Yemen's rival parties aren't sold on peace - Farea al-Muslimi

December’s peace talks in Switzerland failed to generate a solution to the war in Yemen, a war that is driven both by regional geopolitical rivalries and by factional conflicts within Yemen itself. In an op-ed for Al Jazeera, analyst Farea al-Muslimi argues that this failure is rooted in the interest of all parties involved to remain at war. According to al-Muslimi, one of the founders of the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies,  Yemen “needs a dealer who can ‘redistribute the cards’ and convince the various players to invest in peace.”

The latest round of peace talks failed because many of those involved do not know what they want out of the UN-mediated process, and because they do not believe it is in their immediate interests to have peace. After nearly a year of war in Yemen, the cycle of business, economy and power now revolves around one main thing: war. Should the fighting suddenly end, many players from both sides would stand to lose.

The Houthis appear to be most comfortable on the battlefield, and if the conflict were to end, they would have to face the undesirable reality of negotiations and power sharing. Meanwhile, former president Saleh, whose agenda differs from that of the Houthis, relies on a state of war to convince those around him that he is indispensable. The Islamist militant organizations that have made notable gains in Yemen certainly have no interest in seeing an end to the conflict that has provided them with the chaos and instability that is so easy to exploit.

Hadi is also a clear loser in any successful peace process as all parties to the conflict would need him to step aside. The Saudi-led coalition, which did not make any attempts at diplomacy prior to waging war, must understand that it will not win by military means. Finally, the West cannot believably call for peace in Yemen while also profiting from weapons sales that are bringing such destruction to the country.

Read the original piece here.

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.

Almigdad Mojalli, 1980-2016

Almigdad Mojalli was a dedicated and talented Yemeni journalist who wrote for international outlets including Voice of America and IRIN. He was killed by a Saudi airstrike on January 17 while reporting on the civilian toll of a previous strike outside of San‘a. He leaves behind a wife and a young son. Two of Almigdad's colleagues, Shuaib Almosawa and Kareem Fahim, wrote about Almigdad for The New York Times this week.

Mr. Mojalli...wrote about the dilemmas Yemeni journalists faced, working and living in a war zone and juggling the job with worries for family and friends. In September,writing for IRIN, an international news service that focuses on humanitarian issues, he chronicled yet another strike. This time, the victims included relatives.

Before that attack, he had become desensitized, he said. "I’ve been to dozens of bomb sites," he wrote. "Every day, I wake up to hear that 10 people were killed last night, or 20, or 40. It almost stops feeling real."

An online donation page has been created to raise money for Almigdad's widow and child.

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.

Happy New Year, from San‘a

[This post was sent to us by a special guest contributor, Fatima Noman. Fatima is 16 years old, and lives in San‘a. This is her third post for the Mafraj Blog.] The thing is when I close my eyes tighter، I hear them louder. Shutting down one sense only clarifies another. The speed of light is a thousand times faster than the speed of sound, the only thing faster than that is the rate at which my heart beats. 9 months later and nothing has changed; my mouth dangles and my eyes widen, enlarge and I taste the end, not of this coalition; but of my life. My life that seems to have been ephemeral and now is burdened be.

Looking back on how much I've grown, the only visible difference is how any sound whether cars passing by, motorcycles approaching my neighborhood or one of my siblings slamming the door too fast or strutting harshly in the second floor -or third or fourth-, scares me and makes me tremble to my feet. I've grown accustomed to my realm of vulnerability.

They say there have been over ten thousand air raids on Yemen, I've seen every memory of the past 16 years flash before my eyes at least ten thousand times. With every air raid I remember my mother's warm embrace at 6 and my father's loving arms at 8. My sister's advice at 13 and my brother's fights on daily basis. The last time I laughed till my stomach hurt and cried tears of joy. I then remember God and sometimes think; how bad can it be under his arms, it can't possibly be scarier than here?

