FOR nearly three months a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, the richest country in the Gulf, has bombed Yemen, the poorest. Yet the Saudis have precious little to show for it. They have failed to pacify the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who now dominate Yemen, or to restore the exiled government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the ousted president who asked them to intervene. When the Houthis sent a Scud missile over the border on June 6th, it refuted the Saudis’ claim to have destroyed the rebels’ firepower, too.
The missile was intercepted by Patriot rockets and a ground attack on the border was repelled, but the attacks suggest that the Houthis, backed by forces loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s former president, want to cause damage inside Saudi Arabia to highlight the kingdom’s vulnerability. The Saudis have been under international pressure to curb their offensive, which has killed perhaps 2,000 Yemeni civilians. But the Scud attack has strengthened their resolve. Neither side seems to have much in the way of a long-term strategy, nor any inclination to give ground.
So there is little hope that UN-sponsored “consultations” between the rebels and the exiled government, which begin on June 14th in Geneva, will bring peace. (Even calling them “peace talks” was seen as too ambitious.) Since emerging from their northern redoubt in 2014, the Houthis, who practise a brand of Shia Islam called Zaydism, have captured Sana’a, the capital, and most big cities, including the larger part of Aden, Yemen’s main port. They are reluctant to cede their newfound power. But Mr Hadi says that in Geneva he will demand just that: “There will be no negotiations.” The conflict’s place at the heart of a regional rivalry between Iran, a Shia power, and Saudi Arabia, a Sunni bulwark, makes it that much harder to resolve.
Yet a peace deal makes sense for nearly all sides. Start with the Houthis, who after their swift advance are now overstretched and short of fuel, food and water. They have learned, at the cost of considerable blood and treasure, that their rivals in central and southern Yemen are prepared to fight to the last bullet. Some tribes opposed to the Houthis have formed unsavoury alliances with the jihadists of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, probably the terrorist group’s deadliest branch, which has gained territory during the fighting.
But the fighters have not been able to push back the Houthis. Nor have they united under the leadership of Mr Hadi, who sips tea safely in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, but is despised back home. Saudi Arabia is unlikely to send in ground troops for fear of an even worse quagmire. Its siege of Yemen has done little more than create a humanitarian disaster. Some 20m people, or about 80% of the population, are in urgent need of aid, warns the UN.
Perhaps the most that can be hoped for in Geneva is a preliminary deal that would ease the suffering and pave the way for further negotiations. But future talks will prove much more nettlesome. An old proposal to split the country into six regions was unpopular, so the structure of the state must be renegotiated. Power-sharing arrangements must be hashed out before new elections can take place. Mr Hadi and Mr Saleh both threaten to play spoiler. Khaled Bahah, the current vice-president, might prove a more unifying figure.
Even if a deal can be reached, there is no guarantee that the fighting will then stop. Though the sectarian anger stirred up by the war may fade over time, regionalism is a persistent problem. Mr Hadi has little sway over separatists who are fighting in the south. They have long agitated for independence (the country was formally split between north and south until 1990) but will not even be represented in Geneva. There is every chance they will fight on, regardless of any agreement.