Islah

Analysis October 13, 2022 04:07 MIN September 2022 STC Talks with Baoum Could Shift Alliances in Southern Yemen By Hussam Radman Hassan Baoum’s calls for independence, first for Yemen and later for southern Yemen, date to the early 1960s, at times landing him in jail or exile. His 2017 demand that Arab coalition countries fighting the armed Houthi movement end their “foreign occupation” of the south was perceived as so extreme by the coalition-backed Yemeni government that it prolonged his exile and ensured his southern separatist group remained frozen out of the country’s power structures. Despite this, Baoum’s political and popular presence has not faded, and the replacement of President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi with a presidential council in April hastened a thaw that is altering southern political dynamics. Baoum, who has lived in Muscat since 2015, is expected to return… Continue reading Yemen Review section September 8, 2022 09:15 MIN August 2022 Truce Extended, But Under Strain On August 2, Yemen’s warring parties agreed to extend the country’s ongoing truce for an additional two months, until October 2. The deal came after intensive shuttle diplomacy by the UN and the US, and the arrival of an Omani delegation in Sana’a on July 31. UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg was unable to secure terms for a broader six-month truce deal, which included proposals to reopen roads in Al-Dhalea, Sa’ada, and Taiz; establish new mechanisms to pay public sector salaries in Houthi areas; expand destinations from Sana’a airport to include India, Cairo, Amman, and Doha; and create a new committee for dialogue and reconciliation. The expanded truce proposal was largely accepted by the government, but was rejected outright by… Continue reading Analysis August 18, 2022 07:33 MIN Defeat in Shabwa Forces Islah to Reckon With New Political Reality By Maged Al-Madhaji Long-running tensions in Shabwa devolved into heavy fighting in the governorate capital Ataq on August 8, pitting Islah-affiliated security forces against UAE-backed units. Back-and-forth fighting over three days ended on August 10 with the Giants Brigades and Shabwa Defense forces, supported by UAE drone strikes, securing control of the city and Islah-affiliated commanders fleeing the governorate. The battle in Shabwa and its ramifications represent the most complex challenge the government’s Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) has faced since its establishment four months ago. This was not the first round of hostilities in the strategic governorate – a battle between Islah and Southern Transitional Council (STC)-affiliated forces in August 2019 was resolved in favor of the former. However, the fresh infighting was… Continue reading Yemen Review section August 12, 2022 07:31 MIN July 2022 Tensions between Islah- and STC-Affiliated Forces in Shabwa Explode with Assassination Attempt Islah-affiliated commander of the Special Security forces in Shabwa, Brigadier General Abd Rabbo Laakab, survived an assassination attempt by members of the UAE-backed Shabwa Defense forces in Shabwa governorate. Laakab’s convoy was ambushed in Ataq city, the governorate capital, on July 19; two members of the Special Security Forces were killed, and two others were wounded in the attack. The attempt was preceded by orders to replace Special Security Forces commanders and a series of clashes between members of the Shabwa Defense forces and Special Security forces in Ataq. On July 15, clashes erupted between Special Security forces manning the Al-Kahraba checkpoint in the village of Gul al-Aadh western Ataq city, and the Shabwa Denfese forces, who were prevented from… Continue reading The Yemen Review March 3, 2022 279:55 MIN The Graveyard of Hubris – Yemen Annual Review 2021 Through most of 2021, the armed Houthi movement appeared unstoppable. As their forces pushed relentlessly toward Marib city, the fall of the last government stronghold in the north began to seem inevitable. Rich in oil and gas, its loss would be a mortal blow to the spiraling economy and political legitimacy of the internationally recognized government. Along frontlines across the country, Houthi forces either held their ground or advanced, showing a cohesiveness, discipline and effectiveness unmatched by the motley array of armed groups opposing them. Houthi drones and ballistic missiles flew across the border into Saudi Arabia, and continued even in the face of retaliatory airstrikes, heightening the cost of conflict for the coalition. Houthi military efforts were buttressed by… Continue reading The Yemen Review July 14, 2021 94:51 MIN Eye on the East – The Yemen Review, June 2021 Through periods of tolerance and persecution, marginalization has remained a constant in the treatment of racial and religious minorities in Yemeni society. During the ongoing conflict, however, violence and subjugation against these marginalized groups has increased dramatically, to the point that it is fundamentally reshaping Yemeni society. For Yemen as we know it to continue to exist it needs to assure the existence of its minorities, as something fundamental to the makeup of a nation dies when its minorities perish. Yemen’s Jewish community, with a history tracing back millennia, played a foundational role in developing Yemeni culture and commerce, and creating much of the artisanal industries for which the country is known. While the community had