With every unannounced burst of light I regret every fight with my dad and argument with my mom. I remorse every time I discarded my sister and boycotted my brother for his "nuisance". As much as that illuminance of light terrifies me, it reminds me how blessed I was and am and will be. Yes, will be; I won't die. I refuse to die, not in their hands. I will live to be 80 and I will make memories enough to heal all the scars made since the 26th of March. I will heal and I will blossom.

Everything seems minuscule and diminutive when compared to death. Your existence, your hopes, your aspirations. You can never really submit to death and accept it, we know it accompanies us wherever we go. Yet we never act like it's tangible we deem it as an "imaginary friend". A friend we only address when we meet face to face. Once we leave its residence, we go back to disregarding it. Whether its a blessing or a curse to become so resilient to death, I'll never know. But for the time being I will dispose the thought of death because I know a burst of light propelled towards me from a jet miles away will not be the death of me. I refuse it to be.

And as 2015 comes to an end I have never been happier to end a chapter in my life. 2015 has been by far the hardest year of my life. Looking back at it, I hit so many milestones and I've reached my highest and lowest points all in the course of 365 days. It's crazy how much one year can do. I met some of the greatest, most inspirational people this year, and for that I am eternally grateful. I was privileged to witness a coalition attack my country first hand whilst having no valid reason to attack. I can't wait to have children one day and tell them all about this year, the longest most fruitful and vain year ever. I can't wait to speak about 2015 in past tense.

Happy New Year

T-shirt design contest

To celebrate our upcoming second International Yemeni Film & Arts Festival, the YPP is holding a t-shirt design contest! We're looking for creative designs that relate in some way to Yemen and the YPP's mission. T-shirts featuring the winning design will be sold at the 2016 Festival and on the YPP website. The winning designer will receive a cash prize of $100 and recognition on the website.

[big_text]Submissions will be accepted through February 7, 2016.[/big_text]

Details:

• Designs must be your own original work.
• Designs may include line art, text, and photographs.
• Designs may include the words "The Yemen Peace Project" or "International Yemeni Film & Arts Festival," or may be without text.
• Designs may use a maximum of three colors (not including background).
• You may submit no more than three designs per person.
• We reserve the right to make changes to submissions, such as image size and colors.
• By submitting a design, you grant us permission to use your design on the YPP website and promotional materials.

Submit your designs 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.

Peace talks end on an optimistic note

A piece in Monday'sNew York Times put a mildly positive spin on the conclusion of the first round of direct peace talks between the Hadi-Bahah government and the Houthi-GPC alliance, which took place in Switzerland last week. The talks did not produce any concrete outcome in terms of ending the conflict in Yemen. However, they did result in increased humanitarian access to the city of Ta'iz, which had been under a total siege by Houthi-Saleh forces, and there was a limited exchange of prisoners between the two sides. Furthermore, according to an anonymous diplomat quoted in the Times, there was a "palpable warming on a personal level between the two delegations over the course of the week." Independent journalist Nawal al-Maghafi has tweeted similar observations from the peace talks:

This round of #peacetalks has officially ended - the fact that they did not collapse & planned another round calls for optimism #Yemen #Biel

— Nawal Al-maghafi (@Nawalf) December 20, 2015

A previous round of talks, held in Geneva in June, collapsed without the two sides even stepping foot in the same room, so the progress achieved in this round, limited though it was, is a good start.

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.

December 1–7: Assassinations, intra-government squabbles, new peace talks

The past week in Yemen has seen an attempted Cabinet reshuffle, the seizure by al-Qaeda of two towns in Abyan Governorate and the 4^th Military Region headquarters in Aden, and the assassination of Aden’s governor, an act which was quickly claimed by a local Islamic State affiliate. Meanwhile, airstrikes and ground combat have continued in central Yemen and beyond the borders with Saudi Arabia. On Monday, December 7, the UN special envoy for Yemen announced that a new round of peace talks will be held next week, beginning on December 15. A ceasefire is expected to be announced on the eve of the talks, although such announcements in the recent past have come to nothing. On December 1, President Abdu Rabbuh Mansur Hadi issued decrees appointing five ministers to the cabinet of PM/VP Khaled Bahah. The reshuffle exacerbated the lingering Hadi-Bahah dispute; PM/VP Bahah reportedly refused to recognize the new appointments, as the president has no legal authority to replace cabinet ministers. On December 2, AQAP militants captured the towns of Zinjibar and Jaʻar in Abyan, following a predawn swift attack that killed the brother of the commander of the local Popular Committees, which were formed to fight the militants.

