Jemenkrieg-Mosaik 709 - Yemen War Mosaic 709

Yemen Press Reader 709: 16. Jan. 2021: Jemen: Krieg ohne Ende – Jemen: Ereignisse von 2020 – Jemens Stabilität hängt von der Anerkennung der Gruppenidentitäten ab – Pompeo zerstört ...

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Schwerpunkte / Key aspects

Kursiv: Siehe Teil 2 / In Italics: Look in part 2: https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-mosaik-709b-yemen-war-mosaic-709b

Klassifizierung / Classification

Für wen das Thema ganz neu ist / Who is new to the subject

cp1 Am wichtigsten / Most important

cp1b Am wichtigsten: USA stufen Huthis als Terroristen ein / Most important: US terror designation against Houthis

cp2 Allgemein / General

cp3 Humanitäre Lage / Humanitarian situation

cp4 Flüchtlinge / Refugees

cp5 Nordjemen und Huthis / Northern Yemen and Houthis

cp6 Separatisten und Hadi-Regierung im Südjemen / Separatists and Hadi government in Southern Yemen

cp7 UNO und Friedensgespräche / UN and peace talks

cp8 Saudi-Arabien / Saudi Arabia

cp8a Jamal Khashoggi

cp9 USA

cp9a USA-Iran Krise: Spannungen am Golf / US-Iran crisis: Tensions at the Gulf

cp10 Großbritannien / Great Britain

cp11 Deutschland / Germany

cp12 Andere Länder / Other countries

cp12a Katar-Krise / Qatar crisis

cp12b Sudan

cp13a Waffenhandel / Arms trade

cp13b Wirtschaft / Economy

cp14 Terrorismus / Terrorism

cp15 Propaganda

cp16 Saudische Luftangriffe / Saudi air raids

cp17 Kriegsereignisse / Theater of War

cp18 Kampf um Hodeidah / Hodeidah battle

cp19 Sonstiges / Other

... Pompeo zerstört Terrorismusbekämpfung – Den Huthis werden Massenexekutionen vorgeworfen – Auswirkungen des Krieges auf den Telekommunikationssektor – USA stufen Huthis als Terroristen ein – und mehr

Jan. 16, 2021: Yemen: War without end – Yemen: Events of 2020 – Yemen’s stability depends on recognition of group identities – Pompeo trashes counterterrorism – Mass executions blamed on Houthis – Impacts of the war on the telecommunications sector – US terror designation against Houthis – and more

Klassifizierung / Classification

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**

*

(Kein Stern / No star)

? = Keine Einschatzung / No rating

A = Aktuell / Current news

B = Hintergrund / Background

C = Chronik / Chronicle

D = Details

E = Wirtschaft / Economy

H = Humanitäre Fragen / Humanitarian questions

K = Krieg / War

P = Politik / Politics

pH = Pro-Houthi

pS = Pro-Saudi

T = Terrorismus / Terrorism

Für wen das Thema ganz neu ist / Who is new to the subject

Ältere einführende Artikel u. Überblicke für alle, die mit den Ereignissen im Jemen noch nicht vertraut sind, hier:

Yemen War: Older introductory articles, overviews, for those who are still unfamiliar with the Yemen war here:

https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-einfuehrende-artikel-u-ueberblicke

(** B K P)

Jemen oder der Krieg ohne Ende

Seit bald sechs Jahren wird im Süden der Arabischen Halbinsel ein erbitterter Krieg geführt, an dem und an dessen Folgen weit über 100 000 Menschen gestorben sind – laut Vereinten Nationen die „größte humanitäre Katastrophe der Gegenwart“. Ginge es dabei nur um den Jemen, das ärmste aller arabischen Länder, wäre die Auseinandersetzung vermutlich längst beendet. Doch dahinter verbirgt sich die Auseinandersetzung um die regionale Vorherrschaft – eben zwischen dem schiitischen Iran und dem sunnitischen Saudi-Arabien.

Schon lange vor dem Arabischen Frühling war der Jemen ein scheiternder Staat, dessen Regierung immer weniger in der Lage war, die wachsenden Probleme des Landes zu lösen.

[…]

Dies änderte sich mit der Thronbesteigung von König Salman im Januar 2015. Da der Monarch damals schon 79 Jahre alt war, wurde die Politik des Königreichs schnell von seinem Sohn Mohammed Bin Salman bestimmt, der zunächst Verteidigungsminister und 2017 auch Kronprinz wurde. Auch Fragen von großer Bedeutung wurden von da an rasch und oft auch unüberlegt entschieden. Der Jemen-Krieg ist die erste große und wohl auch folgenschwerste Entscheidung, die Bin Salman zu verantworten hat. Das saudi-arabische Militär konzentrierte sich dabei vor allem auf Luftangriffe gegen die Huthis und ihre Verbündeten im Norden des Landes. Die emiratischen Truppen operierten gemeinsam mit verbündeten jemenitischen Einheiten und Milizen im Süden.

Das größte Problem des Bündnisses war das Fehlen von Bodentruppen. Riad und Abu Dhabi hatten wohl gehofft, Ägypten oder Pakistan zu einer Entsendung von Soldaten bewegen zu können, doch beide Staaten verweigerten sich diesem Wunsch. Das machte schon 2015 einen vollständigen Sieg der beiden Golfstaaten sehr unwahrscheinlich.

Nachdem es den Emiratis noch gelungen war, die wichtige Hafenstadt Aden einzunehmen, entwickelte sich denn auch ein jahrelanges Patt. Die saudi-arabischen Luftangriffe verwüsteten zwar den Norden, ohne die Huthis damit aber entscheidend schwächen zu können. Nur zwei Mal standen die Saudis kurz davor, einen entscheidenden Durchbruch zu erzielen. Zum ersten Mal im Dezember 2017, als das Bündnis des ehemaligen Präsidenten Saleh mit den Huthis zerbrach. Riad gelang es aber nicht, das Ende der Allianz zu nutzen, weil die Rebellen Saleh kurzerhand ermordeten.

Noch vielversprechender schien der Vormarsch auf die wichtige Stadt al-Hudaida am Roten Meer, der im Juni 2018 begann. Über diesen Hafen wickelten die Huthis einen Großteil der Versorgung des nördlichen Hochlands ab, und Riad und Abu Dhabi hofften, die Rebellen nach einem Sieg dort zu Verhandlungen und weitgehenden Zugeständnissen zwingen zu können. Doch diesmal erwies sich der internationale Widerstand als zu groß, da die Gefahr bestand, dass eine Einnahme zu einer weiteren Verschlechterung der humanitären Situation im Jemen führen würde. Es dürften vor allem Proteste aus dem US-Kongress gewesen sein, die die arabischen Verbündeten veranlassten, einem Waffenstillstand für al-Hudaida und Gesprächen unter Ägide der Vereinten Nationen zuzustimmen. Diese begannen im Dezember 2018 und führten tatsächlich zu einer vorübergehenden Beruhigung.

Just in dieser Situation eskalierte aber der Konflikt zwischen Saudi-Arabien und Iran, was auch mit der US-Regierung unter Donald Trump und seiner Konfrontationsstrategie gegenüber Iran zu tun hatte. Die Beziehungen zwischen Saudi-Arabien und Iran waren schon seit Jahren sehr schlecht, weil Riad Teheran vorwarf, die Aufstände und Bürgerkriege im Nahen Osten für eine aggressive Expansionspolitik zu nutzen. Saudi-Arabien sieht sich durch die Präsenz der iranischen Revolutionsgarden und mit ihnen verbündeter Milizen im Libanon, Irak, in Syrien und im Jemen eingekreist und bedroht.

Weil sich der Kronprinz der Unterstützung durch den neuen US-Präsidenten Donald Trump sicher wähnte, wurde seine antiiranische Rhetorik immer schriller. Trump hatte sich für eine Strategie des „maximalen Drucks“ gegenüber Iran entschieden und das Atomabkommen von 2015 schon im Mai 2018 einseitig aufgekündigt. Mit harten Sanktionen versuchten die USA die Islamische Republik zu zwingen, erneut in Verhandlungen einzutreten und weitergehende Zugeständnisse zu machen.

Zusätzlich geschwächt wurde die Position der Saudis durch den kühl kalkulierten Rückzug der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate. Für Abu Dhabi war das Kriegsende viel attraktiver als für Riad, weil emiratische Verbündete Aden und einen Teil des Südjemen beherrschten und die VAE die Kontrolle über die wichtigsten Häfen des Landes erlangt hatten. Sie hatten damit wichtige Ziele erreicht, während die Saudis – für die die Niederlage der Huthis oberste Priorität hatte – keine Erfolge vorweisen konnten.

Ganz anders stellt sich die Lage für Riad dar: Mit dem Abzug der emiratischen Truppen war der Krieg für die Saudis endgültig nicht mehr zu gewinnen. Im Gegenteil: Die Situation verschlimmerte sich für Riad im Sommer 2019 weiter, denn die Huthis und Iraner zeigten mit Drohnen- und Cruise-Missile-Attacken wiederholt, wie schutzlos das Königreich seinen Gegnern ausgeliefert ist.

Noch schlimmer war für Mohammed Ibn Salman aber die Einsicht, dass auch der Saudi-Arabien und ihm persönlich so wohlgesonnene Präsident Trump letztlich nicht bereit war, für die Sicherheit des Königreichs einen Krieg mit Iran zu riskieren.

Doch während es im Sommer 2019 kurzzeitig so schien, als würde Riad die Überlegenheit Irans akzeptieren und einen Ausgleich suchen, ist seither sehr deutlich geworden, dass Bin Salman auch langfristig auf Konfrontation setzt. Dafür sprechen außer der fortgesetzten Annäherung an Israel – den militärisch stärksten Feind Irans im Nahen Osten – vor allem neueste Nachrichten über den Ausbau der saudi-arabischen Raketenstreitmacht und über ein Atomprogramm, das eine eigene Urananreicherung umfassen soll. All das sind deutliche Anzeichen dafür, dass Saudi-Arabien auf eine nukleare Bewaffnung abzielt, was den Konflikt in der ohnehin hoch explosiven Golfregion weiter eskalieren würde.

Die saudische Führung hat den Kampf um die Vorherrschaft am Golf also noch nicht aufgegeben – und damit auch nicht den blutigen Krieg im Jemen. Und da Iran mit den Huthis nun über Verbündete in Sanaa verfügt, dürfte das Land schon bald wieder zum Schauplatz werden – in einer neuen Runde der endlosen Auseinandersetzung zwischen Iran und Saudi-Arabien – von Guido Steinberg

https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2021/januar/jemen-oder-der-krieg-ohne-ende

(* B H K P)

Yemen

All parties to the conflict have perpetrated indiscriminate attacks and targeted civilian infrastructure, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Although parties to the conflict signed the Stockholm Agreement in December 2018, which established a ceasefire for Hodeidah Governorate, they continue to perpetrate widespread violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law. The protracted conflict has been characterized by fragmenting coalitions and a multitude of fronts, as well as a climate of impunity that enables ongoing crimes.

The dire humanitarian situation is a direct result of the armed conflict – including the deliberate starvation of civilians – and requires a political solution. Escalating violence in Hodeidah and other governorates not only threatens the viability of the ceasefire but also the delivery of life-saving aid to millions of vulnerable Yemenis. Humanitarian restrictions and the destruction of medical facilities present grave challenges as Yemen confronts a COVID-19 outbreak.

All parties to the conflict in Yemen appear manifestly unable or unwilling to uphold their responsibility to protect.

https://www.globalr2p.org/countries/yemen/

cp1 Am wichtigsten / Most important

(** B H K P)

Human Rights Watch: Yemen – Events of 2020

Covid-19

Unlawful Attacks

Children and Armed Conflict

Landmines

Arbitrary Detentions, Torture, and Enforced Disappearances

Blocking and Impeding Humanitarian Access

Violence against Women

Abuses against Migrants

Key International Actors

Six years into an armed conflict that has killed over 18,400 civilians, Yemen remains the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Yemen is experiencing the world’s worst food security crisis with 20.1 million people—nearly two-thirds of the population—requiring food assistance at the beginning of 2020.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have led a military coalition against Houthi-led forces that took over Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. In 2020, fighting in northern Yemen increased sharply when the Houthis seized new areas held by the internationally recognized Yemeni government and advanced toward Marib governorate, where thousands of Yemenis were internally displaced and faced dire humanitarian conditions and increased risk of Covid-19.

In southern Yemen, the UAE continued its air operations and support for local Yemeni forces on the ground despite withdrawing most of its ground troops in mid-2019. The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) continued to challenge the recognized Yemeni government in the south.

The protracted conflict has had a devastating impact on civilians across the country. Civilians suffer from destroyed critical infrastructure, lack of fuel, lack of basic services, abusive local security forces, a weak state, and fragmented governance. Unprecedented heavy rainfall in many parts of Yemen in 2020 killed scores of people and left others displaced. The floods destroyed and damaged houses and infrastructure, including buildings in Sanaa’s old city, a UNESCO world heritage site.

Yemen’s economy has been ravaged by years of conflict. Millions of people in Yemen have lost their income due to business closures and some working in the public sector have not received their full salaries regularly, leading to increased poverty. Millions of civilians in Yemen depend on humanitarian aid.

Houthi authorities did not allow United Nations experts to secure the Safer Oil Tanker off the coast of Hodeida, leaving Yemen at risk of environmental disaster if the ship’s 1.1 million barrels of oil leak into the Red Sea.

