Analysis

Analysis March 16, 2021 22:07 MIN ‘Businessmen are not prohibited from engaging in politics’ – A Q&A with Ahmad al-Essi Officially, Ahmad al-Essi is a businessman who dabbles in politics – he’s the chairman of the Alessi Group as well as the deputy head of Yemen’s presidential office. Unofficially, Al-Essi may be the most powerful Yemeni alive. Certainly, he’s one of the richest. Twice, once in 2015 and again in 2016, he provided a financial lifeline to President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi – the first time just after Hadi fled Sana’a for Aden, the second after Hadi fired Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and, incensed, the Saudis had cut off Hadi credit. Al-Essi and Hadi had been close for years, dating back to the early 1990s when Hadi was Minister of Defense. Al-Essi also leveraged his close relationship with the president… Continue reading Analysis January 25, 2021 32:31 MIN China Prioritizes Gulf Economic, Oil Relationships; Yemen Can Wait By Hisham Al-Khawlani Diplomatically isolated by the West and overshadowed by the Soviet Union in the east, communist China of the 1950s sought out relationships with smaller states, including Yemen. It cultivated diplomatic and economic ties, which it maintained with various Yemeni leaders, northern and southern, through the next three decades. China secured infrastructure projects, provided loans, invested in Yemen’s fledgling oil and gas sector and, prompted by rapid domestic manufacturing growth, began importing Yemeni oil. However, as China’s strategic interests and global standing have changed dramatically since the early 1990s, so, too, have its relationships with Yemen and the Gulf regional powers that influence Yemen’s current war and its future. China’s relationship with Saudi Arabia began to thaw in the 1980s after… Continue reading Analysis January 23, 2021 09:10 MIN Yemen’s Socialist Party and the Fragmentation of the Yemeni Left By Bushra Al-Maqtari Yemeni political parties have performed dismally in recent decades. This has both spurred, and been spurred on by, the failure of politics in general in the country, which culminated in the outbreak of war almost six years ago. Yemen’s political parties today have abandoned their positions as national power brokers capable of pushing forward a political process to end civil strife and assumed the position of warring parties. The parties have adopted varied roles in the warring camps, including committing to alliances with regional powers interfering in Yemen. The ramifications of such distorted positions will have a rippling effect on Yemen’s future. In particular, leftist and Arab nationalist parties’ institutional structures have weakened and fractured, altering their historic place in… Continue reading Analysis January 19, 2021 05:53 MIN In Focus: How I Narrowly Escaped Death at Aden Airport By Hussam Radman Only a limited number of journalists and government officials were supposed to be present at Aden International Airport on December 30, 2020. However, to our surprise, hundreds of citizens had flocked since the early hours of the morning to welcome the new cabinet members, and some to celebrate the return of former Aden security director and prominent Southern Transitional Council (STC) figure, Major General Shalal Ali Shaye’a, to the interim capital. Large crowds gathered at the airport’s main gate in a festive atmosphere. Inside the airport’s lounge, the crowd was divided in two: to the right were STC supporters, who made up a majority of the crowd; and to the left were supporters of the internationally recognized government. However, the… Continue reading Analysis December 24, 2020 13:35 MIN Three Weeks in a Houthi Prison By Casey Coombs On May 15, 2015, I sat between two Yemeni officers in a police truck behind the Criminal Investigation Department in Sana’a. “You’ll be free in two hours,” one of the officers told me as he stared anxiously at the building, which housed a prison run by the US-backed Counter-Terror Unit (CTU). Earlier that day, a group of teens clutching AK-47s covered in Houthi stickers entered my home in Sana’a’s Al-Buniyah neighborhood, searched my belongings and handed me off to cops from a nearby police station. The station chief and a man in army fatigues wanted to know every detail about my time in Yemen and why I hadn’t left the country when the war started a few months earlier. I… Continue reading Analysis December 22, 2020 14:47 MIN Journey into Shabwa By Ryan Bailey In November, the Sana’a Center organized a visit by an international press delegation to Yemen’s Shabwa governorate. This was the third such trip the center has arranged, with previous ones being to Marib and Hadramawt, and came as part of the Sana’a Center’s continuing commitment to ensure the world, through its media, has a window onto Yemen – given the international press’ restricted access to the country due to the ongoing war and pandemic. Ryan Bailey, an editor and researcher with the Sana’a Center based outside the country, traveled to Shabwa with the delegation and documented their tour around the governorate and those they met during his first trip to Yemen. It is early evening when our Yemenia Airways flight… Continue reading Analysis December 18, 2020 44:14 MIN Al-Mahra: Where Regional Powers Define Local Politics By Casey Coombs Although far from the frontlines of Yemen’s civil war, Al-Mahra governorate remains an important battleground