Houthis block food and medicine from entering Ta‘iz - HRW

Houthi forces surrounding Ta‘iz have been reportedly denying entry to aid vehicles and confiscating food and medical supplies from civilians. Human Rights Watch has documented a number of instances, some dating back to at least September, of the Houthis stopping Ta‘iz residents at checkpoints surrounding the city and confiscating fuel, food, medicine, and clothing. Medical aid trucks belonging to the World Health Organization and Médecins Sans Frontières have been turned away from Ta‘iz, preventing the delivery of essential medical supplies, such as oxygen tanks and vaccinations. These practices constitute a violation of international humanitarian law and have had grave consequences for the residents of Ta‘iz. One hospital reported that six premature infants have died in the last two months because the hospital lacks the oxygen tanks and generators necessary to run their incubators.

“The Houthis are denying necessities to residents of Ta‘iz because they happen to be living in areas that opposition forces control,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director. “Seizing property from civilians is already unlawful, but taking their food and medical supplies is simply cruel.”

Although Houthi forces surround Ta‘iz and maintain checkpoints outside of the city, opposition forces commanded by Shaykh Hamud al-Mikhlafi--including the Sunni Islah party and salafi groups--control the city center.

Ta‘iz has been subjected to indiscriminate shelling and some of the heaviest ground fighting in the conflict, forcing two-thirds of its population to flee while the remaining residents are in desperate need of food and medical aid.

Read the Human Rights Watch report here.

New evidence of Coalition's cluster bombs - Amnesty International

Amnesty International is calling on the Saudi-led coalition to immediately stop using cluster munitions after reports surfaced that forces dropped the illegal explosives on San‘a on January 6, 2016. The attacks killed a 16-year-old boy, wounded at least six other civilians, and damaged homes and other property.

Amnesty International spoke to the brother of the 16-year-old boy who was killed in the attack: “At around 5am, he was on his way to the mosque opposite our house in al-Daqeeq district to perform the dawn prayers. We then heard the first explosion. A minute later we heard a series of consecutive explosions in the neighbourhood when the little bombs landed, one of which landed on the roof of our neighbour’s house… My mother found Essa at the mosque door in a pool of his own blood.”

Markings on the bombs’ remnants indicate that they were CBU-58 cluster munitions manufactured in the USA in 1978. The US is known to have transferred 1,000 CBU-58 bombs to Saudi Arabia sometime between 1970 and 1995.

The coalition denies using cluster munitions in San‘a, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, such as the recovery of the bombs’ cylinders and a number of descriptions of the explosions by residents that are consistent with air-dropped cluster munition attacks.

The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions banned the use, production, sale, and transfer of cluster bombs. Although the US, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen are not parties to the convention, any use of “inherently indiscriminate weapons [such as cluster munitions], which invariably pose a threat to civilians” is prohibited under the rules of customary international humanitarian law.

Read more from Amnesty International here.

AQAP and IS benefit from Yemen's war - Gregory Johnsen

Writing in the CTC Sentinel, Yemen specialist and AQAP expert Gregory Johnsen argues that Yemen's ongoing war is benefiting both AQAP and local Islamic State affiliates, though the two groups are often at odds with each other. According to Johnsen, AQAP is taking advantage of the power vacuum that prevails in most of the country, but they're also taking advantage of the conflict in other ways:

As Saudi air strikes target Houthi fighters and military units loyal to former President Salih, AQAP can move into the newly cleared territory. In December 2015, AQAP did just that, retaking two of the towns in Abyan that it had held in 2011 and 2012.[9] In the town of Ja`ar, which had previously served as the group’s de facto capital, AQAP killed the deputy commander of the city’s Popular Committee and reestablished control over Ja`ar, which AQAP refers to as Waqar....

AQAP has also dispatched fighters to conflict zones such as Taiz, where they join the local resistance against the Houthis and make local allies. One of AQAP’s primary goals is to integrate itself into Yemeni society. By fighting the Houthis alongside Yemenis, AQAP is creating new alliances, which its leaders believe will serve them well in the future....Prior to the Saudi-led bombing campaign, AQAP appeared to be in trouble. This is no longer the case. The group is acquiring more territory and, once again, is growing.

Local Islamic State supporters are taking advantage of another resource created by the war: sectarianism.

Just like in Iraq, where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the group’s spiritual founder, sparked a sectarian civil war by bombing Shi`a mosques, the goal in Yemen seems to be a radicalization of the religious landscape and the grafting of a sectarian war on to the country. The initial attack in March 2015 targeted what the Islamic State later claimed were “Shi`a mosques” in Sana`a....