Unlawful Attacks

All parties to the armed conflict in Yemen and have committed serious violations of the laws of war, many of which may amount to war crimes by responsible personnel. In 2020, Saudi-led coalition forces conducted airstrikes that indiscriminately killed and injured civilians. As of March, the Saudi-led coalition had conducted between 20,624 and 58,487 airstrikes since March 2015, according to the Yemen Data Project. Almost a third of all airstrikes carried out by the coalition hit civilian objects such as residential homes, hospitals, schools, weddings, farms, food stores, school buses, markets, mosques, bridges, civilian factories, detention centers, and water wells. The Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis have committed unlawful attacks against detention centers, killing and injuring detainees.

The Saudi-led coalition and Houthi forces continued to fire mortars, rockets, and other missiles indiscriminately into heavily populated areas including Marib, Taizz, and, Hodeidah. These weapons killed or wounded civilians and damaged critical infrastructure such schools and health facilities. In April, Houthi forces attacked the Taizz Central Prison complex, killing five female prisoners, two young girls, and a policewoman, and wounding nine others, according to Mwatana, a Yemeni human rights group. Houthi forces continued to fire ballistic missiles indiscriminately into Saudi Arabia.

Blocking and Impeding Humanitarian Access

Human Rights Watch documented in September that Houthi authorities, Yemeni government and affiliated forces, and the UAE-backed STC were severely restricting the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid. Millions have been suffering in Yemen because the Houthis and other Yemeni authorities have denied the UN and other aid agencies unhindered access to people in need. International and local aid groups have faced a wide range of obstacles imposed by parties to the conflict on the ground, severely restricting their work.

The Houthi authorities have imposed hundreds of regulations and lengthy delays in approving aid projects. They block aid assessments required to identify people’s needs, seek to control aid monitoring, and dictate or interfere with lists of aid recipients in order to divert aid to authority loyalists.

The coalition has forced the Sanaa International Airport to remain closed since August 2016.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/yemen

(** B P)

YEMEN’S STABILITY IS DEPENDENT ON A RECOGNITION OF THE STATE’S DIVERSE GROUP IDENTITIES

The formation of a new government that brought together northern and southern politicians in the final days of 2020 marked an important milestone in fulfillment of negotiations made under the so-called Riyadh Agreement. Despite this progress, it remains unlikely that the deep fault lines between the internationally-recognized government (IRG) under the control of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi and the Southern Transitional Council (STC), vying for independence in the South, will be overcome through this power sharing arrangement. Further complicating the situation, the five-year-long international mediation effort between the IRG and the Houthis, who control most of northern Yemen, has mostly resulted in a stalemate. Meanwhile, the IRG’s authority has significantly waned and is limited to a few specific territorial areas. Underlying these dynamics are diverse group identities—of both a sectarian and regional nature. For example, in the case of the Houthis, followers claim that the country’s political leadership positions should be restricted to Zaidis (a Shia branch of Islam) with Hashemite lineage. In the case of the Southern Movement, identity politics are aligned with beliefs that those living in the formerly independent state of South Yemen have fundamentally different needs and desires than their northern counterparts.

Indeed, Yemen’s various group identities are complex, often intertwined with several different layers. Political practices frequently inflame tension between groups, reinforcing these various identities. This is at the core of the Yemeni conflict today. Groups using these identities as a rallying cry are so much at odds with each other that only a superficial, if any, reconciliation agreement appears possible. The key to peace is a state that enshrines the recognition and acknowledgement of this multiplicity of identities into a constitution by guaranteeing equal rights to all its citizen regardless of social, geographical or religious background. A new system of governance would also need to decentralize political power in a way that distributes it more evenly and inclusively to all of Yemen’s major regions.

MISGUIDED ATTEMPTS TO BUILD A NATIONAL IDENTITY

The protests of 2011 weakened the central government. Some transitional-period reforms, such as restructuring the military, also chipped away at it. As a result, a power vacuum emerged that the Houthis eventually capitalized on in the country’s north. Although the Houthis, who started as a religious movement, were persecuted by Saleh prior to the Arab Spring, they eventually aligned with him, paving the way for their takeover of Sana’a in 2014. In this turn of events though, they have gone from being marginalized to now excluding, silencing and victimizing others. Their singular domination in northern Yemen has re-enforced identity divisions with southern Yemenis. Many fear that the current situation represents an institutional entrenchment of identities that have a prejudicial or discriminatory tendency. To overcome this, Yemen needs to radically rethink what a national identity might look like. They need to be pragmatic about a governing system that unites them while at the same time allows for separate regional identities to co-exist and have equal standing.

MANY NATIONAL IDENTITIES

Before the modern era, there were historically multiple Zaidi imamates and Sunni dynasties in the North and multiple sultanates in the South.

WORKING TOWARDS CREATING A NEW IDENTITY FOR YEMEN

To strengthen a collective national identity moving forward, Yemen’s needs to honor subnational diversity. Accepting the unique histories and needs of Yemen’s various group identities and not placing them in a hierarchy will encourage equitable participation in the political process. These pluralistic interests do not need to be the source of the conflict. For that reason, Yemeni academics, civil society organizations and media outlets, along with international organizations involved in state building, should encourage discourse that recognizes these differences while working towards merging common interests. All of Yemen’s diverse groups must have a say in a new governing system in order to achieve a sustainable peace and that must be guaranteed in the country’s future constitution. Doing so would help eliminate the current identity polarization and open the door for plurality to become a point of strength, as well as a catalyst for development and economic and cultural prosperity – by Mohamed al-Himyari

https://www.yemenpolicy.org/yemens-stability-is-dependent-on-a-recognition-of-the-states-diverse/

(** B H P)

Pompeo’s Scorched Earth Campaign

Describing the relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda as an “axis,” as Pompeo did, is every bit as dishonest and ridiculous as it was when George W. Bush included Iraq and Iran as part of the so-called “axis of evil.” It is fitting that Pompeo’s description echoes that of Bush, because the claim Pompeo is making is little more than reheated Bush-era propaganda that Iran hawks have periodically tried to promote. Every time Iran hawks bring up this nonsense, it gets shot down very easily because their distortion of the evidence is so obvious. The New York Times reports.

“Mr. Pompeo spoke alternately about Al Qaeda’s “new home base” and a “new operational headquarters” in Tehran, bewildering counterterrorism officials, who said there was no evidence for his assertions. Some said his comments appeared to represent his own analytic conclusions, rather than those of the United States intelligence community.”

Pompeo went so far as to declare that Iran is the “new Afghanistan” for the terrorist group, which is also nonsense. He is telling these lies in the hopes of throwing up more roadblocks to U.S. reentry into the JCPOA, but it isn’t going to work because his claims are false. Iran holds some members of Al Qaeda as hostages and bargaining chips in order to protect themselves against attack, but they do not work with them or sponsor them. They hold these people as an insurance policy for their own security. It takes willful ignorance or anti-Iranian fanaticism to interpret it as anything else. In Pompeo’s case, it is definitely the latter.

There are governments in the region that support and arm local Al Qaeda affiliates and other like-minded groups, but unfortunately for Pompeo they are U.S. allies and clients.

The Houthi designation is the most destructive part of Pompeo’s scorched earth campaign, and it is the one that needs to be undone first.

Mark Lowcock, the U.N. humanitarian aid chief, has warned that Pompeo’s malevolent decision to designate the Houthis as terrorists will condemn Yemen to the worst modern famine in decades:

It is extraordinary for Lowcock to single out the actions of one of the five permanent Security Council members. It is a measure of how destructive the Houthi designation will be and how terrible the resulting famine could be that he is openly criticizing the U.S. action and calling for it to be overturned. The Houthi designation is by far the worst thing that Pompeo has done as Secretary of State, because if it is not quickly reversed it will lead directly to the deaths of tens and possibly even hundreds of thousands of people. It takes severe cruelty to look at a war-torn, famine-stricken country that depends heavily on outside aid and imports and then choose to suffocate the survivors with additional economic warfare. That is what Pompeo has done, we shouldn’t forget that.

He seems to have made the decision to designate the Houthis without alerting Congress in advance and without doing any of the work needed to facilitate humanitarian carve-outs to mitigate the damage done by the designation.

Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer report on the briefing between administration officials and Congressional staffers that happened earlier this week:

The staffers’ anger is understandable, since Pompeo and other administration officials have been lying to Congress about Yemen for years. The administration has consistently opted to make the lives of ordinary Yemenis more miserable, and this last evil decision is Pompeo’s final insult on his way out the door. The administration officials couldn’t defend Pompeo’s decision to the staffers, and they had no answers for how to avert the famine that everyone expects to be the result.

The Trump administration’s approach to using sanctions and terrorist designations has always been purely punitive and destructive. We have seen this with the “maximum pressure” campaigns on Iran and Venezuela, and more recently we have seen the same thing with Syria sanctions – by Daniel Larison

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/state-of-the-union/pompeos-scorched-earth-campaign/

(** B H P)

Pompeo trashes counterterrorism on the way out

That the list of FTOs is supposed to be about facilitating prosecution of individuals supporting terrorism shows how much of a misuse it is to treat the list as a sort of general shaming device aimed at any entity that the administration of the day happens to dislike. No administration has abused the list more in this way than the outgoing Trump administration. The height of this misuse was its adding to the FTO list in 2019 Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — which, as part of the armed forces of a state, is not at all the sort of non-state organization that the list was intended to include. No one is going to be prosecuted for writing a check to the IRGC.

Something similar can be said about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s latest move along this line, which is to designate the Houthis of Yemen as an FTO. The Houthi movement is the de facto government of almost half of Yemen’s territory, including the capital city of Sanaa, and far more than half of the country’s population. It has been so for the past six years. It has at least as much claim to being the sovereign of Yemen as does the would-be president on the other side of the Yemeni civil war, who is propped up by the Saudis and spends most of his time in Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis are interested in power and resources in Yemen and have no interest in international terrorism. Their only cross-border activity has consisted of some aerial attacks aimed at Saudi Arabia as relatively small attempts to retaliate for the devastating Saudi air war against Yemen that has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians.

Pompeo’s designation statement claims to “recognize concerns” about the impact on the already awful humanitarian situation in Yemen and talks about licenses for humanitarian activities. But as the story of such licenses with Iran demonstrates, this will mean aid will be effectively stalled as long as would-be aid-givers fear the long arm of U.S. law, and in this case the fear of being branded a material supporter of a terrorist group. The move will exacerbate what the United Nations still considers “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” with “50,000 Yemenis …already living in famine-like conditions, with 5 million more just one step away” and made worse by the Trump administration’s own aid cuts intended to punish the Houthis.

To achieve a trifecta of abuse of the terrorism issue, Pompeo has picked this same week to foment a misbelief that Iran and Al-Qaeda are, in Pompeo’s words, an “axis” and “partners in terrorism.” If this sounds a lot like an earlier supposed partnership between Al-Qaeda and another Middle Eastern state starting with the letter “I” — as well as an earlier “axis of evil” — it should. The Iranian regime, Shia and Persian, is no more of a partner with Al-Qaeda than was the secular regime of Saddam Hussein. Iran and al-Qaeda have been on opposite sides of almost every political, ideological, military, and sectarian divide, as manifested in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.

The presence of some Al-Qaeda types in Iran, mostly under a kind of house arrest, has been known for years and reflects a modus vivendi between enemies rather than anything approaching a partnership — see Michael Hirsh’s fine summary of the issue. Pompeo is presenting nothing new.

Pompeo’s presentation of such misleading material now, as well as his other manipulations supposedly in the name of counterterrorism, is part of the Trump administration’s salting of the earth before giving way to the Biden administration. And this manipulation will indeed present immediate difficulties for the new administration on such matters as putting policy toward Iran, Yemen, and Cuba on more productive tracks than the highly unproductive ones they are on now – by Paul R. Pillar

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/01/13/pompeo-trashes-counterterrorism-on-the-way-out/

(** A P)

Reports of mass executions in Yemen blamed on Houthis

More than 20 Yemeni farmers are reported to have been killed in what locals are calling a process of 'colonisation' by the Houthis.

New evidence has emerged of Houthi militia atrocities in the village of al Haima, located in Yemen’s second largest province, Taiz, with local journalists and news agencies sharing photos (graphic) depicting unspeakable horrors, including the hanging bodies of a man and teenager, and bullet riddled bodies of a father and young son.

“These are the bodies of Yemeni farmers,” Mohammed al Rumim, a Yemeni journalist based in Taiz, told TRT World on Wednesday. “Houthi militias want to control their farms and use for military bases to launch operations in the area, but they protested, so now they are dead.”

According to Rumim, more than 20 Yemeni farmers have been killed, alongside another 40 injured in and nearby al Haima during the past week, a claim corroborated by Colonel Abdul Basit al-Baher, a Yemeni Army spokesperson, who told Arab News on Friday, “The Houthis have launched a hysterical attack on Haima."

“They have stormed more than 20 houses, taken 50 civilians as hostage and shelled the villages with heavy weapons. They are committing a cleansing against residents.”

On Wednesday, Yemeni news wire Khabara Agency described in almost identical terms, invoking the words “war crimes” and “genocide” in its reporting of the atrocities carried out by Houthi militias against the villages of al Haima, claiming locals were being punished for refusing to pay the Houthis “double taxes.”

Another local news organisation – Al Hadath Yemen – reported the killings and Houthi occupation of Yemeni land as “colonisation,” alleging the group is “pursuing families who have fled” and “killing and kidnapping children.”

Aldubai affirms that Houthi militias had besieged al Haima for almost a week before they launched what he described as a “vicious attack against civilians” last week, an assault that included the bombing of a dozen homes, more than 100 house raids and the public hanging of protesters from trees.

