Yemen

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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 14, 2022 2:29 pm

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U.S. president confirms deployment of troops in Yemen
By The Cradle (Posted Jun 14, 2022)

Originally published: The Cradle on June 12, 2022 (more by The Cradle) |

In a letter addressed to Congress earlier this week, President Joe Biden confirmed that the U.S. has deployed troops to Yemen with the aim of battling extremist groups and continuing military support for the Saudi-led coalition.

“A number of American military personnel are deployed in Yemen,” the U.S. president said,

to conduct operations against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and ISIS, as well as providing military advice and information to the Saudi-led coalition.

According to Biden’s letter, the U.S. military will continue to work “closely” with “partner regional forces” in their operations against Ansarallah.

The letter adds that the U.S. military presence in Yemen is “to protect U.S. interests by providing air and missile defense capabilities and support the operation of United States military aircraft,” but stressed that the U.S. role in the country is “non-combatant” and is for “defensive purposes.”

Although the U.S. president previously vowed to end offensive support for the Saudi-led coalition amid growing criticism in Congress of Washington’s role in the brutal war on Yemen, the letter confirms the White House’s continued support for Saudi Arabia and its allies.

Since the start of the war, Washington has provided direct military, intelligence, and logistical support to the Saudi-led coalition.

According to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the state and defense departments have both turned a blind eye to the coalitions killing of civilians in Yemen.

In particular, the report highlights that the deadliest attacks by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen were carried out by using combat jets and munitions supplied and maintained by U.S. companies, with the approval of the State Department and the Pentagon.

According to the UN, the war in Yemen has killed at least 233,000 people directly and indirectly due to an increase in the prevalence of diseases as a result of attacks on health facilities and the widespread shortage of food.

Before entering office, Biden promised to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition, but after his election, the U.S. president reneged on his promises and continued with the same Trump-era policies that have enabled the brutal attacks on the people of Yemen.

https://mronline.org/2022/06/14/u-s-pre ... -in-yemen/

At least Trump did fulfill some of his campaign promises, fucked up as they were. Biden OTOH, has only a black woman on the Supremes to show. Showpiece identity politics is thin gruel compared to getting genuine relief to the working class, which has never been Biden's intent. Biden may be the ultimate Democratic Party war-monger. How about that?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 20, 2022 4:01 pm

Interview With a Representative of Ansar Allah
JULY 19, 2022

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Protest by Ansar Allah supporters. Ansar Allah is a strong, broad-based resistance movement. Ansar Allah, their supporters and their fighters come from all sorts of backgrounds, united around the common goal of removing the occupiers from their land. File photo.

Since 2015, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and others have been conducting a brutal and genocidal imperialist invasion of Yemen. The Yemeni people have been subjected to what has been described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, as a direct result of the invasion and blockade. The invasion has been fully supported and aided by the United States, Britain, France, and other imperialist powers. The following is an interview I conducted with my friend Abu Ezzedine Al Yaguri, a representative of Ansar Allah, or as it is sometimes erroneously termed, the ”Houthi Movement.” Ansar Allah is leading the Yemeni people in resisting the imperial onslaught and leading Yemen’s people towards liberation.

Q: First, what is the ultimate goal of Ansar Allah, and how do you envision Ansar Allah Yemen in the future?

A: Ansar are not intruders on the Yemeni people, but Ansar Allah are the sons of the Yemeni people and their goal is to protect the land and honor from the Saudi-Emirati invasion and occupation. And they want to build a modern Yemeni state with a high and good economy.

Q: As you know, but our readers may not, Ansar Allah was founded in 1994 by the late Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi. What are the events and circumstances that led to the establishment of Ansar Allah?

A: When we saw the injustice, with our own eyes, from the Yemeni authorities, and when we saw the … betrayal with America and Britain … when we see false cultures dominating the minds of our sons and daughters, the martyr leader Sayyid Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi taught the students the guidance of God, and the culture of the Holy Qur’an and correction from the false paths. The false Wahhabi paths and cultures were imported from abroad.

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PICTURED: Portrait of Sayyid Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, founder of Ansar Allah.

Q: In 2004, Ansar Allah began an armed struggle against the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Why and under what circumstances did Ansar Allah wage this armed struggle? Can you also explain Ansar Allah’s view of the Saleh regime in general?

A: Ali Abdullah Saleh, under the American-Saudi leadership, waged six wars on the province of Saada in order to destroy Ansar Allah. They used all Yemeni and Saudi means and weapons against Ansar Allah until they reached the point of bombing by planes, but they could not destroy us, because God is with us and we by God is stronger.


Q: In 2012, Saleh was overthrown after a popular uprising that began in 2011. What role did Ansar Allah play in overthrowing Saleh, and what was Ansar Allah’s reaction to it?

A: When we went out with demonstrations in 2011 in the revolution of the Arab Spring, we had a real goal of overthrowing the rule of the tyrant Ali Abdullah Saleh, because the people that had been ruling Yemen for 33 years were the Saudi ambassador, the American and British ambassador, and Saleh, seated in a chair of power under his American and Saudi puppet masters.

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PICTURED: Yemeni protestors demanding the overthrow of Western-backed dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, in the Yemeni Popular Uprising of 2011–2012.

Q: Since 2015, Saudi Arabia, with the full and unconditional support of the United States, Britain, and the United Arab Emirates, has waged a war of genocidal aggression against Yemen. Can you explain to our readers the reality of the brutality unleashed by Saudi Arabia and its allies on Yemen?

A: The states of the coalition of aggression launched an aggressive and absurd war against the Yemeni people in all its sects and social groups, killing children, women, and the elderly. They used internationally prohibited contract bombs in their war on Yemenis of faith, and their supporters. We are the ones who put the Security Council resolutions and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council under our feet, and praise be to God, who changed our conditions and returned us from the state of defending our land, to the state of attack with our drones and our ballistic missiles, with which we strategically target deep within the borders of the states of absurd aggression, led by the quartet of aggression: America, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates.

Q: Ansar Allah played the leading role in resisting the Saudi-led invasion. Can you explain how Ansar Allah resists the invasion, and what progress Ansar Allah has made in liberating Yemen from invaders?

A: Brother, if Ansar Allah were not inside Sana’a, and if we did not defend and fight the coalition countries, they would have occupied Yemen as they are doing now in southern Yemen. The coalition countries loot wealth from natural resources, such as gold and crude oil, in front of the hypocritical “world community,“ and we do not hear any condemnation or denunciation from them, but when the Yemeni people react powerfully and rightly, the hypocritical world barks like rabid dogs, and then you hear the wailing and crying of the countries of the coalition of aggression, and we tell them that they should fight us with honor and manliness, not with their weeping and wailing.

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Pictured: Ansar Allah freedom fighters. It is Ansar Allah fighters like these who have led the Yemeni people in resisting the invaders.

Q: Some, especially in the West, have tried to portray Ansar Allah as a “sectarian” movement, “who are only interested in fighting for the Shiite community in Yemen.” Can you explain why and how this depiction is wrong, and what is actually the relationship of Ansar Allah with other communities in Yemen, as opposed to the Western narrative?

A: Brother, these are strange ideas, and they serve the American project. If they want to possess a country, invade it, or plunder its wealth, they will classify you as a Shiite, a Rafida, and a Magi. These are their intentions and false flags. The coalition is killing the Yemeni people, whose population is about 30 million Yemenis, on the pretext that they are killing the so-called “Persian tide” inside Yemen, and that is supposedly why they are killing us. Truly, why are America, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates killing us? Are we supposed to be Iranians within the Yemeni people? Is it us who have robbed our blood, our land, and our honor?

Q: After the liberation of Yemen from the invasion, how do Ansar Allah plan to rebuild the country from the destruction caused by the invasion? How does Ansar Allah plan to rebuild the Yemeni economy, for example?

A: We will certainly liberate every inch of Yemeni lands, no matter what the cost to us. The occupying and invading states will be expelled like the forces of the British colonial occupation and Ottoman Turkish occupation. Once these forces have been expelled, we will start extracting oil at that time. Yemen has a huge oil reserve, and we will export it abroad, and when we extract Yemen’s oil and export it abroad, Saudi oil reserves will dry up.

Q: One of the groups involved in the invasion of Yemen is the terrorist group al-Qaeda. What is the role of these terrorists in Yemen, and is al-Qaeda supported by Saudi Arabia and the UAE?

A: Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the ones who use this terrorist group to destabilize the Arab and Islamic peoples as a pressure card in order to get what they want from the poor countries. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, these two dictatorial regimes, are the Arab Zionists, and the enemies of the Islamic and Arab nation; they work to implement the American project.

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PICTURED: Cartoon on Yemen by Carlos Latuff. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been supporting terrorists like al-Qaeda in their war on Yemen.

Q: Finally, what can the friends of Yemen do, internationally, to support the struggle of the Yemeni people?

A: The world has become hypocritical. There is no country standing with us except for the countries of the Axis of Resistance.

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PICTURED: Progressive citizens of London, England, demonstrate against a state visit by war criminal Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.

https://orinocotribune.com/interview-wi ... sar-allah/
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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 19, 2023 3:11 pm

Former UN Envoy to Yemen Linked to MI6, a Party to the War
JANUARY 18, 2023

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Martin Griffiths, then UN special envoy for Yemen, disembarks from a plane upon his arrival at Sanaa's international airport in Yemen on June 2, 2018. Photo: Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images.

Martin Griffiths, a Briton who now runs the United Nations’ humanitarian work, co-founded and advises a private conflict resolution company that “works closely” with MI6. He was until recently the UN special envoy to Yemen.

*The company, Inter Mediate, was founded by Griffiths and Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff who is the company’s chief executive.
*Leading ex-MI6 officer was a founding director of Inter Mediate, which involves senior former UK military and diplomatic figures.
*Foreign Office has given over £4m to Inter Mediate and launched “campaign” to secure Griffiths’ appointment to his UN special envoy role.
*Griffiths has said “diplomatic work, information gathering or intelligence work is all about empathy at its core.”
*UK special forces, which operate with MI6, have been involved in the Yemen war.

The UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, was until August 2021 the UN special envoy to Yemen, a conflict in which British special forces have been fighting.

Griffiths, 71, has held a number of prominent positions in the field of international peace building. He was previously charged with “mediating an agreement to end the conflict” in Yemen which has now raged for nearly seven years and produced the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.

The UK is heavily backing the Saudis in the Yemen war in an effort to restore the government of Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who was forced to flee in 2015.

Declassified has found in public information that a conflict resolution company co-founded by Griffiths—for which he continues to be a “strategic advisor”—works closely with MI6 and the Foreign Office. It includes among its trustees and advisers a range of former British military and diplomatic figures.

The company, Inter Mediate, “focuses on the most difficult, complex and dangerous conflicts where other organisations are unable to operate” and “brings together some of the world’s leading experts on dialogue and negotiation.”

Inter Mediate was said by its chief executive to be “starting work” in Yemen and Syria six years before Griffiths became UN envoy to Yemen, at a time when he served as a senior UN adviser on Syria. It is not known if the company is still active in Yemen.

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Jonathan Powell (right), who co-founded Inter Mediate with Martin Griffiths. Photo: Creative Commons.

The findings may raise questions about the undermining of the appearance of impartiality crucial to the role of a UN special envoy and senior humanitarian official.

Promoted by the Foreign Office

The Foreign Office promoted Griffiths to become UN special envoy to Yemen in February 2018. It stated: “A successful campaign to secure the appointment of a new UN special envoy for Yemen led to the appointment of British national and international mediation expert Martin Griffiths.”

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the Secretary-General of the UN, told Declassified: “Mr. Griffiths was appointed by the Secretary-General as his Envoy for Yemen in 2018 following the standard recruitment and assessment process applied to all Secretariat positions in the United Nations.”

Griffiths had been propelled into a very senior UN role in 1994, becoming director of the United Nations Department for Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) in Geneva, one of the UN’s top humanitarian officials.

Previously Griffiths had for four years been chief executive of British development NGO ActionAid and had also worked at Save the Children and the UN’s children’s agency, UNICEF.

It is not known if the DHA appointment was at the behest of the UK government although there is a history of British officials being placed in senior humanitarian roles at the UN. Since 2010, all five heads of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the successor to the DHA, have been Britons.

Saudi Arabia and the UK, which work closely together in the war in Yemen, “expressed their strong support” for Griffiths’ appointment as UN special envoy in a joint communiqué. The UK government has funded the UN special envoy’s office, providing £650,000 from the British aid budget in 2019-20.

Griffiths’ former political adviser in Yemen, Chris Halliday, took up his role by leaving his position as head of the Yemen team in the Foreign Office.

Inter Mediate was established in 2011 by Griffiths and Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff. Powell helped negotiate the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland and was central to UK foreign policy under Blair.

Powell has been Inter Mediate’s chief executive since its founding. A former Foreign Office official, Powell was in 2014 appointed by then prime minister David Cameron to be the UK’s special envoy to Libya, at a time when he headed up Inter Mediate.

Powell and Inter Mediate have run numerous projects funded by the Foreign Office in countries such as Burma, Libya and North Korea. Declassified found 23 payments made by the Foreign Office to the company from 2013 to 2020.

The Foreign Office told Declassified it has “provided just over £4 million to Inter Mediate between 2011-2020 to support work towards resolving international conflicts.”

Private partner

Powell has been described by the specialist media organisation, Intelligence Online, as the Foreign Office’s “private partner.” It describes Inter Mediate as conducting “discreet diplomatic missions with state funding but also private money,” though it is unclear who the private funders are, as the organisation’s accounts do not list these.

