Category Archives: Yemen

Yemen ceasefire: Houthi retreat suffers setback, says UN envoy

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Plans for prisoner exchanges have also not gone to plan, says Martin Griffiths

Deadlines for a retreat of Houthi troops in Yemen, agreed in talks last month, have had to be delayed, the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has said. He also conceded plans for prisoner exchanges have not gone to plan.

Griffiths also had to deny that the retired general Patrick Cammaert, appointed by the UN to implement the ceasefire in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, had quit due to disagreements with Griffiths’s team.

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Will corruption, cuts and protest produce a new Arab spring?

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In Sudan, Egypt and beyond, unrest is growing and hardline dictators are ill-equipped to respond

Sudan missed out on the Arab spring, but that may be changing. Protests against Omar al-Bashir, the indicted war criminal who has dominated the country for 29 years, are becoming a daily occurrence. Street-level unrest, sparked by rising bread and fuel prices, began last month and spread quickly. But the focus of demonstrators, their ranks swollen by teachers, lawyers and doctors, has switched to Bashir himself. They want him gone.

Bashir’s response has been predictably repressive. And the president may succeed in battering his critics into silence, as in the past. But the causes of the unrest cannot be bludgeoned away: a struggling economy, low investment, high unemployment, corruption, bad governance and a potentially disastrous lack of opportunity for new generations of young people.

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UK to attend US summit on Iran on condition of Yemen talks

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Jeremy Hunt is first senior European minister to agree to attend controversial meeting

The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has agreed to attend a summit organised by the US in Warsaw originally billed as an alliance to confront Iranian aggression, but only on the condition that the US secretary of state hosts a meeting on Yemen on the summit’s margins.

Hunt is the first senior European minister to declare that he will attend the summit, which starts on 13 February. European diplomats have been reluctant to attend, suspecting that the event is part of a US drive to undermine Europe’s support for the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015.

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UK gives £2.5m to help salvage Yemen ceasefire

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Funding comes as UN officials fear cessation of hostilities in Hodeidah might soon collapse

The UN’s increasingly fraught attempt to salvage a ceasefire in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah that could lead to a wider peace across the war-torn country is to be shored up by extra money from the UK to support the civilian administration of the city.

The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced an initial extra £2.5m funding on Tuesday amid signs that the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, is struggling to gain agreement even on basic confidence-building measures such as prisoner swaps.

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America is retreating from world affairs and circling the wagons…

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For all its rhetoric, the US under Donald Trump is on a clear path of disengagement in international matters

America’s ambivalence about engagement with the world beyond its shores is nothing new. Isolationist instincts are deeply rooted in the national psyche. Large constituencies opposed US involvement in both world wars. Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign was the most recent manifestation of a longstanding desire to avoid the “foreign entanglements” that the first US president, George Washington, warned against in his 1796 farewell address.

Yet, as US power expanded, this yearning for separateness grew increasingly at odds with another national urge – to demonstrate America’s pre-eminence, and propagate its values and interests, through global leadership. This process climaxed in the early 1990s when America’s main rival, the Soviet Union, imploded and the US claimed the mantle of sole superpower.

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Populist leaders face mounting resistance, say global rights experts

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Opposition to authoritarian rule reflects increased concern of voters and institutions, Human Rights Watch claims

From Europe to Yemen and Myanmar to the US, authoritarian and populist leaders face an increasingly powerful human rights pushback, according to an influential annual survey of global rights.

Despite mounting pessimism around rights abuses and attacks on democracy by populists on both the far left and far right, the “big news” of the past year was the growing trend to confront abuses by “headline-grabbing autocrats”, said Human Rights Watch.

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Yemen ceasefire: new UN resolution seeks to save agreement

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Fresh resolution will increase UN monitors overseeing Hodeidah deal

The UN has tried to prevent the collapse of the ceasefire agreement in Yemen by endorsing a fresh security council resolution urgently increasing the number of monitors overseeing the deal in Hodeidah, the strategic port that lies at the heart of the three-year civil war.

The resolution, drafted by the UK, extends the UN monitoring role for a further six months and increases the number of monitors to as many as 75 people. UN personnel are likely to be transferred from Djibouti to Hodeidah.

