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."

War in Yemen is Grossly Under-Reported

Last week the the Saudi-led coalition resumed its bombing of the critical Yemeni port city of Hodeida after a month-long ceasefire.

Mohammed Ali Kalfood and Margaret Coker provide a rundown in "Saudis Escalate Siege of Port in Yemen, Alarming Aid Groups," which is the first non-AP or Reuters dispatch on Yemen that The New York Times has published in a month.

It is fairly well-accepted fact that the war on Yemen is grossly under-reported. Just one example from last month -- there was barely a blip on the media radar when Amnesty International published a report accusing the UAE and the U.S. of war crimes in Yemen torture centers.

There are other grossly under-reported wars as well; Libya and Somalia, to name two. But Yemen is the worst because it is broadly acknowledged to currently represent the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe, and it wouldn't be possible without the active involvement of the United States.

In June, the Saudi and Emirati governments launched the battle for control of Al Hudaydah in an effort to tip the balance of power against the Houthis. The Saudi-led coalition ignored a resounding diplomatic outcry over concern for the safety of the city’s 600,000 residents and the possibility that the fighting could disrupt supply lines for urgent humanitarian assistance to millions of others in Yemen.

Aid arriving in the Red Sea port accounts for about 70 percent of imports in Yemen, a country where two-thirds of the 29 million people rely on international aid.

Less than a month later, the coalition halted the Al Hudaydah ground assault as it faced the hard realities of urban warfare and little progress. Instead the Saudis and Emiratis said they would support United Nations efforts to find a political solution, as well as a possible formula for a wider cease-fire.

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations special envoy, offered a grim progress report to Security Council members. “Recently, and despite all our efforts, the pace of war has increased,” he said, with Al Hudaydah becoming the “center of gravity” for the conflict.

Since the assault on Al Hudaydah started, more than 330,000 people, approximately half the city’s inhabitants, have fled, according to the United Nations.

Mr. Griffiths said he planned to invite the warring sides to Geneva on Sept. 6 for a first round of consultations aimed at convening peace talks. The plan is to “discuss a framework of negotiations and specific plans for moving the process forward,” he said.

On Thursday afternoon, however, the Arab coalition’s aerial forces were pounding several neighborhoods of Al Hudaydah, according to residents and aid workers.

Shortly after 4 p.m., bombs hit the city’s crowded fish market, about 200 yards from Al Thawrah Public Hospital. Medics rushed to the scene trying to save lives, but then about 30 minutes later another strike rocked the street in front of the hospital, where the wounded had been transported from the market.

Other Wars

With so many wars being fought, and potential wars soon to become actual wars, certain theaters of conflict go dark in the mainstream media. For example, Libya and Yemen are only sporadically covered in The New York Times. If it wasn't for the fact that Libya is a major launch point for refugees entering Europe, that country's civil war would be covered even less.

Yesterday there was this important story on News24, "Libya govt urges 'intervention' over southern clashes":

Libya's unity government has called for "urgent intervention" by the international community to end military escalation in its south, warning of a possible "civil war".

For more than a week, militias allied to the UN-backed Government of National Accord have fought off rival forces trying to capture an airbase in the south of the North African country.

"We ask you to take a firm and decisive stance with regards to this escalation and we will support all decisions to re-establish security and stability in Libya," GNA head Fayez al-Sarraj wrote in a letter published on Saturday.

Sarraj called for an "urgent intervention" from the international community "to end the deterioration of the situation in south Libya", in an open letter addressed to bodies including the European Union, the United Nations and the Arab League.

He did not specify the nature of what form such intervention could take.

Clashes erupted last week after the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army, commanded by military strongman Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and loyal to Libya's eastern authorities, battled to seize the Tamenhant air base from militias backing the GNA.

"This sudden and unjustified escalation... puts the country on the brink of civil war", Sarraj said.

The GNA, which both Haftar and the eastern-based parliament have refused to recognise, has announced a counter-offensive against the LNA.

The LNA has said the Tamenhant base was a launching pad for fighters who seized key oil terminals from its control last month, before the LNA retook them days later.

