Yemen (Continuación)

Shiite Huthi rebels man a checkpoint at the southern entrance to the city of Sanaa 15 November 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

In early 2014, I found myself in the sparsely furnished front room of a nondescript breezeblock villa in Aden, a city in southern Yemen that was once one of the busiest ports in the world. My host was a man who once fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and later helped what would become the local al-Qaeda franchise gain a foothold in Yemen.

He was recounting how, in 1993, a distant relative had arrived at his hideout in the mountains of Abyan, to Aden’s east. The visitor, a senior military official who like my host hailed from Abyan, had come from Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, with a message from President Ali Abdullah Saleh.…  Seguir leyendo »

Paisaje de Marib, Yemen. Foto: Biblioteca de Arte / Art Library Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Fernando Varanda

Tema

Arabia Saudí es un actor clave en Yemen. El conflicto actual, que entra en su séptimo año, asiste a un renovado impulso por alcanzar una resolución al tiempo que se recrudece la violencia. El reino saudí ha manifestado su intención de retirarse militarmente de una campaña sin triunfos evidentes, pero hay una serie de factores y desafíos que ponen trabas y preceden a su salida de Yemen.

Resumen

Este análisis pone el foco sobre la política de Arabia Saudí hacia Yemen y los factores que la condicionan en relación con el conflicto. Atendiendo al contexto nacional e internacional, se plantean varios desafíos y líneas de acción que podrían demarcar el futuro de Yemen.…  Seguir leyendo »

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, flanked by senior Swedish, Swiss and UN officials, addresses a news conference after the High-Level Pledging Event for the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen, in Geneva, Switzerland, April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy

Martin Griffiths, the outgoing UN envoy to Yemen, gave his final briefing to the UN Security Council on 15 June, painting what he said was a “bleak picture” of stalled efforts to broker a ceasefire and initiate talks over ending the country’s six-year civil war. Elite Yemeni and diplomatic circles are now abuzz with speculation about who will replace Griffiths, whom the UN has named as its new top humanitarian official. Yet the better question is not who the envoy will be, but what job description the new person will have. The situation in Yemen has changed significantly since the war broke out, and it is time for mediation efforts to catch up.…  Seguir leyendo »

With tough questions being asked on Capitol Hill and about 80 members of Congress calling for pressure on Saudi Arabia to lift its blockade of Yemen, it cannot be long before the Biden administration will be expected to deliver real results to end a six-year conflict that has caused what the United Nations says is the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The supply of aid and the lifting of the blockade would save countless lives. Yet they are consequences of the conflict, not its cause. Addressing them alone will not bring an end to war.

Neither will they change the fact that a ceasefire plan backed by the Biden administration and the Saudis has been rejected by the Houthi rebels who took control of the capital Sanaa in September 2014, with Yemen's president going into exile when the Saudi bombing campaign started in early 2015.…  Seguir leyendo »

Displaced Yemenis at a shelter provided by Kuwait's Rahma International Charity in Yemen's war-ravaged western province of Hodeida on April 4. (Khaled Ziad/AFP via Getty Images)

By U.N. estimates, 24.3 million people in Yemen — 80 percent of the population — are at risk of disease and hunger. In parts of the country, more than 60 percent of the population struggles to secure food, after a conflict-fueled economic collapse has made it harder for Yemenis to afford food and other basic needs. The humanitarian crisis and growing famine threat has mobilized the world’s second-largest contemporary aid response, and factored into President Biden’s decision to reverse the designation of Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, as a foreign terrorist organization, which would have made food imports more costly.…  Seguir leyendo »

Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council: A Delicate Balancing Act

The past decade has witnessed the gradual destruction of Yemen’s pre-war power structures and the rise of new political forces. Perhaps no faction, not even the Huthis who control much of the northern highlands, better exemplifies these new networks than the pro-independence Southern Transitional Council (STC). Formed in April 2017, this self-styled southern government-in-waiting and its allies now hold most of Yemen’s four southern governorates, including the temporary capital, Aden, and almost a fifth of the cabinet seats in President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s internationally recognised government. As part of the Saudi-brokered deal that brought it into government, the STC should also have a seat at the table if and when the UN convenes talks over a political settlement to end the war.…  Seguir leyendo »

I’ll use this month’s President’s Take to highlight two places where we’re worried things could fall apart further over the month ahead, at enormous human cost.