already been dwindling in… Continue reading Analysis October 22, 2020 56:41 MIN Marib: A Yemeni Government Stronghold Increasingly Vulnerable to Houthi Advances By Casey Coombs, and Ali Al-Sakani Marib, a centrally-located governorate connecting Al-Bayda, Shabwa, Hadramawt, Al-Jawf and Sana’a, has undergone a drastic transformation since the war started in 2015, emerging as a booming economic, social, political and military center. Natural resources including irrigation from the Marib dam and oil and gas reserves were instrumental in building a bustling metropolis in Marib city over a short period. But it was the autonomy afforded by decentralization under Governor Sultan al-Aradah that harnessed those resources for local development. Obtaining its share of the national gas and oil revenues, for example, has helped fund the improvement of infrastructure, pay civil servants' salaries and build government institutions. Though hardly insulated from the war, Marib has become a haven for displaced people and… Continue reading The Yemen Review October 8, 2018 34:33 MIN The Yemen Review – September 2018 In September, the Yemeni rial’s recent decline accelerated precipitously, with the currency’s value dropping to record lows by month’s end. While the rial has been under multiple, intensifying pressures stemming from the war for several years, a large increase in the money supply – through a 30 percent increase in civil servant salaries – and the collapse of peace talks last month appear to have spurred a rial sell-off in the market (see ‘Domestic Currency Hits Record Low’). A nation-wide fuel shortage ensued. Retail fuel stations closed en masse and prices for available petrol on the black market jumped an average of 130 percent relative to August, and as much as 230 percent in some areas (see ‘Fuel Shortages and… Continue reading The Yemen Review September 6, 2018 30:09 MIN The Yemen Review – August 2018 In the last six days of August the Yemeni rial entered one of its steepest and most rapid declines in value since the conflict began, resulting in sudden price spikes for basic foodstuffs. Given Yemen’s overwhelming dependence on imports to feed the population, such changes in the rial’s value have direct implications for the country’s humanitarian crisis (see ‘The Yemeni Rial’s Rapid Decline and Food Prices Surge’). Both the internationally recognized Yemeni government in Aden and the Houthi authorities in Sana’a took actions through last month targeting unlicensed money exchange firms – that have proliferated since the conflict began in 2015 – in an effort to curb their destabilizing effect on the currency market (see ‘Attempts to Curb the Influence… Continue reading The Yemen Review August 5, 2018 39:19 MIN Yemen at the UN – July 2018 Review At the end of July the Yemen conflict seemed poised to take on much broader regional and global dimensions, as Saudi Arabia halted oil shipments through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait off Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Iran declared the sea “no longer secure,” and Israel threatened military intervention if Houthi forces attempted to close the strait to shipping (see ‘Riyadh Halts Bab Al-Mandeb Oil Shipments After Houthi Attacks’). Earlier in July, the Saudi-led military coalition and associated ground forces had temporarily halted their campaign to dislodge Houthi fighters from Hudaydah city and capture Yemen’s busiest port. The United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths spent the rest of the month shuttling between the various stakeholders in the conflict in a… Continue reading Main Publications July 29, 2018 22:35 MIN Challenges for Yemen’s Local Governance amid Conflict By Maged Al-Madhaji, and Anthony Biswell Local councils are among Yemen’s most important state institutions. Responsible for providing basic public services to millions of Yemenis, local councils represent official governance and the Yemeni state for much of the population. The intensification of the conflict between the internationally recognized government, its regional backers and the Houthi group since March 2015, however, has heavily impacted funding and security for local councils, undermining their ability to provide services effectively in most areas of the country. In many areas, this absence of effective official governance has created fertile ground for non-state actors to exert their influence. In the areas under Houthi control, Houthi supporters closely monitor local council activity. In the southern coastal city of Aden, local councils are caught… Continue reading The Yemen Review January 22, 2018 98:45 MIN A Year of Hunger and Blood: Yemen at the UN / Special Issue – 2017 in Review In early 2017 the United Nations (UN) declared that Yemen was enduring the single largest humanitarian crisis in the world. By year’s end, UN agencies estimated that 17.8 million people in Yemen were food insecure and 8.4 million were at risk of famine. Economic and public service collapse left more than 16 million Yemenis without access to safe water and sanitation, and 16.4 million without proper healthcare. All of these factors played into an outbreak of cholera in 2017 that surpassed 1 million suspected cases by December – the largest cholera epidemic ever recorded in a single year. The UN’s 2017 humanitarian appeal for Yemen amounted US$2.3 billion, of which the international community had funded 70.5 percent by year’s end… Continue reading