Inter Mediate’s main funders are governments, including those from Finland, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands, as well as the UK.

In its early years, Inter Mediate recruited almost exclusively veterans from the Foreign Office and both the company and Powell appear to have good access to government ministers.

Powell met Sir Simon Fraser, the Foreign Office’s top civil servant, in February 2011, at a time the company was being established. Since then, a company representative, presumed to be Powell himself, has had meetings with several other senior British diplomats and ministers.

But a spokesperson told Declassified: “The Foreign Office was not involved in the founding of Inter-Mediate.”

It is unclear what work Griffiths undertakes as an adviser to Inter Mediate. However, the company website states that Powell “has… participated in a number of negotiations between governments and insurgent groups in Europe and Asia working closely with Martin Griffiths of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue”—referring to a conflict resolution centre in Geneva that Griffiths established in 1999.

A spokesperson for Inter Mediate told Declassified: “We don’t talk to the press about the work we do, or discuss details about our staff and trustees. But to be clear: Inter Mediate is a charitable organisation founded to end armed conflict around the world, building on lessons from the Northern Ireland experience and other successful peace processes.”

The spokesperson added: “We are funded by multiple governments and foundations, but have always worked entirely independently as a non-governmental organisation and have no special relationship with any government. We publish the sources of our funding annually in accordance with the Charity Commission rules.”

A Foreign Office spokesperson told Declassified: “The UK engages with a wide range of international NGOs and other groups to discuss best practice for conflict mediation in a number of countries.”

It added: “Inter-Mediate is one of many well-respected mediation organisations, with which we have discussed Yemen, Libya and other conflicts.”

Close to MI6

In an email disclosed by the US government, Powell wrote that Inter Mediate is close to MI6. He told a senior aide to Hillary Clinton, then the US secretary of state, in March 2012 that “we work closely with FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], NSC [National Security Council] and SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] in London.”

The UK’s National Security Council is the main government body for discussing British security objectives and is chaired by the prime minister.

Informed of Powell’s presence in Washington DC later in the month, Clinton replied: “I’d like to see Powell when he’s in the Building.” Powell was eventually scheduled to meet Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Jacob Sullivan, who is now President Biden’s National Security Adviser.

It also appears Powell met briefly with Clinton in her offices. Powell also met William Burns, then deputy secretary of state, who he called an “old friend.” Burns, a career diplomat, is now director of the CIA.

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In an email disclosed by the US State Department, Jonathan Powell tells an adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Inter-Mediate “works closely” with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6). Clinton responds that she would like to meet with Powell.
In an email disclosed by the US State Department, Jonathan Powell tells an adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Inter-Mediate “works closely” with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6). Clinton responds that she would like to meet with Powell.
In his email, Powell added that Inter Mediate sets up “secret channels between insurgents and governments” and was working in Nigeria, Colombia, Bahrain, Afghanistan and North Korea. He continued: “We are starting work in Syria, in conjunction with [former UN secretary general] Kofi Annan, in Yemen, in Somalia and in Burma.”

Clinton’s aide noted that Inter Mediate works “under the radar.”

‘Security intelligence’

Despite co-founding Inter Mediate, Griffiths has never been a director of the company. Its four founding directors include Christopher James, a senior veteran of MI6 and the SAS, who served on the Inter Mediate board for five years until 2016. James headed the MI6 section responsible for liaising with British firms.

After leaving MI6, James founded in 1995 the business intelligence firm Hakluyt, which is known for its connections to MI6 and as being “a convenient rest home for MI6 men”. Hakluyt was reportedly set up with the blessing of then MI6 chief, Sir David Spedding.

Hakluyt’s current managing partner, Varun Chandra, previously worked at Inter Mediate, and, like Jonathan Powell, was also an adviser to Tony Blair Associates, the former prime minister’s private consultancy company. Haklyut has access to the highest levels of government—Declassified found 12 meetings or telephone calls between the company and ministers or senior civil servants between 2011 and 2021.

In November 2020, prime minister Boris Johnson appointed Hakluyt’s global head of corporate clients, Dan Rosenfield, as his chief of staff.

Inter Mediate was, for a brief period soon after its incorporation, registered at the London office of another company set up by MI6 veteran Christopher James called Corporates for Crisis (CforC), a “corporate intelligence” firm.

Soon after, in July 2012, it was reported that Griffiths “recently worked for CforC.” The company’s managing director during 2008-10 was Brigadier Ed Butler, a former commander in the SAS.

Other senior UK military officers are associated with Inter Mediate. General Nicholas Houghton, the former chief of the defence staff, Britain’s most senior military officer, became a “strategic advisor” to Inter Mediate in 2017, where he was “in charge of South East Asian business.”

Baron Richards of Herstmonceux, another former chief of the defence staff, also reportedly worked at Inter Mediate on Southeast Asia around 2015-17.

Incorporated as a private company under the name IM01, Inter Mediate is also registered as a UK charity. The company, which is located close to Whitehall, states that “an able core team working out of a single office in London supports the founders and experts.”

In 2021-22, Inter Mediate had an income of £1.4m and ran nine funded projects in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Career path
Griffiths’s links to MI6 raise questions in light of UK special forces being party to the conflict in Yemen on which he previously led UN negotiations. In 2019, it was reported that “at least five British special forces commandos had been wounded in gun battles as part of a top-secret UK military campaign in Yemen.”

The men, from the Special Boat Service (SBS), received the injuries from battles in the Sa’dah area of northern Yemen, where “up to 30 crack British troops are based,” it was claimed.

The operations of UK special forces are opaque and guarded from transparency laws, but it is known that MI6 works closely with the SBS and the army’s equivalent, the Special Air Service (SAS). A recent article in the Daily Telegraph noted that “SAS personnel serve as a wing of MI6 while remaining under military command.”

The SAS has operated inside Yemen. In January 2019, a 12-man US/UK special forces task force, comprising the SAS and the US Green Berets, was reportedly flown into Yemen from Djibouti, ostensibly on an “humanitarian mission.”

The soldiers were dressed in Arab clothing and were reported to be operating near the government-held town of Marib in central Yemen.

Declassified revealed in 2021 that Britain had a secret detachment of up to 30 troops at Al-Ghaydah airport in eastern Yemen, where they were training Saudi forces.

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A neighborhood in Sana’a, Yemen, a day after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike, 18 May 2019. Photo: Creative Commons.

The Foreign Office did not respond to Declassified’s request for information on Griffiths’ diplomatic career, which is unclear. Information suggests that Griffiths’ sole diplomatic position was as a press spokesperson for the British embassy in South Africa in 1985-7.

Griffiths’ career path has seen him work for humanitarian agencies amid episodes in UK foreign policy where the government has promoted covert operations.

Griffiths was a programme officer for UNICEF during 1981-3, based in Peshawar, Pakistan near the Afghan border. Peshawar was the base for CIA and MI6 covert operations to support mujahideen forces inside Afghanistan to counter the Soviet occupation of the country which began in 1979.

Griffiths also reportedly worked for UNICEF in Sri Lanka in 1978-81 and on the Thai-Cambodian border in 1979-80. Britain began what would become a years-long covert programme of support to the Sri Lankan government in 1979, dispatching a former director of MI5 and an SAS team to support the government in its conflict with Tamil insurgents.

Britain also conducted a covert operation in Cambodia that is believed to have begun in 1983, alongside the US, with the SAS providing training to resistance forces in the country at secret bases in Thailand.

UN adviser
After founding Inter Mediate in 2011, Griffiths served between 2012 and 2014 as an adviser to three special envoys of the UN secretary general for Syria, and as deputy head of the UN Supervision Mission in the country.

In early 2012, Inter Mediate was also “starting work” in Syria, according to Jonathan Powell.

This was another sensitive time for UK foreign policy as David Cameron authorised British covert operations in Syria to support rebel groups seeking to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, with its US and Arab allies.

In a recent interview, Griffiths said “diplomatic work, information gathering or intelligence work is all about empathy at its core.”

He added: “One of the things I have focussed on is creating relationship with the ‘other,’ the person who is quite different. That ranges back to dealing with the Khmer Rouge in 1979 on the Thai-Cambodian border, through to UNICEF programming in Pakistan’s north-west frontier province. Where it’s most important is with people who are most different. You don’t use it a lot with the Foreign Office.”

A Foreign Office spokesperson told Declassified in 2021, when Griffiths was still UN envoy to Yemen: “Martin Griffiths is an independent UN official and highly regarded international mediator. We work closely with Griffiths on the Yemen conflict in his capacity as Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General to Yemen, and fully support his work in our role as penholder on Yemen in the UN Security Council.”

Martin Griffiths did not respond to Declassified’s requests for comment.

https://orinocotribune.com/former-un-en ... o-the-war/

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Parties in Yemen war in indirect talks to formalize ceasefire, claims AP report
According to the report, the parties have shown greater willingness to address key issues such as lifting of the blockade and sharing of oil revenues in the talks that are being mediated by Oman

January 18, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Hans Grundberg (on screen), UN special envoy to Yemen, addressing the UNSC on January 16, 2023. (Photo: UN Photo/Loey Felipe)

Quoting sources in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and in the UN, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Tuesday, January 17, that the representatives of Yemen’s Ansar Allah (Houthis) government and the Saudi Arabia-backed administration in southern Yemen have started “back-channel talks” in order to formalize the informal ceasefire and achieve lasting peace in the war-torn country.

The report indicates that the talks are being facilitated by Oman as an intermediary, and major issues such as the sharing of oil revenues, lifting of the Saudi-imposed blockade, and security guarantees are being discussed.

The talks were initiated after almost nine months of relative calm in Yemen following the UN-negotiated ceasefire that took effect in April last year. Though the ceasefire officially ended in the beginning of October, Yemen has not seen major fighting since then.

The disagreements between the Houthi administration in Sanaa and the Saudi-backed administration over issues such as the Saudi-led blockade of the country, the Houthi siege of Taiz, and the sharing of oil revenues, were considered major reasons for the failure of ceasefire talks in the past.

Apart from lifting the eight-year-old Saudi-imposed blockade, which prevents the flow of basic commodities such as food and medicine into the country, the Houthis have demanded that the Saudi-backed administration, which controls most of the oil-producing areas, pay the salaries of all public employees. The Houthi government in Sanaa recently claimed that despite a majority of Yemenis living in areas under its control, it only receives 7% of all revenues from the country’s natural resources.

Speaking during his January 16 presentation to the UN Security Council (UNSC), Hans Grundberg, UN special envoy to Yemen, had called on all parties to take advantage of the absence of any “large-scale fighting” to start a dialogue for peace.

Grundberg had noted that apart from “minor fighting” in five provinces—Marib, Taiz, Dalim Hodeidah, and Lahj – along with fighting at the border of Saudi Arabia, most of Yemen has seen a calm unprecedented since the beginning of the war in 2015.

“To actively work to extend the longest period of relative quiet we have seen in the past eight years, which offers a much needed reprieve for the Yemeni population,” Grundberg said, there was an urgent need for intra-Yemeni talks focused not on “individual issues” but on broader issues to achieve a more “comprehensive settlement.”

The war in Yemen began following the Saudi-led international coalition’s armed intervention in 2015, in support of then president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who had fled the capital Sanaa after the Houthi takeover of the city a year before. According to the UN, close to 400,000 Yemenis have been killed and millions have been displaced in the war, and almost the entire population of the country now depends on some kind of aid for survival.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/18/ ... ap-report/
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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Sun Apr 09, 2023 5:41 pm

Meeting in the capital of Yemen to start the peace process

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The war in Yemen has caused the worst humanitarian catastrophe at present, according to the UN. More than 21 million Yemenis will need assistance this year. | Photo: EFE
Posted 9 April 2023

The recent normalization of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two great rivals in the region, has opened a window of hope for the end of the conflict.

Delegations of representatives from Saudi Arabia and Oman arrived on Saturday night in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, to discuss with the leaders of the Huthi insurgency the launch of a peace process to end the civil war in the country, reported sources from the Supreme Political Council, the highest political body of the rebels.

The attendance of Saudi representatives represents a turning point since Riyadh is an ally of the Yemeni government and recognized by the international community in the fight against the Houthis, backed in turn by Iran.

The recent normalization of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two great rivals in the region, has opened a window of hope for the end of the conflict.


Local media claim that the Omani and Saudi delegations will meet with the president of the Supreme Political Council, Field Marshal Mehdi al Mashat. They will discuss topics such as the lifting of the "siege", "the end of the aggression"; the term by which the Houthis designate Saudi military aid and the restoration of the rights of the Yemeni people.

For its part, the Huthi delegation will address "the payment of salaries to civil servants and the profits from oil and gas," the statement added.

Prior to these meetings, Saudi Arabia decided to release 13 prisoners of war in a detainee exchange process. This is part of a larger-scale exchange agreed last month in Switzerland under the management of the United Nations and involving 887 fighters.

The war in Yemen has caused the worst humanitarian catastrophe at present, according to the United Nations. More than 21 million Yemenis will need humanitarian aid this year and 17 million of them will need to receive it urgently to survive.

The conflict has cost the lives of 380,000 people, more than 85,000 of them children, to which four million displaced people must be added, according to data from UN agencies.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/reunion- ... -0006.html

Google Translator

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'Peace In The Middle East? That's A Threat.'

Thanks to China's and Russia's mediation peace is breaking out in the Middle East.

Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai - 4:14 UTC · Apr 8, 2023
#BreakingNews:

The United Arab Emirates has begun withdrawing its forces from #Yemen. The Saudi-Emirati-Yemenite agreement will be announced soon.

The Middle East is solving its conflicts without the #US negative impact.

Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai · Apr 7
Great news:
#SaudiArabia will announce the end of the war in #Yemen after the Eid al-Fitr. Saudi is ending all its (high/low) conflicts in the Middle East with #Iran, #Syria, #Iraq, #Yemen & #Lebanon(not interested in the country for now) to turn towards its own development. ...


Peace will also come to Syria. The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia will soon visit Damascus. He will invite Syria to rejoin the Arab League. An Arab League summit will be held next month in Saudi Arabia and the Syrian president Bashar al Assad is expected to be there.

This comes after agreements between Iran and Saudi Arabia to bury the hatchet and after agreements between Iraq and Iran to reign in a Kurdish uprising in Iran that was controlled by Kurdish forces in Iraq.

'We can't have that', says U.S. president Joe Biden. He sent CIA director Bill Burns to Saudi Arabia to threaten consequences:

CIA Director Bill Burns made an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia this week where he reportedly aired Washington's frustrations over Riyadh's opening to Iran and Syria through mediation brokered by US rivals China and Russia.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a US official confirmed the trip to Al-Monitor. “Director Burns traveled to Saudi Arabia where he met with intelligence counterparts and country leaders on issues of shared interest," the US official said.

The official did not disclose the exact day of the trip but said that Burns discussed intelligence cooperation, especially in the area of counterterrorism. The CIA director met the country's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.


Burns likely threatened to withhold U.S. intelligence on terrorist groups from the Saudis. The CIA could additionally push some of its ISIS assets to make some nasty appearances in Saudi Arabia to then offer 'help' to 'fight terrorism'.

I do not think that this will work. The Saudis have had enough of U.S. interference in their region. They are looking for development and development requires peace.

Thus the U.S. is upping its threat:

The US Navy deployed a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Middle East waters via the Suez Canal, a spokesperson revealed Saturday.
The Pentagon's rare disclosure of the location of one of its Ohio-class submarines came amid heightened tensions between the United States and Iran after an American military contractor was killed by a drone attack on a US base in Syria last month.

The USS Florida arrived in the region before transiting the canal on Friday "to help ensure regional maritime security and stability," Cdr. Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for the US Navy's 5th Fleet, told Al-Monitor via email.
...
Last week, the Pentagon extended the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS George H. W. Bush in the Mediterranean to support US forces in the Middle East in case of further conflagration and moved up the planned deployment of a squadron of A-10 attack aircraft to the region, CNN first reported.


Meanwhile the Zionists finally have to confront their ideological core:

Sina Toossi @SinaToossi - 15:28 UTC · Apr 8, 2023
Israel's former defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon says Jewish extremists who believe in "Jewish supremacy" & seek a "big war" are influencing the Israeli government's decision-making. He likens their agenda to a "Mein Kampf" in reverse.

Muhammad Shehada @muhammadshehad2 · 15h
Extremely important! #Israel's *right-wing* ex-Minister of Defense, Moshe Ya'alon, sheds light on Israel's most dangerous government & the supremacist ideology of its Finance & Security Ministers.

Listen to every word to understand the ongoing escalation!
video


Moshe Ya'alon describing the ideology of two current ministers: "Jewish supremacism. Mein Kampf in reverse. ... To as soon as possible get to a big war. ... This is what goes into the decision making process in the Israeli government."

When government ministers seek a big war they will probably get one. A civil war between 'liberal' Zionists and hard core ideological Zionists, fought on the back of Palestinians, may become a prelude to that.

Posted by b on April 8, 2023 at 16:17 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/04/p ... l#comments

But it's not "Mein Kampf" in reverse, they just change some names.
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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 11, 2023 2:23 pm

Saudi-Houthi talks spark Yemeni hopes
Updated: 2023-04-11 07:54

Image
Mahdi al-Mashat (left), head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council, shakes hands with Saudi Ambassador to Yemen Mohammed bin Saeed Al-Jaber at the Republican Palace in Sanaa, Yemen, on Sunday, when Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Houthi militia engaged in direct talks aimed at reviving a cease-fire. [Photo/Agencies]

Meeting seen as step forward in efforts to revive cease-fire in war-torn nation

ADEN, Yemen — Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Houthi militia on Sunday engaged in direct talks aimed at reviving a cease-fire in the war-torn nation, as part of international efforts to find a settlement to Yemen's nine-year conflict.

Saudi Arabia's delegation, chaired by the kingdom's ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed bin Saeed Al-Jaber, met with Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi's supreme political council, which runs rebel-held areas in Yemen, according to the Houthi-run SABA news agency.

An Omani delegation, which arrived in Sanaa on Saturday, joined the talks, the agency reported. It said al-Mashat hailed Oman's efforts to bridge the gap between different sides of the war to achieve peace in Yemen. SABA did not give further details.

Mohammed al-Bukaiti, a Houthi leader, said on Twitter that achieving an honorable peace between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia would be "a triumph for both parties" and urged all sides to take steps to "preserve a peaceful atmosphere and prepare to turn the page of the past".

Officials from both sides spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door negotiations.

They said the Saudi-Houthi understandings include a six-month truce with a cessation of all military activities across Yemen. The Houthis have committed to coming to the table with other Yemeni parties to negotiate a political settlement to the conflict, they said. The United Nations is meant to facilitate the political negotiations, they added.

Both parties also agreed to further ease restrictions by the Saudiled coalition on Sanaa's airport and the Houthi-controlled Red Sea ports in Al Hudaydah, the officials said. The Houthis would lift their yearslong blockade on Taiz, Yemen's third largest city which is held by government forces, they said.

There was no immediate official comment from Saudi Arabia on the trip, the second of its kind in 2023.

The visit indicates progress in the Oman-mediated consultations between Riyadh and Sanaa, which run parallel to the UN peace efforts. The peace initiatives have gained momentum after Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to reestablish ties in a deal brokered by China.

Oman, which shares borders with Yemen, has been trying for years to bridge differences between Yemen's warring parties.

In comments to The Associated Press, Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy for Yemen, described the ongoing efforts, including the Saudi and Omani talks in Sanaa, as "the closest Yemen has been to real progress toward a lasting peace" since the war began.

"This is a moment to be seized and built on and a real opportunity to start an inclusive political process under UN auspices to sustainably end the conflict," he said.

Image
Yemenis carry humanitarian aid provided by a charitable organization on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Marib on Thursday. [Photo/Agencies]

'Positive signals'

Yemeni Foreign Minister Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak said there were "positive signals" that a cease-fire deal would be announced, along with addressing other humanitarian and economic issues.

"The (regional) circumstances are different," he told Egyptian satellite channel Al-Qahera in an interview aired on Friday. "It pushed toward achieving a solution."

Bin Mubarak, however, said there are "many fundamental issues" that Yemen's warring sides need to address before reaching a settlement to the conflict.

Ahmed Nagi, a Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said the Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement has given a boost to Saudi-Houthi negotiations, and that both sides are close to announcing the cease-fire's renewal.

However, the second track of the Houthi-Saudi negotiations — a potential road map to reach a permanent settlement to the conflict — would be a major challenge when discussed by Yemeni parties, he said.

"Each party has different interpretations and expectations," he said. "Given the complexities of the situation, it is hard to see progress on this track very soon."

Yemen has been embroiled in a devastating civil war since 2014, with the Houthis fighting against the internationally recognized Yemeni government. The Saudi Arabia-led coalition intervened in the conflict in support of the Yemeni government in 2015. The war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 4 million, and pushed the country to the brink of starvation.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b95ca.html
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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 12, 2023 3:04 pm

Saudi-Yemen Peace Talks Underway in Sanaa
APRIL 11, 2023

Image
Saudi, Yemeni, and Omani delegates pose for a photo in Sanaa, Yemen on 9 April, 2023. Photo: Ansarallah Media Office via AP.

The prospect of ending Saudi Arabia’s eight-year war in Yemen advanced quickly since China brokered a détente between Iran and the kingdom

Official delegations from Saudi Arabia and Oman held the first round of peace talks with officials from Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance group on 9 April, as Riyadh seeks a permanent ceasefire to end the NATO-backed war launched in 2015.

The Saudi and Omani delegations were welcomed by the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, Mahdi al-Mashat, at the Republican Palace in Sanaa on Saturday night.


“[We appreciate] the mediation efforts of the brotherly Sultanate of Oman and its positive role in bringing points of view closer together and its efforts to achieve an honorable peace,” Mashat told reporters on Sunday.

The head of the Saudi negotiating team also thanked Muscat’s efforts towards achieving peace, saying, “thanks to the brothers in the Sultanate of Oman for their important role and great efforts in the framework of bringing peace to Yemen,” according to Yemen’s Al-Masirah TV.

According to officials on both sides, the talks will hammer out details to end the Saudi-led coalition’s war and the civil war between Yemen’s internal factions that saw Ansarallah come to power in 2014.

The lifting of Riyadh’s vicious air and sea blockade is also high on the agenda, as is the full reopening of Sanaa airport, the payment of wages for public servants, rebuilding efforts, and a timeline for occupation forces to exit the country.

As a sign of good faith, the kingdom released 13 prisoners on Saturday in exchange for a Saudi detainee freed earlier. This comes ahead of a broader prisoner exchange agreed upon by the warring sides.

However, despite the optimism permeating the talks, on Sunday night Ansaralalh senior official Mohammed al-Bukaiti cautioned that any further negotiations should be conducted only with Saudi Arabia and not with the unelected Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) or its head, Rashad al-Alimi.

“Saudi Arabia is not a mediator but a party to the conflict, and we are not ready to negotiate again through Rashad Al-Alimi, who was appointed by [Riyadh] … The doors of Sana’a are open to all, and we renew the call … for dialogue to build a political process based on internal balances and achieve the sovereignty and independence of Yemen,” Bukaiti wrote on Twitter.


“It is too early to say for sure that the negotiations in Sanaa will be successful, but it is clear that an atmosphere of peace hangs over the region, which gives cause for optimism and hope,” Bukaiti said a day earlier.

The Saudi-led war has caused close to 400,000 deaths in the Arab world’s poorest nation, nearly 60 percent of them caused by issues like lack of access to food, water, and healthcare, according to the UN.

Riyadh and Sanaa have been holding Omani-mediated talks for months to renew a UN-sponsored ceasefire, but the prospect of ending Yemen’s eight-year war has advanced quickly since last month, when China brokered a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In addition to this landmark agreement, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has been pushing to restore ties with Syria and end the regional isolation of President Bashar al-Assad after more than a decade of war.

Yemen’s impending peace deal is seen as yet another defeat for the foreign policy agenda of US President Joe Biden, who has lost a significant amount of clout in West Asia since taking office.

https://orinocotribune.com/saudi-yemen- ... -in-sanaa/

********

The Yemeni “Peace Process” is a Sham Though You Wouldn’t Know That From Watching U.S. News or Reading Foreign Affairs
By Andi Olluri - April 11, 2023 0

Image
[Source: debriefer.net]

Media and intellectual elites continue to add spin to dignify a criminal war of aggression that has resulted in unconscionable suffering among the Yemeni people.

In April 2022, a temporary truce was signed between the warring parties in Yemen, which ended in October, though fragments of it are still operational.[1]

The truce in no way addressed the crystal clear causes of mass death, starvation and aggression in Yemen—namely, Western-Arab aggression and brute force.

But the so-called “truce” nevertheless had its clear effects: It allowed for the coalition of powerful Arab and Western countries attacking Yemen to radically expand and enhance occupation, military advancement and plundering (as well as for them a largely irrelevant bonus of somewhat alleviated civilian casualties, useful for their PR purposes).

The media reporting about the truce and its implementation one year after its implementation teaches us a great deal about how refined propaganda works to achieve violent state goals, with justice and legality entirely disregarded.

In approaching this topic, we must remember that, when two of the leading propaganda systems—the Western and Eastern—agree in their propaganda, it is overwhelmingly difficult to break free from its illusions.

The fact is that the Western bloc as well as the Eastern (led by China) are every bit as interested in maintaining their Saudi and Emirati ties, though the Western system is setting the agenda on every term. The Chinese merely refuse to expose what would otherwise be splendid material for their information warfare against our hypocrisy. Accordingly, the propaganda system is unanimous and in fact global regarding the war in Yemen.

Thus, there are two versions of the Yemen “peace” process: what has happened in the real world—the actual facts—and the radically distorted Washington-Riyadh version of the process.

Image
Yemen peace deal signing ceremony. [Source: defenceweb.co.za]

The Prohibited Background
In approaching this issue, it is necessary to first give the reader a description of the nature of the colonial violence against Yemen, which has been the hallmark of the country’s history and, of course, the war of aggression waged against it since 2015.

Until 2011, a Washington-Riyadh-controlled puppet ruled Yemen through an effective military death-squad-managed society. Massive nationwide demonstrations erupted against the regime and, naturally, the Arab-Gulf dictatorships intervened to stifle genuine general democratic participation in the political system, putting in place yet another puppet, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, subordinated to the West and the Arab Kingdoms.

The Arabs and the West set up fraudulent elections, in which their lapdog “won 99.8 percent of the vote—a result which would make even Bashar al-Assad or Saddam Hussein blush” (Middle East Monitor), banning elections ever since.

The sole purpose of the Hadi regime, just like his predecessor, was “to implement Washington-consensus neoliberal reforms at a difficult political and economic time,” with the starving population obviously being irrelevant, as a major Western study on the topic noted. You will notice that this is what has constantly been referred to as Yemen’s “legitimate” and “internationally recognized” government, without anyone raising an eyebrow.[2]

Image
Abdrabbuh Hadi [Source: dawn.com]

In 2014 and 2015, a popular revolution occurred, involving multiple political and regional parties (though ubiquitously referred to as “Houthi” in the propaganda system, which I will use henceforth simply because of practical reasons).