But the unity government has denied any link with the attacks on the oil facilities in Libya's northeast.

The GNA, which was born of a UN-brokered deal signed in late 2015, has struggled to assert its authority nationwide since taking office in Tripoli in March last year.

Libya has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi, with rival militias and authorities vying for control of the oil-rich country.

The air base at Tamenhant is where Italian troops reportedly have been stationed. So we have a situation where Haftar, backed by Russia and France, is doing battle with tribes backed by Italy. Are Italians special forces fighting Russian special forces? It seems unlikely, but we would never know because there has been almost no reporting.

On the war in Yemen there is blurb in today's Situation Report:

Here’s your interagency process. Humanitarian groups and the U.S. State Department are pushing back against a plan by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen to take a key port city with help from the U.S. military, Buzzfeed reports. The Pentagon is in favor of providing more logistical support to the Gulf coalition's plan to retake the city of Hodeida, believed to be a major hub for Iranian weapons shipment to Houthi militants in Yemen. But the State Department and aid groups have opposed the plan, saying the operation would likely take longer than the Pentagon's estimated four to six week time frame and exacerbate Yemen's humanitarian crisis by interfering with food and aid shipments. For more on U.S. military policy in Yemen, and what the Saudis might be looking for, check this recent story by FP’s Paul McLeary and Dan De Luce.

As wars multiply, the situation in Syria -- where the CIA backed jihadis while the Pentagon supported anarcho-feminists and the two sides actually fought each other -- will become more commonplace.

War Crimes in Yemen

The Gray Lady seems to be paying more attention to Yemen these days. The Saudi-led, U.S.-backed destruction of the poorest Arab nation has received spotty coverage in the "newspaper of record" because it tars the Obama administration as guilty of war crimes.

Today a story by Rick Gladstone, "Amnesty International Says All Sides in Yemen Have Committed War Crimes," makes this quite clear. Amnesty released a report, "Yemen: Bloody trail of civilian death and destruction paved with evidence of war," as did UNICEF, "Yemen Conflict: Over a thousand child casualties so far," which detail the crimes against humanity. As Gladstone says,

The Amnesty and Unicef reports were released as heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition hit Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeida, the main gateway for trade and emergency supplies to north and central Yemen.

Jamal Ayesh, the port director in Hodeida, said that the airstrikes hit after midnight, destroying the only five cranes in the port. He said that hangars used for maintenance and storing goods were also destroyed. “We can say that the cranes are out of service now,” he said.

Lloyd’s List, a London-based news service for the insurance industry, said Hodeida had closed because of the airstrikes.

Edward Santiago, the Yemen director for Save the Children, said in a statement that the full extent of the damage to Hodeida was unclear, but that “the impact of these latest airstrikes will be felt most strongly by innocent children and families.”

Mr. Santiago called the Hodeida bombing “the final straw.”

More than 4,000 people have been killed in Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest country, since March, when the Saudis began bombing Houthi rebels who had driven the Saudi-backed government into exile. Saudi Arabia views the Houthis as proxies of Iran, its regional rival.

Yemen is now one of the world’s most acute humanitarian catastrophes, with 80 percent of the population in dire need of food and other emergency relief.

The Houthis have suffered a series of defeats in the past month and have been driven out of the southern port of Aden by fighters aligned with the exiled government.

Although the Houthis still control Sana, the capital, exiled Yemeni officials are predicting that they will reclaim it within weeks.

The important thing to remember here is that the United States is acting as air-traffic controller for the Saudis, not to mention that the U.S. Navy is participating in the blockade of Yemen. Beyond a doubt, the Obama administration is participating in a total war on the Yemeni civilian population. The airstrikes on the port of Hodeida are intended to staunch the flow of aid to territory that the Houthis control. The Obama administration is guilty of war crimes; this should be obvious to all.

Remember this the next time some Western official stands at a lectern and admonishes the Syrian government for insufficient care to its civilian population. Because of the dominant role that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel play in the determination of U.S. foreign policy, Obama did a somersault and now fully and openly backs the Egyptian police state of Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. One wonders how Obama is going to explain away the famine he is helping to create in Yemen.