Battle for Hodeida Resumes

AP has a long report, "Key battle in Yemen’s war risks tipping country into famine," this morning about the U.S.-blessed resumption of the battle for Hodeida:

BAJIL, Yemen (AP) — With American backing, the United Arab Emirates has resumed an all-out offensive aimed at capturing Yemen’s most vital port, Hodeida, where Shiite rebels are digging in to fight to the last man. Thousands of civilians are caught in the middle, trapped by minefields and barrages of mortars and airstrikes.

[snip]

Hodeida’s port literally keeps millions of starving Yemenis alive, as the entry point for 70 percent of food imports and international aid. More than 8 million of Yemen’s nearly 29 million people have no food other than what is provided by world relief agencies, a figure that continues to rapidly rise.

A protracted siege could cut off that lifeline. The battle has already killed hundreds of civilians and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, adding to the more than 2 million Yemenis displaced by the war. Amid the fighting, cholera cases in the area leaped from 497 in June to 1,347 in August, Save the Children reported Tuesday.

[snip]

The battle brings in to sharp relief a question hanging over the war: What will be the shape of Yemen after all the destruction it has wreaked?

Notably absent from the fight to take Hodeida are the forces of Hadi’s government — the government that the coalition says it aims to restore. Several pro-Hadi officials told the AP that the UAE squeezed him out.

“The government knows nothing about what is going on in Hodeida,” one senior official said. “It’s all in the hands of the Emiratis.” He and the other officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities of relations with the Emirates.

Mistrust runs deep between Hadi’s government and the UAE, which has set up military bases across southern Yemen and controls much of the south through the militias it funds. Some Hadi allies accuse the UAE of seeking to impose its own dominion over Yemen — and see the assault on Hodeida as adding another piece to its hold over the country’s coastline.

Houthi-free southern Yemen has turned into a patchwork of splintered regions under rival militias. Aden, the southern capital, has seen assassinations and street battles between pro-UAE and pro-Hadi militias, as well as increasing crime, robbery and rape.

You will find the AP story in "the newspaper of record" but no original report. The Times has Declan Walsh stationed in Cairo but his last dispatch, "Battle Intensifies for Yemeni Port as Dock Workers Still Unload Aid," on Yemen was published at the end of spring. How many features on the Rohingya -- tales of gang rapes and babies snatched from their mothers breasts to be tossed into a bonfire -- have been published since then? Hannah Beech's output alone numbers half-a-dozen stories, and she has had to cover the Thai underwater cave rescue, various typhoons, earthquakes and tsunamis during the same time period.

It's impossible to avoid the conclusion tweeted by Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif:

US abrogated JCPOA -a multilateral accord enshrined in UNSC Resolution 2231- arguing that it seeks a bilateral treaty with #Iran. Today US withdrew from an actual US-Iran treaty after the ICJ ordered it to stop violating that treaty in sanctioning Iranian people. Outlaw regime.

One wants to recite a prayer: "O outlaw regime. May you be brought low and made to atone for your crimes. Darkness approaches and the earth waits to fold you under its skin."