As two leading Middle Eastern scholars noted in a technical report on the revolution, “For the Gulf’s undemocratic monarchs, a genuine popular movement on their southwestern border was worrisome,” and naturally they “prioritized the concerns of foreign actors over the substantive demands of the millions of Yemenis who mobilized for change.” In short, everything was fine.

Meanwhile, oil and mineral profits were flowing to American and European corporations, Western forces could control the strategic nodes, all dissent was stifled, and the population was starving. The harmony was, however, to be unacceptably ruined by popular indigenous demands, political participation, peasant groups and genuine popular political parties—a dreaded threat which the “Free World” had to smash, to be sure.[3]

The U.S., most European countries and especially the UK and France, joined with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel and a host of other nations (henceforth the “Coalition”) in March 2015 to openly launch a war of aggression and occupation in Yemen, something which continues to this day with unrelenting brutality and death.

Internal documentation from the U.S. State Department during the same period, conceded that “the U.S. had been pushing the Saudis and its Gulf partners,” along with the Europeans, “to be more active in policing their own region,” thus “protecting” Western “energy and security interests in the region.” No doubt the same kinds of discussions were happening among the Russian General Staff before invading Ukraine.[4]

As the war started, the Middle Eastern press regularly noted the obvious, namely, that “The war in Yemen will be fought with Western arms.”[5] Sure enough: UN and EU advisers estimate that the Coalition has been “heavily armed by the United States and Europe with arms amounting to” an absolute minimum of “$100 billion” (it is actually much higher than that), and even $200 billion is probably a low estimate, too.[6]

Image
Weapons captured(?) by the U.S. in Yemen. [Source: sainthoward.blogspot.com]

The UN, which is after all filled with nations all seeking to align with the Arab kingdoms, passed resolutions establishing a weapons embargo on Houthi. These resolutions were then scandalously fabricated by the Coalition to be a carte blanche for the attack, with the media refusing to expose the fraud. The resolutions, of course, gave no justification, and prohibited “obstructing the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Yemen or access to, or distribution of, humanitarian assistance in Yemen” (Res. 2216), and the Security Council called “on all member States to refrain from external interference which seeks to foment conflict and instability and instead to support the political transition” (Res. 2201). Obviously that had to go.[7]

Comparing Western aid to Yemen, its arms sales to the Coalition states has been worth, on average, 55 times more. The lessons we learn from this illustration of enlightened humanitarianism is that violence and terrorism in fact works, and pays off.[8]

So far, perhaps half a million people have been killed, almost the entire population is under the immediate threat of famine caused by a Coalition blockade aiming to inflict maximum pain, while it occupies and plunders the country. So much for the background: We now turn to the so-called “truce,” starting on April 2, 2022.

War Is Peace
The truce identified a “halt to all offensive ground, aerial, and maritime military operations, inside and outside of Yemen, and a freeze in current military positions on the ground,” as the primary step in fulfilling the general peace process.[9] That feature of the treaty is redundant, since military attack and advancement in occupied territory is already supposed to be prohibited by international law and treaties—a considerable nuisance for us.

On April 3, one day after the signing of the accord, Yemeni military sources reported that Coalition “warplanes and reconnaissance aircraft” operated in multiple Yemeni provinces, along with shelling of a host of towns. Thus, one could have predicted the future of the truce before the ink had even dried. Western press found no interest in reporting on the incidents.[10]

Image
Arab Coalition warplanes. [Source: debriefer.net]

Incidentally, at about the same time, the Washington-Riyadh figurehead President Hadi was swapped out by his masters, after having loyally served his role. He was replaced with yet another unelected, externally imposed military Junta consisting mainly of army generals and officers from Saudi Arabia and the UAE—the countries attacking Yemen. (The head of the junta, Rashad al-Alimi, happened to be the highest paid politician on the planet.)

Image
Rashad al-Alimi, Chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council of Yemen. [Source: wikipedia.org]

The equivalent scenario would be Russia successfully conquering Ukraine, imposing as President and leadership of Ukraine a military junta drawn from the top Russian and Belarusian military brass, with all of Russian media going along, of course. This event went literally unreported in the major press, in yet another Orwellian triumph. Furthermore, one of the main excuses for the brutal attack against Yemen, was for the lawless aggressors to re-impose the “legitimate” (unelected) Hadi government.

Now, however, the primary public motivation for the attack was suddenly quietly abandoned, revealing that the excuse was total fraud to begin with. Nevertheless, the media relentlessly and ubiquitously still refer to the junta as the “internationally recognized government,” pretending nothing happened. The disgrace of the so-called “free press” could not be more spectacular.[11]

Between 2016 and 2021, a year before the truce, the Coalition stole Yemeni oil worth an estimated $14 billion, a staggering number considering Yemen is one of the absolute poorest countries on the planet. That was not going to stop after the truce.[12] Thus, in May 2022 (just a month after the truce went into effect), the Junta sold the oil-rich fields in Shabwa to the UAE for free exploitation, thus further diverting “tens of thousands of barrels of oil per day” from the Yemeni people.

Image
Refinery near Shabwa oil fields. [Source: thecradle.co]

Just a few days before that was announced, the Coalition seized a supply ship heading to Yemen. It contained cooking gas intended to be used by the starving population. The Coalition stole it not because the most powerful nations on Earth need it but, rather, because discipline has to be taught to the unruly.[13] By the end of April, more than 5,000 violations of the truce had been committed, primarily by the occupier.[14]

In throwing the truce’s primary principle out of the window, the Coalition radically escalated and expanded its occupation and military advancements on occupied territory. Just to pick a few examples virtually at random: In May and June alone, the Middle Eastern press reported that “UAE forces,” and Israeli, “are displacing Yemenis from” Yemen’s south archipelago, in order to build military bases on the islands, while “military equipment…from and to UAE ships” was flowing.

In mid-June, the U.S. officially declared that it was sending more forces to occupy Yemen, “as well as providing military advice.” This was followed by further expansion of military outposts in southern Yemen, this time to install Israeli radars to conduct surveillance on the Iranians, as Israeli media informed.[15]

Accordingly, the media and intellectual classes went into the mode of self-image damage control. Thus, a European Council on Foreign Relations report in mid-May 2022 could conclude that the indigenous forces “have continued to battle forces of the internationally recognized government”—a favored Orwellism—“on key front lines.”

Most importantly for the occupiers, of course, includes “Marib—an oil-rich province of east Sanaa that the Houthis have long been trying to seize,” an intolerable outrage. “The war has reminded the Houthis’ dominant military wing of just how much they can gain through violence, leaving peace negotiations as merely part of a strategy to make more gains rather than to compromise … the Arab coalition will be watching carefully to see whether the Houthis are willing to make reciprocal concessions,” the report goes on.

Image
[Source: ibtimes.com]

Most interestingly, the Coalition of the world’s leading superpowers expanding its occupation, and bombing a peasant society under the façade of a truce, is not a reminder of “how much they can gain through violence,” but part “of a strategy to make more gains rather than to compromise.”

Those comments are reserved only for the occupied, while the aggressor is painted as a helpless benign benefactor trying to do good; one can only guess if the Russian Commissariat has achieved the same level of refinery as they complain of Ukrainian inability to perceive noble Russian efforts to do “reciprocal” good. The report finishes: “The truce shows that the most effective peace efforts will come from regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.” That is quite a phenomenal statement in its cynicism, but the general culture is too indoctrinated to notice the cynicism, so we need not tarry on it.[16]

In similar fashion, Foreign Affairs published a long and impressive piece of agitprop, analyzing Yemeni affairs in late June, ”The Surprising Success of the Truce in Yemen.” It noted that the “truce remains fragile,” which it suggests is the fault of “expansion of Houthi cross-border attacks.”

Nothing else, then, such as constant Coalition bombardment, expanding occupation and plunder of Yemeni resources.

The article decries Yemeni “anti-Western revolutionaries” (not guessing why they would have reasons to be such), and goes on to say: “For the Saudis, agreeing to the Houthis’ conditions in their entirety would effectively mean ceding victory to the group to no advantage other than ending the drain on Saudi resources; in particular, the Saudis would fail to obtain the vital security guarantees related to border security that they have pursued throughout the conflict.”

In plain English: For the aggressor to stop their aggression would mean that they do not get away without a scratch and their full victory, and furthermore our unprovoked attack will have cost us too much, and we cannot accept this. Again, this reveals the total fraud and moral corruption regarding the debate about Ukraine and the impossibility of diplomacy with Russia due to every nation’s “inalienable right” to self-determination within the “rules-based order.”

Also, the Foreign Affairs piece warns: “But as long as the Houthis attack regional rivals with weapons based on Iranian technology, any nuanced assessment of the relationship will not hold much water in Washington or other Western capitals.” That definition of “nuanced assessment” is certainly true, according to some standards.[17]

The Iran question deserves careful attention. In fact, the alleged Iranian connection of the Houthi—the “Iran-backed militia” as the propaganda system calls it—has been repeated religiously almost daily and used since day one as a main justification for the Coalition’s unprovoked attack. It is, however, regarded in internal Western documentation for what it really is: a concocted lie (and irrelevant), though predictably the servile press refuses to expose the farce.

Image
“Bad” allegedly Iranian-backed Houthi fighters. [Source: thedefensepost.com]

Internal Obama State Department reports conceded, from the start, that “[t]he administration had been following Iran’s meddling in Yemen—the presence of Revolutionary Guard agents, Hizbollah’s role, and some weapons smuggled into the country—but saw this largely as efforts to ‘aggravate and pinprick and undermine’ Saudi Arabia rather than ‘some kind of grand Iranian plan to take over the peninsula.’”[18]

UN expert panels estimated that Iran provided Houthi with approximately 2,000 firearms in the first year of the Coalition attack against Yemen, with the vast majority of their arms acquired from domestic weapon depots.

The panels concluded that they had “not seen sufficient evidence to confirm any direct large-scale supply of arms from the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Similarly, even the Atlantic Council, a NATO-funded propaganda outlet, reported in a study from 2017: “There is certainly evidence of Iran supplying limited amounts of mainly small weapons and advisers to the Houthis. However, tangible evidence for Iranian military assistance in the form of heavy weapons that could decisively change the course of the war is scant….With or without Iran’s involvement, the underlying structure of the conflict and Houthi grievances would likely be the same.”[19]

Perhaps one could argue that the small amounts of weapons supplied by Iran are uniquely effective. There is evidence one can turn to for that, too, but do not expect it to be reported in the “free press.”

The UN appointed Panel of Experts on Yemen (dissolved last year following extreme Saudi pressure), was “aware of only one attack with a cruise missile and three with longer range ballistic missiles in 2021; this, in its view, suggests that the Houthis continue to struggle to acquire more sophisticated components for longer range systems from abroad,” and the “handful of attacks with longer-range drones and missiles caused limited damage. Their primary purpose was not military, but political….The Houthis’ primary goal with such strikes is to pressure its adversaries and build leverage for eventual negotiations”—unlike Western-supplied weapons to the Coalition, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, used for the impressive slaughtering.[20]

Or consider the facts reported by Annelle Sheline, one of the leading scholars on contemporary Yemen, regarding the constant panic about Yemen’s “Iran-supplied” missiles used in self defense on Saudi targets:

“The Saudi-led coalition has carried out more than 24,800 air raids since 2015 [killing tens of thousands of civilians …In contrast, the Saudi coalition spokesperson reported in December 2021 that the Houthis have launched over 400 missiles and over 800 drones at Saudi Arabia since the start of the war in March 2015, killing 59 civilians. Added together…If the U.S. had genuinely withdrawn support for Saudi offensives, the rate of coalition air raids should have declined from the Trump era to the Biden era, but it has not. Instead, coalition attacks began to increase dramatically in late 2021.”

Sheline goes on: “Without the assistance of U.S. military contractors, two-thirds of the Saudi Air Force would be unable to fly,” thus immediately ending the Coalition’s primary tool of attack and conquest, ending the war. However, none of this suits the purposes of ideological warfare, and therefore cannot be reported.[21]

Image
Annelle Sheline [Source: annelle-sheline.com]

Being too silly to merit discussion among serious circles, the Iran-focused agitprop is now discarded as cheap propaganda even in Western scholarship. Thus, elite Western security analysts openly concede that “The Houthis are a self-sufficient entity. They don’t need Iranians to be on call…The Houthis are fairly autonomous in their decision-making” (Andreas Krieg, King’s College, London).[22]

The most authoritative work yet on the Houthi movement, a 300-page volume published last fall, informed that “we learn that far from the simplified notion that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy, they actually operate interdependently and are, rather, ‘aligned’ with Tehran…the Houthi-led National Salvation Government has its own foreign policy, which mainly revolves around seeking wider support for the struggle against foreign aggression in Yemen.

Despite attempts to forge stronger international relations, severely limited as they are, the Houthis find themselves with little foreign policy space amid the overarching rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”[23]

The standard on the topic, the Routledge Handbook of U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare Operations, published in 2021, includes a chapter on Yemen and Iran specifically, written by Oxford’s Elisabeth Kendall, perhaps the leading Yemen scholar in the world. In it, she writes: “The Houthi ‘coup’” in 2015, with the vast support of the population and even our puppet President’s own army, “was thus generated by domestic concerns relating to the control of resources and power rather than by ideological principles externally nurtured by Iran.”

