Yemen: Will calls for peace lead to more violence?

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Reuters

Finally, there is a chance to engage in meaningful peace talks with Yemen. So it would be wise for us to expect an intensification of violence.

How does it make sense? This stems from the desire of the conflicting parties to influence the negotiation by making last-minute gains.

This explains why the Houthi rebels of the blockaded port of Hodeidah now fear that the Saudi-led coalition is about to launch an assault on them.

It was reported on Thursday that 10,000 soldiers were moving in this direction, ostensibly to capture or threaten the point of entry of much of Yemen's food and humanitarian aid.

For those who have covered the conflict, such steps are terribly familiar.

Military commanders often see the approach of the talks – it was suggested that the Yemeni parties to the conflict meet in Sweden later this month – as their last chance to conquer a new terrain while simultaneously altering the situation. Equation at the table of peace.

Covering the wars of the Balkans in the 1990s, we witnessed a wave of violence unleashed by the putative Vance-Owen peace plan.

He planned to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina into cantons, each with a dominant group – so warlords began to "ethnically cleanse" their territory in advance.

During the Syrian civil war, with its myriad of rebel factions and local power balances, the carrots of humanitarian aid or "demilitarization agreements" were used indifferently with the stick of increased bombing or d & # 39; A real assault.

The arrival of relative peace in many areas cleared by President Assad's forces is accompanied by a hideous escalation of violence.

During his recent campaigns, ranging from an assault crossing the Suez Canal during the 1973 war to airlifts in Lebanon in 2006 or a ground surge in Gaza in 2009, a last minute reader once peace negotiations launched a feature of Israel's military operations.

So, what does it mean in the Yemeni context? The Saudi coalition has been seeking for months to take Hodeida.

Given the slowness of its operations to date, it is questionable whether they can really take hold of them in the weeks leading up to the start of the negotiations, but they can increase the pressure, even if the United States calls a ceasefire.

If they manage to make gains on the ground, it would mean that their heavy weapons would "neglect" the port, so they could hope to reap dividends in Sweden without suffering a bloody attack.

For their part, the Houthis know that they will be under Swedish international pressure to take measures themselves to build confidence.

They have used long-range missiles to target Saudi population centers and may need to remove them, far from the border with the Kingdom, as part of peacemaking efforts.

In the coming days, Houthi commanders may be tempted to fire some of these missiles as long as they can. It could also be a means of retaliation if their own victims in Hodeidah started to increase.

Of course, it is possible that the suffering increases and that the famine that rages in the country intensifies, without concrete result in the Swedish talks.

But the only thing we can say, in the light of the current diplomatic and military developments, is that both sides seem to believe that they may have entered a sort of final game.

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