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Thread: Yemen 2016 onwards: an intractable war?

  1. #281
    Council Member AdamG's Avatar
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    Report to Congress on Yemen Civil War
    August 28, 2018 8:03 AM
    The following is the Aug. 24, 2018 Congressional Research Service report, Yemen: Civil War and Regional Intervention.

    From the report
    This report provides information on the ongoing crisis in Yemen. Now in its fourth year, the war in Yemen shows no signs of abating. On June 12, 2018, the Saudi-led coalition, a multinational grouping of armed forces led primarily by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), launched Operation Golden Victory, with the aim of retaking the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah. The coalition also has continued to conduct air strikes inside Yemen. The war has killed thousands of Yemenis, including combatants as well as civilians, and has significantly damaged the country’s infrastructure. According to the United Nations (U.N.) High Commissioner for Human Rights, from the start of the conflict in March 2015 through August 9, 2018, the United Nations documented “a total of 17,062 civilian casualties – 6,592 dead and 10,470 injured.” This figure may vastly underestimate the war’s death toll.
    https://news.usni.org/2018/08/28/rep...emen-civil-war
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  2. #282
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    WASHINGTON — U.S. Navy sailors seized more than 1,000 AK-47s from a small, disabled boat in the Gulf of Aden this week after boarding the vessel to determine its nation of origin, service officials said Thursday.

    Sailors aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham on Monday observed unmarked packages being transferred onto a skiff from a small, masted sailing vessel, known as a "dhow." U.S. sailors boarded the craft Tuesday to investigate, according to Navy officials. The skiff was sailing in international waters near Yemen without flying a country’s flag and determined to be “stateless,” the officials said.
    https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-...yemen-1.545177
    A scrimmage in a Border Station
    A canter down some dark defile
    Two thousand pounds of education
    Drops to a ten-rupee jezail


    http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg

  3. #283
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default The Houthi War Machine: From Guerrilla War to State Capture

    This is a 'long read' via CTC, by Michael Knights who has visited the Houthi areas and is an interesting read on how they fight, not the fighting itself.

    The Abstract:
    Abstract: The Houthi rebels have been at war with the Yemeni government almost constantly since 2004. In the first six years, the Houthis fought an increasingly effective guerrilla war in their mountainous home provinces, but after 2010, they metamorphosed into the most powerful military entity in the country, capturing the three largest cities in Yemen. The Houthis quickly fielded advanced weapons they had never before controlled, including many of Iranian origin. The story of how they moved from small-arms ambushes to medium-range ballistic missiles in half a decade provides a case study of how an ambitious militant group can capture and use a state’s arsenals and benefit from Iran’s support.
    Link:https://ctc.usma.edu/houthi-war-mach...state-capture/
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 09-12-2018 at 10:16 AM. Reason: 128,294v today
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  4. #284
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    Default U.S. approach to Yemen is challenged as country splinters and government vanishes

    An article in Newsweek and for once Eastern Yemen, the province known as Hadramawt, with the the port city of Mukulla is the focus.
    Link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...79_story.html?
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  5. #285
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Recipe for a disaster: Yemen's three flexible wars

    Via Lawfare Gregory D. Johnsen, a SME; the Editor's foreword:
    The war in Yemen has gone from bad to worse, leaving tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands of civilians at risk from disease and malnutrition. The war's complexity rivals its brutality, with a dizzying array of actors with discreet and shifting agendas. Gregory Johnsen of the Arabia Foundation describes the three wars Yemen is facing: the struggle against terrorism, the civil war, and the regional struggle encompassing Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran. Each has its own dynamics, and together they are shattering Yemen.
    He ends with:
    There is, simply put, no longer a single Yemen. There are multiple Yemens and no single individual or group capable of re-uniting them into a coherent whole. Yemen has too many groups with too many guns to ever be a unified state again. The civil war, which has taken a back seat to the regional conflict over the past three years, will eventually resume at full force. And when it does, the fighting it produces will be bloody and protracted.
    Link:https://www.lawfareblog.com/yemens-three-wars
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  6. #286
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default "Off ramps" for AQAP fighters?

    Via WoTR Gregory D. Johnsen has a short commentary on AQAP, it ends with:
    Contrary to the picture painted by the numbers, AQAP is the weakest it has ever been. Decimated by drone strikes and challenged by rivals, its international terrorist side is a shadow of its former self. Only its domestic insurgency side — bolstered by Yemen’s messy war — is growing. If this side can be reduced and contained, AQAP can be defeated. But if it is allowed to remain and continue to grow, the group may be able to resurrect the international side of its organization and become a global terrorist threat once more.
    Link:https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/th...ian-peninsula/
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  7. #287
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    Thirty-five Yemeni and international NGOs called Wednesday for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" in Yemen, where they warned 14 million people were now "on the brink of famine".

    The joint appeal was signed by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Action Against Hunger, CARE International, Oxfam, Doctors of the World, and Yemeni organisations, according to a statement.