“There is evidence of Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, providing weapons and military advisors to the Houthis. This was likely not as significant at this point in the conflict as their opponents claimed, and there is little evidence of Iran supplying the Houthis with heavy weapons in the early stages of the war.” Additionally, “It was not Iranian assistance that explains the Houthi success,” but rather internal political maneuver and support. Most importantly, “The Houthi relationship with Iran is based on pragmatism rather than command and control,” and in fact lessening in military support over the years.[24]

Image
Elisabeth Kendall [Source: bbc.com]

But all of this is beside the point and essentially completely irrelevant because there is no reason why Iran would not have the right to send arms to a country defending itself from a gang of murderous terrorist states. Any indication that Yemen would try to acquire the arms necessary for it to defend itself causes unspeakable fury in the West which, on the other hand, apparently has a God-given right to supply the aggressor, and in fact is the aggressor.

The principle is therefore clear enough: We have the right to attack anyone we like, and the victim trying to defend itself is an unspeakable transgressor. A person who has not yet lost a modicum of sanity will notice the spectacular Western hypocrisy in analyzing their tens of billions of dollars in sophisticated armaments going to Ukraine, supposedly to “defend it,” which is being sent simultaneously as we block Yemen from arming themselves, while nobody in the media or the general culture reacts. This has to be considered as one of the greatest ever achievements of thought control and brainwashing, achieved by the most powerful and vicious propaganda system in history.

Image
[Source: reddit.com]

Thus, on June 5, the White House published another routine hypocrisy and lie-filled denunciation of Iran for its “interference in the internal affairs of” Yemen, and “its support for terrorism through its armed proxies, and its efforts to destabilize the security and stability of the region.” Immediately after that, the U.S. State Department sent $5 billion in missiles to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. That one would have made Orwell gasp for air.[25] [NOTE: It’s unclear whether the $5 billion was the combined total to Saudi Arabia and the UAE or whether each of them received $5 billion.]

We now return to the events in the summer and early fall of 2022, illustrating further what the “truce” actually meant in the real world. In July and August, Yemeni media reported that “U.S. military units deployed” on Yemeni ports along with Saudi troops to crush a potential “rebellion against the Riyadh-formed” and unelected military Junta.

Shortly thereafter, UAE ships arrived in Yemeni ports “carrying huge military reinforcements” to supply their proxy forces in the country, occupying it. Thus, the standard procedure of plundering a defenseless victim with impunity could go on, why Yemen’s national oil authority remarked that one of their ships carrying huge amounts of gasoline, despite receiving a UN permit to travel freely, was seized by the Coalition, thereby making it five ships in total illegally being held at that time. Again, it must be stressed that the terrorist occupying states are in no need of gasoline. But resistance has to be punished.

Meanwhile, the French Foreign Legion was sent in to occupy southern parts of Yemen by France, in order to gain “access to the area” and “secure south Yemen’s gas exports” for cheap and easy plundering, just like the good old days.

Image
[Source: pinterest.com]

A few days later, another Yemeni ship was captured by the Coalition, stealing approximately $200 million in oil. In a stunning outburst of (accidental) honesty, a leader of the Coalition-imposed Junta—Vice President al-Bahrani—warned warring parties from fighting, since it would jeopardize Western “oil and gas investments” in Yemen. He further noted: “I tell you frankly this is what I have seen from European, American and Arab officials,” who will make “large oil and gas investments” in Shabwa, Hadramout and Mahra, the major oil rich regions, heavily occupied by the Coalition.

The Vice President also stated that securing these “investments”—outright plundering—“will be our priorities,” thus making it clear that the official policy of the Junta is solely to secure plundering and occupation by its foreign masters.

In October, the UAE seized mineral and gold mines, stealing tons of gold, while establishing, along with France, ports in Shabwa to steal and export Yemen’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) to foreign vessels. This was done under the aegis of the destroyer USS Cole patrolling the shores of Yemen, while American military delegations on the spot explored routes for extracting oil resources. A UN report noted:

“The Saudi-led countries…have found the appropriate opportunity to realize what were in the past wishes…Those wishes have become within reach…The U.S.-backed coalition countries have sought hard to tear the country apart and create weak entities [in Yemen] through which they could control the country, its wealth and capabilities…the coalition countries have turned southern and eastern Yemeni provinces, which contain huge wealth of oil, gas, gold and other minerals into a land where there is no national sovereignty…companies…have been brought in to loot Yemeni wealth and antiquities and control the islands, ports and coastal lines of strategic importance.”[26]

Yet another remarkable illustration of the West’s unquestionable right to invade, occupy and plunder was illustrated by a cardinal sin by the attacked victim, which caused unspeakable anger and fury. Namely, I am referring to when Yemen, between October and November, warned multiple times against numerous foreign vessels attempting to dock the occupied ports to ship stolen LNG, and after these ignored the warnings, tried firing defensive missiles at them.

That caused almost hysterical outrage in the West. The occupying countries in the EU expressed “deep concern about the unacceptable threats by the Houthis to attack oil companies and commercial shipping in neighboring countries,” and required “the Houthis to moderate their demands.”

The U.S.’s Yemen envoy Steven Fagin, in yet another Orwellian triumph, warned that Yemen trying to prevent mass plundering of its resources would “only harm the Yemeni people by worsening fuel shortages.”[27]

Image
Steven Fagin [Source: ye.usembassy.gov]

An international report by Reuters, cited by the few papers which covered the events, denounced the “escalation” by “the Iran-aligned Houthis,” while remaining silent about the ongoing occupation, attack and plundering, thus exposing the newswire’s actual role as a servile tool of government propaganda. The next day, incidentally, yet another Yemeni gas ship was seized by the Coalition. Total silence, as usual.[28]

In fact, since Yemen transgressed the universally held sacred principles of the West which say that the aggressor must reserve the right to do anything it feels likes, and that the attacked must not defend itself, the U.S., France and other military Coalition leaders officially decided to declare that the “Houthi menace” is “an international threat.”

What this tacitly shows is that Yemeni oil and wealth does not actually belong to the people of Yemen, or the country itself, but rather to us, a priori. UN envoy Hans Grundberg (government official from Sweden, a country deeply involved in the attack), warned that “attacks on oil” infrastructure and Arab-Western “oil companies” used to plunder the nation “undermines the welfare of the entirety of the Yemeni people,” thus exposing the UN’s well-known corruption and compromise. In short, the Yemeni people, we may then add, are solely the elite elements under control of the attacking and occupying Coalition, conducive the needs of Western oil corporations.

Another stunning illustration of Western “values” was the U.S. Navy intercepting a small ship carrying Iranian AK rifles going to Yemen for its self-defense. The Navy took them and said that they were “considering sending seized Iranian weapons to Ukraine” in its self-defense against Russia. We may speculate how moralists in the West would react if the Russian fleet intercepted Western arms in Poland or Romania to send them to Yemen, claiming to uphold the universal right of sovereignty and self-defense of all nations.[29]

Image
Iranian rifles destined for Yemen seized by U.S. naval vessel. [Source: businessinsider.com]

Although actual critics of the attack on Yemen, on non-propaganda and principal terms, had no access to the press, the major journals lended themselves open to Saudi generals explaining that “Saudi Arabia’s stance on protecting Yemen’s sovereignty remains unequivocal…It is imperative for Saudi Arabia to preserve peace in Yemen.” Therefore, “It is a war of necessity, not a war of choice for the Saudis.” What is shocking is not that it was published (that is to be expected), but rather that it elicited no reaction of utter contempt and hysterical laughter.[30]

Meanwhile, foreign government-funded propaganda warned of “Iran transferring the technology and parts necessary for the Houthis to increase their reach to the point of being able to reach Israel is likely increasing” (no evidence provided). Once again the inalienable Western doctrine that we must be free to attack anyone we desire, and that nobody is allowed to defend themselves, is put on full display with no reactions, since essentially everyone agrees, of course.[31]

The European press denounced Houthi for bothering “Europe” and its “vantage point” in “energy exportation,” and going so far as describing Yemen’s fending of pirates as “Iranian efforts” to attack “Europe” and “holding Yemen hostage” (The National)—an unspeakable propaganda triumph that would have made even Goebbels cringe.[32]

Therefore, the reactions were entirely predictable and natural when the media were given State Department and Saudi General Staff notes on what to report, when they found alleged Iranian arms (a couple of thousand AK rifles and RPGs hidden in cow manure onboard old fishing vessels, intercepted by American, British and French destroyers and frigates patrolling Yemeni waters). U.S. Navy spokesman Commander Timothy Hawkins was concerned since “weapons from Iran to Yemen leads to instability and violence.”[33]

The media responded to this blatant and vulgar propaganda coup by loyally marching in the jingoist parades in general euphoria and joy for our leaders, and wrath against “the enemy” for daring to disobey our commands. The journals were particularly angry about our forces not being able to “export oil” from occupied territory, accusing the “Iran-aligned” Yemenis of themselves having “destroyed Yemen’s economy,” as The Jerusalem Post put it.

By the way, the same Post observed shortly after, that the key “obstacle to a permanent, peaceful settlement in Yemen” is the “Houthis, supported by sophisticated Iranian weaponry,” offering no evidence for the charge, and omitting the West’s not only “sophisticated” but necessary weaponry to keep the attack going. Also another contributing factor, it said, is the Coalition’s “internal conflict.” The meaning of that is pretty straight forward: If the Coalition were just more efficient at attacking and destroying the occupied enemy, it would be able to totally crush the indigenous population, thereby achieving “a permanent, peaceful settlement in Yemen.” In late October, Yemeni media published a record of Coalition-seized Yemeni oil ships, totaling billions of dollars in value.[34]

Image
Yemeni oil ship seized by Saudis. [Source: thecradle.co]

We return to the timeline of events, from November 2022 until the beginning of January 2023. On November 16, Emirati documents were leaked to the Middle Eastern press, showing that the UAE sought to expand their occupation of strategic Yemeni islands. Namely, militarily transforming the Mayyun island (Perim) and expelling the indigenous population, giving tactical access to the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb between Somalia and Yemen.[35]

Image
[Source: wikipedia.org]

One day prior to that, one might add, Coalition forces sent “shipments of weapons at Aden airport,” under control of proxy UAE forces, while also conducting military operations with “military planes” and “intensive flying of drones” to ensure that occupation can go on with little or no disturbance.[36] A few weeks later, Saudi Arabia sent even more military forces to the oil-rich Hadramout while bribing local tribes to enlist them as mercenaries, an old trick, while also simultaneously establishing new military runways at Socotra island for military use. The island is already under Israeli occupation.[37]

Image
[Source: cbc.ca]

On November 8, a ship carrying fuel going to Yemen was intercepted and seized by the Coalition, just outside Djibouti while, on the very next day, the governor of Aden (Yemen’s temporary capital since 2015) claimed that the Americans had met with their Yemeni puppets in order to implement “a two-pronged plan, the first of which is to approve an American request to secure the oil and gas fields in the east of the country, and the other to use smuggling ports to transport shipments out to sea.” That meeting has not been confirmed, but the facts on the ground are unequivocal, to be sure. On November 11, the Coalition seized three ships carrying diesel just outside Sanaa.[38]

Most interestingly, the Middle Eastern information system was more or less openly conceding that the mass-scale plundering was going on. Coming straight from the horse’s mouth, Emirati print media (Al-Emarat Al-Youm) quoted officials stating that “France, Britain and the United States decided to form a joint unit for” securing illegal oil exports “in Shabwa and Hadramout…at the request of the Riyadh-formed” Junta. This too, was too taboo for the “free press,” revealing our sophisticated understanding of conducting ideological warfare on the home front.[39]

In mid-December, the Coalition seized yet two more Yemeni fuel ships, once again to enforce discipline on the disobedient. The very same day this was reported, “strategic depots” were “being prepared by the U.S. forces” occupying a civilian airport in Mahra province, eastern Yemen.[40]

Image
Stephen Pomper [Source: lawandsecurity.org]

The reader of this has to bear in mind truly how little this affected the media propaganda version about the situation in Yemen—since none of this has been reported in the West. Thus Stephen Pomper and Michael Wahid Hanna, former Obama official and NYU Law School expert, respectively, could write in Foreign Affairs[41] in early December that there had been, since April, “a political settlement for a conflict that has pitted Houthi rebels, who control large parts of the country and are backed by Iran, against the internationally recognized Yemeni government.”

But there is a problem. Namely that “the Houthis have resumed their intermittent attacks on Yemen’s oil-exporting infrastructure,” not explaining why, of course, since it would give the game away. They go on: “There is little Washington can do to create [peace]. For whatever positive impact the Biden administration’s efforts have had—and they have had one”—(of course without giving a single example)—“the United States has neared the end of what its waning influence over the Saudis and Emiratis can achieve.”

Image
Michael Wahid Hanna [Source: belfercenter.org]

One might easily think of examples to the contrary, however difficult they may be to consider for elite-educated intellectuals. For example, the United States could stop lending its support to the Coalition Air Force, thus practically immediately ending the attack. Annelle Sheline has pointed out that, “without the assistance of U.S. military contractors, two-thirds of the Saudi Air Force would be unable to fly.”[42]

Pomper and Hanna go on to describe the Houthi “demand,” which says that Yemeni oil should belong to Yemen, as “a requirement so outlandish that it appears intended either to foreclose further talks or to humiliate the government and Saudi coalition.” No further comment was perceived as needed, while they praise the foreign-imposed Junta as representing “a broad spectrum of views” and “derive support from different sources,” such as the Saudi and Emirati General Staffs, the British Foreign Office and U.S. State Department, surely with the support from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ExxonMobil and so on. However, they do criticize the war on the basis that it has become “counterproductive,” much like Russian state media “criticize” the invasion of Ukraine on similar grounds.