The Islamic State’s primary goal throughout 2016 will be to further divide the country through sectarian attacks, recreating an Iraqi-style Sunni–Shi`a civil war in Yemen. The more sectarian the war becomes, the stronger the Islamic State will grow as it seeks to portray itself as the true defender of Sunni Islam.

Johnsen predicts that, in addition to fighting the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition, AQAP and IS will likely go to war against each other in the coming months. He also warns that both organizations might increase their efforts to strike targets outside of Yemen, in order to boost their reputation and gain recruits.

Read the full article here.

Arbitrary detention by the Houthis - HRW

A new report by Human Rights Watch details the Houthi forces' practice of arbitrarily detaining and disappearing individuals with ties--real or imagined--to the Islah Party or other opposition groups. The report provides details of more than 20 cases of arbitrary detention and forced disappearance, out of 35 cases confirmed by HRW investigators. The people illegally detained by the Houthis include political activists, Islah party members, journalists, and lawyers. According to one Yemeni attorney interviewed by HRW, more than 800 people are currently being held by Houthi authorities in and around San‘a:

He said that based on information he has gathered from sources knowledgeable about detentions, the Houthis were holding at least 250 at al-Thawra pretrial detention facility, 180 at Habra pretrial detention facility, 167 at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), 165 opposition figures at Sanaa Central Prison, 73 at the Political Security Organization’s headquarters, 20 at al-Judairi police station, 10 at one of the homes of the former First Armored Division commander, Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, and an unknown number at Zain al-Abdeen mosque in Hiziyaz.

Based on interviews with witnesses and family members, the report claims that Houthi authorities are depriving many detainees of food and water, preventing them from contacting anyone on the outside, and holding them in otherwise illegal and abusive conditions. One journalism student, for example, who has been imprisoned for more than four months, was "first held for three days without food or being allowed to use the bathroom." A professor at San‘a University's medical school "was being held in a three-by-three meter cell with 14 other men and was only allowed to use the bathroom once a day."

Read the full report here.

Independent intellectuals under threat - Bonnefoy

In a recent piece published by OpenDemocracy.net, French scholar Laurent Bonnefoy examines the post-revolution trend of attacks on independent activists and thinkers, and the related polarization of Yemen's political and intellectual arena. Bonnefoy focuses in particular on a recent attack on Nabil Subay, a famous journalist/poet/social critic:

On 2 January 2016 in Sana’a, Nabil Subay, a Yemeni journalist, heads for lunch with friends. Unidentified gunmen attack him on a busy street: they beat him violently about the head and shoot him in both legs. He is taken to hospital and operated on. One of his colleagues, Muhammad Aysh, immediately places responsibility on the Houthis, given that the city is under their control; they allowed this aggression to happen and let the perpetrators escape....

...The attack he suffered in early January 2016 symbolises a deep and worrying dynamic emerging in a country which, only a few years ago, and particularly during the 2011 revolutionary moment, demonstrated a flourishing of ideas and creativity. As the political situation has become increasingly tense since 2014, far too many independent and moderate personalities have been murdered or suffered violence and intimidation.

As Bonnefoy points out, groups on many sides of Yemen's political divides have carried out assassinations, arrests, and other acts of intimidation and repression against their ideological enemies in recent years. The atmosphere such acts create will only make it harder for Yemen to ever emerge from the present conflict.

Coalition drops cluster bombs on San‘a - HRW

Human Rights Watch has investigated reports of the use of cluster munitions in Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen's capital, San‘a. As of Thursday, HRW had found indisputable evidence of the weapons in two neighborhoods, according to a report published today. The cluster munitions used were manufactured in the USA, and were likely sold to Saudi Arabia or another participating air force by the US, though Saudi Arabia has been known to buy US munitions from third countries as well. Although neither the US nor KSA has signed the international ban on cluster munitions, the use of such weapons--which are, by their nature, indiscriminate--in populated areas is a crime under international humanitarian law. From the HRW report:

“The coalition’s repeated use of cluster bombs in the middle of a crowded city suggests an intent to harm civilians, which is a war crime,” said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch. “These outrageous attacks show that the coalition seems less concerned than ever about sparing civilians from war’s horrors.”

Residents of two Sanaa neighborhoods described aerial attacks consistent with cluster bomb use. A resident of al-Zira`a Street told Human Rights Watch that his family was awakened at 5:30 a.m. on January 6 by dozens of small explosions. He said that he had been at work, but that his wife told him that when the family fled they saw many homes and a local kindergarten with newly pockmarked walls and broken windows.