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/reports-of-mass-executions-in-yemen-blamed-on-houthis-43256

(** B E K)

Impacts of the War on the Telecommunications Sector in Yemen

Executive Summary

The telecommunications and information technology sector in Yemen is a vital component of the country’s infrastructure and plays a critical role in economic growth. It is the second largest source of public revenue after the petroleum sector, and contributes important work opportunities, whether directly or indirectly, through its connections to other sectors of the national economy.

From 2015 to 2019, the sector’s performance has varied due to the extraordinary circumstances Yemen has been going through. It is estimated that the conflict has caused about $4.1 billion in direct financial losses for the telecommunications sector due to electricity outages (at times caused by a lack of fuel), institutional fragmentation, and competing policies and financial demands by the authorities in Sana’a and Aden, as well as confiscation of assets and extortion. The sector has also lost a number of opportunities that may have otherwise been available if it were not for the outbreak of the conflict, like the development of licensing agreements and the progression to 4G technology. Investors in the telecommunications sector have been deterred from the Yemeni market despite its large size and the fact that many services are not currently being provided by the companies operating in the sector.

The sector faces a large number of challenges, the most serious of which are: the unsuitability of the legal and institutional regulatory environments; fragmentation of public entities in the sector; unproductive accusations made by the parties to the conflict; the lack of separation between political, regulatory and operational roles within the sector; and the reliance on a weak and fragile infrastructure to provide these services. Other challenges include the restrictions imposed on importing equipment, difficulty accessing a number of districts and entire governorates to carry out necessary repairs, declining revenues for the companies, and the increase of fees being levied by both the authorities in Sana’a and in Aden, compounded by the population’s general impoverishment and limited purchasing power.

To strengthen the role of Yemen’s telecommunications, there must be efforts in the short term to depoliticize the sector during the conflict, repair operator networks, introduce new services (such as video conferencing and digital financial services), and work to lower internet tariffs—this paper does not provide an analysis of how to achieve a viable mix of upgraded services and affordable prices while still maintaining the feasibility of new investments. In the medium and long term, efforts to draft new telecommunications laws must continue, in addition to separating regulatory and operational roles, developing the regulatory and institutional environment, encouraging private investment, and updating educational programs and university curricula to ensure that they are up-to-date with ongoing developments in the field of telecommunications and information technology. These curricula and programs must meet the local market’s needs for specialized labor – by Mansoor al-Bashiri

https://sanaacenter.org/publications/main-publications/12721

cp1b Am wichtigsten: USA stufen Huthis als Terroristen ein / Most important: US terror designation against Houthis

Frühere Berichte / Earlier reports: https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-mosaik-708-yemen-war-mosaic-708-1

Siehe / Look at cp1

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Int. Crisis rroup: The U.S. Should Reverse Its Huthi Terror Designation

The outgoing Trump administration has designated Yemen’s Huthi rebels a terrorist organisation. Proponents argue the measure will provide leverage with the Huthis, but in reality it will hurt efforts to end the war and could precipitate famine. The incoming Biden administration should rescind it immediately.

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. The action is also bad for UN-led efforts to end the war. And it arguably runs counter to U.S. interests and harms the security of Washington’s Gulf allies.

For these reasons, the incoming Biden administration should reverse the Huthis’ designation as soon as possible upon taking office. In the meantime, the Trump administration should state unequivocally what exceptions and licences it has put in place to allow for the continued flow of humanitarian aid into Yemen and expand them to include commercial imports. Without such steps, famine is all but certain to follow.

The debate over the merits and risks of a designation is not new. Proponents of a designation, namely Saudi Arabia and its Yemeni allies along with the United Arab Emirates, have been unable to win the war militarily and contend that fighting will only end when the Huthis, now in the ascendant militarily and confident in their status as de facto rulers of north-western Yemen, have been forced into “behaviour change” by economic and political pressure. They also argue that the designation is warranted because the Huthis fulfil the criteria for it by engaging in indiscriminate attacks upon civilians in Yemen as well as firing rockets and missiles at Saudi Arabia and attacking shipping in the Red Sea. As the most recent example, they cite a missile they claim the movement launched at Aden’s international airport in southern Yemen to target the newly formed Yemeni government that had just arrived there on 30 December. The Huthis deny responsibility for the strike.

Critics of the designation, including Crisis Group, approach the issue from a different angle. They argue, first and foremost, that the designation will impose dire collective punishment on the estimated 20 million people who live in Huthi-controlled areas. Yemen is a poor country in peacetime; in wartime, ordinary people have become too impoverished to pay for basic foodstuffs, leaving them increasingly dependent on extensive humanitarian aid. As detailed below, the designation will send a chill through aid agencies, which will fear running afoul of the U.S., and it could throw international trade with Yemen into a deep freeze. Food will become scarce and costlier, making it too expensive for most people to buy. Critics of the designation also contend that it will contribute little to resolving the conflict. The Huthis are likely to become more bellicose and make up any income they lose from taxing local markets by increasing tariffs on goods, pushing the cost of living to even more unsustainable levels for ordinary Yemenis. They are also likely to rely more heavily on Iran, their main external backer, for economic and political support – an outcome the U.S. says it is determined to avoid.

The Huthis’ ties with Iran are not the only issue where Washington’s actions are likely to prove counterproductive to its stated goals. Huthi officials say they will take “reciprocal” action as the designation’s impact becomes clear.

The designation also complicates UN-led efforts to negotiate a ceasefire and convene political talks about ways to end the war. These efforts were already stalling, and in dire need of a boost from the U.S., as both the Huthis and the government seem resolved to pursue a military victory. The Huthis may now choose to boycott the UN envoy, whom they sporadically accuse of being a tool of U.S. interests.

Along with UN and humanitarian officials, Crisis Group has repeatedly raised these concerns with senior U.S. officials. But the proponents have won the day, having gained the support of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior Trump administration officials. Since mid-2020, a group of these officials have come to see a designation as another building block in their “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and as a source of much-needed leverage with the Huthis for the U.S. and its allies.

The U.S. officials’ rush to the finish line has had deeply troubling consequences. So eager was the Trump administration to designate the Huthis before leaving office that it announced the move before it had done its due diligence on limiting humanitarian harm. It made the announcement before the Treasury Department had prepared a package of licences that would assure the UN aid agencies and humanitarian NGOs that they could continue their work in Yemen without fear of civil or criminal penalties in the U.S. Treasury officials are now scrambling to complete this package before the designation takes effect on 19 January. Meanwhile, no such licence is being prepared for private-sector importers, meaning that trade inflows may grind to a halt even if the U.S. puts humanitarian waivers in place in time. Senior aid officials say that if food and other imports are frozen, there is little they can do to prevent a famine.

If it wants to ward off mass starvation, the Trump administration should immediately take mitigating steps.

But these measures are merely palliative – and inadequate at that. Never before has the U.S. slapped a terrorist designation on a group like the Huthis that controls this much territory (around 30 per cent of Yemen’s land mass) and administers (at least de facto) so many people (approximately twenty million Yemenis). Even with licences in place, international banks, insurers and commodity traders that grease the wheels of international trade could well conclude that the risk of legal censure in the U.S. outweighs the meagre profits offered by trade with Yemen. The only way to avoid additional impediments to the movement of trade is to lift the blanket designation of the Huthis.

That task will fall to the incoming Biden administration.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/yemen/us-should-reverse-its-huthi-terror-designation

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How the Trump Administration’s Foreign Terrorist Designation of the Houthis will solidify instability in Yemen and the Gulf—just in time for the incoming Biden Administration

Although the politics behind the terrorist designation are regional and global, its primary effects are on the country of Yemen. Tehran’s military involvement there has grown since the Trump administration reneged on the US’s commitments to the JCPOA nuclear deal in May 2018, setting off a spiral of severe economic turmoil in Iran. The local roots of Yemeni conflict are unfortunately too often lost in the discussions of larger regional and global political dynamics. Below, I trace how three key consequences will ensue from this latest move by the Trump administration, beginning with the situation in Yemen itself.

The first of these is Yemen’s dire humanitarian situation, which remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis

The second consequence is that the US’s terrorist designation will bolster the Houthis politically, by increasing local sympathy for them and decreasing the already endangered legitimacy of international mediation. Houthi political legitimacy is rooted in their discourse as an oppressed group challenging a Western-backed authoritarian government, first in the context of the global war on terror, and more recently since the 2011 Arab uprisings.

It is precisely this apparent double standard from which foreign actors, whether Iran, Russia, or the Yemen-based Sunni terrorist network Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, derive legitimacy when they act against the US. This is particularly risky in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s own contentious terrorist designation of the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood has risked isolating and radicalizing Yemen’s powerful Brotherhood-linked Islah Party. A key party to the Saudi-backed coalition and a clear adversary to the Houthis, the Islah have been weakened by intra-coalition divisions between the Saudis and Emiratis. In addition to the Houthis, the greatest non-state benefactor to the Yemeni conflict has been the Yemeni-based terrorist network Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Indeed, the further international marginalization of the Houthis as well as Islah could lead either to an eventual desperate alliance of convenience with their historical Salafist enemies in Al Qaeda. Along these lines, Mike Pompeo’s sudden, unsubstantiated claims of an Iranian support base to Al Qaeda could very well become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the US.

To add to complications of an international portrayal of a ‘legitimate government coalition’ fighting ‘Houthi rebels’, the conflict over the last several years has increasingly been characterized by infighting within the coalition, between the internationally recognized government Saudi Arabia backs and militias backed by the UAE.

In this context, a terrorist designation from a foreign power supporting Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while overlooking systematic human rights violations by these states, works to solidify the Houthis’ clout as revolutionaries representing Yemenis in the face of interference by foreign-backed dictators. This further minimizes incentives for the Houthis to reach settlements with Saudi Arabia, which they view as inextricably intertwined with the US. Such a designation will increase local and regional sympathies for the Houthis, while reducing the potential of conflict mediation.

The third consequence is related to the growing political utility of Yemen to an Iran on the defensive. As the question of whether a Biden administration will be able to return the US to the Iran nuclear deal looms in the coming year, there’s been much talk of whether stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is as important as its support to militias around the region, including the Houthis. But, impeding diplomacy and continuing crippling sanctions only serves to increase Tehran’s support to such Arab militias.

Alternatively, the situation in Yemen could become a bargaining chip for Iran: if Iran offers to reduce support to the Houthis, it could demand the US in turn reduce sanctions. This would be a form of low-hanging fruit to the Islamic Republic, for whom political returns in the form of revolutionary status have been greater than its actual material support to the Houthis.

Oversimplified understandings of political and religious identities in the MENA region have long contributed to misinformed and destabilizing policies by foreign interveners. These include the notion that the region is characterized by intractable sectarian divisions and that autocrats are bulwarks against violent non-state actors. Despite deep-rooted enmity between the Houthis and Al Qaeda, Hussein al-Houthi had seized on US support to President Saleh in the early 2000s to fight al Qaeda, capitalizing on an image of the US’s war on terror as a war on Muslims, and emphasizing themes of Muslim humiliation, revivalism, and unity. The reality is that the construction and salience of identities fluctuate in accordance with political incentives. Conceptions of national security threats as involving inflexible enemies—with no potential for common ground—facilitates intractable military conflict. US labeling of the Houthis as terrorists serves to entrench Houthi animosity to other parties, while in turn Houthi depictions of Saudi Arabia and the US as imperialists justify the Houthi revolutionaries’ control over Yemen. It also gives the Houthis greater legitimacy to demand support from state and non-state actors interested in challenging American hegemony. While no political identity is immutable, the label terrorist brings, in addition to economic implications for the wider Yemeni population, connotations that facilitate polarization along the very binaries off which the war thrives – by Caroline Tynan

https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/14/01/2021/how-trump-administrations-foreign-terrorist-designation-houthis-will-solidify

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Tod kommt aus Washington

Die scheidende US-Regierung schickt die Jemeniten in den Hungertod und legt so bei ihren letzten desaströsen Entscheidungen noch mal einen drauf. David Beasley, Chef des Welternährungsprogramms (WFP), bezeichnet die Entscheidung, die Huthi-Rebellen auf die Terrorliste zu setzen, als »Todesurteil für Hunderttausende, wenn nicht Millionen unschuldiger Menschen im Jemen.

Sogar der EU-Außenbeauftragte hat allen Mut zusammengekratzt und die US-Regierung kritisiert. Die vorbehaltlose Unterstützung der saudischen Kriegskoalition durch die USA torpediert auch den angelaufenen Versöhnungsprozess im Jemen. UN-Vermittler Martin Griffiths fürchtet »einen abschreckenden Effekt« auf seine Bemühungen, die Konfliktparteien zusammenzubringen. Aber von der UNO haben die USA eh nie viel gehalten. Offensichtlich geht es der Trump-Regierung zum wiederholten Mal darum, der Iran-Politik des künftigen US-Präsidenten Joe Biden vorzugreifen und eine Verwüstung zu hinterlassen.

https://www.neues-deutschland.de/artikel/1147062.jemen-tod-kommt-aus-washington.html

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US-Außenpolitik: Den Jemen schlagen, den Iran meinen

Die US-Regierung schlägt noch Pflöcke in ihrer Politik des "maximalen Drucks" gegen Teheran ein und erklärt die Huthis zur Terrororganisation. Die Rechnung zahlen Zivilisten

Nur geringe Erfolgsaussichten haben Appelle wie jener am Donnerstag von Mark Lowcock an die scheidende US-Regierung, ihre Entscheidung zu revidieren, die jemenitischen Ansarallah – besser bekannt als Huthi-Rebellen – doch nicht auf gleich zwei US-Terrorlisten zu setzen, als "Foreign Terrorist Organization" und als "Specially Designated Global Terrorist"-Gruppe. Die Zahlen Lowcocks, des Chefs des Uno-Amtes für die Koordinierung humanitärer Angelegenheiten (OCHA), sind dramatisch: Etwa 50.000 Menschen im Kriegsland Jemen sind bereits von einer echten Hungersnot betroffen – viele von ihnen werden sterben –, 16 Millionen leiden an Hunger, fünf Millionen sind nur einen Schritt entfernt davon.

