Armies of Liberation

UNICEF and Government of Yemen jointly launch the First Inter-Agency Comprehensive Child Protection Assessment Report in Conflict Affected Areas in the north of Yemen:

Key Findings:
* 68% of children interviewed have been subjected to domestic violence
* 8% of all abused children have admitted exposure to sexual exploitation perpetrated by host communities, aid workers and others
* 7.9% of IDPs and affected families have had one child killed as a result of the conflict
* 10.3% of children of these families have been injured as a direct result of the fighting from both sides of the conflict
* 21% of children reported that they saw someone being injured or wounded
* 7.1% had witnessed someone being killed
* 10.2% of families reported that their children had been subjected to detention by both sides of the conflict
* More than 15% of the fighters from Al-Houthi and tribal militias are Children below 18 yrs.
* 2.1% of displaced and affected families have indicated that at least one of their children is still missing
* High illiteracy levels amongst care givers in displaced and affected regions, 73% of fathers and 85% of mothers are illiterate without appropriate learning or educational opportunities

Yahya al-Houthi, an MP and brother of Abdel-Malik, sent a letter to the Yemeni parliament about the Senate’s finding the US military aid may have been mis-used (diverted) to Saleh’s efforts against the Houthis. Its extremely difficult to believe that the transfer of mil aid comes as a shock to anyone in DC. The Sa’ada region has been cut off from journalists since 2004, and the civilian casualty toll is anyone’s guess, but the Yemeni regime’s tactics are clearly in violation of international law and include sustained blockade and indiscriminate bombing. While Saleh is using US military support against the Houthis, he is also using al-Qaeda operatives as mercenaries and has been doing so since 2005-ie, the US is equipping an (al-Qaeda supported) jihad against Shia civilians. The Yemeni state itself calls it a jihad and has produced fatwas claiming “Houthi blood is free.” This is not news, but an ongoing pathetic failure of integrity and foresight.

We continue to expose our deep concern of the military and financial help of Western and especially the assistance the United States, European Union, as well as Arab aid provided to the system of Yemen in response to Western demands to provide such assistance to the regime in Yemen, and we reiterated our concern that such assistance will increase the tension conditions in our country and increase the unjust compulsion, the arrogance and injustice, emphasizing that he would use the aid in the suppression of the people and strengthen the dictatorship and the rule of domestic and install the corruption, rather than commitment to a democratic political and institutional governance, and it will expand the popular discontent against the corrupt system more, thereby expanding the cycle of violence and prolonging it.

We are today before the important recognition of the Chambers of the U.S. published a lot of media sources, reporting on the health of our apprehension of that aid has recognized that the system used actually against Houthis, rather than hunt for alleged terrorists, and people saw that it did not distinguish between one was people of all age groups and orientations of the target of bombs and missiles and one incident of camp the normal people too-distant future where the regime killed this aid, scores of children and women and the elderly, as well as it beat for the accommodation of prisoners from the Yemeni military in Sa’ada, where he spent more than 100 prisoners, as well as hit the markets and the displacement camps and cities inhabited by the civilian population. (Read on …)

UN

22 July 2010 – The United Nations is expressing concern about the humanitarian situation in northern Yemen, where the needs of the local population displaced by ongoing fighting vastly outstrip the funds provided so far by donors.

Less than $70 million, or 36 per cent, of the $187 million sought this year by aid agencies for assistance in Yemen has been received, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported today.

UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been providing relief to civilians in Yemen’s north, where Government forces have engaged rebels in sporadic armed conflict in recent years. (Read on …)

Yemen Observer: The Information Office of the rebel leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, launched an awareness campaign and educational activities in the areas of Sa’adah province, Sufyan district, and al-Jawf province last week about the dangers of “al-Qaeda,” according to al-Houthi and local sources in Sa’adah province. Al-Houthis described al-Qaeda as the “U.S. intelligence tool used by Washington to occupy any Arab or Islamic country under the pretext of combating terrorism.” (Read on …)

Ah yes there are advantages to being in business with the president, despite being on the list of violators of UN sanctions on Somalia. al Sahwa

Sahwa Net- Yemeni authorities released on Tuesday night Sheikh Faris Mana’a, a weapon dealer who was arrested on January by Yemeni authorities, sheiks from Saada governorate told Marib Press.

