Yemen’s Peace Process: A Path to Conflict?
The possibilities and risks of Yemen embracing peace and stability after a long period of internal civil war remain bleak. A boy pulls containers of water after he filled them at a faucet, amid an acute shortage of clean drinking water in Sanaa, April 20, 2015. Mohamed al-Sayaghi/Reuters. The war in Yemen will come to an end. Yet, its conclusion will not resolve the initial reasons that plunged the country into conflict, and led communities to raise arms against one another. It is likely that many of the underlying issues will continue to exist in the near future, compounded by new complications born of the war, paving the way to continued conflict. While peace may benefit some, it can fuel feelings of anger and resentment in others. One challenge for peace-makers is to ensure that those costs and feelings are below a certain threshold and will not be a cause of conflict. A peace process, due to its inherent exclusionary nature and limitations of its scope of priorities, is the firs