"Gegen den Rat praktisch aller, die im humanitären, wirtschaftlichen und diplomatischen Bereich zu Jemen arbeiten", so schreibt die International Crisis Group (CG), erfolge der US-Schritt, der am Tag vor der Angelobung Joe Bidens in Kraft treten soll. Damit wird das von den Huthis gehaltene Gebiet praktisch isoliert. Auch im US-Kongress gibt es kritische Stimmen, denn Ausnahmen und Lizenzen für in Jemen tätige Hilfsorganisationen, aber auch für den Import von Lebensmitteln und anderen lebenswichtigen Gütern durch den Privatsektor wurden noch nicht ausgearbeitet. Das ist umso erstaunlicher, als die Listung der Huthis als Terrororganisation ein Projekt ist, an dem das US-Außenministerium bereits lange arbeitet.

Die Entscheidung dürfte zwei Hauptstoßrichtungen haben: Erstens hinterlässt man einmal mehr der antretenden Biden-Regierung Fakten, die ihr den Start und die Aufnahme einer eigenen politischen Linie erschweren. US-Außenminister Mike Pompeo schießt derzeit in hoher Geschwindigkeit neue Maßnahmen aus dem State Department, die sein Nachfolger, Anthony Blinken, erst einmal in den Griff bekommen muss. Eine Organisation wie die Huthis von der Terrorliste wieder herunterzunehmen ist politisch heikel. Washington wird sich also vor allem damit beschäftigen müssen, die humanitären Folgen abzumildern.

Zweitens – und vor allem – sind die neuen Maßnahmen gegen die Huthis auch Teil der "Maximum Pressure"-Politik der Trump-Regierung gegen den Iran. Sie hat ja nicht die erwünschten Resultate erzielt, nun sollen noch ein paar Pflöcke eingeschlagen werden – von Gudrun Harrer

https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000123310110/us-aussenpolitik-den-jemen-schlagen-den-iran-meinen

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Biden team says recent Trump foreign policy moves ‘feel like sabotage’

Up until now, Biden transition officials had shied away from publicly criticizing recent policy changes, but in an exclusive conversation with the PBS NewsHour, a transition official detailed a number of issues with the outgoing administration’s approach, singling out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in particular.

“Most of Yemen is at risk of starvation so that Mike Pompeo can feed his own domestic political ambitions.”

“We will manage this, but it does start, at some point, to feel like sabotage. Not only do they know we don’t want to implement some of these approaches; they don’t even want to implement them,” a transition official said. “Which is why they’re doing them now, rather than at any other point in the previous four years.”

“Secretary of State Pompeo is literally risking hundreds of thousands of lives,” the Biden transition official told PBS NewsHour. “Most of Yemen is at risk of starvation so that Mike Pompeo can feed his own domestic political ambitions. This is not about any special affinity we have for the Houthis. But the Trump administration’s actions are only further harming the people of Yemen, who have already suffered unimaginably. This is childish and silly, and we’re not going to let it box us in.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/biden-team-says-recent-trump-foreign-policy-moves-feel-like-sabotage

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Calls grow for Biden to reject Houthi ‘terrorist’ designation

Civil society, faith groups urge US president-elect to overturn decision to label Yemen’s Houthis as ‘terrorists’.

Dozens of civil society and faith-based groups in the United States are urging President-elect Joe Biden to overturn the Trump administration’s decision to label Yemen’s Houthis a “terrorist” organisation.

In a letter (PDF) to Biden on Friday, 50 organisations including the National Council of Churches and Health Alliance International said “rather than being a catalyst for peace, these designations are a recipe for more conflict and famine”.

They will “prevent the delivery of critical humanitarian assistance to millions of innocent people, greatly hurt the prospects for a negotiated settlement to the conflict, and further undermine U.S. national security interests in the region”, the letter reads.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/15/calls-grow-for-biden-to-reject-houthi-terrorist-designation

letter also here: https://twitter.com/FCNL/status/1350139470042050567/photo/1

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US designation of Houthis as terrorists harms Saudi Arabia, not Iran & will only cause more suffering for Yemen

Whilst the so-called ‘unity government’ has been formed, it cannot be considered as a be-all end-all solution for Yemen’s brutal war, as Ansarallah still remains the biggest player in Yemen, in terms of its military power and control of vital territory. Ansarallah has not been included in the newly formed ‘unity government’ and the US’ decision to register the group as a terrorist organization, will, according to the UN, derail peace talks from going ahead between the group and its Saudi-backed opposition.

The so-called threat of Iran to the Persian-Gulf Arab States has played one of the biggest roles in allowing for the war in Yemen to continue, pushing the regimes to pursue alternative trade routes, negating the Iranian controlled Strait of Hormuz.

On top of all of this, the designation does not even benefit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). A prolonged military conflict, instead of a negotiated peace settlement with Ansarallah will further drain the resources of Saudi-backed forces on the battlefield, as well as mean an escalation of attacks on mainland Saudi Arabia.

Despite Ansarallah having condemned the designation announcement, its military wing is likely to use this moment as a justification for further offensive actions in its favor. As a registered terrorist organization, it would be nearly impossible for an officially diplomatically achieved settlement to be reached and hence will push the Saudi-Emirati-backed forces opposing the group to engage in the only remaining solution. The same solution that has completely failed them since the start of the war in 2015.

However, despite the hardline rhetoric, this terrorist designation will have about as little effect on Iran, as the designation of Gaza’s Hamas has had. If anything, the added pressure placed on Saudi Arabia to end its war internationally, as well as the military might of the Houthis’ cruise-missile strikes on its infrastructure, will perhaps give Iran favorable leverage over the KSA.

What is clear now is that this move will increase the suffering of the Yemeni civilian population, pushing Saudi Arabia to engage in the sole option remaining, a military one.

Trump seems to be throwing as many hurdles as possible at the incoming Biden administration in order to prevent this from occurring. The impact the designation of the Ansarallah as a terrorist group will mean that if Joe Biden wishes to truly pursue peace in Yemen, he must reverse the registration of the group.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/512684-us-saudi-arabia-iran-yemen/

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U.N. says U.S. blacklisting of Yemen group may hinder bid to avert oil spill

The United Nations is concerned that a U.S. plan to blacklist Yemen’s Houthi movement on Tuesday will hinder its efforts to assess a decaying oil tanker that is threatening to spill 1.1 million barrels of crude oil off the war-torn country’s coast.

“We are continuing to prepare for the Safer tanker assessment and are broadly on track with this work,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.

“However we have to look at potential impact of the (U.S. designation) on the Safer mission – there are questions about potential legal jeopardy for the people who are going to do the mission, which of course we all want to avoid,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-un/u-n-says-u-s-blacklisting-of-yemen-group-may-hinder-bid-to-avert-oil-spill-idUSKBN29K22Z?rpc=401&

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Yemen: US terrorist designation of Ansar Allah: Risk alert and humanitarian impact (14 January 2021)

Designating Ansar Allah as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist risks:

Significantly increasing food prices in a country where an estimated 16.2 million people (54% of the population) are already facing high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above).

The number of people facing food insecurity is expected to rise in the coming six months (IPC 3/12/2020). A designation could further accelerate this process.

The majority of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity live in Ansar Allah controlled areas.

Intensifying conflict over stable frontlines that could displace up to 900,000 people.

Yemeni officials and other Yemeni political actors in support of the designation believe the move could add leverage to negotiations. However, there is a high risk the designation will increase humanitarian suffering and trigger an escalation in conflict.

Reducing aid funding and increasing the cost and time it takes to deliver aid in a country where 80% of people rely on humanitarian assistance.

Causing the business sector, especially importers and financial institutions, to withdraw from, or further limit their engagement with Yemen, narrowing the pipeline of hard currency which Yemen relies on to keep essential food, fuel and medicine flowing .

Hampering peace efforts through both formal and informal (Track II) channels.

Waivers and authorisations are essential to help mitigate against the humanitarian impact of a designation. Lessons learned from previous cases have showed the importance of their timeliness. However, issuing, understanding, and implementing the exemptions will take time. Given the speed at which this legislation is being introduced, and the complexities of the operating environment in Yemen, it is extremely unlikely that waivers and authorisations will be broad enough, or introduced quickly enough, to prevent disruptions to humanitarian operations or the banking systems, supply chains and transport networks that humanitarian actors and ordinary Yemenis rely on. There are no authorisations which can protect humanitarian actors from prosecution under the material support clauses of the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Nationality Act.

https://www.acaps.org/sites/acaps/files/products/files/210114_acaps_yemen_risk_alert_ansar_allah_fto_designation_0.pdf = https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-us-terrorist-designation-ansar-allah-risk-alert-and-humanitarian-impact-14

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Yemenis fear cuts to imports, remittances after U.S. blacklists Houthis

Yemenis fear a U.S. decision to blacklist the Houthi movement could further isolate them from the global financial system, depriving the war-battered country of vital remittances and hampering the flow of imports.

The World Bank estimates one in 10 Yemenis rely on remittances, already down sharply due to the coronavirus pandemic. Severe inflation has put many basic goods out of reach, foreign reserves have dwindled and a divided central bank has struggled to pay public-sector salaries.

“I live in a state of fear. I heard if the American decision is implemented, my brother won’t be able to send money. I will lose my family’s only source of food,” said government employee Ahmed Hassan, 43, who has not received wages for four years.

Yosra Abdullah’s family, who also live in Houthi-controlled northern Yemen, rely on relatives living in Saudi Arabia and the United States to survive.

“If the decision is enacted, it will hit remittances, the family situation will deteriorate,” she told Reuters while shopping at a supermarket in the capital Sanaa.

There was no sign of people rushing to stock up on goods at markets and shops in Sanaa visited by Reuters on Thursday ahead of the designation of the Iran-aligned Houthi group as a foreign terrorist organisation going into effect on Jan. 19.

But many fear trade and commercial operations will be paralysed in a country that imports 90% of its food.

“The biggest problem since the conflict began is money transfers into Yemen ... We try to get it from some Arab countries, but from Europe it is largely banned,” said Adnan Shiban, who runs a charity kitchen supported by foreign donations. “It will get worse.”

“We are feeling in the dark,” said a humanitarian worker who declined to be named.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security/yemenis-fear-cuts-to-imports-remittances-after-u-s-blacklists-houthis-idUSKBN29J2JF?rpc=401&

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Audio: Trump Team Stymies Diplomacy in Yemen

The Trump Administration has declared Houthis a terror group. In doing so, the road to a diplomatic resolution of the Saudi‐led war in Yemen is that much more difficult. John Glaser comments.

https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/trump-team-stymies-diplomacy-yemen

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US rejects UN plea to reverse Yemen rebel terror designation

The U.S. deputy ambassador, Richard Mills, told the Security Council the U.S. has listened to warnings of the terrorist designation’s humanitarian impact and will take measures to reduce the impact on aid deliveries and commercial imports.

“But we do believe that this step is the right move forward to send the right signal if we want the political process to move forward,” he said.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-middle-east-famine-united-nations-yemen-0c724e56719b8415df89a0643d59e590

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Film: Yemen: Top United Nations officials urge US to revoke blacklisting of Houthis | World News

Three top United Nations officials all called on the United States on Thursday to revoke its decision to designate Yemen's Houthis a foreign terrorist organization, warning it would push the country into a large-scale famine and chill peace efforts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2LZBp44hHM

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Top U.N. officials urge U.S. to revoke blacklisting of Yemen's Houthis, warn of famine

Three top United Nations officials all called on the United States on Thursday to revoke its decision to designate Yemen’s Houthis a foreign terrorist organization, warning it would push the country into a large-scale famine and chill peace efforts.

U.N. Yemen mediator Martin Griffiths, U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock and U.N. food chief David Beasley issued their warnings during a U.N. Security Council meeting on Yemen.

“We fear that there will be inevitably a chilling effect on my efforts to bring the parties together,” Griffiths told the 15-member body. “The decision will contribute to the prospect of famine in Yemen and should be revoked based on humanitarian grounds at the earliest opportunity.”

“We are struggling now without the designation. With the designation, it’s going to be catastrophic. It literally is going to be a death sentence to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent people in Yemen,” said Beasley, a former governor of South Carolina.

“This designation - it needs to be reassessed, it needs to be reevaluated. And quite frankly, it needs to be reversed,” he said.

While the United Nations and aid groups help about a third of Yemen’s 28 million people, Lowcock stressed commercial imports are key to ensuring millions more have access to food.

He said a U.S. plan to issue licenses and exemptions to allow aid agencies to continue working will not prevent a famine in Yemen, which relies almost solely on imports.

“Aid agencies cannot – they simply cannot - replace the commercial import system,” said Lowcock, warning the U.S. decision would push Yemen into a “famine on a scale that we have not seen for nearly 40 years.”

“What would prevent it? A reversal of the (U.S.) decision,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/yemen-security-un-int/top-u-n-officials-urge-u-s-to-revoke-blacklisting-of-yemens-houthis-warn-of-famine-idUSKBN29J22D

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UN warnt vor Hungersnot im Jemen - Kritik an US-Terrorliste

Nach dem Beschluss der US-Regierung, die Huthi-Rebellen im Jemen auf ihre Terrorliste zu setzen, befürchten Helfer katastrophale Folgen für Millionen Menschen.