A resident of Hayal Sayeed, another residential neighborhood, described hearing small explosions at around 6 a.m. He went out on the street, he said, and saw more than 20 vehicles covered in pockmarks, including his own, as well as dozens of pockmarks in the road. He said that at least three houses in the area had pockmarked walls and broken windows. He found a fragment in his car, he said.

Read the report here.

How Sectarianism is Poisoning Yemen - Farea al-Muslimi

In a recent article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yemeni analyst and commentator Farea al-Muslimi explores the role of sectarianism in Yemen's current conflict. Al-Muslimi also gives a brief overview of the role religious identity has (and hasn't) played in Yemeni political conflicts since the mid-20th century. It has become common for foreign observers to classify Yemen's war as another manifestation of the apparent conflict along sectarian lines that is being played out in other parts of the region. But Yemen specialists generally take issue with this characterization, and say that sectarian rhetoric is new to Yemen's political scene. There's truth to that position, but it's not the whole story. In this article, al-Muslimi does an excellent job of tracing the peaks and troughs of sectarian framing across several decades.

While Yemen is home to two major religious groups, the Zaydi Shia Muslims in the north and the Sunni Muslims of the Shafi’i school in the south and east, the religious divide has historically been of limited importance. Internal conflicts have certainly been endemic to Yemen, but they have typically been driven by political, economic, tribal, or regional disparities. While these conflicts sometimes coincided with religious differences, they were rarely a primary driver. Instead, religious coexistence and intermingling was taken for granted by most Yemenis and seen as a normal feature of everyday life.

But with the outbreak of the most recent round of conflict after the 2011 Arab Spring, sectarian discourse has become more heated, reorganizing Yemeni society along sectarian lines and rearranging people’s relationships to one another on a non-nationalist basis. It seems that the trend of sectarian polarization that plagues the region, from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon, has finally arrived in Yemen.

Read the article here.

Mapping the Yemen Conflict - ECFR

The European Council on Foreign Relations has put together a series of annotated maps to illustrate the multiple political and social aspects of Yemen's ongoing conflict. This is one of the most useful resources we've seen; it's not clear, however, whether the maps are still being updated.

Check out this feature from the ECFR here.

Blind Air Strikes - Mwatana

The San'a-based NGO Mwatana Organization for Human Rights has released a new report on the Saudi-led coalition's targeting of residential areas and civilian infrastructure in several parts of Yemen. The report "focuses in particular on 44 incidents of aerial attacks conducted by the Saudi Arabia-led Arab coalition which targeted civilians in nine Yemeni provinces including Sana’a, Ta'iz, Lahj, Ibb, Hodaidah, S’adah, Hajja, AL- Baidha and Dhamar over the period from March to October 2015." Read the full report here.

Schools Under Attack in Yemen - Amnesty International

A new report by Amnesty International investigates five airstrikes, carried out by the Saudi-led coalition, on schools in Yemen. The country's education system is in shambles at present. Armed factions on all sides of the conflict have attacked and/or occupied schools. In many parts of the country, displaced people have taken up residence in school buildings, making it difficult or impossible for classes to continue.

Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces have carried out a series of air strikes targeting schools that were still in use, in violation of international humanitarian law, and hampering access to education for thousands of Yemen’s children, said Amnesty International in a new briefing published today. The coalition forces are armed by states including the USA and UK.

The briefing ‘Our kids are bombed’: Schools under attack in Yemen, investigates five air strikes on schools which took place between August and October 2015 killing five civilians and injuring at least 14, including four children, based on field research in Yemen. While students were not present inside the schools during the attacks, the strikes caused serious damage or destruction which will have long-term consequences for students.

Read Amnesty's full report here.

Power Vacuum in Aden - Adam Baron, ECFR

In a new article for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Adam Baron examines the unstable situation in Yemen's southern port city of Aden. The city serves as the provisional capital for President Hadi's government-in-exile, but despite its "liberation" from Houthi-Saleh forces by southern resistance fighters and Gulf state troops, security in Aden is practically nonexistent. On December 6, Aden's recently-appointed governor (nominally loyal to the Hadi government) and several of his guards were assassinated in a car bomb attack in al-Tawahi District. The attack was claimed by a local branch of the Islamic State organization.

The violence and instability in Aden—and for that matter, the rest of the country—remains fueled by patterns of instability that are, at their essence, rooted in years, if not decades, of failure by Yemen’s political leaders. Exacerbated by the ongoing conflict, this power vacuum has only grown in Aden as efforts by the Hadi government and its international allies to bolster the port city’s security have yet to move beyond the nominal stage.

Read the full article here.