In fact, it seems that essentially all of the minimal criticism against the attacking Coalition is purely tactical, not principaled; that the invasion and attack is costing us too much, giving us bad looks and that we will not get away unscathed in our destruction of Yemen. Consider a paper by the Carnegie Middle East Center, published in October 2022, and which in fact is at the outermost end of the spectrum of critique. It criticizes the Coalition for “thinking about militarization” since it is “generating pushback from Yemenis,” and that the invasion has been “detrimental to Saudi interests.” The very thought of us stopping “militarization” against a country because it is illegal, immoral and fundamentally wrong is far beyond the realm of possible discussion in Western culture.[43]

Thus, the first year of the truce may have decreased the number of people killed in actual fighting, but the main principle of the accord, a “halt to all offensive ground, aerial, and maritime military operations, inside and outside of Yemen, and a freeze in current military positions on the ground,” was proven to be a pipe dream before the ink had dried on the paper. The original accord was stillborn and in fact never operational—roughly in accordance with perhaps the only official study on the adherence to the truce.[44]

In January 2023, the Junta leased the major port of Qishn, “rich in various types of rare minerals,” to the Emirati mining company of AJHAM, to export valuable Yemeni resources. Of course, no consultation with the Yemeni people was conducted, then or ever.[45]

That coincided with the French fleet having a military parade off the coast of Yemen,” hoping to cash in “a claim for a share of wealth that is being raced for, specifically in the eastern crescent of Yemen,” as Yemeni press informed.[46]

The very next day, January 5, American forces in Abyan were, in their words, preparing for “fighting terrorism” along with Emirati forces (namely, by conducting international terrorism themselves) in multiple provinces. Well, which ones? “All of these provinces,” it just so happens, are rich in “oil and overlook the most important sea-lanes around the world,” a coincidence, surely. Throughout the month, American military delegations in these areas were expanding their bases, doing heavy lobbying by the gun to gain further control “on the coast of Hadramout in eastern Yemen,” particularly rich in natural gas and other valuable Yemeni resources, which of course ipso facto do not belong to Yemen.[47]

On January 27, Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution reviewed the so-called truce, triumphally concluding that there had been general adherence to it. The occupation and plundering, which would have impressed even someone like Leopold II, was not worthy of mention, as per usual. Interestingly, however, Riedel comments on the “virulently anti-American” Yemeni resistance, conceding that “the Saudi war has allowed” it “to play the role of patriotic defenders of a small country fighting a rich neighbor with the backing of Washington and much of the Western world.”

Image
Bruce Riedel [Source: youtube.com]

That is very dangerous, since the poor people of the Third World may get some funny ideas and inspiration about independence in the future, which of course is a grim and unacceptable risk. What is more, “air strikes, blockades, and intentional mass starvation are the characteristics of a war the United States has supported”—apparently not participated and been instrumental in the war, we are led to believe, then.[48]

To kick February off, the UAE officially declared its many years’ long annexation of the strategically located Yemeni archipelago of Socotra. However, this was no Russian annexation of Donbas and so, therefore, not worthy of our deep condemnation and upholding of virtuous standards, and naturally the event ended up in the Memory Hole. In mid-February, the Coalition finally let cargo ships headed to Yemen enter the country, almost a year after the truce was enacted, Reuters reported.

On March 2, admirals of the American Navy imposing the vicious blockade on Yemen, along with the CIA and Ambassador Stephen Fagin, arrived in Aden to meet the representatives of the Junta. They met on a newly formed U.S. military base at Al-Ghaydah Airport to discuss “the potential dangers of terrorism”—another word for national independence—and coordination of oil extraction from Yemen. Again, the Yemenis themselves are excluded from such privileges.[49]

Image
Meeting at Al Ghaydah Base in Yemen. [Source: centcom.mil]

As of mid-March, that is where things stand. As we reach the one-year anniversary of the signing of the truce, we realize that the diplomatic process in fact did very little to resolve the fundamental and core issues of today’s Yemen, namely, that it is being brutally attacked and occupied by foreign powers. This has not fundamentally changed and, as is crystal clear, the media have made themselves accomplices to this massive outburst of terror and violence.

(Notes at link.)

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... n-affairs/
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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 17, 2023 1:38 pm

Sanaa Peace Talks Closest Yemen and KSA Have Been To Ending War: UN Envoy
APRIL 14, 2023

Image
Delegations from Saudi Arabia and Oman arrive in Yemen’s capital Sana’a on April 8, 2023 to hold talks with officials from the Ansarullah resistance movement. Photo: Via Twitter.

Despite growing optimism for a comprehensive peace agreement, questions remain on whether the UAE is ready to abandon its occupation of southern Yemen and the Socotra archipelago

UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg on 10 April said that ongoing peace talks between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are the “closest Yemen has been to real progress towards lasting peace,” adding that this moment must be “seized.”

“This is a moment to be seized and built on and a real opportunity to start an inclusive political process under UN auspices to sustainably end the conflict,” Grundberg told AP.

Over the last several days, officials from Saudi Arabia and Oman have been holding peace talks with Yemen’s National Salvation Government (NSG) in the capital Sanaa.

The talks are being conducted without the involvement of any UN or western representatives.

Saudi-Yemen Peace Talks Underway in Sanaa


Ali al-Qahoum – a member of the political bureau of NSG-allied resistance group Ansarallah – on 11 April hailed Oman’s efforts in bridging the gap between Sanaa and Riyadh and said progress is being made to end the eight-year war.

“There is, praise be to God, great progress in achieving a just peace that meets the aspirations and sacrifices of the Yemeni people in stopping the aggression, lifting the siege, ending the occupation, expelling foreign forces, reconstruction, reparations, and the implementation of humanitarian files,” Qahoum tweeted.

The Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed bin Saeed Al-Jaber, expressed similar sentiments on Tuesday, hailing the ongoing efforts to “discuss paths of dialogue between the Yemeni parties to reach a comprehensive and sustainable political solution.”

His comments were the first by Saudi Arabia on the peace talks. They also coincided with an announcement by the Saudi-appointed parallel government in Aden to complete a prisoner swap deal with the NSG.

“Regarding the deal for prisoners signed in Geneva with the other party under the auspices of the United Nations, we announce that the Yemeni government team is ready to implement the deal at the specified time announced by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),” Yahya Kazman, the head of the parallel government’s negotiation committee, said in a statement.

Last year, the NSG and Saudi-appointed Yemeni officials signed a UN-brokered deal to free 2,000 prisoners, but their release was disrupted due to mutual violations of the agreement.

The Saudi-led war has caused close to 400,000 deaths in the Arab world’s poorest nation, nearly 60 percent of them caused by issues like lack of access to food, water, and healthcare, according to the UN.

Riyadh and Sanaa have been holding Omani-mediated talks for months to renew a UN-sponsored ceasefire, but the prospect of ending Yemen’s eight-year war has advanced quickly since last month, when China brokered a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

But despite the optimism of officials on all sides, questions remain about whether the UAE will sign off on a peace deal and agree to remove its forces from southern Yemen.

Through the Southern Transitional Council (STC) – a second parallel administration established by Abu Dhabi – the UAE controls most of Yemen’s southern ports, where Yemeni oil is exported from.

The UAE is also occupying several strategic islands off Yemen’s coast and is in the process of establishing a “maritime empire” in Yemeni waters.

Because of this, analysts have suggested that the UAE is uninterested in a solution that ends the war in Yemen.

According to a report by Yemeni news outlet Al Masirah, in recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has deployed its forces to southern Yemen and Socotra to extend its influence and possibly forestall any disruption to the peace process.

https://orinocotribune.com/sanaa-peace- ... -un-envoy/

************

Hundreds Released Yemen Prisoner Swap After Houthi-Saudi Talks

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Yemen Prisoner Swap. Apr. 14, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@maajid_saleem

Published 14 April 2023

"...the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced its custodianship over the prisoner exchange program..."


Following negotiations between the Houthi rebels and Saudi officials, a significant number of individuals were released from detention in Yemen through a prisoner exchange program. This exchange involved hundreds of individuals who were previously held in captivity.

The Yemeni conflict has resulted in an agreement being reached between the warring factions for the release of approximately 900 detainees. Such significant developments hold potential consequences for the region's political and socio-economic stability.

The initiation of the transfer and exchange of close to 900 prisoners by the conflicting factions in Yemen marks the negotiations for peace between the Houthi rebels and the Saudi representatives.

On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced its custodianship over the prisoner exchange program, wherein its aircraft fleet is designated for the transportation of the liberated prisoners across six Yemeni and Saudi Arabian cities.


“With this act of goodwill, hundreds of families torn apart by conflict are being reunited … Our deep desire is that these releases provide momentum for a broader political solution,” said Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East.

In Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, Talal al-Nazili was elated to see his brother again.

"Today is a victorious day," he said. “The day when my brother was released after seven years. We never lost hope and I do not feel the ache I had in my heart, it feels clear now.”


During negotiations in Switzerland in the previous month, the involved parties reached a consensus to liberate 887 detainees and convene once more in May to deliberate on additional releases. The agreement was witnessed by the United Nations' representative for Yemen, namely, Hans Grundberg, together with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The negotiators were optimistic in expecting an all-inclusive agreement encompassing all extant detainees throughout the course of the 10-day deliberations.

The recent discussions were part of an ongoing sequence of meetings that culminated in the liberation of detainees in the year 2022 and 2020 through the intermediary efforts of the United Nations in a pact commonly referred to as the Stockholm Accord.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Hun ... -0018.html
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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 28, 2023 3:19 pm

Yemen Peace Talks Collapse Due to US Interference: Ansarallah
JULY 26, 2023

Image
Head of the Political Council in Yemen Mahid Al-Mashat. Photo: Al Mayadeen.

The once-hopeful April peace talks failed following a dispute over the payment of civil servant salaries and Saudi looting of Yemeni oil.

President of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council Mahdi al-Mashat announced on 23 July that negotiations with Saudi Arabia to end the war in Yemen had ceased, while accusing the US of seeking to block a peace deal, Sputnik reported on 23 July.

Mashat told Al-Masirah TV that negotiations with Saudi Arabia, which heads the US-backed coalition occupying parts of Yemen, collapsed in April over the issue of the payment of salaries to Yemeni civil servants.

In 2016, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government moved the Central Bank from the capital Sanaa, which is under Ansarallah’s control, to the southern port city of Aden and refused to pay the salaries of Yemeni civil servants living in Ansarallah-controlled areas.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE also began extracting and exporting Yemeni oil from sparsely populated areas occupied by the Saudi-led coalition and refusing to hand over the proceeds to Ansarallah, which controls the most populated areas of the country, in effect, looting Yemen’s oil wealth.

During the last round of peace negotiations in April, Saudi Arabia offered to begin paying the salaries of Yemeni civil servants, but out of its own funds, rather than from Yemeni oil revenues.

Mashat explained that “The negotiations stopped at the point of handing over the salary from our oil and gas wealth, and the Saudi side was ready to pay it from its own and not from our oil and gas wealth.”

“What the Saudi side wants is to steal our oil wealth and transfer it to the Saudi National Bank and then give charity to the employees of our people, and this is what we rejected,” he said, while vowing to “extract salaries from the enemy [in reference to Saudi Arabia].”

Mashat stated further that “the American side is the one who insisted that Saudi Arabia refrain from paying salaries in the past period.”

The April talks were initially viewed as hopeful, following the broader reconciliation taking place across the region after the Chinese-mediated resumption of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March.

A prisoner exchange, releasing more than 900 prisoners between the two sides, was successful, while Ansarallah negotiators described discussions with the Saudi delegation in Sanaa as “serious and positive.” Controversial issues remained unresolved, but a new round of negotiations was planned in the “hope of completing the discussion of outstanding issues at a later time.”

The head of the prisoners’ committee in the Ansarallah resistance movement, Abdul Qader al-Murtada, stated in May that US officials had sought to obstruct the prisoner exchange negotiations as well.

“The Americans have been obstructing peace throughout the past periods, and they are always the ones who obstruct any progress and seek to plant obstacles in all rounds of negotiations in the prisoners’ file,” Murtada told a Lebanese TV station at the time.

https://orinocotribune.com/yemen-peace- ... nsarallah/
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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 18, 2023 3:29 pm

BP, Evergreen suspend Red Sea tanker traffic as Yemen continues attacks

The move comes as Yemen's Ansarallah continues to target Israel-bound commercial ships in support of Palestine

News Desk

DEC 18, 2023

Image
(Photo credit: BP)
BP said it will pause all its tanker traffic through the Red Sea following an escalation of attacks on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement in response to Israel's brutal bombing campaign in Gaza.

“In light of the deteriorating security situation for shipping in the Red Sea, BP has decided to temporarily pause all transits through the Red Sea,” the company said in a statement on 18 December.

Similarly, Taiwanese container shipping line Evergreen said on Monday that it has decided to temporarily stop accepting Israeli cargo and instructed its container ships to suspend navigation through the Red Sea until further notice.

The BP and Evergreen announcements follows a similar decision by four major shipping firms, who announced the suspension of passage through the Red Sea on last week. Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and CMA CGM – Italian-Swiss and French companies – announced their decision on Saturday. On Friday, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, also announced their decision to halt operations in the Red Sea.

Yemeni naval forces launched missiles against two ships headed for Israel that day.

On Thursday, 14 December, Sanaa announced it carried out a drone strike on the Israel-bound Maersk Gibraltar vessel. Days earlier, Yemeni naval forces launched a missile on a Norwegian ship that was carrying oil and was destined for the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Sanaa’s forces also captured an Israeli-linked vessel last month, taking it back to the coast of Yemen.

