HRW Report
The full report is here and it very good. The report makes many good observations including:
The government failed to implement its part of the peace deal(s)
The mediators were arrested
The regime replaced Zaidi preachers with Salafi preachers
Arbitrary arrests included family members of suspected rebels, critics, journalists and children
The media black-out
Observers are concerned that the current cease-fire won’t hold, especially since an earlier truce failed because, critics charge, the government reneged on its promise to release Houthi loyalists. That fed growing anger against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is also a Zaidi but has largely allied himself with the country’s Sunni Muslim majority.
“They’re not knocking heads to stabilize the country,” said Christoph Wilcke, the Human Rights Watch researcher who wrote the report. “It’s having the opposite effect. This is a futile conflict. . . . Continuing the war is undermining stability both in terms of resources and the growing anger at the government.”
Wilcke, who spent two months researching the report, said he met Thursday with National Security Council officials in Washington in hope of influencing efforts to draft a new Yemen policy. A Sept. 17 car bomb explosion targeting the U.S. Embassy in Sana, the Yemeni capital, killed at least 16 people, mostly bystanders. He said U.S. officials are concerned that the practices of the Saleh government may be undermining broader security concerns.
