Analysis

Analysis May 3, 2022 07:00 MIN April 2022 Death From Beneath: Landmines in Hudaydah By Sam Ali On a Sunday night more than three years ago, Rawan, 15, was squeezed onto a motorcycle with her sister and two brothers as their father, Abdulbari Yahyah Farea, sped them away from fighting near their home by Hudaydah airport. The motorcycle struck a landmine, with the explosion killing Rawan's father and two brothers, 3 and 8, instantly. Rawan was slightly injured and tried to drag her severely wounded sister, Hanan, 10, to relative safety. Rawan spent the next 12 hours on the phone with UN aid workers, who provided first aid guidance until her phone battery died. Hanan was still losing blood. UN officials eventually got an ambulance to the girls, following extensive calls to Houthi authorities in Sana’a and… Continue reading Analysis May 3, 2022 06:21 MIN April 2022 Made in KSA: The Risks of an Imposed Presidential Council By Osamah Al Rawhani Since President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi stepped aside in early April, the overwhelming consensus among Yemenis has been “good riddance.” Replacing Hadi with a presidential council was doubtless the best way forward, but the devil is in the details when it comes to political systems, and there are many devilish details lurking in Yemen’s newly appointed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC). They will emerge as the council works out how it will operate and as its hastily thrown-together members decide to what extent they are willing to trust one another. The largest and most frustrating, however, is that the council was formulated by foreign parties without substantive Yemeni input. And because it was not created by Yemenis to represent Yemenis, its… Continue reading Analysis May 3, 2022 05:51 MIN April 2022 Ramadan Truce Largely Holding By Sana’a Center Staff Truces of various forms have come and gone in Yemen before. They have rarely lasted or been respected by the parties to the conflict, and sometimes have ended before even having begun. However, when a two-month truce came into effect at 7 p.m. local time on April 2, announced by the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg, there was a sense that this time might be different; that there was a willingness from all sides to stop the fighting, albeit temporarily. In one sense, that may be true. The first week of April was the first time since the Saudi-led coalition intervened militarily in Yemen in March 2015 that a week went by without airstrikes. The same followed the… Continue reading Analysis April 8, 2022 07:53 MIN Hadi Out, Presidential Council Takes Over By Maged Al-Madhaji, Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen, and Abdulghani Al-Iryani In the early hours of April 7, Yemen witnessed a dramatic political change as President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi dismissed Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and then signed over the executive authority he has held for the past decade to a presidential council. The eight-man body, known officially as the Presidential Command Council (PCC), was announced from Riyadh, where Yemeni parties to the anti-Houthi coalition had gathered under the auspices of Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-sponsored consultations. The reformed leadership body brings together disparate factions within the anti-Houthi alliance. It is headed by Rashad al-Alimi, a former interior minister. The other seven members of the PCC are: Marib Governor Sultan al-Aradah, Southern Transitional Council President Aiderous al-Zubaidi, National Resistance forces… Continue reading Analysis April 7, 2022 02:54 MIN Money Exchangers Eye Windfall from Rial’s Recent Gains By Wadhah Al-Awlaqi The value of Yemeni rials increased dramatically today, April 7, following the announcement of US$3 billion in new Saudi and Emirati support for the internationally recognized Yemeni government. However, there are strong signs already from the money market that the rebound will be temporary. Consultations in Riyadh between Yemeni parties to the anti-Houthi coalition and Gulf Cooperation Council states yielded major results in the past 24 hours, with Yemeni President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi replaced by a presidential council and Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar sacked. Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates committed US$1 billion each in new support to the government-controlled Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) in Aden, while Saudi Arabia committed a further US$1 billion in… Continue reading Analysis April 7, 2022 03:29 MIN March 2022 US Assistance to Saudi-Led Coalition Risks Complicity in War Crimes By Afrah Nasser The protracted conflict in Yemen has killed almost a quarter of a million people directly or indirectly due to inadequate food, health care and infrastructure. It has included unlawful attack after unlawful attack, with homes, hospitals, schools and bridges among the civilian objects that the warring parties have targeted. Fighting has internally displaced more than 4 million people from their homes. Food insecurity is on the rise. The conflict that began in 2014 between the Houthi armed group and the government of President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi morphed in 2015 into a conflict between the Houthis and the US-backed coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Today the fighting includes nearly 