As a result of Yemen’s pro-Palestine naval operations, shipping costs in the Red Sea have surged significantly, with companies, including Israeli companies, being forced to reroute ships around the horn of Africa, adding two weeks to any journey toward Europe.

About 12 percent of global trade depends on the Suez Canal and 5 percent on the Panama Canal, according to Marco Forgione, director general at the Institute of Export & International Trade.

“They are fundamental to the flow of international trade,” he said. “Without them operating smoothly, the domino effect of damage and disruption to supply chains caused by ships delayed and in the wrong places will be substantial.”

In response, US officials are seeking to form a maritime task force that will protect ships traveling through the Red Sea from Ansarallah attacks. White House and Pentagon officials have said the White House is working with partners, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to form that group.

US officials have also threatened military action against Ansarallah. "As we've demonstrated in the past," Pentagon spokesperson Gen. Patrick Ryder said last week, "our military will not hesitate to take action where we deem it necessary and appropriate, including to protect against actions in the maritime domain that could threaten our troops."

If the US succeeds in the creation of an international coalition against Yemen, it would be the “filthiest” coalition known to mankind, Ansarallah politburo member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti said on Sunday.

"How will the countries that rushed to form an international coalition against Yemen to protect the perpetrators of Israeli genocide be perceived?" the top Yemeni official asked.

"How will Yemen, which took administrative and popular action to stop the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, be perceived?" he added.

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/bp-ev ... es-attacks

Top shipping companies suspend Red Sea journeys in fear of Yemen
This brings the total number of major international shipping firms that have suspended Red Sea operations up to four

News Desk

DEC 17, 2023

Image
The Galaxy Leader, seized by Yemeni forces last month. (Photo credit: Yemen Military Media)

Two more major shipping firms announced the suspension of passage through the Red Sea on 16 December, bringing the total number of companies up to four.

No ship is in danger as long as it doesn't go to an Israeli port. The US and EU are forcing shipping companies not to use the Red Sea in order to create an excuse to attack Yemen.

Yemen has already survived Western backed starvation and genocide.

Yemen also has powerful allies. https://t.co/FuNKJe66Q2

— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) December 17, 2023


Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and CMA CGM – Italian-Swiss and French companies – announced their decision on Saturday, one day after two Israel-bound vessels were attacked by Yemeni Armed Forces on 15 December.

Four Major Shipping Firms Halt Red Sea Route After Houthi Attacks https://t.co/VpQmiHdTLD

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 17, 2023


On Friday, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, two major shipping firms, also announced their decision to halt operations in the Red Sea.

Yemeni naval forces launched missiles against two ships headed for Israel that day.

“The naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces […] carried out a military operation against two container ships (MSC Alanya and MSC Palatium III), which were heading to the Israeli entity, targeting them with two naval missiles,” the Yemeni army said in a statement.

On Thursday, 14 December, Sanaa announced it carried out a drone strike on the Israel-bound Maersk Gibraltar vessel. Days earlier, Yemeni naval forces launched a missile on a Norwegian ship that was carrying oil and was destined for the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Sanaa’s forces also captured an Israeli-linked vessel last month, taking it back to the coast of Yemen.

As a result of Yemen’s pro-Palestine naval operations, shipping costs in the Red Sea have surged significantly, with companies, including Israeli companies, being forced to resort to expensive reroutes and hiked prices.

Earlier this month, Israeli shipping company Zim began implementing reroutes around Africa.

War risk premiums – required to be paid by vessels sailing through high-risk areas – rose during the week to up to 0.2 percent of the value of a ship, from 0.007 percent the previous week, market estimates showed, translating “into tens of thousands of dollars of additional costs for a seven-day voyage,” Reuters reported.

"These attacks have the potential to become far more of a global strategic economic threat than simply a regional geopolitical one," said Duncan Potts, a former vice admiral in the British navy, on 12 December.

Last week, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed reports that Washington is looking to form a naval task force with its allies, aimed at protecting Israeli shipping in the Red Sea.

In response, Iran’s Defense Minister Mohammed Reza Ashtiani said on 14 December that such a force would face “extraordinary problems.”

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/top-s ... r-of-yemen

US pressures Saudi Arabia to postpone imminent peace deal with Yemen

Although a peace deal is reportedly ready to be signed, Washington wants the kingdom to instead join a naval 'task force' that will confront Sanaa's forces in support of Israel

News Desk

DEC 18, 2023

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Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman meets a delegation of the Yemeni armed forces in Riyadh on 19 September, 2023. (Photo Credit: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS)

The US is exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia to delay the signing of a peace agreement with Yemen and instead join an expanded maritime protection task force to confront Yemeni attacks against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea.

According to a report by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a draft peace deal between Sanaa and Riyadh has been finalized. It could be signed before the end of the year, potentially ending a NATO-backed war that has decimated the Arab world's poorest country for eight years.

“Saudi Arabia is going through a difficult test between two options […] Either it will emerge from the Yemeni quagmire under a roadmap agreed upon with Sanaa, or it will submit to US dictates and join the international maritime coalition, and this means remaining vulnerable to [western] blackmail,” the Al-Akhbar report details.

Despite the pressure from Washington, the kingdom is reportedly “continuing on the path to peace" and is working to “speed up” the completion of the peace agreements to avoid “further obstruction by the Emiratis or local agents.”

Saudi and Yemeni negotiators have given their final comments on the agreement. The revised version was recently delivered to UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, who has started coordinating an official peace ceremony.

According to Al-Akhbar's sources in Riyadh and Sanaa, the peace deal includes the complete lifting of a land, sea, and air blockade imposed on Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition, a “consensual mechanism” to pay the salaries of public employees, and the free export of oil from Saudi-controlled regions.

"The ball is in Riyadh’s court, which is under US pressure to delay the signing and enter into a war alliance against Yemen in the Red Sea,” Al-Akhbar highlights, adding that UAE-backed forces are also looking to derail the peace process.

A peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Yemen would significantly hamper US efforts to deploy an international naval task force to the Red Sea to protect Israel's maritime trade.

“The force, provisionally entitled Operation Prosperity Guardian, is due to be announced by the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, when he visits [West Asia],” UK daily The Guardian reported on 17 December.

The US war chief is set to visit Israel later this week to meet with senior officials. According to the British outlet, western officials believe Washington has secured the involvement of Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, and Bahrain.

For the past several weeks, the Yemeni armed forces have been launching attacks on Israeli-linked commercial vessels attempting to cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait south of the Suez Canal.

In response, five of the world's largest shipping companies have announced a complete cessation of activities in the vital sea route. These are Hong Kong-based OOCL, France's CMA CGM, the Danish Maersk, the German Hapag-Lloyd, and the Italian-Swiss-owned Mediterranean Shipping Co.

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/us-pr ... with-yemen
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Re: Yemen

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 19, 2023 3:23 pm

THE US PREPARES ITS UKRAINE WAR COALITION FLEET IN THE RED SEA TO PROTECT ISRAEL, ATTACK YEMEN – RUSSIA RESPONDS

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

On Monday, General Lloyd Austin (lead image, left), the US Secretary of Defense, announced that the US is assembling a fleet of warships to defend Israel’s port of Eilat, the Gulf of Aqaba, and Israel’s Red Sea shipping route by threatening to attack Yemen if it exercises its Law of the Sea right to regulate military transit through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (lead image, right).

The Austin fleet is to be assembled from the coalition of NATO states at war with Russia in the Ukraine. Austin’s call, announced by the Pentagon while Austin is in Israel, follows the failure of the USS Eisenhower and its squadron, with additional French and British warships, to prevent the collapse of commercial container and tanker shipping to and from Israel.

“The recent escalation in reckless Houthi attacks originating from Yemen,” Austin announced, “threatens the free flow of commerce, endangers innocent mariners, and violates international law. The Red Sea is a critical waterway that has been essential to freedom of navigation and a major commercial corridor that facilitates international trade. Countries that seek to uphold the foundational principle of freedom of navigation must come together to tackle the challenge posed by this non-state actor launching ballistic missiles and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) at merchant vessels from many nations lawfully transiting international waters.”

“This is an international challenge that demands collective action. Therefore, today I am announcing the establishment of Operation Prosperity Guardian, an important new multinational security initiative under the umbrella of the Combined Maritime Forces and the leadership of its Task Force 153, which focuses on security in the Red Sea. Operation Prosperity Guardian is bringing together multiple countries to include the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain, to jointly address security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, with the goal of ensuring freedom of navigation for all countries and bolstering regional security and prosperity.”

Bahrain on the Persian Gulf — the only Arab state included on Austin’s list — and the Seychelles, the island state in the Indian Ocean, are included to provide shore base facilities for the proposed Yemen-attack fleet. However, no country with naval bases on the Red Sea shore, territorial waters, and exclusive economic zones extending into the waterway — Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, and Djibouti — has publicly agreed to participate or approved this escalation of the Gaza war to benefit Israel.

The Pentagon has also asked the Australian Navy for a frigate to join the Red Sea fleet, but the Australian government in Canberra is reluctant to agree, and Austin has dropped the country from his list.

All of the governments on Austin’s list, with the exception of the US, voted last week at the United Nations General Assembly for Israel to halt its operations in the Gaza war. In this context, none of these states recognizes Israel’s right to impose its blockade of Gaza’s ports extending into Palestine’s territorial waters, the Gaza Maritime Area, and Israel’s de facto military rule of the international waters of the Mediterranean, including the Gaza Marine gas field.

“Freedom of navigation”, Austin’s version of the legal doctrine of his Operation Prosperity Guardian, does not apply to the Gaza Maritime Area.

In the Red Sea, maps of the International Institute for the Law of the Sea Studies show overlapping territorial waters and economic zone claims from the eastern and western shore states, leaving no international waters for the passage of warships, particularly through the southern gateway to the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Austin’s operation is not innocent passage, as the international Law of the Sea requires, and it defies Yemen’s right to exercise prior authorization.

Russia’s response is no response, for the time being.

For a summary up to 2021 of the military record and the international law claims for the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, read this.

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Source: https://upsccolorfullnotes.com/red-sea-countries-map/

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Source: https://www.marineinsight.com/

In an interview with a Russian-speaking American on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not explicitly address the new US intervention plan in the Middle East.

He did say that “Europe and the United States are now rushing in the Middle East, calling on the Lebanese, Iranians, Iraqis, and Syrians to do everything so that the war in Gaza does not spread to the surrounding territories. Perhaps they need to apply the same fervour to ensure that this does not happen in Ukraine.”

Also on Monday, in the Moscow newspaper Vedomosti, it was reported that Russian experts expect “most likely, the Americans will launch missile and bomb attacks on command centres and military depots of the Houthis, or targeted strikes by special forces may follow in order to eliminate the commanders of the movement. The operation will be roughly comparable to the actions of Western allies in Syria or Iraq.”

The newspaper claimed that, according to its source, “the military forces of Saudi Arabia and the UAE may participate in the operation – their armed forces and their proxies have been waging a sluggish war against Iran’s allies in Yemen since 2015. I think the Arab monarchies themselves would like to involve the Americans in the conflict, but it will not come to a full–scale war.”

The implication is that the Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry, and Kremlin are reluctant to publicly condemn the Austin fleet operation move so as not to upset current Russian relationships with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).


What this means for Russia’s relationship with Iran materialized on Monday afternoon when the Iranian Ambassador to Moscow, Kasem Jilali, asked for a meeting at the Foreign Ministry, and met Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. If Yemen and the Red Sea were discussed, the official communiqué is keeping it secret. “During the conversation,” the ministry release says, “the Middle East agenda was discussed in detail, with an emphasis on developments in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict zone. There was general concern about the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip. The importance of intensifying international efforts aimed at an early ceasefire, providing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population and turning the situation into a political channel was stressed. The issues of the Syrian settlement were also touched upon, including the continuation of close coordination of efforts between Russia and Iran in the Astana format in the interests of supporting the unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the SA [Syrian Arab Republic]”.

For analysis of the most recent round of Russian-Iranian negotiations, click to read.

In the past, Moscow officials have consistently defended the Yemeni state’s sovereignty, including its territorial waters in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Ministry has also defended “dialogue with the Houthis and other Yemeni political associations, as well as with all interested states”.

Russia has also proposed that the United Nations legalize and regulate all operations impacting Yemen.

But that was long ago. The last but one statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry mentioning the Houthis, the civil war in Yemen, and Saudi military intervention was issued six and a half years ago, on March 17, 2017: “We reaffirm our fundamental position in favour of an early cessation of hostilities and the resumption of a negotiation process in the Republic of Yemen, taking into account the interests of all leading political forces in the country. We continue to believe that the unilateral steps taken by the parties to the conflict, including the current court ruling, as well as the sea and air blockade of certain regions of Yemen controlled by the Houthis and Saleh supporters, are not conducive to creating a favourable environment for restoring trust and restarting the dialogue, and put off the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the crisis, which is so much needed by the long-suffering Yemeni people.”

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Abdulmalik Al-Mekhlafi meets Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, January 22, 2018.