Also on Tuesday, unidentified gunmen abducted a Tunisian staffer working for the  ICRC’s office in Sanʻa while on the way to work in the early morning. Her whereabouts remain unknown to date. Some 30 aid workers reportedly left Yemen within 48 afterwards, including 10 ICRC staffers.

While airstrikes continued over the last week to pound positions on several fronts across Yemen, Saudi-led warplanes have targeted residential areas in the northern provinces of Saʻdah and Hajjah, as well as the coastal western province of al-Hudaydah, where another fish market has been hit by airstrikes.

The battles in the central provinces of Marib and Taʻiz continue to intensify.

In Taʻiz the western and eastern fronts have seen clashes escalating amid heavy airstrikes. Near the Red Sea port town of Mokha, pro-Houthi forces have claimed to hit a sixth warship from the coalition navy. In Marib, this week’s fighting has mostly taken place in the western district of Kuwfal.

On Sunday, Aden’s governor, Gen. Jaʻfar Muhammad Saʻad, was killed along with several members of his entourage, as a vehicle packed with explosives collided with his car in the al-Tawahi district of Aden. Local self-proclaimed IS affiliates took responsibility for the attack. Saʻad was tapped by President Hadi in October to take over the governorate. He had lived in exile prior to that, having fought against the Saleh regime in Yemen’s 1994 civil war.

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.

Is the international community about to ditch President Hadi?

Observers who keep a close eye on Yemeni affairs have understood for a while that President 'Abdu Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, the man touted by most of the international community as the "legitimate" head of the Yemeni state, does not enjoy the full confidence of his government-in-exile. His vice president/prime minister Khaled Bahah seems to command more respect and admiration, inside and outside Yemen, and the government--based between Aden, Riyadh, and Amman--has long been divided between the president and PM, according to knowledgeable sources. But while this intra-regime conflict has simmered behind closed doors, international officials and diplomats have, for the most part, maintained the fiction of the "legitimate" president's control over the "recognized" government of Yemen.* That facade took a few serious hits this week, as both the AFP and Reuters published articles acknowledging the Hadi-Bahah divide. The AFP's Tuesday piece deals with President Hadi's sudden replacement of several ministers and ambassadors. The crux of the maneuver, according to AFP, was Hadi's attempt to replace Foreign Minister Riyadh Yasin, whom Hadi plucked from obscurity to act (quite incompetently) as his chief diplomat back in late March, and whom Bahah has reportedly despised and refused to work with from day one. If Hadi hoped to repair the breach with his VP/PM by ditching Yasin, he seems to have failed: Reuters reported on Wednesday that Bahah had publicly "rejected" the reshuffle, because the president has no constitutional authority to appoint or dismiss cabinet members.

Also on Tuesday, Reuters put out a piece that was chock-full of quotes from anonymous Yemeni and foreign diplomats dumping on Hadi, and making it clear that no one in the international community is interested in propping up his presidency any longer than is absolutely necessary.

"Hadi has never been popular and it’s not in his interest that the war stop before complete victory. Diplomats know that Hadi is not a serious candidate, and a settlement means he’s out."

A second diplomat said there was now broad agreement that talks were the way forward because the war had reached a stalemate on the ground. But "a few dissenters" including in Hadi's camp were nonetheless holding out for a military victory.....

Western and regional officials have voiced support for Hadi's prime minister and vice president, Khaled Bahah, widely seen as a rival, who some describe as a more capable technocrat.

