Poets explore how the artform can unite people on different sides of conflict
A story is often told to illustrate how central poetry is to Yemeni culture: that of the visit of a famous lute player from Baghdad.
He was invited to play in Sana’a, where he performed enchanting and technically brilliant music for an hour. But when he stopped, the audience waited for the musician to start talking. Without any poetry, they thought, the entertainment could not possibly be over yet.
Continue reading...UN envoy issues warning as renewed clashes reported following Houthis’ withdrawal
Renewed clashes broke out between Houthi rebel fighters and Saudi-backed pro-government forces in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah on Wednesday, breaching a ceasefire and potentially threatening a withdrawal agreement intended to pave the way for wider peace talks.
The fighting prompted the UN’s special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, to warn that peace could yet be a way off, despite earlier signs the pullout by Houthi forces was going to plan. Their withdrawal from Hodeidah and two other Red Sea ports, which began on Saturday, was the most significant advance yet in efforts to end the four-year-old war.
Continue reading...UN supervisor welcomes long-delayed implementation of Stockholm ceasefire deal
Yemen’s Houthi movement has begun unilaterally moving its forces out of key ports, the first practical progress under a ceasefire deal agreed last year.
The retreat from areas in and around western Hodeidah was agreed at talks in Sweden in December but stalled over a lack of trust between two sides in the war.
Continue reading...As a voluntary agreement is struck for forces to withdraw from the port city, two friends recount the horror of conflict in their neighbourhood in Yemen
Friends Majed Al-Wahidi and Ali Al-Zazai remember the constant buzzing of drones overhead in Hodeidah on 18 November last year.
Majed, a teacher and father of six daughters, had left Ali’s house to return to his home nearby, but went back because he had forgotten his lighter. It was about 5pm and Majed’s daughters were in their bedroom, having taken a break from studying to pray in their modest, corrugated iron-covered home.
Continue reading...Politicians decry Trump’s decision to continue US involvement in it as a cynical move and missed opportunity for humanitarian help
Donald Trump has vetoed a bill passed by Congress to end US military assistance in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.
The Senate had passed a bipartisan resolution on 13 March in a 54-to-46 vote, in a move that was largely seen as a rebuke of Trump’s alliance with the Saudi forces leading military action in Yemen. The House voted on the resolution in early April, passing it with 247 votes to 175.
Continue reading...More than 2,000 new cases reported every day, with 25% of those affected being children under five
Yemen is facing a massive resurgence of cholera in what was already one of the world’s worst outbreaks, with more than 137,000 suspected cases and almost 300 deaths reported in the first three months of this year.
With well over 2,000 suspected cases being recorded every day – a doubling since the beginning of the year – aid agencies fear they could be facing a major new health crisis.
Continue reading...Four years into the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis, three Yemeni women ask – exactly what is required of people living in warzones?
A news report from December 2018 lays bare the depths of the crisis gripping Yemen. Mothers watch doctors measure the arms of their children. “When the tape shows red,” the TV correspondent narrates, “it means they’re severely malnourished.” After more than four years of a civil war and proxy conflict, these Yemeni children, mothers, and doctors are trapped in what the UN has called “the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time”.
Continue reading...House voted 247-175 to send the resolution to Trump’s desk, where it is likely to be met with a veto
Congress has given final approval on a resolution to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, in an unprecedented attempt to curtail the president’s power to go to war and a sweeping rebuke to Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
Related: War has broken Yemen. A new route to peace is needed, now | Hisham Al-Omeisy
Continue reading...Exclusive: Yemen rebel chief says foreign secretary ‘cannot be a peace broker and arms salesman’
The leader of the Houthi movement in Yemen has condemned the British foreign secretary for pressing Germany to relax its arms sales ban on Saudi Arabia, saying it was not possible for the UK to be a peace-broker in the country and an arms seller.
“Britain sending aid does not change the tragic reality of its arms sales. Jeremy Hunt cannot promote peace while at the same time acting as an arms salesman,” said Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the supreme revolutionary committee, in an interview with the Guardian.
Continue reading...Minister promises to investigate report of firefight involving British personnel as claims swirl about child soldiers in Saudi-led force
The foreign office minister Mark Field has promised to get to the bottom of “very serious and well sourced” allegations that British SAS soldiers have been injured in a firefight with Houthi rebel soldiers in Yemen.
He was answering an urgent question asked in the Commons on Tuesday by the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, who suggested the Britons may have been witnesses to war crimes, if weekend allegations were true that UK special forces were training child soldiers in the Saudi-led coalition.
Continue reading...As the civil war enters its fifth year, activists talk about their work to hold Yemen together
Yemen is marking a grim anniversary this week: it has been four years since a western-backed military coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened in its civil war, a move which has led to the deaths of at least 60,000 people and caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.