Die Vereinten Nationen warnen vor einer Hungersnot.

«Unsere Kinder blicken jeden Tag dem Tod ins Auge. Sie bekommen kein Essen, keine Gesundheitsversorgung und keines ihrer Rechte», sagte Fatma Ahmad der Deutschen Presse-Agentur. «Der Krieg hat uns alles geraubt», sagt Ahmad, Mutter eines stark unterernährten Mädchens. Es gebe «keine Gehälter oder Medizin» und auch kein «Essen, um den Magen zu füllen».

UN-Nothilfekoordinator Mark Lowcock schrieb bei Twitter: «Es könnte der Tropfen sein, der das Fass im Jemen zum Überlaufen bringt.» Nun drohe «nicht nur eine kleine Hungersnot, sondern eine wirklich gewaltige». Das UN-Kinderhilfswerk Unicef hatte im Oktober bereits Höchstwerte bei der akuten Unterernährung von Kindern unter fünf Jahren gemeldet.

https://www.stern.de/news/streit-um-huthi-rebellen-un-warnt-vor-hungersnot-im-jemen---kritik-an-us-terrorliste-9565586.html = https://www.blick.ch/news/international-un-warnt-vor-hungersnot-im-jemen-kritik-an-us-terrorliste-id16292461.html

und auch https://linkezeitung.de/2021/01/16/uno-prognostiziert-dass-die-einstufung-der-houthi-durch-die-usa-als-terroristen-zu-einer-hungersnot-fuehren-wird-wie-sie-seit-40-jahren-nicht-mehr-aufgetreten-ist/

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U.N. aid chief to urge U.S. to reverse plan to blacklist Yemen's Houthis

U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock will on Thursday urge Washington to reverse a plan to designate Yemen’s Houthis a foreign terrorist organization, warning the move would push the country into a “famine on a scale that we have not seen for nearly 40 years.”

In prepared remarks for a briefing of the U.N. Security Council, seen by Reuters, Lowcock will tell the 15-member body that a U.S. plan to issue licenses and exemptions to allow aid agencies to continue working will not prevent a famine in Yemen, which relies almost solely on imports.

“What would prevent it? A reversal of the (U.S.) decision,” Lowcock will say. “Aid agencies cannot – they simply cannot - replace the commercial import system.”

“The data show that 16 million people will go hungry this year. Already, about 50,000 people are essentially starving to death in what is essentially a small famine. Another 5 million are just one step behind them,” Lowcock will say.

While the United Nations and aid groups help about a third of Yemen’s 28 million people, Lowcock will stress commercial imports are key to ensuring millions more have access to food.

“Yemen imports 90% of its food. Nearly all that food is brought in through commercial channels. Aid agencies give people vouchers or cash to buy commercially imported food in the market,” Lowcock will say.

https://www.reuters.com/article/yemen-security-un-int/u-n-aid-chief-to-urge-u-s-to-reverse-plan-to-blacklist-yemens-houthis-idUSKBN29I386

and

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Aid chief: US naming Yemen rebels terrorists a famine threat

The U.N. humanitarian chief is urging the United States to reverse its decision to declare Yemen’s Houthi rebels a terrorist group, warning that the designation will likely lead to “a large-scale famine on a scale that we have not seen for nearly 40 years.”

Mark Lowcock planned to make the appeal in a speech to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.

Lowcock said data show that 16 million of Yemen’s 30 million people will go hungry this year.

“Already, about 50,000 people are essentially starving to death in what is essentially a small famine,” he said. “Another 5 million are just one step behind them.”

Lowcock said every decision made now must take this into account.

Stressing that the terrorist designation has companies pulling back from dealing with Yemenis, Lowcock warned that famine will not be prevented by the licenses the United States has said it will introduce so some humanitarian aid and imports can continue to reach Yemen.

“What would prevent it? A reversal of the decision,” Lowcock said.

He said Yemen imports 90% of its food, nearly all purchased through commercial channels, so aid shipments cannot be enough to stave off hunger.

“Aid agencies give people vouchers or cash to buy commercially imported food in the market. Aid agencies cannot -- they simply cannot -- replace the commercial import system,” he said.

Lowcock, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the U.N. talked to commercial traders when the U.S. first raised the possibility of designating the Houthis as terrorists, and they said they weren’t sure they would be able to continue importing food.

After the U.S. announcement, Lowcock said, the U.N. went back to the traders and “the Yemeni companies who bring in most of the food are using words like `disaster,’ `havoc’ and `unimaginable’ when they describe to us what they fear is coming.”

He said global suppliers, bankers, shippers and insurers for Yemen companies are “very risk-averse” and some are now phoning their Yemeni partners saying “they now plan to walk away from Yemen altogether.”

“They say the risks are too high,” Lowcock said. “They fear being accidentally or otherwise caught up in U.S. regulatory action which would put them out of business or into jail.”

He said some hope they can keep going but if they can “their best-case estimate is that costs could go up by 400 percent” which would make it too expensive for many importers to do business and too expensive for Yemenis to buy food.

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-famine-united-nations-yemen-1d6a4d9a636cb9106a4ab634ea69877c

and also https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/un-urges-us-reverse-houthi-terror-designation

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The Elders warn Yemen famine will be worsened by US designation of Houthis as terrorists

The Elders today expressed concern that the severe famine and humanitarian crisis in Yemen will be worsened by the US Government’s designation of one of the parties in the conflict as terrorists.

Due to enter into force on 19 January, just one day before the Trump Administration’s term in office ends, this designation will severely impact the lives of Yemenis, and all commercial trade with the country.

This US action will punish the whole of the Yemeni population, raising the prospect of mass famine and significant loss of life, and possibly make a future diplomatic solution even more difficult, the Elders warned. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world and exacerbating this situation will increase instability in an already fractured and fractious region.

Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General and Deputy Chair of The Elders, said:

“I am deeply worried by this action, especially its timing. It is likely to be counter-productive to the goal we should now all be focusing our energies on: ending this disastrous war as soon as possible and protecting the lives of the Yemeni people. I fear that this move may make the Houthis even less inclined to engage with the international community.”

The Elders expressed their hope that the incoming Biden Administration will make ending the war a high priority and give renewed support to talks led by UN special envoy Martin Griffiths.

https://theelders.org/news/elders-warn-yemen-famine-will-be-worsened-us-designation-houthis-terrorists

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Film: What is the current humanitarian situation in Yemen. What are our fears for the future given recent US decision.

https://twitter.com/jnbeuze/status/1349302562378428418

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Designating the Houthis Threaten Aid

It’s brutal what’s happening against civilians in Yemen. I don’t know how much more suffering civilians can tolerate. Life is already hell in Yemen. The designation would have disastrous ramification on the already dire economic & humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Accountability for Houthis abuses is very crucial but does the US State Department realize that this action would harm civilians more than the Houthis? & would threaten humanitarian aid on which millions of Yemenis rely on for survival?

Comes to my mind now the words of the UN’s @UNReliefChief Mark Lowcock, “Yemenis are not “going hungry”. They are being starved.” Such designation would lead to exacerbating an already shocking level of hunger in Yemen.

The designation would have a devastating effect on the humanitarian response in Yemen, in the short & long terms. As if the current death toll wasn't enough! With such designation, the U.S. would risk complicity in hundreds of thousands of preventable civilian deaths in Yemen.
Amid shocking levels of hunger in Yemen, extreme shortages of humanitarian funds & a gruelling environment for aid groups to operate at, the designation would worsen the already terrible situation. International aid groups have warned a while ago that blacklisting the Houthis would cost innocent lives in Yemen.
We in Human Rights Watch warned last month how the designation would threaten aid – by Afrah Nasser, HRW

http://afrahnasser.blogspot.com/2021/01/designating-houthis-threaten-aid.html

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Oxfam calls on President-elect Biden to revoke Houthi terrorist designation in Yemen and end arms sales

“The Foreign Terrorist Organization designation that Secretary Pompeo has chosen to apply is by far the most severe–and the most deadly–for Yemeni families,” says Scott Paul, Oxfam’s humanitarian advisor in Washington. “It will block US humanitarian aid, goods, and personnel from entering northern Yemen, where 70 percent of the population lives, and substantially reduce them throughout the rest of the country.”

The Houthi terrorist designation could also “in effect freeze years of effort to achieve political resolution, since it further supports the perception that the US is being partial to Saudi Arabia,” says Abdulwasea Mohammed, Oxfam’s policy and advocacy advisor in Sana’a, Yemen.

Though justice and accountability for the many violations committed by the warring parties are sorely needed, a terrorism designation will not provide them. But it will have severe consequences on those most impacted by the crisis, which Paul says “will be felt acutely across a country also hit hard by extreme hunger, cholera and Covid-19 ... as banks, businesses and humanitarian donors become unwilling or unable to take on the risk of operating in Yemen.”

Oxfam is calling on the incoming Biden administration to revoke the terrorist designation due to take effect the day before inauguration. “Every day these designations remain in place will compound the suffering of Yemen’s most vulnerable families. We call on President-elect Biden to revoke them immediately upon taking office,” Paul urged in a statement on January 11.

https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/oxfam-calls-president-elect-biden-revoke-houthi-terrorist-designation-yemen-and-end-arms-sales/

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Red Cross fears U.S. move against Yemen's Houthis to impede aid

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday it feared that the U.S. designation of Houthi fighters in Yemen as a terrorist group would lead to a “chilling effect” on delivering vital aid to starving and sick civilians.

ICRC director of operations Dominik Stillhart said the agency urged states imposing such measures to consider “humanitarian carve-outs” to mitigate any negative impact on populations and on impartial aid.

https://www.reuters.com/article/yemen-security-redcross-int/red-cross-fears-u-s-move-against-yemens-houthis-to-impede-aid-idUSKBN29J1JA

and

(A H P)

A statement from Dominik Stillhart, director of ICRC operations

the ICRC is concerned by the potential negative impact of the U.S designation of Ansarullah as a foreign terrorist organisation on the humanitarian situation in Yemen, as well as on the provision of impartial humanitarian assistance to those in need. In particular, the ICRC is concerned about the possible "chilling effect" the designation may have on humanitarian action, leading to it being impeded or delayed. Increased operational risks and possible de-risking from the banking and private sectors in response to the designation ultimately may constrain the humanitarian response in Yemen.

States that decide to impose such measures must consider the humanitarian consequences and take steps, such as humanitarian carve-outs, to mitigate any negative impact on affected populations and on impartial humanitarian action.

https://www.icrc.org/en/document/yemen-indiscriminate-airport-attack-means-many-families-are-mourning

and

(A P)

Photo: In wake of US likely designation of Ansarullah as FTO, Al-MasaPress has published an image for Abdullah Yahya al Hakim (Pic R) in a meeting with ICRC officials, who is 1 of 3 leaders U.S. to designate them as SDGTs.

This meeting wit ICRC could be a message that the U.S. designation is going to be a blow to the US as all UN agencies have to meet with Ansarullah officials, including those designated, or the humanitarian catastrophe is going to continue moving from the bad to worse to boycott

https://twitter.com/Naseh_Shaker/status/1349526066579312640

referring to http://www.masa-press.net/2021/01/14/%d8%b1%d8%b3%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a9-%d9%82%d9%88%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d9%8a%d8%b1%d8%af-%d8%a8%d9%87%d8%a7-%d8%a3%d8%a8%d9%88-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%a7%d9%83%d9%85-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%89-%d9%82%d8%b1/

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Analysis: US ban on Yemeni Ansarullah: What are goals and effects?

But why is the outgoing administration making such a move? What effects could this move have on Yemeni political scope?

Frustration with war

As an answer to the question about the motivation behind designating Ansarullah as an international terrorist organization, there should be a reference to the resistant movement’s victories against the Saudis and their allies. The movement now has an upper hand both on the battleground and also the political ground over the Saudi-Emirati aggression and its home and foreign backers, hence powerfully and smartly marring all plots designed by foreign sides.

Maintaining the Yemen crisis

Certainly, one of the objectives behind the Ansarullah designation is to put political and economic pressures on Sana’a.

Politically, blocking any advancement of the intra-Yemeni talks aimed at ending the transition from the crisis and war from which the Yemenis have been suffering for years to security and stability is on the White House agenda.

The US counterterrorism legislation, approved in 1996 by Congress, bans and criminalizes roughly any cooperation and trade ties with any group blacklisted by Washington as a terrorist organization.

Setting patterns for Biden administration

Another goal behind the White House move is related to a possible deal made with the Saudis: In exchange for Saudi facilitation of the Arab-Israeli normalization, the White House in the closing days of the Trump government obligates Biden to back the Saudis in the Yemen crisis by blacklisting Ansarullah.

Despite all these goals set by the Americans, the blacklisting remains largely symbolic and would not impact the movement’s position and power both on the political and war stages. In the past, Washington blacklisted other resistant movements like Lebanese Hezbollah and some units of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to undermine them, but what is observable is the bold presence of Hezbollah and the PMF in home and regional developments.

https://en.abna24.com/news//analysis-us-ban-on-yemeni-ansarullah-what-are-goals-and-effects_1105819.html

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How US terror designation against Yemen's Houthis could prolong the war

Should the Biden administration push for a political solution in Yemen, this designation will present an obstacle

Yet, the negatives of designating the Houthis as a terrorist organisation outweigh any potential positives. In Yemen, where more than two million children under five do not have enough to eat and more than 24 million people need humanitarian assistance, the US move will make aid agencies’ missions in Yemen even harder.