for Gulf powers competing for influence in the conflict. A Saudi military buildup in Al-Mahra, purportedly aimed at slowing the flow of Houthi-bound weapons from Iran, reached a tipping point in February when fighting broke out over the mounting restrictions on cross-border trade. The clashes immediately preceded the appointment of a new governor who has been less divisive than his predecessor and has found some success managing anti-Saudi tensions in the governorate. However, despite the political shakeup and the new direction it signals, numerous competing interests remain at odds on the local and regional levels. This paper focuses on the most recent shifts in these… Continue reading Analysis December 18, 2020 06:05 MIN UAE Keeps Friends Close and Saudi Arabia Closer in Yemen By Abdulghani Al-Iryani Yemenis often puzzle over the role the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plays in Yemen. Today, the main source of confusion stems from Emirati actions in the south, which raise fears among Yemeni unionists and false expectations among Yemeni secessionists that the UAE is working to redivide Yemen into two or three parts. Others speculate that the UAE’s true purpose, by repeatedly attacking the forces of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, is to keep Saudi Arabia bogged down in a perpetual Yemeni quagmire. Finally, the UAE’s mostly feigned attempts at empire-building, which have included building bases along Yemen’s Red Sea and southern coast, and on Yemeni islands including Socotra and Meiyun, give the impression that the UAE covets the country’s ports… Continue reading Analysis December 17, 2020 07:40 MIN Islah Wary of a Hadi Reconciliation with the STC On December 11, Yemeni government and Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces began withdrawing from frontlines in Abyan governorate. The redeployments – first stipulated in the Saudi-sponsored Riyadh Agreement signed in November 2019 but implemented more than a year later than scheduled – are set to be followed by the imminent formation of a new Yemeni government that includes STC figures. Movement to implement the agreement following months of stalemate comes at a time of acute vulnerability for Yemeni President Abdo Rabbou Mansour Hadi. With government forces having been engaged in a two-front war – against the armed Houthi movement in the north and Southern Transitional Council (STC) in the south – for most of the past year, the president has… Continue reading Analysis December 14, 2020 56:44 MIN Oil Extraction Industries’ Impacts on Health, Livelihoods and the Environment in Hadramawt By Yasmeen al-Eryani This policy brief on the environmental impact of the oil extraction industries in Hadramawt explores what seems to be a well-known secret among residents living near oilfield concession blocks and people from the industry: that oil exploration and production activities in the governorate may be deviating from sound environmental standards and could be posing a serious risk to the environment and public health. When it comes to environmental and health impacts, there are no definitive studies that document and analyze incidents of pollution due to error or negligence in oil exploration and production activities beyond occasional unpublished environmental impact assessments (EIAs) retained by the Ministry of Oil and Minerals or the oil companies. Combined with the lack of open government… Continue reading Analysis December 10, 2020 10:05 MIN Trump’s Endgame: Weighing a Houthi FTO Designation By Maged Al-Madhaji, Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen, Waleed Alhariri, and Abdulghani Al-Iryani As US President Donald Trump’s administration winds down, reports have emerged that Washington is once again considering the idea of designating the armed Houthi movement, Ansar Allah, as a foreign terrorist organization. Such a move would criminalize most interactions with the Houthi movement conducted without US government waivers. The United States, a key international actor in the Yemen conflict and strong supporter of the Saudi-led coalition, hasn’t received public support from its Western allies for such a designation. On December 8, the United States imposed terrorism-related sanctions on Hassan Eyrloo, the recently-appointed Iranian ambassador to the Houthi government in Sana’a. The US claims that Eyrloo is an officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Forces. It is unclear… Continue reading Analysis December 10, 2020 10:37 MIN Biden Takes Over: Advice and Expectations for a New US Administration By Gregory D. Johnsen, Thomas Juneau, Stacey Philbrick Yadav, and Baraa Shiban US President-elect Joe Biden has made clear that his administration will cut off support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Yet it is not clear what US policy toward Yemen will look like under the Biden administration. Washington’s Yemen policy, long driven by counterterrorism and broader regional interests, has substantively remained unchanged through the past three US administrations. At times, drone strikes have intensified or direct military ground operations have eased, but Yemeni internal issues — political, economic and security — consistently have been left to Saudi Arabia. In terms of the Yemen War, Washington has staunchly supported Saudi Arabia, in the UN Security Council and in supplying weapons and logistical support to carry on the fight against the armed… Continue reading