    "With 14 million men, women and children on the brink of famine -- half the country's population -- there has never been a more urgent time to act," the statement said.


    Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/afp/...#ixzz5WI0x4U2g
    A scrimmage in a Border Station
    A canter down some dark defile
    Two thousand pounds of education
    Drops to a ten-rupee jezail


    http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg

  8. #288
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default U.S. support for this war represents a strategic and moral failure.

    An article from Lawfare by a SME, although the focus is Yemen there is a wider application. Daniel Byman as Editor adds:
    ...it has lessons for similar efforts when allies wage "limited" wars. Far from being an efficient, low-cost use of resources, Rand argues that these wars are not likely to achieve the results Washington wants, yet will implicate the United States in whatever goes wrong.
    Link:https://www.lawfareblog.com/extricat...red-operations
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-25-2018 at 05:19 PM. Reason: 133,271v today 5k up since Sept '18
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  9. #289
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Saudi Arabia’s Blood Pact With a Genocidal Strongman

    Fascinating commentary on the Yemeni conflict and the role of the Sudan - mercenaries for the coalition - which is fraught with problems. The sub-title is a reminder of the past:
    The Saudis and UAE bribed Sudan's president to send Janjaweed fighters to be cannon fodder in Yemen. It's not working out.
    Link:https://www.theamericanconservative....dan-yemen-uae/

    Now just why a 'conservative' website would carry this I know not.
    davidbfpo

  10. #290
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    Default They are all doomed

    A refreshing, first-hand account of a visit to the front line near Hodeida by two German reporters. Here is a "taster" passage:
    What is currently taking place in Yemen can hardly be described as a fight between a government and insurgents. That would require a functioning state with an army and an internationally recognized government. But none of that exists any longer. Exile President Hadi can't even fly to Aden without obtaining Saudi Arabia's permission. He's little more than a fig leaf for the proxy war Saudi Arabia and the UAE are waging on Yemeni soil against their archenemy Iran, which backs the Houthi rebels.
    Link:http://www.spiegel.de/international/...a-1243730.html
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  11. #291
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    Default Yemen on the brink: how the UAE is profiting from the chaos of civil war

    Recommended by a "lurker" as an excellent reporter; Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. It is a 'long read' and is based on what is happening in Aden. He is not complimentary about the UAE's role and their local allies - who appear to be more akin to bandits.
    Link:https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...-of-civil-war?
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  12. #292
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    Washington (CNN)The terrorist behind the 2000 attack on the USS Cole is believed to have been killed in a US airstrike in Yemen on Tuesday, according to a US administration official. Jamel Ahmed Mohammed Ali Al-Badawi was an al Qaeda operative who the US believes helped orchestrate the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors.
    The official said all intelligence indicators show al-Badawi was killed in a strike in Yemen as a result of a joint US military and intelligence operation.
    https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/04/polit...-st=1546725552
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 02-24-2019 at 12:00 PM. Reason: 138,366v today
    A scrimmage in a Border Station
    A canter down some dark defile
    Two thousand pounds of education
    Drops to a ten-rupee jezail


    http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg

  13. #293
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default The Failing Islamic State Within The Failed State of Yemen

    An article (10 pgs) from the free, online journal Perspectives on Terrorism, by Elisabeth Kendall, a SME from Oxford University, who has been on the ground in the Yemen.
    Link:https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/bi...-1/kendall.pdf
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  14. #294
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    Default Understanding the Houthi Faction in Yemen

    Via Lawfare and the Editor's Note explains:
    Yemen’s war, the world’s deadliest active conflict, has no end in sight. Many of its chief protagonists—including the Houthis, whose ties to Iran and hostility to U.S. allies put them at the center of the conflict—are not well understood. Sama’a al-Hamdani, the director of the Yemen Cultural Institute for Heritage and the Arts, does a deep dive on the Houthis. She details their goals and divisions, as well as how they might be induced to join Yemen’s nascent peace process.
    Link:https://www.lawfareblog.com/understa...-faction-yemen
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  15. #295
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Leaving or reducing? The UAE's role.

    Nervous of the crisis in the Gulf or the beginning of the end for the UAE role in the Yemeni Civil War? Now six days ago Reuters reported:
    The United Arab Emirates, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, is scaling back its military presence there as worsening U.S.-Iran tensions threaten security closer to home, four western diplomatic sources said.
    Link:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-y...-idUSKCN1TT14B

    Followed up since, notably this in WINEP commentary. Here is a "taster":
    In short, the UAE argues that its drawdown is not just because of war fatigue, but also because its mission is largely complete in the south, and the conflict with the Houthis is now in the hands of UN negotiators rather than coalition military forces. Outside observers are often less generous in their view of the UAE’s decisions and efforts, however.
    Link:https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/...e-saudi-arabia

    Incidentally another military partner, Sudan, may have to review its reported fourteen thousand strong commitment, given the issues back home as the military hold onto power.
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 07-04-2019 at 10:57 AM. Reason: 145,507v today
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