Michael Page, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, told Middle East Eye: “Yemeni civilians already face existential threats to their survival, including a looming risk of famine. The Trump administration’s last-minute, cynical designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organisation will simply add another burden for Yemeni civilians trying to survive, as it could force humanitarian aid groups to limit or end delivering critical aid that millions of Yemenis rely on in areas under Houthi control, where the bulk of the country’s population lives.”

Thus, it appears the US move will not benefit average Yemenis much. Rather, citizens will likely be the main victims.

Since the takeover of Sanaa, the Houthis have increasingly been portrayed as “Iran-backed”. Yet, while Tehran stepped up military assistance to the Houthis after the eruption of its ongoing, six-year war, Iran does not control the group’s decision-making.

Iran’s influence in Yemen is often exaggerated.

Meanwhile, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, told MEE: “This step is not in America’s interest as it will insulate America from playing any political role in the future, whether in Yemen or in the region, as Yemen has become a regional power… “This decision by an outgoing administration makes no sense from the political, moral or national security point-of-view,” the former deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Sanaa, Nabeel Khoury, told MEE. “The designation would apply to all parties involved in the war in Yemen, since they are all likely guilty of war crimes, or it wouldn’t apply at all.”

The designation of the Houthis as terrorists will take effect on 19 January, the day before president-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. Should the Biden administration push for a political solution in Yemen, it is likely that the designation will prove to be an obstacle.

“Politically, if you want peace in Yemen, the Houthis are an important player in this war; you need to be able to negotiate with them,” Khoury said. “So, designating them as terrorists would complicate things for the Biden administration, which has the intention of trying to end the war … The Houthis themselves will be less inclined to talk to American diplomats if they are officially designated as terrorists. An American peace initiative will now be a more difficult proposition than it was before the designation.”

UN-led peace efforts may also be negatively impacted by the US move.

For the peace process to succeed in Yemen, no party should be excluded from the dialogue - particularly the Houthis, who are a significant factor in the equation. It is not clear yet as to whether the Saudi-led coalition will take advantage of the US designation to prolong or expand its military campaign in Yemen, which would push the warring parties even further from a political solution.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-us-terror-designation-against-yemens-houthis-could-prolong-war

and also https://www.yenisafak.com/en/news/us-terror-label-of-houthis-raises-concerns-over-yemen-3558678 (giving to much emphasize to one biased interviewee)

https://global.ilmanifesto.it/trump-administration-adds-houthis-to-terror-list-a-fatal-move-for-yemen/

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International organizations begin to evacuate their staff from Sana’a following the revealed US intent to designate Houthis a terrorist organization./Voice of Yemen website

https://www.alsahwa-yemen.net/en/p-44480

(A P)

Extracts of the Noon Briefing on Yemen by the UN Secretary-General Spokesperson - 13 Jan 2021

Just to say that we, of course, continue to be extremely concerned about the potential impact of the US designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. And that is the impact on the humanitarian situation in Yemen — particularly on the risk of famine. Yemen remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

https://osesgy.unmissions.org/extracts-noon-briefing-yemen-un-secretary-general-spokesperson

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Iran reacts to US terrorist designation of Ansarullah

The spokesperson of the Iranian foreign ministry on Wed. named the US designation of the Ansarullah movement as a terrorist group, as Trump's latest efforts to complete its destructive role in the imposed war in Yemen.

Saeed Khatibzadeh named the act as the Trump administration's latest efforts to complete its destructive role in the shameful imposed war in Yemen and to stall a political solution and peace talks.

He added that since the beginning of the war in Yemen, the United States has been a major sponsor of Saudi-led coalition crimes in Yemen and has not spared any financial or weapons assistance.

"The Trump administration has ignited and continued the war and blocked any chances for a possible political solution to this crisis," the spokesperson noted.

Censuring the US behaviors and decisions in this regard such as obstruction of aid to Yemen, he noted that such actions will impede the peace-seeking missions of the UN.

He called for the international community to react against Trump's vicious decision

https://en.mehrnews.com/news/168514/Iran-reacts-to-US-terrorist-designation-of-Ansarullah

and also https://ifpnews.com/us-trying-to-force-yemen-peace-talks-into-deadlock-by-blacklisting-ansarullah-iran

https://en.irna.ir/news/84184998/Iran-Foreign-Ministry-reacts-to-US-terrorist-designation-of-Ansarullah

(A P)

Tribal Cohesion Council: US, The Mother, Source of Terrorism Since Its Establishing

https://english.almasirah.net/post/17157/Tribal-Cohesion-Council-US%2C-The-Mother%2C-Source-of-Terrorism-Since-Its-Establishing

(A P)

John Brady TD expresses concern at implications of Trump decision on humanitarian agencies in Yemen

Sinn Féin spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and Defence John Brady TD today expressed his concern at the constraints that will be placed upon humanitarian agencies attempting to deal with the crisis in Yemen, following the decision of the Trump administration to classify the Houthis as a terrorist organisation.

https://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/59437

(A P)

Anna McMorrin responds to US designation of Yemen Houthis as terrorist organisation

Anna McMorrin MP, Labour’s Shadow International Development Minister, commenting on the United States designating Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist organisation, said:

“This damning decision to designate Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist organisation will have a catastrophic impact on the distribution of life-saving aid amidst the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis.

“Millions of innocent Yemenis who have no free choice to live under Houthi control will pay the price for this dangerous move which represents a last-ditch attempt by the outgoing Trump administration to tie the diplomatic hands of President-Elect Biden and drive a coach and horses through his promised peace efforts.

https://labour.org.uk/press/anna-mcmorrin-responds-to-us-designation-of-yemen-houthis-as-terrorist-organisation/

(A P)

Russia: US Plan to Label Houthis as Terrorists Can Have Negative Impact on Situation in Yemen

Washington's intention to label the Houthis as 'terrorist' may have negative consequences for the Yemeni settlement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Speaking at a press conference after meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud on Thursday, Lavrov indicated that he would very much like it if a political settlement in Yemen was not affected by the US move, RIA Novosti reported.

"But many, including representatives of the UN, are expressing fears that a negative effect may appear," Lavrov added.

https://www.farsnews.ir/en/news/13991025000542/Rssia-US-Plan-Label-Hhis-as-Terrriss-Can-Have-Negaive-Impac-n-Siain

and also https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/us-terror-label-on-houthis-may-have-negative-effect/2110376

(A P)

World dares not speak genocide in Yemen: EU parl. member

A member of the European Parliament has lambasted the double standards by the United States and Europe on human rights, saying that the world dares not speak of the humanitarian disaster created by the genocide in Yemen.

Mick Wallace, an independent Irish member of the European Parliament, made the comments in a tweet on Friday, following the recent US sanctions against the Ansarullah movement and the banning of the Yemeni Foreign Ministry’s Twitter account.

“World's worst Humanitarian Disaster is taking place in Yemen - But only Saudi + UAE are interested - And they're committing Genocide with complicity of US and EU - But the world dares not speak its name, it is the unspoken war. And now BigTech wants even more silence,” Wallace tweeted.

https://en.mehrnews.com/news/168583/World-dares-not-speak-genocide-in-Yemen-EU-parl-member

(A P)

Iran's Zarif: Blacklisting Ansarullah shows Washington’s utter contempt for peace

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has denounced the outgoing US administration’s decision to blacklist Yemen’s Ansarullah movement just before handing over power, saying such a hostile move shows Washington’s “utter contempt for peace.”

https://en.abna24.com/news//irans-zarif-blacklisting-ansarullah-shows-washington%e2%80%99s-utter-contempt-for-peace_1106322.html

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A new twist in Yemen: Houthis designated a terrorist organisation

The outgoing administration in Washington has taken the view that the Houthis cannot be a partner in peace efforts in the country given that they have obstructed all opportunities for a settlement presented by negotiating processes in Kuwait, Geneva and Stockholm.
Few believe that there are parties opposing these aside from those sharing interests with Iran, such as Oman, or wanting to score points, such as the UK, which acts as though it is the driving force in the UN-sponsored peace process and has been keen to support British diplomat Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy to Yemen.
The reactions from Sanaa and Tehran were predictable. “We condemn the terrorist designation of Ansarallah and reserve the right to retaliate against any such designation from the Trump administration or any other party,” President of the Ansarallah’s Revolutionary Council Mohamed Ali Houthi wrote on his Twitter account.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that the designation was “doomed to failure” and predicted that the “bankrupt US administration would leave another legacy in its final days.”
Equally to be expected was the Yemeni government’s praise for the decision, as it had previously urged the Trump administration to make it before it left office.

Arab Coalition forces appear to have agreed their options regarding paths to a resolution to the Yemeni conflict, with the most salient indication being the Riyadh initiative to solve the Yemeni crisis. The Riyadh Agreement, as it was called, aimed to promote a settlement among the warring parties in southern Yemen so as to focus their efforts on eliminating the Houthis and restoring the legitimate Yemeni government.
In response to or in anticipation of coalition moves towards this end, the Houthis might increase their terrorist activities, including strikes against fixed or mobile targets belonging to coalition members and leader Saudi Arabia.
The UN mission to Yemen may be the party most thrown into confusion. It may be forced to replace Griffiths and pursue other alternatives for dealing with Yemen now that Pompeo’s action has effectively put paid to the peace process, even if some saw this as an attempt to legitimise the Houthis and increase their influence.
One alternative the UN might pursue could be termed the “Taliban option”. Even if the Houthis are on the US blacklist, settlement efforts could continue through the backdoor, via Qatar, for example. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/50/1203/398736/AlAhram-Weekly/World/A-new-twist-in-Yemen-Houthis-designated-a-terroris.aspx

(A P)

Saudi Arabia Reiterates Support for Washington’s Terror Designation of Houthis

The Saudi cabinet reiterated on Tuesday the Kingdom’s support for the United States’ move to designate the Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen as terrorist.

The ministers hoped the designation would help rein in the terrorist militias and their backers and curtail their danger against the Yemeni people, international peace and security and the global economy.

https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2738306/saudi-arabia-reiterates-support-washington%E2%80%99s-terror-designation-houthis

(A P)

OIC Hails US Plan to designate Houthi as FTO

The General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has welcomed the United States of America's decision to blacklist the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

https://www.spa.gov.sa/viewfullstory.php?lang=en&newsid=2180697

My comment: Saudi mouthpiece organizations…, and:

(A P)

GCC Chief Welcomes US Designation of Houthis as Terrorist

https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2738356/gcc-chief-welcomes-us-designation-houthis-terrorist

(A P)

Yemeni Ministry of Foreign Affairs: US is the mother of terrorism in the world

https://hodhodyemennews.net/2021/01/14/yemeni-ministry-of-foreign-affairs-us-is-the-mother-of-terrorism-in-the-world/

(A P)

Taiz crimes alone qualify Houthis for terror designation: Female activist

The crimes of Houthi militia in the central Yemen province of Taiz alone qualify them to be designated a terrorist organization, a prominent Yemeni female activist said.

https://www.alsahwa-yemen.net/en/p-44483

cp2 Allgemein / General

(* A K P)

Interactive Map of Yemen War

https://yemen.liveuamap.com/

(A K)

Maps: Military Situation in Yemen Jan. 14, Jan. 13:

https://southfront.org/iran-deployed-advanced-suicide-drones-in-yemen-report/

https://southfront.org/a-rare-standoff-eu-condemns-us-designating-of-yemens-houthis-as-terrorists/

(A P)

We continue our countdown to the Voices of #SustainingPeace online discussion next week! Hisham Al-Omeisy @omeisy is working on building capacities and coalitions for #peace, promoting human rights and empowering #youth. Learn more & register http://ow.ly/1ZAB50BwxyY

https://twitter.com/UNITAR/status/1349762263566217220

(A K P)

“THE DESIGNATION IS GOING TO BE A DEATH SENTENCE TO HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS IF NOT MILLIONS”

Faced with this catastrophe, opposition to the war and the West’s backing for it is growing around the world. On 25 January, more than 260 organisations internationally have called a global day of protest to end the war and the blockade. The protest will be demanding that the new US president Joe Biden comes good on his promises to end US support for the war and that he overturns Mike Pompeo’s decision immediately.

Join the World Says No to War on Yemen Global Online Rally at 7pm GMT on 25 Jan

https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/pompeos-houthi-designation-could-lead-to-the-starvation-of-millions/

(* B P)

She Helped Launch Yemen's Revolution. 10 Years On, Tawakkol Karman Still Believes Change Is Possible

“In our country, we revolted against a dictatorship in order to be able to democratically elect a new president. We sacrifice ourselves for democracy,” Karman tells TIME by phone. “Here in the U.S., there is a president who wants to erase democracy.”

Ten years after she made her stand, Karman discussed the strength of Yemeni women, the expectations she has for the Biden Administration, and why amid such dire circumstances she believes freedom and democracy will prevail in Yemen. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity:

Why did women play such a prominent role in Yemen’s uprising? Ten years on have women’s rights advanced or backslid?

Yemeni women led the change in the peaceful revolution, and also in the transitional period. The dictator Ali Saleh—and I believe most of the dictators around the world— knew how women are strong and so wanted women to be marginalized. If dictators want women to participate in public life at all, they just want them to decorate their regimes. But Yemeni women are not as Saleh portrayed. We are very strong. We have a great history of women leaders: the Queen of Sheba, Queen Arwa. Yemen under their rule was the richest country in the region. It’s not in the blood or the soul of Yemeni women to play the traditional roles Saleh wanted for us.

So, when the opportunity came, you saw many women on the front line.