First is Yemen. The UN calls the war the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

It has left almost a quarter of a million people dead, more than half from malnutrition and disease. Many millions more are starving, displaced or homeless. The UN’s humanitarian chief recently warned of the “worst famine the world has seen in decades”. Four hundred thousand children under the age of five are severely malnourished, he said, and “in their last weeks and months” of life.…  Seguir leyendo »

Smoke billows during clashes between forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed government and Huthi rebel fighters in al-Jadaan area about 50 kilometres northwest of Marib in central Yemen on 11 February 2021. Yemen's Iran-backed Huthis rebels have resumed an AFP

In early February, the rebel Huthi movement (also known as Ansar Allah) reinvigorated its year-long offensive in Yemen’s northern governorate of Marib, launching an intense assault and making territorial and strategic gains in the province’s west. Huthi forces are now reportedly within 30km of Marib city, the ousted government’s last major northern stronghold, and the capital of a governorate whose original population of 300,000 has been swollen by internally displaced persons to perhaps as many as three million. The Huthis have signalled their clear intent to press on, absent a nationwide truce that halts Saudi airstrikes, allows them to reopen the airport in Yemen’s capital city, Sanaa, and permits them to more easily bring goods through Hodeida, the Red Sea port that they control.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Yemeni looks through the wreckage of a building after it was hit by an airstrike on the northern outskirts of the capital, Sanaa, in 2017. (Yahya Arhab/EPA)

In early February, the Biden administration announced several shifts in U.S. policy toward the war in Yemen — a conflict that has left 20 million near starvation and 80 percent of Yemen’s population dependent on humanitarian assistance. The changes include ending U.S. support for Saudi-led offensive operations; reversing the Trump administration’s last-minute designation of the Houthi forces as a foreign terrorist organization; and supporting a special envoy to Yemen and diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.

After 2015, the United States played a critical role in sustaining the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. U.S. support provided Saudi Arabia with intelligence, targeting data, in-air refueling of Saudi aircraft (this ceased in 2018), sales of precision-guided munitions and other arms, and ongoing maintenance and support for Saudi aircraft.…  Seguir leyendo »

The image of Yemen that most see in the US is a bleak one: war-torn, plagued by hunger and disease, hopeless. But these horrors are an incomplete snapshot of the real Yemen. The country I know and love — and have been fighting for since before the beautiful uprising ten years ago — is strong, beautiful and rich in history, home to some of the world's earliest cities and first skyscrapers. It is full of dreamers and dreams -- some realized, and others still waiting to be achieved.

I remain immensely hopeful, even as my fellow citizens suffer in a terrible proxy war involving self-interested nation-states, because I know their resiliency and aspirations.…  Seguir leyendo »

An elderly woman looks on while sitting on a make-shift bed as people try to salvage tents damaged by torrential rain, at a camp for Yemenis displaced by conflict in the northern Hajjah province on 30 September 2020. Essa Ahmed/AFP

Against the advice of more or less everyone working in the humanitarian, economic and diplomatic fields in Yemen, and including many of its own professional staff, the outgoing Trump administration has designated Yemen’s Ansar Allah, better known at home and abroad as the Huthis, as a terrorist organisation.

The designation (in fact, a package of designations that named the Huthi movement both a “Foreign Terrorist Organisation” and, along with three of its top leaders, a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” entity) will unquestionably make what the UN says is already the world’s largest humanitarian crisis much worse by tipping parts of Yemen into famine.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman walks in the old city of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. July 2019. CRISISGROUP/Peter Salisbury.

In December 2018, Western and international policymakers demonstrated something that Yemenis had long suspected: when motivated by developments on the ground or at home, they can produce (some) diplomatic results, as the United States did by pressuring Saudi Arabia and by extension the internationally recognised government of Yemen into accepting the UN-brokered Stockholm Agreement. The deal, which averted a battle for the Red Sea port of Hodeida, is the signature diplomatic success story to date in the ongoing Yemeni conflict that began in late 2014. For the warring parties and to Yemeni and international observers, however, the agreement also symbolises the limits of external mediation in resolving the conflict: international pressure forced the parties to endorse the deal, but not to implement it.…  Seguir leyendo »

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) shakes hands with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at Irqah Palace in the capital Riyadh on 20 February 2020. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / POOL / AFP

The Washington Post reported on 25 September that U.S. officials are considering a potentially consequential new step in Washington’s approach to Yemen: either designating the Huthis – the term used by most Yemenis to describe the rebel group that controls the capital Sanaa and much of north-western Yemen and calls itself Ansar Allah – as a foreign terrorist organisation or naming particular Huthi leaders as specially designated global terrorists. When Washington designates a group as a foreign terrorist organisation, it makes material support for that group a crime, freezes its assets and bars its members from entering the U.S. The consequences of an individual designation are similar but slightly less onerous.…  Seguir leyendo »

El conflicto de larga data en Yemen está más maduro que nunca para lograr una solución. Los distintos bandos yemeníes han quedado exhaustos por la lucha y aceptaron rápidamente el llamado en marzo de António Guterres, secretario general de las Naciones Unidas, a un alto el fuego mundial por la pandemia de la COVID-19. El mes siguiente, la coalición en Yemen liderada por los sauditas anunció un alto el fuego unilateral de dos semanas, que luego extendió.