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Afghanistan bucks global trend with sharp rise in civilian casualties

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Number of innocent people killed or maimed in Afghan war rises 36% despite overall fall in casualties worldwide

Civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan from explosive weapons rose by more than a third last year, against a downward trend globally, according to a survey seen by the Guardian.

Most of the 4,260 civilians killed or injured in explosions in the country in 2018 – up from 3,119 in 2017 – were victims of suicide attacks, found a report by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

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Yemen: Houthi rebels’ food aid theft only tip of iceberg, officials say

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Questions over relief effort multiply as it emerges aid officials knew for months of armed groups diverting food

The theft of food aid in Yemen by Houthi rebels might be only the tip of the iceberg, officials believe, as questions multiply over international relief efforts in the famine-ravaged country.

It has emerged that aid officials have been aware for months that armed groups – most prominently Houthi rebels in the capital, Sana’a – have been diverting food aid into the key areas they control, including by manipulating data in malnutrition surveys used by the UN.

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Outrage after Netflix pulls comedy show criticising Saudi Arabia

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Standup Hasan Minhaj had mocked official accounts about fate of Jamal Khashoggi

Netflix has taken down an episode of a satirical comedy show critical of Saudi Arabia in the country after officials from the kingdom complained, sparking criticism from Human Rights Watch, which said the act undermined the streaming service’s “claim to support artistic freedom”.

It comes three months after the brutal killing of the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – which US senators have blamed on the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – and as the war in Yemen continues to devastate the country.

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Beyond Syria: the Arab Spring’s aftermath

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The outlook is bleak for key countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya

Just over eight years ago, Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a bitter one-man protest outside a government office against the government. Within hours, demonstrators took to the streets of his small town, Sidi Bouzid. By the time he died in hospital just overtwo weeks later, protests had spread across the country, would soon topple the president and spill beyond Tunisia, in a regional convulsion dubbed the Arab Spring.

Related: Syria: Assad has decisively won his brutal battle

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U.S. needs a different role in Yemen

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In other parts of the globe, like the Republic of Yemen, lethal forces are stalking victims whom Americans cannot always picture in complicated political scenarios we may not quickly grasp. So the average American blinks, and in that blink opportunists make deals with undemocratic, unprincipled bullies.

Saudis & Allies Renew Bombing of Yemen Port City, Sparking Famine Fears

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The Saudi-led coalition launched heavy air strikes on Yemen's main port city of Hodeidah on Friday, in an apparent resumption of military operations on the city after the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement attacked two Saudi oil tankers, residents said. The coalition on July 1 halted an attack on the Houthi-held city to aid UN efforts at a political solution that would avert an all-out assault on the Red Sea port, which the United Nations fears could trigger a famine throughout the country.

Saudi Arabia’s Yemen Campaign escalates into War of Missiles

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As Mohammed Bin Salman's global tour continues in a bid to stabilise Riyadh's economy, his foreign policy needs revising to ensure political and security risks aren't deepening. After three years fighting in Yemen's civil war, the Houthis have stepped-up their strategy and are going after Saudi Arabia's economic enterprises.

Houthi rebels claim capture of U.S. underwater drone off Yemeni coast

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Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claim to have seized an U.S. underwater surveillance drone operating off the Yemeni coastline, posting video on Tuesday of rebel fighters pulling the unmanned system from the Gulf of Aden. Rebel forces detected and seized the REMUS 600 autonomous mini-submarine, designed to carry out anti-mine operations and conduct long-range maritime surveillance, on Monday according to reports on Houthi-controlled media outlets in Yemen.

UN: Coalition airstrikes kill 136 in Yemen in 11 days

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President Donald Trump's administration is publicly blaming North Korea for a ransomware attack that infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide in May and crippled parts of Britain's National Health... President Donald Trump's administration is publicly blaming North Korea for a ransomware attack that infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide in May and crippled parts of Britain's National Health Service. China's government has criticized President Donald Trump's decision to label Beijing a rival and called on Washington to accept the rise of a more powerful China.