Yemen President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi

Photo’s source: wikipedia.org

On April 5^th, Yemen’s President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi issued an order dismissing Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and transferring his powers to a newly established presidential leadership council. The order was announced on state television by the Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism Muammar Al-Eryani. Rashad Al-Alimi has been appointed to the presidency of the eight-member council.

The President Mansour Hadi said the new council will assume the duties of both the president and his deputy.

Saudi Arabia announced billions of dollars in aid and urged Mansour Hadi to begin talks with the Houthis to end the country’s devastating war.

$2bn would come from Riyadh and a further $1bn from the UAE, which is part of a Saudi-led military coalition backing Hadi’s internationally-recognised government against the Iran-aligned Houthis.

Yemen has been at war since late 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and Hadi, who had been elected for a two-year transitional period in 2012 after mass anti-government protests, fled south. The Houthis are not participating to the Yemen talks.

The country is in the first week of a two-month UN-brokered truce. It is the first nationwide break in hostilities since 2016.

Peter Salisbury, a Crisis Group analyst, wrote on Twitter “The announcement that Hadi is ceding his powers to a presidential council made up of key political and military figures with direct roles on the ground is A Big Deal”. “Most consequential shift in the inner workings of the anti-Huthi block since war began. How this will actually work in practice will be … complicated to say the least”.

The war has killed tens of thousands and devastated the economy, leaving 80% of the population of some 30 million people reliant on aid.

Riyadh, which last deposited funds into the Aden-based central bank in 2018, wanted to exit the costly conflict, which is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Hadi took the power of Yemeni state in 2012 in a political transition plan backed by Gulf states after the Arab Spring protests in 2011 that brought down President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The UN is pushing for inclusive political negotiations to end the conflict in which several Yemeni factions are fighting for power.

This article was edited using the data from the Dw.com, Aa.com, Reuters.com, France24.com, Aljazeera.com, and Anews.com.tr