saudi Arabia’s battlefield losses and heavy financial costs of war for Riyadh during over a year of unceasing aggression against Yemen. Moreover, Al Saud’s major allies like the US, Britain and some Arab countries now came up with the notion that Yemen crisis can be settled only through political deals.
By Al Waght
Source Article from http://theiranproject.com/blog/2016/06/22/five-sticking-points-ahead-yemen-peace/
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