As the conflict enters its fifth year, diplomats are struggling to rescue a three-month-old ceasefire which has been threatened by heavy fighting in the cities of Hodeidah and Taiz between rebel Houthis and forces loyal to Yemen’s government. At the start of the rainy season, the UN has warned of a sharp spike in cholera cases.
Continue reading...In the last two weeks, 1,000 young people a day have been infected with the disease
Yemen is seeing a sharp spike in the number of suspected cholera cases this year, with 1,000 children a day infected in the last two weeks alone, agencies said.
More than 120,000 cases have been reported, with 234 deaths in the country, which has been at war for four years this month. Almost a third of the 124,493 cases documented between 1 January and 22 March were children under fifteen. Increasing rates of malnutrition among Yemen’s children have left them more prone to contracting and dying from the disease.
Continue reading...As ministers and weapons manufacturers alike shun the body that oversees UK arms exports, its authority is at risk of being eroded
As Britain’s foreign secretary warns of “a shortening window of opportunity” for peace in Yemen, the hours are also counting down for weapons manufacturer Raytheon UK to explain its activities to the government’s committees on arms export control (CAEC).
Raytheon, the world’s third largest manufacturer, was called upon to give live evidence on Wednesday. However, the company has effectively avoided face-to-face scrutiny by simply declining to attend.
Continue reading...Since the Stockholm deal in December, airstrikes on Hodeidah have decreased but casualties have doubled elsewhere
Yemen is continuing to experience a steady stream of violence, claiming at least one life every eight hours – despite the agreements reached between the internationally recognised government and the Houthis at talks in Sweden just over three months ago.
According to figures compiled by two international aid agencies, in some areas of the country the number of casualties, far from falling, had doubled where the conflict was flaring up.
Continue reading...The approval puts Congress on a collision course with Donald Trump in an unprecedented rebuke of his foreign policy
The Senate has voted to end US support for the Saudi Arabian-led coalition’s war in Yemen, bringing Congress one step closer to a unprecedented rebuke of Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
Lawmakers have never before invoked the decades-old War Powers Resolution to stop a foreign conflict, but they are poised to do just that in the bid to cut off US support for a war that has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe.
Continue reading...Head of southern transitional council says ignoring will of people is ‘recipe for instability’
Peace in Yemen is impossible without acknowledgement of southern Yemen’s calls for independence from the north, leaders of the United Arab Emirates-backed southern transitional council (STC) are due to tell British MPs and officials as they step up efforts to be involved in the peace talks.
The south of Yemen, briefly a communist state, was united with the north in 1990 and southern separatists were then beaten militarily when they tried to secede in 1994. Continued southern resentment at the north’s control of the country’s resources, including by the rebel Houthis, is a large undercurrent in the civil war.
Continue reading...Xavier Bettel says his same-sex marriage would condemn him to death in some countries
Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, has confronted Arab leaders over the repression of gay rights, telling them his same-sex marriage would condemn him to death in some of their countries.
The conference room at a summit of EU and Arab states fell silent when Bettel made his statement, according to a German TV journalist.
Continue reading...Dominant donors to record appeal to alleviate suffering of civil war will include countries leading aerial bombing campaign
The international community will gather on Tuesday to try to raise more than $4bn to help alleviate the suffering and famine caused by Yemen’s civil war, but will find itself heavily dependent on three combatants in the conflict – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the US – to reach its fundraising target for 2019.
The $4.2bn (£3.2bn) target for 2019 – the largest sum sought for any single year since the start of the civil war in 2015 and an increase of 33 % on last year – will be the focus of an all-day pledging conference in Geneva.
Continue reading...Prime minister announced aid package at EU-Arab League talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
Theresa May has pledged £200m to help victims of the war in Yemen as she called for an end to the “crisis and suffering” caused by civil war.
The prime minister announced the aid package as she arrived for EU talks in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. “We are playing our part and will continue to do so but there is still more that we as an international community can do,” she said. “At the summit in Egypt, I will call on our partners in Europe and the region to continue to provide the aid that is so desperately needed.”
Continue reading...Ahmed Ali Muthana files suit after officials said New Jersey-born daughter was not a US citizen and would not be allowed home
The father of an Alabama woman who joined the Islamic State group in Syria is suing to bring her home after the Trump administration took the extraordinary step of declaring that she was not a US citizen.
Hoda Muthana, 24, told the Guardian this week that she regretted leaving the US to join the terrorist group and wants to return from Syria with her 18-month-old son. She has said she is willing to face prosecution in the United States over her incendiary propaganda on behalf of the ruthless but dwindling group.
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