50 other battle fronts. The… Continue reading Analysis March 30, 2022 05:09 MIN March 2022 Yemen and Saudi Part II: A Future of Neighborly Relations By Abdulghani Al-Iryani For seven decades, leaders and pundits from Yemen and Saudi Arabia have capitalized on the differences and conflicting interests between the two nations to advocate adversarial, often antagonistic relations and policies. Incompatibilities pointed out between the two states typically include republic vs. monarchy, poor vs. rich, left-leaning vs. right-leaning, chaotic vs. stable, etc. So, while Yemen depended and continues to depend on remittances from its migrant workers in Saudi Arabia for its economic survival, and Saudi Arabia depended on cheap Yemeni labor for its initial construction boom through the 1970s and ‘80s, and for a large portion of the service sector until today, the trajectory of the relationship between the two states has been heading toward a clash. A quick… Continue reading Analysis March 27, 2022 17:34 MIN The Best of Intentions: How the Biden Administration Tried and Failed to End the War in Yemen By Gregory D. Johnsen The Biden administration took office on January 20, 2021, determined to end the war in Yemen. On the campaign trail, candidate Biden had promised not to “sell more weapons” to Saudi Arabia, explaining that Saudi airstrikes in Yemen were “murdering children” and “innocent people.” Biden referred to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” and said that it needed “to be held accountable” for its actions in Yemen. Biden’s campaign pledge was designed to be a sharp break with the previous two administrations. Both the Obama administration – in which Biden served as vice president – and the Trump administration had, in one way or another, backed the Saudi-led coalition and its war in Yemen. But six years into a war that… Continue reading Analysis March 21, 2022 28:44 MIN The Impact of the Saudi Intervention on Social Norms in Al-Mahra By Abdulkareem Ghanem The Yemeni governorate of Al-Mahra on the Arabian Sea bordering Oman has a unique cultural identity, its own ancient Semitic language and a distinct history. These factors have helped the governorate maintain its own customs and traditions and preserve social norms that maintain social cohesion and mitigate conflict. But the Saudi military presence in Al-Mahra that began in 2017 has tested these social norms. Saudi forces have established military camps across the vast governorate and recruited thousands of locals into Saudi-backed forces, while buying the loyalty of local leaders and marginalizing those who oppose its presence. This research found that social norms promoting social cohesion remain strong. So far, opposition to the Saudi intervention has been largely peaceful and local… Continue reading Analysis March 21, 2022 23:01 MIN The Other Side of Aden By Ebetahl Al-Salehi Since the 1940s, Aden has been welcoming outsiders – a factor that has made it unique among Yemeni governorates, in terms of ethnic and cultural diversity. Indians, Ethiopians, Iranians, Somalis and others have all founded communities there, with this diversity shaping the everyday life of Aden’s inhabitants, while also providing it with a tradition of tolerance toward others. This tradition continued when economic growth and then the unification of North and South Yemen boosted internal migration into the port city dramatically in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet, since the 1994 Civil War, political developments have had a negative impact on Aden’s culture of tolerance. This detrimental effect continues today, with Aden more damaged by the current fighting than at… Continue reading Analysis March 15, 2022 04:57 MIN January-February 2022 The View From Sana’a: Heavy Bombing, Complex Crises By Salam al-Harbi Seven-year-old Salma woke up to the sound of a massive explosion on January 25, when coalition warplanes bombed Al-Hafa military camp, east of Sana'a, and fell from her bed in the darkness. Her terrified cries filled the house, and Salma ran looking for her parents in the next room as they raced to hers. The family collided halfway, falling to the ground before her father could reach for the light switch. The intensity of the airstrikes in January and February, the largest sustained air campaign in recent years, was reminiscent of what Sana’a and its inhabitants experienced in the early days of the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in Yemen. This time, coalition warplanes were retaliating for Houthi drone and missile attacks… Continue reading Analysis March 15, 2022 05:30 MIN January-February 2022 Flawed Data Continues to Plague Humanitarian Response in Yemen By Sarah Vuylsteke In October 2021, I published a series of reports with the Sana'a Center revealing deep failures in the humanitarian aid system in Yemen. Based on interviews with 73 aid workers, UN staff, analysts and experts, the reports described an inefficient and inappropriate humanitarian response driven by flawed data and beholden to myths. Key issues raised included the control of Houthi authorities over the humanitarian response, and the reliance of aid actors on partial and biased data. Flawed data has been used to support exaggerated narratives describing Yemen as the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” and ever “on the brink of famine.” While such narratives have been highly effective for fundraising, they collapse under scrutiny. The reports focused on aspects… Continue reading