"The leadership between Bahah and Hadi is not in sync," the second diplomat said, offering praise for Bahah as a "healer" while describing Hadi as more self-interested.

Now, all of that has been conventional wisdom among full-time Yemen watchers for a while now. But when foreign diplomats start saying things like this to the press--especially going so far as to accuse an internationally-backed president of deliberately sabotaging peace talks--it's usually because they've been encouraged to leak by their superiors. While I doubt we'll see figures like John Kerry or UN special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed publicly disavowing Hadi, it would seem that the powers that legitimized his presidency are now getting ready to facilitate his exit. Stay tuned.

*Why all the quotation marks? Here's a quick summary of the precariousness of the Hadi-Bahah regime: Hadi was anointed as president of Yemen under the so-called GCC Initiative, an agreement signed by the ruling General Peoples' Congress coalition and the Joint Meeting Parties opposition bloc that eased long-time dictator 'Ali 'Abdullah Saleh out of power. That agreement stipulated that Hadi would govern for a two-year transitional period, with the help of a power-sharing government split between the GPC and JMP. But Hadi stayed in office far past the two-year mark, with no legal basis. He also reshuffled the cabinet, something neither the constitution nor the GCC Initiative gave him authority to do. In late 2014, after the Houthis began their slow-motion coup with the help of former president Saleh, a new government of ostensibly non-partisan technocrats was formed, with Bahah as PM. But most of that government's ministers resigned in January-February 2015, and President Hadi, after fleeing from Yemen to Saudi Arabia, unilaterally appointed new officials to make up for those who didn't join him in exile. So, when foreign officials or media outlets describe Hadi and/or his government as "legitimate," just know that the term is being applied arbitrarily, and with no legal basis.

November 25–30: Marib and Taʻiz still contested; UN demands peace talks

Yemen’s armed conflict has entered its ninth month with no end in sight: airstrikes and ground fighting across Yemen have thus far claimed the lives of more than 5700 people and pushed the country to the brink of famine, according to activist groups and aid agencies. A new report by Human Rights Watch details the failure of the Saudi-led coalition and its western backers to investigate unlawful airstrikes in Yemen, although “the evidence is everywhere.”  The UN special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, is still pushing for new peace talks in Geneva. On November 25, Prime Minister/Vice President Khaled Bahah met with Ahmed in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. During the meeting, Bahah said that the delegates of his government aim to come back from the new Geneva talks with a solution that guarantees the restoration of peace and security in Yemen.

On Monday, President Abdu Rabbuh Mansor Hadi received a draft including notes on the agendas that have been proposed by the UN envoy for the proposed session of talks. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with PM Bahah on the sidelines of this week’s climate talks in Paris; during the meeting, Ban called on Yemen’s warring parties to return to negotiations immediately and without preconditions. Thus far the Hadi-Bahah government has insisted that the Houthis and their allies must implement UN Security Council resolution 2216 before talks can begin.

Over the weekend, airstrikes in the capital, Sanʻa, targeted once again mountainous positions that have repeatedly been struck over the past months. The warplanes also knocked out the road connecting Dhamar, Ibb, and Taʻiz provinces with Sanʻa.

It’s been two weeks now since coalition and resistance forces launched a major operation to “liberate” Taʻiz Governorate. Justifications for the delay in liberating Taʻiz and Marib have started to appear in the media; while the field commander in charge says the operation is going according to plan, the local tribal resistance commander stated that 10 brigades of Houthi/Saleh forces are fighting to hold their positions in Taʻiz.

Coalition units intensified their efforts to take control of the western part of Taʻiz, near the Red Sea town of Mocha. The western and eastern fronts are reportedly seeing the fiercest clashes since the operation was launched. Pro-Houthi forces are holding their positions in al-Shurayjah and al-Rahidah on the road to the southern province of Lahj despite heavy airstrikes.

Likewise, Marib’s western district of Sirwah has not yet been liberated, despite months of fighting. On Sunday, Marib’s deputy governor said that landmines planted by Houthi/Saleh forces are the main reason behind that.