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Prisoner Swap
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The Yemen Review
February 15, 2024
42:27 MIN
The Yemen Annual Review 2023
Peace talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) dominated Yemeni politics over the last year. The negotiations began as backchannel discussions in October 2022 after the Houthis resisted UN pressure to renew a truce first agreed in April 2022 by making a series of eleventh-hour demands. The talks continued despite Houthi attacks on oil terminals in southern Yemen in late 2022 that effectively put the internationally recognized government under a form of economic blockade. As the months progressed, the government’s increasingly dire economic situation pressured it to accept the Saudi policy of seeking a settlement with Houthi authorities, seemingly at almost any price. The broad terms of a Saudi-Houthi agreement first became public in January, when international…
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Analysis
October 13, 2023
18:39 MIN
Al-Qaeda’s Shifting Alliances During the Yemen War
By Abu Bakr Ahmed
During the fighting in Shabwa last year and more recently in Abyan, forces affiliated with the Southern Transitional Council (STC) locked horns with Islah-affiliated government forces. Both sides accused the other of links to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Such claims have been a feature of the war since 2015, but are usually more rhetorical than real, lacking evidence on the ground. Over the last year, however, AQAP has been more publicly sympathetic to the Islamist Islah party than is normal in its often guarded comments. In a speech in August 2022 by Abu Ali al-Hadrami, a top-tier leader who rarely appears in media, the group expressed frustration that the STC-backed Shabwa Defense forces and UAE-backed Giants Brigades forces…
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Analysis
June 7, 2021
26:28 MIN
UN-Backed Prisoner Swap Negotiations in Yemen Locked in Stalemate
By Salah Ali Salah
The latest round of United Nations-backed prisoner exchange negotiations, which took place in late January through mid-February in Amman between Yemen’s internationally recognized government and de facto authorities from the armed Houthi movement (Ansar Allah), collapsed after a month with no agreement reached. That the warring parties failed to reach a deal demonstrates that the prisoner file continues to be marred by technical and political issues. These problems must be overcome if the Yemeni parties and current UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, hope to make progress. UN-led negotiations have, thus far, failed to secure the release of conflict-related prisoners and detainees on the “all for all” basis agreed to in the Stockholm Agreement in December 2018. The agreement…
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