In January 2018, Abdulmalik Al-Mekhlafi, Foreign Minister of the Aden-based Yemeni government, met Lavrov in Moscow for talks. “We believe,” Lavrov said at the press conference following their negotiations, “that the UN should henceforth be able to deliver humanitarian aid to Sanaa without fail. It is important to strive to lift the sea and air blockade, to remove all limitations on the deliveries of food, medicines and other prime necessities to all regions of Yemen with no exceptions…Yemen’s Foreign Minister Abdulmalik Al-Mekhlafi and we have agreed to maintain close contacts both directly and via our embassy in Yemen, which due to security reasons has been recently relocated from Sanaa to Riyadh. At the same time, we will continue our dialogue with the Houthis and other Yemeni political associations, as well as with all interested states, including the Arab coalition, on which the further developments in the country and around it depend. We will urge everyone who can contribute to the settlement and the transition from war to a political dialogue to do so as soon as possible.

There is no Foreign Ministry record of a meeting with Hisham Sharaf, Foreign Minister since 2016 of the Sanaa-based Yemeni (Houthi) government. The Russian Embassy in Sanaa was evacuated in December 2017.

In November 2019, Moscow appeared to be saying the only international Red Sea operation it would countenance for Yemen should be led by the United Nations (UN). “We”, declared the Ministry’s press department, “urge the parties to the Yemeni conflict to do everything in their power to keep up this positive change so as to be able to stop the hostilities altogether and to launch a UN-led process of peaceful settlement based on the regard for the interests of all the main political forces as well as religious and regional groups in Yemen. We are still convinced that these developments will not only benefit friendly Yemen but will also help to ensure security of all the neighbouring countries.”

The Chinese government approach appears to be different.

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Source: https://maritime-executive.com/

On Sunday, Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), the Chinese state-owned fleet company, announced that it is halting all shipments to and from Israeli seaports. However, unlike its European peers, OOCL did not say it will stop sailing through the Red Sea. The implication, a shipping source comments, is that Beijing has declared its support for the Arab-led blockade of Israel, and will negotiate directly with Houthi and Yemeni officials so that OOCL vessels will be able to navigate safely through the Red Sea and into the Suez Canal, and vice versa. The commercial advantage to the Chinese is plain, the source said. Whether the Chinese Navy will send escorts for Chinese-flagged cargo vessels remains to be seen.

https://johnhelmer.net/the-us-prepares- ... more-89069

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Yemen Forces UAE To Send Freight by Land to ‘Israel’ Through Saudi Arabia
DECEMBER 18, 2023

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Yemeni Armed Forces boarding the cargo ship Galaxy Leader on November 19, 2023. Photo: Ansar Allah Center/AP.

Israeli reports reveal that a shipment of fresh foodstuff was sent from the UAE to the Israeli occupation via land freight to avert Yemen’s blockade in the Red Sea.

The first batch of fresh foodstuffs arrived in “Israel” from the United Arab Emirates in the first trial of a new land bridge that is to be used instead of the Red Sea due to the Yemeni blockade on the latter, the Israeli Walla! news website reported on Saturday.

The shipment of foodstuff was transported from the UAE “through the new land bridge [used] as an alternative to the Red Sea,” media reports said. The freight was transported from the UAE through Saudi Arabia then Jordan and then “Israel”.

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Israeli reports said the initial trial was a success, with 10 trucks making it from the UAE to occupied Palestine for the benefit of the Israeli occupation.

The trucks had to cross a distance of some 2,000 km (1,242 miles) over two days and a few hours.

Israeli media in December said an agreement was signed between the authorities of the ports of Dubai, the UAE, and Haifa, occupied Palestine, regarding the establishment of a land bridge between the two ports in a bid to avert the “Yemeni threat to shut down maritime passages.”

The world’s second-largest shipping company, A.P. Moller-Maersk, announced Friday the suspension of all container traffic through the Red Sea until further notice. This decision comes in response to an attack by the Yemeni Armed Forces on its container ship in the Bab al-Mandab Strait on Thursday.

Simultaneously, the Yemeni Armed Forces announced that their Naval forces carried out a military operation against the Maersk Gibraltar cargo ship, which was en route to the Israeli occupation entity.

In a statement, the Yemeni Armed Forces confirmed that the ship was targeted with a drone, adding that a direct hit was confirmed after the Maersk Gibraltar’s crew refused to respond to warning calls from the Yemeni Naval Forces. The company claimed that the ship was not impacted by the attack.

“Following the near-miss incident involving Maersk Gibraltar yesterday and yet another attack on a container vessel today, we have instructed all Maersk vessels in the area bound to pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to pause their journey until further notice,” a company’s spokesperson was quoted as saying by Sky News.

It is worth noting that Maersk announced last week that it will start imposing a new risk surcharge on container shipments heading to “Israel” starting next year, citing the need to cover rising insurance premiums due to the unstable security situation.

Two ‘Israel’-bound ships attacked
The spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree publicly announced Friday that the Yemeni Naval Forces targeted the MSC Alanya and the MSC PALATIUM III with anti-ship missiles, dealing direct hits to the two vessels, having refused to heed Yemeni warnings in support of the oppressed Palestinian people, who are currently being subjected to massacres, destruction, and a siege in the Gaza Strip, in implementation of the directives of Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, and in response to the calls of the Yemeni people.

The Brigadier General emphasized that all vessels, heading to the Israeli occupation’s ports, will continue to be targeted, until “Israel” lifts its blockade on Gaza and allows for the passage of necessities into the Strip, including food and medical supplies.

This is happening as the matter got worse for the Israeli occupation after the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) announced a new equation following a US veto on a ceasefire in Gaza at the UNSC meeting, which added ships heading to “Israel”, regardless of their nationality, to the ban, and expanding its scope to the Arabian Sea, as well the Red Sea.

This comes alongside other attacks claimed by Yemen against Israeli targets, including the launch of long-range cruise missiles and drones on several occasions, as well as ballistic missiles at “Eilat” located in the southernmost region of occupied Palestine.

(Al Mayadeen – English)

https://orinocotribune.com/yemen-forces ... rough-ksa/

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Yemen will target Israeli vessels despite US-led naval coalition: Official

Yemen's military efforts to support Gaza have created 'the most significant threat to global shipping in decades'

News Desk

DEC 19, 2023

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Yemen's Houthi rebels say they attacked two "Israeli-linked" vessels in the Red Sea. (Photo credit: AFP)

In response to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s announcement of the creation of a multinational naval operation to patrol the Red Sea, Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government said they will continue targeting Israeli-linked ships in the strategic shipping corridor.

"Our position will not change in the direction of the Palestinian issue, whether a naval alliance is established or not," Ansarallah official Mohammed Abdulsalam told Reuters, stressing that only Israeli ships or those going to Israel would be targeted.

“Our position in support of Palestine and the Gaza Strip will remain until the end of the siege, the entry of food and medicine, and our support for the oppressed Palestinian people will remain continuous.”

Announcing the naval operation on 18 December, Defense Secretary Austin said during a visit to Bahrain that joint patrols would be held in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden which encompass a major East-West global shipping route. "This is an international challenge that demands collective action," he said.

Ansarallah’s commitment to oppose what they and others describe as Israel’s campaign of genocide against the people of Gaza has led the group to seize an Israeli-linked ship and launch attacks on over a dozen others. The resistance group has also launched missiles at the Israeli port city of Eilat since the start of the war on 7 October to oppose Israel’s horrific bombing campaign in Gaza that has killed almost 20,000, the majority women and children.

On Tuesday, British maritime security firm Ambrey reported a potential boarding attempt of a vessel 17 miles west of Yemen's port city of Aden, adding that the attack was unsuccessful and all crew were safe.

Yemeni attacks on ships in the Red Sea have disrupted maritime trade through the Suez Canal, with commercial ships traveling from Asia westward to Europe choosing instead to travel around the southern tip of Africa.

The detour adds two weeks to the shipping times and increases costs significantly.

Despite Secretary of Defense Austin’s announcement, A.P Moller-Maersk A/S, which owns a fleet of more than 300 container ships and controls many more, said Tuesday that it will divert its fleet around Africa.

Shipping firms are waiting to see if the US plan to counter Ansarallah will be successful.

“Once we see what the effect of this increased security in the area will be for shipping, companies will then make an assessment based on that, but it’s very early days for that now,” International Chamber of Shipping Secretary-General Guy Platten told Bloomberg TV.

There are now 67 container ships that have re-routed around Africa and another 75 that are delayed and awaiting instructions about which route to take.

Bloomberg noted further that according to Clarkson Research Services Ltd., the container shipping firms that have so far halted travel through the Red Sea account for 95 percent of all the shipping capacity deployed through the Suez Canal.

In an editorial published Sunday, the Wall Street Journal called the disruptions “the most significant threat to global shipping in decades.”

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/yemen ... n-official

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Red Sea’s Gateway of Tears… As Usual, Uncle Sam’s Euro Vassals Pay the Price

Finian Cunningham

December 19, 2023

The major European states are finally making some noises calling for a ceasefire to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. What’s taken them so long?

The major European states are finally – at long last – making some noises calling for a ceasefire to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. What’s taken them so long?

It’s still pathetically insufficient and falls far short of a full-throated demand on Israel to stop its unbridled slaughter of Palestinians – 20,000 of whom have been killed in more than 70 days of relentless bombardment.

But now Britain, France and Germany are calling for a ceasefire. Well sort of. The British and German foreign ministers David Cameron and Annalena Baerbock wrote a joint article in Britain’s Sunday Times in which they said there needs to be a “sustainable ceasefire” but – bizarrely, they added – not right now.

Their French counterpart Catherine Colonna was a little more forthright. On a visit to Tel Aviv on Sunday, she mustered the conviction to call for an immediate truce.

The slightly stronger French position was presaged by the killing of one of its diplomatic staff in Gaza a few days earlier.

Still, despite the outrage of the killing, the French minister’s words were softly spoken and couched with pandering to Israel’s so-called right to self-defense. Perhaps if the diplomatic staffer who died was a French national instead of being a Palestinian man working for France, then Paris would have been more condemnatory in its response.

Pathetic though the European response is with regard to demanding Israel obey international law and stop massacring civilians, nevertheless the divergence from the U.S. position is notable. Washington is also showing signs of pressure from the international outcry over Israel’s genocide with mealymouthed pleas for “restraint”. However, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration continues to repudiate all calls for a ceasefire and continues unreservedly arming Israel’s killing machine.

What is going on with the European calculation? After all, only as of last week, the Europeans were not calling for a ceasefire. Britain and Germany abstained from a vote at the United Nations General Assembly demanding a ceasefire. The U.S. voted No along with Israel, while 153 nations voted Yes.

The sudden shift by the Europeans is most likely spurred by their concerns over economic pain.

The closing down of the Red Sea shipping route by the Yemenis in solidarity with the Palestinians is starting to ramp up serious economic costs to global trade. The Yemenis have warned that any ships identified as Israeli-owned or bound will be prevented from passing. But the risk is deterring all shipping.

Yemen straddles the Bab el-Mandeb, the 32-kilometer-wide channel at the southern end of the Red Sea which in effect connects Europe to Asia. All ships passing from Asia to Europe use this route on their way to the Suez Canal in Egypt and thence to the Mediterranean Sea and the European mainland.

Aptly named, Bab el-Mandeb (“the Gate of Tears”) is a classic chokepoint. It controls an estimated 12 per cent of the global shipping trade. And the Yemenis have slammed the gate shut.

As a result of Yemeni military attacks targeting several Israeli ships, over the past week, four major global cargo companies have suspended their vessels using the Red Sea route.

All four shipping companies are European-based. They include the Swiss-registered Mediterranean Shipping Company – the world’s largest – as well as Maersk from Denmark, Hapag-Lloyd of Germany and France’s CMA CGM.

A fifth global giant to suspend its vessels using the Red Sea is Evergreen which is based in Taiwan.

Britain’s oil and gas major BP also announced Monday that it has ordered its tankers to avoid transiting the same route.

All firms are citing the deterioration in security conditions for their decision to halt shipping operations.

With the Bab el-Mandeb closed off, that means cargo vessels have to circumnavigate the continent of Africa by the Cape of Good Hope in the far south. That alternative route entails an additional 6,000 kilometers to shipping routes which means appreciably more transport costs from increased fuel consumption, port stops and supply logistics. The added costs will concatenate to hike consumer inflation and stress Europe’s already fragile economies.

It is the Asian-European trade that is most impacted by the Red Sea closure. China is the European Union’s biggest trading partner. The United States is also massively dependent on China for its imports but unlike the European economies, the U.S. receives its Asian trade from shipping across the Pacific Ocean.

The Yemenis have declared their actions will continue in support of “Palestinian brothers” until the Israeli regime ends its genocide.

Yemen may be the poorest among the Arab nations, but it is playing an ace card. It is squeezing the chokepoint on the Red Sea which is threatening severe damage on the Israeli and European economies.

This would explain why the major European states are suddenly finding a voice to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Europeans are finding that their economies are at grave risk from disruption of shipping as a result of the Yemenis closing down the Red Sea. Britain may no longer be part of the EU but it is still heavily reliant on Asian-European trade.

Once again, the Europeans are finding they are paying a heavy price for being vassals of the United States and not having any independent foreign policy.

The U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has rebounded with far more damage on Europe than it has on the Americans. The Europeans have slavishly followed Washington’s aggression against Russia by implementing a raft of economic sanctions and cutting off vital energy trade. Germany’s economy, in particular, has been ravaged by the loss of Russia’s natural gas as fuel for its industries.

Likewise, the Europeans have meekly followed U.S. policy by pandering to Israel and giving Tel Aviv political and diplomatic cover for its genocide in Gaza. And as in the Ukraine-Russia debacle, the Europeans now stand to incur more severe economic repercussions as the Yemenis inflict the pain of increased shipping costs.

As that old war criminal Henry Kissinger is reputed to have quipped: to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be an ally is fatal.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/ ... pay-price/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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