Saudi’s military intervention in Yemen began under President Obama. Do you have hopes that the Biden Administration will change course?

Yes, I have very big hopes for the Biden Administration. The most important thing is that they made promises that they would not be blind to human rights violations in the region, and they would put great effort into stopping the war in Yemen. I believe that Biden will put pressure on Saudi Arabia to stop the war, and also stop selling weapons to Saudi and the Emirates.

The outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has just designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization. Is that a mistake?

I do not trust Trump and the decisions of his administration, despite the fact that the Houthis, and behind them Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates, and their militias, are practicing widespread and systematic destruction against Yemen. Any efforts that are not directed to pressure them together to stop their destruction of Yemen will not lead to a peace industry.

https://time.com/5930042/tawakkol-karman-yemen/

(* B H K P)

A Yemeni Famine Made in Washington and Riyadh

Branding the Houthis as terrorists will make it vastly more difficult for humanitarian groups to deliver desperately needed food, fuel, and medicine to 24 million Yemenis, 80% of the country’s population.

Hardly anyone says that Yemen is already suffering from famine. That’s odd, given the hellish conditions in Yemen. Instead, we are told that Yemen is on the “brink” of famine, the “verge” of famine, that famine is “imminent,” that the people of Yemen are “facing” famine, or that famine is “looming” in Yemen.

There is a reason for that. The UN has not yet declared that a famine exists in Yemen. So, conditions in Yemen, while nightmarish, may not yet meet the definition of “famine” under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification(IPC), the food insecurity scale used by the UN.

However, I think Professor Shireen Al-Adeimi of Michigan State University has a better explanation. Professor Al-Adeimi has tweeted: “Famine hasn’t been declared because the UN faces immense pressure from its top donors, the US & Saudi [Arabia], who are also causing the famine in Yemen.”

We should have known. Labeling Yemen’s suffering as a “famine” is politically inconvenient. You may be reminded of the Clinton Administration’s cowardice in refusing to call the 1994 slaughter in Rwanda “genocide”because that might have forced the US to step in to stop the killing.

The famine in Yemen isn’t an accident. The famine is intentional. Kamel Jendoubi, the Chairperson of the UN Group of Experts on Yemen, reported to the Security Council in December that “Civilians in Yemen are not starving; they’re being starved by the parties to the conflict.”[1]

Some of the blame goes to the Houthis who divert and delay aid deliveries, and extort bribes before allowing aid to go through. Yet most of the blame for Yemen’s famine belongs to the Saudi-led coalition. The famine exists due to the coalition’s bombing campaign and the coalition’s land, sea, and air blockade on Yemen. The bombing campaign and blockade have continued, with brief interruptions, since 2015.

The US aids and abets the coalition’s intentional starvation of Yemen. The US shares intelligence with the coalition, provides targeting assistance, and provides spare parts for coalition warplanes. President Barack Obama took the US into the war in 2015 in order to placate the Gulf States which opposed his nuclear deal with Iran. President Donald Trump, who hates everything else President Obama ever did, has enthusiastically continued Obama’s Yemen policy despite Congressional resistance.

Just how little Yemeni lives matter to Trump and Pompeo is apparent in the Administration’s slashing of tens of millions of dollars in aid for Yemen in March 2020.

Trump loves arms sales and they have been his Administration’s chief motivation for supporting the Saudis – by Charles Pierson

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/15/a-yemeni-famine-made-in-washington-and-riyadh/

(* B H K P)

Der Westen ist immer noch mitschuldig am Krieg gegen den Jemen

Die USA — sowie europäische Mächte wie Frankreich und Deutschland — verkaufen weiterhin Waffen und tragen damit zur humanitären Katastrophe im Jemen bei.

Während westliche Regierungen den systematischen Mord einer Generation unterstützt haben, haben sich weltweit Bewegungen zum Widerstand mobilisiert.

Man kann nicht von der humanitären Katastrophe im Jemen sprechen, ohne die Mitschuld des Westens zu erwähnen. Der ohnehin schon brutale jemenitische Bürgerkrieg, der aus einem innenpolitischen Kampf um die politische Kontrolle entstand, hat sich durch ausländische Akteure in ein unerbittliches und grenzenloses Schlachtfeld verwandelt.

Die Vereinigten Staaten haben schon lange vor dem Ausbruch des Krieges im Jahr 2014 einen aktiven und schädlichen Einfluss im Jemen ausgeübt. Beginnend unter der Bush Regierung und ununterbrochen fortgesetzt unter Obama und Trump, tötete die US-Drohnenkampagne zwischen 2004 und Februar 2020 allein im Jemen zwischen 1.020 und 1.389 Menschen.

Als folglich im Jahr 2015 eine von Saudi-Arabien und den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten geführte Koalition in den Krieg intervenierte, ergriffen die USA die Chance, Unterstützung zu leisten. Vom Westen bis zum Golf war die Unterstützung der US-Verbündeten schon bald überwältigend. Sie rechtfertigten ihre Entscheidung mit der Behauptung, "[es] sei die legitime und logische Reaktion Saudi-Arabiens, um die iranische Expansion am Golf zu blockieren und eine humanitäre Katastrophe im Hinterhof des Königreichs zu verhindern".

Es ist schwierig zu glauben, dass die saudische Intervention notwendig war, um eine Katastrophe im Jemen zu vermeiden. Es ist noch schwieriger zu glauben, dass sich die Obama Regierung nicht voll und ganz bewusst der Katastrophe war, die sie bald finanzieren würde.

Für die jemenitische Bevölkerung hat dieser Blankoscheck für die Intervention der Koalition eine Katastrophe bedeutet. Nach Jahren des Konflikts benötigen nun 24 Millionen Menschen irgendeine Form von humanitärer Hilfe.

Vor diesem Hintergrund sind die Hilfsprogramme der Vereinten Nationen für Millionen von Menschen zum einzigen Instrument geworden, das ihnen das Überleben sichert.

Doch die bestehende Unterstützung reicht nicht aus. Mit der Kürzung der Gelder aus Saudi-Arabien und den VAE bittet die UNO die internationale Gemeinschaft nun verzweifelt um Hilfe, um "die schlimmste Hungersnot, die die Welt seit Jahrzehnten gesehen hat", zu verhindern.

Der Westen ist dem Aufruf der Vereinten Nationen jedoch nicht gefolgt.

Aber noch ist alle Hoffnung für den Jemen nicht verloren. Während westliche Regierungen die systematische Vernichtung einer Generation unterstützt haben, haben Bewegungen auf der ganzen Welt zum Widerstand mobilisiert.

Es gibt Gründe, optimistisch zu sein, aber ebenso welche, vorsichtig zu sein. Die westlichen Eliten werden den Interessen des mächtigen militärisch-industriellen Komplexes nicht von sich aus entgegentreten. Nur Mobilisierung kann sie dazu zwingen. Die Zeit für eine solche Mobilisierung ist jetzt: Die Menschen im Jemen können nicht länger warten - von Isa Ferrero

https://progressive.international/wire/2021-01-14-the-west-is-still-complicit-in-the-war-on-yemen/de

(* B H K P)

The West Is Still Complicit in the War on Yemen

The US – as well as European powers like France and Germany – continue to sell arms and pour fuel on the humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

The United States has been an active and malign influence in Yemen since well before the onset of war in 2014. Starting under the Bush administration, and continuing without pause under Obama and Trump, the US drone campaign killed somewhere between 1,020 and 1,389 people from 2004 to February 2020 in Yemen alone.

Thus when, in 2015, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began an intervention into the war, the US jumped at the chance to lend its support. From the West to the Gulf, backing from US allies was soon overwhelming, justifying their decision by claiming “[it] was Saudi’s legitimate and logical response to block Iranian expansion in the Gulf and to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the Kingdom’s backyard.”

It’s hard to believe that Saudi intervention was necessary to avoid disaster in Yemen. It’s even harder to believe that the Obama administration wasn’t fully aware of the disaster they would soon sponsor.

These predictions of suffering would quickly come true. Both the US and the UK soon began providing logistical, intelligence, and diplomatic support, while they, Germany, France, and more have all provided massive flows of weapons to the intervention coalition. Backed by such overwhelming and unconditional support, the coalition has had no qualms about repeatedly committing horrific crimes against the civilian population, including using mass starvation as a weapon of war by imposing a land, sea and air blockade on a country that already imported more than 90% of its food before the war.

But existing aid is not enough. With a scaling back of funding from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the UN is now desperately urging the international community to help avert “the worst famine the world has seen for decades.

The West, however, has not met the United Nations’ call. The numbers speak for themselves: less than half of the humanitarian aid requested by the United Nations has been delivered to Yemen. For a sense of scale, compare the remainder — $1.7 billion — to the tens of billions of dollars that the West sells in arms to the coalition each year.

In short, the West has not only poured gas on the Yemeni conflagration — it has also cut off the fire hose’s water supply.

But all hope for Yemen is not lost. While Western governments have supported the systematic murder of a generation, movements across the world have mobilized in resistance - by Isa Ferrero

https://thewire.in/world/war-yemen-west-arms-complicity = https://progressive.international/wire/2021-01-14-the-west-is-still-complicit-in-the-war-on-yemen/en

(A P)

Houthis renege on Yemen tanker pledge, says minister

Minister of information, culture and tourism in Yemen's internationally recognised government Muammar Al-Eryani on Thursday accused the Ansar Allah group, known as the Houthis, of reneging on its pledge to allow UN experts to board and assess the condition of the Safer oil tanker at the end of January.

https://debriefer.net/en/news-22483.html

My comment: This is rather odd propaganda. There is a Houthi / Un agreement that an UN team will come to Safer tanker in February. Now the US designation of Houthis as terrorists exactly could impede this. The UN team could be sanctioned by the US.

(B K P)

Special briefing: The Arab Spring a decade on

Yemen

Yemenis are still hoping for change and an opportunity to participate in government. Yet, the chances of this happening amid the ongoing violence are diminished by the current levels of poverty, famine, and human rights violations. The situation today is far more volatile and much worse than when the uprising started.

https://www.mei.edu/publications/special-briefing-arab-spring-decade

(* B K P)

[Hadi gov.] Yemen’s interior says ballistic missiles used to attack Aden airport

The Yemeni Interior Ministry said the missile which were used to attack Aden’s airport last month were ballistic, Al-Arabiya TV reported.
They were launched from a site 100 kilometer away from the airport, in Houthi-controlled areas, the report added.
The Ministry said “Iranian and Lebanese experts” are behind the missiles which were used in the attack.
On Dec. 30, a deadly rocket attack shook Aden airport moments after a plane carrying members of Yemen’s cabinet arrived on a flight from the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh.
No one has claimed responsibility. But the Yemeni government promptly accused Houthi rebels and their backers, the Iranian government, of being behind the airport attack and a drone assault on the Mashiq Palace in Aden shortly after the prime minister and his Cabinet were transferred there.
Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed said the deadly blast was carried out using three precision-guided missiles.
Houthi officials have denied being behind the attack and have sought to blame unspecified groups in the Arab-led coalition.

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1792476/middle-east

and also https://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/aden-airport-attack-carried-out-by-houthi-rebels-yemen-3558714

and

(* B K P)

New footage shows missile attack on Aden airport

The Yemeni ministry of interior published on Thursday, a footage showing the moment missiles hit Aden International Airport on the 30th of December, targeting the members of newly formed cabinet shortly after their arrival.

http://en.adenpress.news/news/31994

Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGirfRHdHY = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSNWH4Nt5nM

and

(* B K P)

Yemen [Hadi gov.]: Aden airport attack carried out by Houthi rebels

The Houthi rebel group was behind last month's deadly attack on Aden airport, Yemen's government announced on Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports.

At least 28 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded as explosions rocked the airport on Dec. 30 just as Yemen's newly formed government arrived from neighboring Saudi Arabia.

"The attack was carried out with three medium-range surface-to-surface missiles that were launched from a distance of more than 100 kilometers [some 61 miles]," Ibrahim Haydan, Yemen's interior minister, told reporters in Aden.

He said the rockets were directed by a GPS-guided navigation system, stressing that "only the Houthi militia has this system in Yemen through Lebanese and Iranian experts."

"It was proven with conclusive evidence that the aim of the attack was to kill all government staff and civilians present at the airport," Haydan said.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210114-yemen-aden-airport-attack-carried-out-by-houthi-rebels/

and

(A H K)

Yemen: An indiscriminate airport attack means many families are in mourning

A statement from Dominik Stillhart, director of ICRC operations, after a visit to Yemen following the deaths late last month of three ICRC staff in an explosion at Aden’s airport:

My visit to Yemen is one filled with heartbreak, following the deaths of three of our colleagues. It's heartbreaking that the people of Yemen have suffered so much violence in the last five years, that ongoing fighting causes daily losses and despair at a time when people are dealing with a global pandemic on top of the consequences of protracted conflict.

The attack at Aden airport on December 30 was indiscriminate and a stark reminder of what civilians caught up in conflict and violence in Yemen endure.

Three of our colleagues were also killed in the attack -- Saidi Kayiranga, Hamid Al-Qadami and Ahmed Wazir -- three dedicated International Committee of the Red Cross staff helping people in need. A

We are increasingly alarmed about the situation across Yemen and committed to doing all we can to help alleviate suffering and deliver assistance.

https://www.icrc.org/en/document/yemen-indiscriminate-airport-attack-means-many-families-are-mourning

and

(* B K P)

Aden attack investigation fuels regional concerns about Iranian missiles

On Thursday, the Yemeni government accused the Houthis of being behind an attack on Aden International Airport in southern Yemen on December 30, timed to coincide with the arrival of the new Yemeni government on a flight from Saudi Arabia.

