Yemen’s Hadi Steps Down in Favor of Presidential Council Amid Riyadh Peace Talks

Amid ongoing peace talks in Riyadh, Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has agreed to relinquish power in favor of a Presidential Council, as his government continues peace talks that the Houthis have so far refused to join.

“I irreversibly delegate to the Presidential Leadership Council my full powers,” Hadi said Thursday on a television station operated by his rump government. He also announced the firing of Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and delegated al-Ahmar’s powers to the council.

Hadi said the move was motivated by a “desire to involve effective leaders in managing the state in this transitional phase, and affirming our commitment to Yemen’s unity, sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.”

The new council will have the power to make decisions concerning foreign policy and national security, especially negotiating with Ansarullah, the Shiite rebel movement better known as the Houthis, who control roughly one-third of Yemen, including the capital Sana’a. It can also enable a state of emergency, and appoint governments, security directors, and supreme court judges, according to Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-owned news outlet that operates from the United Arab Emirates.

The council will be headed by Maj. Gen. Rashad al-Alimi, and will also include Sultan Ali al-Arada, Tariq Muhammad Salih, Abed al-Rahman Abu Zara’a, Abdullah al-Alimi Bawazeer, Othman Hussein Megali, Aidarous Qassem al-Zubaidi, and Faraj Salmin al-Bahsani.

Supporting the council will be a 50-member commission to advise and consult with them. It includes legal and economic teams. The council will end its term upon the election of a new president - a process not yet agreed upon, as the Houthis have so far refused to join the talks, saying they will only negotiate on Yemeni soil.

However, the Houthis and Saudis agreed to a two-month ceasefire last week, at the beginning of Ramadan, helping to set the present process in motion.

“These measures were issued outside Yemen in form and content, and our people are not concerned with what the outside decides in its internal affairs,” Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Houthis’ top negotiator, said about the news of the council’s formation.

“Yemen is not a child until others engineer for it the shape of its state and government and decide for it its present and future,” he added.

Transitional Leader-Turned President-in-Exile

Hadi, 76, has been in power since June 2011, playing the role of acting president off and on for several months amid a political crisis centered on then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh. He was chosen as president for a two-year transitional period in a February 2012 election held between Yemeni political factions, but which the Houthis boycotted.

Hadi's mandate was extended for another year in January 2014, and the day after his mandate expired in January 2015, he was forced from office by mass protests led by the Houthis but motivated by widespread dissatisfaction with his rule, including an end to fuel subsidies and a proposed federalization plan that critics said would amplify poverty in the already-poor country. A month later, in the southern city of Aden, Hadi rescinded his resignation, denounced the Houthi seizure of power, and fled to Riyadh, seeking help crushing the uprising.

The Saudi bombing campaign against the Houthis began in late March 2015, being joined by a coalition of Sunni states including the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan, as well as the United States. The US ostensibly ended its support for Saudi offensive operations last year, but has continued to provide extensive air defenses for the kingdom against Houthi drone and missile attacks targeting Saudi military installations and oil infrastructure, the basis of its economy, as part of a war of attrition.

The war has killed nearly 400,000 Yemenis in the eight years since, according to United Nations estimates, most of whom have died due to indirect causes related to the conflict, such as inadequate food, drinking water, medicine, and other infrastructure. However, constant bombing of urban areas by the Saudi-led coalition has also claimed many lives. The UN has called the situation the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and condemned the Saudi blockade of the country as exacerbating that crisis.

Last month, UN agency chiefs warned Yemen was “teetering on the edge of outright catastrophe” amid news the food crisis was getting worse, with the likely prospect that the number of people experiencing “catastrophic” or famine-like levels of hunger will increase five-fold by the end of the year, from 31,000 in mid-March to 161,000 by December. More than 17.4 million Yemenis are food insecure, or 58% of the country.