Europe's Approach toward Yemen's Crisis and its Key Players; A Move from Normative-ness to Pragmatism

Following the protests, uprisings and armed rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia early 2011, the Yemenis also poured into the streets toprotest as a result of their frustration with the incompetent and corrupt government ruling over them for nearly three decades. They protested against Ali Abdullah Salih who had brought about nothing but poverty, cultural and political backwardness and deprivation of the public services. In November 2011, at the height of armed conflicts and after months of negotiations, the main political parties of the country settled for the solution offered by the Gulf Cooperation Council and signed an agreement. Based on this agreement, the power was supposed to be transferred during a two-year time span. According to the agreement, Ali Abdullah Salih, the president, had to move into a non-active role pending the presidential election in return for immunity from prosecution and his Vice President, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi was supposed to become the acting president. The main parts of the process were first the formation of a government of national unity and then a conference of national dialogue. Two years of attempts failed to achieve what was intended and 2015 marked the beginning of crisis and conflict (Saif, 2015:5). Most of the members of the European Union had either a minor or no role at all in solving the crisis especially after the conflicts were aggravated in 2015. Late 2014, some of the members such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland defined some missions for themselves especially based on mediation or human rights-related issues. However, we can hardly recognize them as important players trying to solve the crisis or claim that they were managing it either regionally or internationally. But the UK is an exception among the European countries; on the one hand, the British Martin Griffiths is playing an effective role as the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen at the Office of the Special Envoy ofthe Secretary-General for Yemen and tries to accelerate the peace negotiations in this country, and on the other hand, by a vast military support of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition against Yemen, the UK is one of the main instigators of the crisis and violators of the human rights in this country (Bonnefoy, 2020:70).