Los bandos enfrentados ya lograron avances significativos hacia un acuerdo de alto el fuego en negociaciones coordinadas por el enviado especial para Yemen de la ONU, Martin Griffiths.…  Seguir leyendo »

A reinforcement convoy of Yemen's Security Belt Force dominated by members of the the Southern Transitional Council (STC) heading to Abyan province, Yemen. AFP/Saleh Al-OBEIDI

On 25 April, the secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) declared self-rule in areas of Yemen’s south that were part of an independent state prior to unification with the north in 1990. The declaration came on the heels of escalating tensions between the STC and the Yemeni government, nominal allies in the fight against Huthi rebels based in the northern highlands. It also came as the UN struggled to engineer a nationwide ceasefire and COVID-19 response plan. STC forces quickly took control of ministries, local government offices and the Central Bank building in Aden, the government’s temporary headquarters since the Huthis pushed it out of the capital Sanaa in 2015. …  Seguir leyendo »

Libyan Army soldiers wear masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus during a military operation in Tripoli, on March 25. Credit Amru Salahuddien/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images

On a recent visit to Libya, I met a family living in an improvised shelter in a displaced persons camp east of Tripoli. One of the tens of thousands Libyan families uprooted by war, the family of seven was living in a room barely 20 paces long and half as wide. A clothesline, a pile of mattresses, a hot plate and the stench of body odor filled the room. Outside, they faced a shortage of potable water and abusive taunts from locals.

The spread of the novel coronavirus will have a devastating effect on the Middle East’s communities of refugees and migrants.…  Seguir leyendo »

Sudan’s prime minister announced last weekend that Sudan began drawing down its forces in Yemen, saying “there is no military solution” to the conflict. This marks another step in the Saudi-led coalition’s de facto drawdown, after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced its own withdrawal over the summer and Saudi Arabia began engaging in Oman-led peace talks with the Houthis this fall.

What does the intervening coalition’s slow but steady drawdown mean for Yemen’s civil war? While there is still a long way to go to reach a lasting peace in Yemen, this moment probably marks the beginning of the end of the war — or at least this phase of the war.…  Seguir leyendo »

Une équipe du Croissant-Rouge à Dhamar, le 1er septembre. Photo Mohamed al-Sayaghi. Reuters

 En tant que Yéménite et humanitaire, je constate chaque jour l’impact de cette guerre sur la santé des Yéménites, sur l’accès à la nourriture, à l’eau potable, aux médicaments et aux structures de soins. Je vois la mise à mal de l’avenir de nos enfants, privés d’école, affamés et traumatisés psychologiquement. Comment accepter que des enfants puissent être pris pour cible ? Comment accepter qu’une femme enceinte ne puisse être suivie pendant sa grossesse ? Comment accepter que nos grands-parents ne puissent bénéficier des soins adéquats ? Il ne s’agit pas de politique, mais de la vie de 30 millions de Yéménites.…  Seguir leyendo »

Mohamed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman witness the signing of the Riyadh Agreement between the Yemeni government and the Southern Transitional Council, at the Saudi Royal Diwan. SPA/Riyadh and Mohamed Bin Zayed Twitter account

The Riyadh Agreement, signed on 5 November, has averted a war within Yemen’s civil war, at least for the time being. The deal prevents a collapse of the fragile alliance of Yemeni forces that Saudi Arabia has supported since intervening in Yemen in March 2015 to prevent Huthi rebels from taking over the country. The question now is whether the agreement can act as a bridge to a nationwide political settlement or if it simply marks a pause before another round of violence.

By signing, the two parties to the agreement – the internationally recognised government of Yemen, led by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and the secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) – have ended a three-month standoff that threatened to split the anti-Huthi bloc.…  Seguir leyendo »

Yemeni supporters of the Houthi movement take part in a rally in Sanaa on Sept. 21. Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

With all of U.S. President Donald Trump’s troubles at home and abroad, his administration could use a win. There is low-hanging fruit in Yemen, and the ripple effects of success there could go far beyond the impoverished and war-torn country. Houthi rebels (who prefer to be called Ansar Allah) have made an offer of de-escalation that, if built on quickly, could help extract the United States from the bloody and unwinnable war that has created the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. It would reduce threats to Saudi Arabia and its oil infrastructure at a time of rising tensions with Iran. And it would open a door to wider de-escalation inside Yemen and possibly across the region.…  Seguir leyendo »