Who will save Yemen from its saviours?

The war that has been going on in Yemen for three years has produced one of the gravest humanitarian crises in the world. It is another crisis comparable to the Syrian crisis right next door. Of Yemen's total population of 28 million, some twenty million people are now in the grip of hunger. More than 2 million have left their homes, and many have taken refuge in nearby countries.

Since 2014, when the Houthis, acting with Iran's support, entered the capital Sana'a and staged a coup against Abdrabbu Mansur Hadi, the representative of the elected legitimate government, the war in the country took on a new character. In this war the lines were redrawn through new alliances.

Even this last sentence alone summarizes how Yemen arrived at this point. Because the parties to the war in Yemen were never as simple as "the Houthis supported by Iran" versus "the representatives of the legitimate government supported by Saudi Arabia and BAE." Precisely because it was not like this, the crisis in Yemen has today turned into a complete tangle, and the civilian Yemeni people are paying the price of this crisis with the death, exile, hunger and misery of millions of people.

For example, the advance of the Houthis, whose social base was in fact not all that large, as far as Sana'a in the 2014 coup came about not only through Iran's support. At times the Houthis were also supported against al-Qaeda by the USA and Britain themselves, and by an alliance in which Saudi Arabia was also included. This support was apparently against al-Qaeda, but in fact the al-Qaeda threat was not on a scale that would require forming such a large coalition and supporting the Iran-backed Houthis.

It was again Saudi Arabia that persuaded all of them to join this alliance, and the target was in fact only the Islah Party and the elements and tribes around it.

Even today the strongest segment in terms of social base is Islah, and this time, for the same alliance, Islah is being presented as an instrument that can be used against the Houthis. However, the Islahis are quite cautious about being seen as an instrument of SA and BAE, who do not trust them and constantly see them as a threat, and about taking part in an operation in which they are seen that way. That is why Islah, while not being far from the war in Yemen, can still maintain a position of managing not to be a party to the war.

Saudi Arabia's fear of Islah rests on nothing other than the traditional fear of the Ikhwan. In fact, there is no chance that any solution that sidelines Islah in Yemen's future can be realized or sustained. Knowing this and yet focusing its greatest sensitivity on a solution that will not strengthen Islah is Saudi Arabia's greatest handicap in producing a solution. The fact that it is not trying to overcome precisely this handicap suggests that Saudi Arabia's greatest interest in Yemen is the continuation of the present chaos and humanitarian crisis.

Moreover, this chaos has nothing to do with the "creative chaos" formulated for the Middle East policy of the USA either. This chaos only increases Yemen's poverty, its weakness, its destitution amid abundance.

Meanwhile Abdrabbu, who until the stage when they advanced to Sana'a and staged the coup shared the same sensitivities as Saudi Arabia, was also giving warm messages to the Houthis. The interesting part is that Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's deposed President, who was killed by the Houthis in the past year, had also said openly, until a time close to his killing, that he was cooperating with the Houthis against the legitimate administration. Thus the Houthis emerged as the luckiest party of the war, not dependent only on Iran for support.

Of course, a very different conjuncture has formed today. With all its dirty dimensions having come to light, the humanitarian tragedy produced by the war disturbs the whole world. Together with this disturbance given to the world, the new problems that each of the parties has recently been exposed to (such as Iran's problem of sanctions and economic difficulties, and Saudi Arabia's Khashoggi affair) make it much harder to sustain the chaos in Yemen any further.

That is why today there are objective conditions forcing the parties to agree and to end the war. The negotiations that began a few days ago in Stockholm between the parties may perhaps not lead to a final result for ending the three-year war, but they can constitute a good beginning.

On the table are matters such as the exchange of prisoners, the reduction of tension, the lifting of the siege on Taiz, the opening of Sana'a airport, the central bank and salaries, and the port of Hodeidah. On these matters a distrust has already formed among the pro-government side that the real concern of the UN's newly appointed Yemen Envoy Martin Griffiths is to rescue the Houthis. One of the things leading to this thought is the worry that what is demanded on all these matters is intended to give the Houthis an advantage with which they will catch their breath at a moment when they are cornered.

For example, until the siege of Hodeidah, from which the Houthis suffer, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen was not brought to the agenda so much, whereas until Hodeidah was reached, events no less than Hodeidah were taking place through the doing of the Houthis. Taiz and Sana'a have been under a similar siege by the Houthis since the beginning of the war and suffer from the same problems.

Still, Stockholm is a starting step for ending the war in Yemen, but the real big step is not for these negotiations to be conducted outside Yemen, but for them to take place among Yemen's own people. A way must be found for the parties to talk to one another in Yemen without involving anyone else in between.

Because so far it has never happened that any element involved in Yemen wanted anything for the good of Yemenis. Those who are trying to save Yemen from the Houthis are the very ones who, from the start, brought the Houthi calamity upon Yemen. And it is they who, in the name of saving it from them, have today sunk Yemen into the greatest humanitarian crisis of its history.

If only they would rush with the same officiousness to bind up the wounds of the war they started. The assets that SA and BAE officials actually possess, the dollars they constantly prove they are able to spend, should mean that they need no one else to heal the humanitarian crisis and wounds in Yemen. That is why every soul that dies of hunger in Yemen makes the injustice and contradiction of their fortunes more visible.