The Guardian
A handout image from the United Arab Emirates News Agency (WAM) shows a fighter jet of the UAE armed forces taking off before raids against Houthi rebels in Yemen. Photograph: AFP/Getty
Jamal Benomar to be replaced, United Nations announces, as Saudi-led air strikes continue against Houthi rebels.
The UN has announced its special envoy to Yemen is stepping down after four years of efforts at a peaceful political transition in the Arab world’s poorest country fell apart amid a Shia rebel uprising and Saudi-led airstrikes.
A statement on Wednesday night said Jamal Benomar “has expressed an interest in moving on to another assignment” and that his successor will be named “in due course”.
Benomar had come under criticism from some in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, as his efforts to broker peace showed little success.
A Saudi-led coalition has carried out weeks of air strikes in an attempt to push back Shia Houthi rebels who swept south from their region near the Saudi border and caused the president to flee.
AFP/Getty
The UN said it would “spare no efforts to relaunch the peace process”. But the challenge has grown as the fighting in Yemen has become a kind of proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies and Iran, a predominantly Shia nation that has supported the Houthis. More than 700 people have been killed since the air strikes began.
The pressure on Benomar, a Moroccan diplomat, had grown as the Houthis grew bolder in recent weeks. By late last week, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN was strongly hinting that Benomar was on the way out.
“We continue to support the mission of the special adviser to the secretary general. … Whoever the secretary general designates as his special adviser, for the time being Jamal Benomar, yes,” said the Saudi ambassador, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi.
Benomar had been tasked in 2011 with guiding a peaceful transition for Yemen after the Arab Spring. For a while the country was praised as a model for such a transition but as the new UN statement pointed out “unfortunately this process was interrupted with the dramatic escalation of violence”.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, was considering Mauritanian diplomat Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed as a replacement for Benomar, said the Reuters news agency, quoting an unnamed United Nations official.
In January 2014 Ould Cheikh Ahmed was appointed deputy UN special envoy for Libya and then in December was charged with heading the United Nations Ebola response mission. He was UN resident humanitarian and development co-ordinator in Syria between 2008 and 2012, and in Yemen from 2012 to 2014.
Saudi Arabia launched air attacks in Yemen in March as Houthi rebels, who had taken control of the capital, Sana’a, in September, closed in on the port city of Aden and forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to Riyadh.
The Houthis and army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh have been fighting alongside each other on several fronts against militia forces loyal to Hadi.
The UN security council this week imposed an arms embargo on Houthi leaders and again demanded they withdraw and stop the violence.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report
