According to Sultan Barakat, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, Yemen's war is actually a multifaceted predicament.
"Mistakenly viewed by many observers as a two-sided conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels, Yemen's war is actually a multifaceted predicament involving a volatile combination of local, regional, and international actors, all of them armed and having major and competing interests in the country's future. The political transition process set out by the Gulf Cooperation Council back in 2011 failed to incorporate key sections of Yemeni society into the decision-making process, such as the southern separatist Hirak movement, the Houthis, and Yemeni youth and women.
"As a result, Hadi's transitional government was increasingly viewed as illegitimate and unrepresentative of the demands and concerns of the Yemeni people. Constructing a truly all-inclusive decision-making process to pick up where the National Dialogue Conference left off will be key to reaching any power-sharing agreement," he concluded.
Several rounds of UN-mediated peace talks in Switzerland and in Kuwait have failed to produce an agreement.
The Houthis and the General People's Congress party of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh are demanding an agreement on a new administration comprising all parties to run the country until new elections, while Hadi supporters say that the Houthis must hand over their weapons and quit the cities they have seized since 2014.
President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi was removed after Houthi forces took control of Sanaa in September 2014. His forces have regained territory since the intervention began, but the rebels still control Sanaa and ports on the southern coast.
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