The accusations were levelled at the Iran-backed militias by Yemeni Interior Minister Ibrahim Haydan during a press conference in Aden.

"The attack was carried out with the use of three medium-range surface-to-surface missiles that were launched from a distance of more than 100 kilometres, using a navigation system that relied on a precise GPS- guided technology," Haydan said.

He added that after "the investigations, which were aided by the collection of data, camera photos and missile debris as well as the analysis of missiles, their angle of impact and blast craters, and the use of inspection and examination results, it became clear that the Houthi militias, with the help of Iranian and Lebanese experts, carried out the terrorist attack using three medium-range surface-to-ground ballistic missiles with a range of 70 to 135 km."

Haydan revealed that the used missiles had serial numbers similar to those of missiles with the same technology that Houthi militias previously used to target military and civilian sites in the Marib governorate, as well as Saudi Aramco oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais.

Observers of Yemeni affairs believe that investigations conducted by the Yemeni government confirmed that Iran was behind the airport attack after smuggling advanced missiles to Sana'a. The investigation also confirmed suspicions that experts affiliated with Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah group had trained Houthi rebels on how to use such technology to target Aden and Saudi oil installations.

https://thearabweekly.com/aden-attack-investigation-fuels-regional-concerns-about-iranian-missiles

My comment: This old Iran narrative really is to be read with caution. The whole story is like not seeing the elephant in the room – as if the saudi war machine would not exist, it’s tried to describe the Houthis as an international danger, to trigger the US, Israel, the “West”.

(* B H P)

"The situation needs us to be active" Youth contributions to peacebuilding in Yemen

The paper draws on our experience of working with youth organisations and activists in Yemen over the past decade, and looks at the heavy toll the conflict is taking on youth activism, as well as the vital roles that youth continue to play in their communities across Yemen.

https://www.academia.edu/41680625/_The_situation_needs_us_to_be_active_Youth_contributions_to_peacebuilding_in_Yemen

(* B K P)

Sacrificing Yemen to Appease Saudis

We look back at the origins of the U.S.-backed Saudi war on Yemen and at a UN peace deal, sabotaged by Riyadh, that was close to preventing the war, as Joe Lauria reported in May 2015.

Pandering to Saudi royals, President Obama tolerated & aided their aerial pummeling of poverty-stricken Yemen. And the rush to bomb the Houthis may have destroyed a promising UN peace accord, wrote Joe Lauria for CN in 2015.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/01/13/sacrificing-yemen-to-appease-saudis/

(* B K P T)

as a reminder from 2015: Al Qaeda Fights on Same Side as Saudi-Backed Militias in Yemen

Special forces from United Arab Emirates said to have joined battle

https://www.wsj.com/articles/al-qaeda-fights-on-same-side-as-saudi-backed-militias-in-yemen-1437087067

(* B H K)

Audio, Dec. 16: Amplifying the Forgotten Voices of Yemeni Women

Yemen is one of the hardest places in the world to be a woman. Far too frequently, women die in bombings and disappear without a trace. It can be difficult to accurately record their experiences, due to the lack of infrastructure and security. But that doesn’t stop Wameedh Shakir. At significant risk, Wameedh researches and records women’s daily challenges and aspirations, so that the future government of a democratic Yemen – and the international community – have enough data to make informed decisions. In this conversation, she tells us how she amplifies the voices of Yemeni women, and what they are saying.

This episode was produced by Suad Ahmed, a Yemeni female reporter. Her ability to capture this story in the midst of a civil war and a pandemic is yet another indication of Yemeni women’s tenacity and strength during an incredibly challenging time.

https://giwps.georgetown.edu/seekingpeace/amplifying-the-forgotten-voices-of-yemeni-women/

cp3 Humanitäre Lage / Humanitarian situation

Siehe / Look at cp1

(B H)

Photos: Empowering youth in #Yemen is one of the projects of @monarelief

https://twitter.com/monarelief/status/1350182831796998144

(B H P)

YEMEN: Adapting an existing project to fight COVID-19

The Cash for Nutrition program in Yemen, run by the Social Fund for Development (SFD) provides critical resources in the form of conditional cash transfers to Yemen's most vulnerable communities. Supported under the World Bank’s Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project (YECRP) the program requires considerable interaction with recipients, often over several weeks or months. To qualify for payments, cash-for-nutrition beneficiaries must attend nutrition awareness sessions, and cash-for-works recipients must provide labor toward producing community or household assets.

To protect Yemeni communities from the COVID-19 pandemic in almost all the country's 333 districts, the YECRP project needed to introduce measures to ensure the safety of beneficiaries.

All project employees were sensitized to COVID-19 measures, and work environments changed to incorporate personal protective equipment (PPE) and physical distancing. The SFD introduced protocols for sanitizing premises and equipment. The most vulnerable members of the SFD teams, such as pregnant women and those with chronic illnesses, worked from home. And the SFD launched a COVID-19 dashboard, giving easy access to employees on the geographic spread of the virus, corresponding trigger points, and mitigation measures for every district in the country.

One looming question for SFD was whether to expand delivery to new beneficiaries or fall back on existing databases. Expanding horizontally—adding new beneficiaries—required additional financing; vertical expansion—increasing benefit values or duration of assistance—was also challenging. YECRP adopted a mixed approach.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/arabvoices/yemen-adapting-existing-project-fight-covid-19

My comment: This appears somewhat very far away from reality of Yemeni life.

(B H)

Yemen Women Protection Sub Cluster Services, Jan to Dec 2020

https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-women-protection-sub-cluster-services-jan-dec-2020

Yemen Women Protection Sub Cluster Services, December 2020

https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-women-protection-sub-cluster-services-december-2020

(B H)

Map: Yemen Emergency Dashboard, December 2020

https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-emergency-dashboard-december-2020

(B H)

Photos: Dr. Sami Alhajj is offering free medical advice to anyone who stops him on the street. "I know the feeling of anxiety that many people have about going to the hospitals now," he says. Yemen has been hit hard by the pandemic with hospitals lacking basic supplies and PPE. But Dr. Alhajj is determined to bring care to patients anyway possible.

https://www.facebook.com/LivingInYemenOnTheEdge/posts/3706417932744543

(B H)

Map by ECHO: Yemen | Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) - DG ECHO 2020 Interventions, 14/01/2021

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-emergency-response-coordination-centre-ercc-dg-echo-2020-interventions-14012021

(* B H)

Starvation As “Weapon Of War”: Oscar Contender ‘Hunger Ward’ Shows How Children Bear Brunt In Yemen Conflict

“This lack of food, or lack of access to food, it’s human-caused,” Fitzgerald tells Deadline. “We often think of famine, and we think of drought, we think of crop failure, we think of locusts. This is not the case in Yemen…Hunger being used as a weapon of war [is] such a horrible thought to me.”

Fitzgerald filmed his documentary at two clinics that treat malnourished children—one in South Yemen, a part of the country controlled by the Saudi-backed government, and one in North Yemen, an area controlled by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Gaining permission to enter Yemen required a major effort, the director says.

Once he entered Yemen, it didn’t take long to witness the tragic toll of war.

“We’d literally been filming two hours,” he recalls, “and the first child passed away in front of us.”

Her name was Asila, just a baby, her skin ulcerated from edema caused by starvation.

“The family…invited us to go to the mosque with them and to do the prayer for the dead, to document the ritual cleansing of the body,” he shares. “And then we followed them to the cemetery, where they buried the body by nightfall. And that was our first day of shooting. And almost every day had some event like that as part of it.”

He adds, “I wanted to make sure that I honored the experience of this family who had offered me access…and to not turn away. And to give people as immersive an experience as possible, to understand in a visceral way what it’s like for someone to lose a child because of hunger in 2020.”

Fitzgerald took substantial risks to film Hunger Ward, a contender for Oscar attention this year. At one point he says he and his film team were stopped at a checkpoint on the road between North and South Yemen.

“We were detained for about eight hours or so by a local warlord…That was probably the sketchiest moment of the entire shoot,” he remembers

Hunger Ward marks the third in a trilogy of short films Fitzgerald has made, including the Oscar-nominated Lifeboat (2018), a harrowing look at the migrant crisis on the Mediterranean. 50 Feet from Syria (2015), shortlisted for the Academy Awards, told the story of an Arab-American doctor who volunteered his services at the Syrian-Turkish border to treat people wounded in Syria’s civil war.

For Fitzgerald, the goal of Hunger Ward, as with his earlier films, is simple.

“I feel like what I try to do is bring some of those stories to light,” he says, “so that more of the world cares.”

https://deadline.com/2021/01/hunger-ward-director-skye-fitzgerald-documentary-interview-news-1234673571/ = https://www.syriahr.com/en/200452/

(B H)

Film: Inevitable humanitarian disaster waiting to Happen to #Taiz children

https://twitter.com/BelqeesRights/status/1349765709782536194

(B H)

Improved Access to GBV Support Services in Yemen

New mobile application improves access to support services for survivors of Gender-Based Violence.

https://www.ye.undp.org/content/yemen/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2021/Improved-access-to-GBV-support-services.html

(B H)

Yemen: Nutrition Cluster Dashboard (January to November 2020)

https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-dashboard-january-november-2020

(B H)

Yemen: Nutrition Cluster, Partners Operational Presence (Jan-Nov, 2020)

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-partners-operational-presence-jan-nov-2020

(B H)

Yemen Nutrition Cluster: GAP Analyses (as of 30 Nov, 2020)

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-vit-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-sam-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-mnp-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-mam-u5-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-mam-plw-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-iycf-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-iron-folat-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-bsfp-u2-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-nutrition-cluster-bsfp-plw-gap-analysis-30-nov-2020

(B H)

Extracts of the Noon Briefing on Yemen by the UN Secretary-General Spokesperson - 13 Jan 2021

Nearly 80 per cent of the population — more than 24 million people — require some form of humanitarian assistance and protection. The situation on the ground continues to worsen as 50,000 Yemenis are already living in famine-like conditions with 5 million more just one step away. Preventing famine remains the top priority right now. To do so, we need to increase humanitarian funding, support the economy, and push for an end to the violence. By the end of 2020, Yemen’s 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan had only received 50 per cent of the $3.38 billion needed for the aid operations, meaning they basically only received $1.7 billion of the $3.38 billion needed. That’s less than half of what had been received in 2019

https://osesgy.unmissions.org/extracts-noon-briefing-yemen-un-secretary-general-spokesperson

(* B H P)

The Yemen war’s forgotten victim: education

Internal political fighting fed by external powers like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran has heavily damaged Yemen’s educational system, and the lives of those in academia.

Najat Sayim Khalil, a retired Yemeni professor of the Sanaa University, believes art and culture deserves better coverage, and is tired of politics always taking precedence over it.

“People don’t like politics because it brings death and misery,” Khalil says without directly mentioning Yemen, where political turbulence has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.

The impact of Yemen’s chaotic politics on Khalil’s life is echoed in what it has done to the previously peaceful campus life of Sanaa University. Its academics have suffered without salaries or adequate health care for years, she explains. The deadly pandemic has made things worse.

The total number of deaths of academics at the university from the lack of access to medicine and health treatment are enormous, she says. But the world’s continuing “focus is on the political aspects while the humanitarian situation has become very dangerous,” she says.

“One of my colleagues was just recently kicked out from his apartment because he could not pay his rent. He and his family are now in danger of living in the streets,” the 57-year-old scholar explains. Most of her colleagues also moved to their relatives’ and friends’ houses because they could not afford to pay their own rents.

The Sanaa University, located in the capital, is Yemen’s first and primary high educational institute

“Ten of my colleagues at the Sanaa University passed away last year due to inadequate health care. They died from blood pressure, diabetes and other reasons because they don’t have money to buy their medicine. All academics at the university have not received their salaries since 2016 due to the civil war escalation,” she says.

Due to the central bank’s shift to Aden, public servants including academics at the Sanaa University could not receive their salaries, Khalil says, giving university staff serious financial difficulties.

“They use all of their sources to survive. First, they spent all their money. Then, they sold their valuable things [like golden bracelets women have]. After that, they basically began selling their furniture and other goods,” she says.

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-yemen-war-s-forgotten-victim-education-43212

Fortsetzung / Sequel: cp5 – cp19

https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-mosaik-709b-yemen-war-mosaic-709b

Vorige / Previous:

https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-mosaik-708-yemen-war-mosaic-708

Jemenkrieg-Mosaik 1-708 / Yemen War Mosaic 1-708:

https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose oder / or http://poorworld.net/YemenWar.htm

Der saudische Luftkrieg im Bild / Saudi aerial war images:

(18 +, Nichts für Sensible!) / (18 +; Graphic!)

http://poorworld.net/YemenWar.htm

http://yemenwarcrimes.blogspot.de/

http://www.yemenwar.info/

Liste aller Luftangriffe / and list of all air raids:

http://yemendataproject.org/data/

Untersuchung ausgewählter Luftangriffe durch Bellingcat / Bellingcat investigations of selected air raids:

https://yemen.bellingcat.com/

Untersuchungen von Angriffen, hunderte von Filmen / Investigations of attacks, hundreds of films:

https://yemeniarchive.org/en

Dieser Beitrag gibt die Meinung des Autors wieder, nicht notwendigerweise die der Redaktion des Freitag.
Geschrieben von

Dietrich Klose

Vielfältig interessiert am aktuellen Geschehen, zur Zeit besonders: Ukraine, Russland, Jemen, Rolle der USA, Neoliberalismus, Ausbeutung der 3. Welt

Dietrich Klose

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