They said that the release of Mana’a was astonishing; pointing out that he was welcomed by masses of Saada sheiks and citizens. (Read on …)

An article covering the press conference is available here at the National.

SEYAJ Organization for Childhood Protection
Summary of press conference on victims of mines and explosive remnants of war
Child land mine victims urgently need medical treatment

May 31, 2010

SEYAJ detailed the horrendous apathy toward children and women who are victims of land mines and explosives in the northwestern province of Saada. Desperate their desperate medical condition, these victims are neglected and lack of access to medical care, even in the minimum standard by provided by hospitals and health centers.

The director of SEYAJ said at a press conference in Sana’a on Monday, May 31, 2010 that the injured had been expelled from the hospitals. The mattresses were pulled from beneath them and they were asked for money for their stay although they received no medicines. The shrapnel was not extracted from their bodies, despite that their injuries were received more than two months in most cases.

The victims of land mines live in harsh humanitarian conditions in the capital Sana’a, where they were not admitted to government hospitals, contrary to the directions of the president and the decision of the Minister of Public Health and Population that required treatment for all victims of war at the expense of the state. (Read on …)

In 2006, I wrote an article ( A Day in the Life of a Failing State) about a chickenpox outbreak in a remote village and how devastating it can be. There was some progress since (after one of the Dar al Hadeth Sheiks reversed his position that vaccines are a Zionist plot), but in Sa’ada, there are tens of thousands of children who were born since 2004 that have never seen a doctor. The following from IRIN

SANAA, 19 April 2010 (IRIN) – A 12-day measles and child polio vaccination campaign began on 17 April in parts of the troubled northern Yemeni governorate of Saada, targeting over 209,000 children, health officials say.

All under fives in seven of the governorate’s 15 districts will be vaccinated against both measles and polio. Those aged 5-15 will be vaccinated against measles, Hinbush Hussein Hinbush, head of the Public Health and Population Office (PHPO) in Saada, told IRIN.
(Read on …)

No surprise there. Update: When I wrote the last article, I wasn’t sure of the break down between the rebels and the arbitrarily arrested, but if we take Abdelmalik’s figure of 1000 rebels in jail and Hassan Zaids figure of 1000 innocent civilians plus 500 disappeared, we come up something around HOOD’s figure of 2000 imprisoned in relation to the war.

Yemen rebel group asks government to free 1,000 detained members, Earth Times

Sana’a, Yemen – A Shiite rebel group that fought the national army in northern Yemen for more than five years called upon the government Friday to free around 1,000 members of the group captured during the conflict that ended in February. (Read on …)

UN re-opening office in Sa’ada City.

Reuters: “Now the situation is better we are just planning to send the staff back again as soon as next week,” he said, adding that life is back to normal in Saada city. The office houses various U.N. relief agencies.

Humanitarian access is needed to other areas in Saada as well as al-Jawf and Amran governorates, where continued insecurity and land mines have hampered or delayed aid distribution, a U.N. statement said Friday.

“Security is the same as it was before the war … Outside Saada city we still don’t know because we have not been there.”

There we go. I think I wrote something very similar in 2005 after my head stopped exploding, but its good to see it in the New York Times. (See my Feb. 2006 article, Al Qaeda Escape in Yemen, Facts, Theories and Rumors for a comprehensive round-up of the situation then that brought us here now.)

Ali Mohsen, bin Laden recruiter, using Afgan Arabs in the Sa’ada War, and possibly training al Iman students at his military camp next door. The US funnels money pretty directly to Ali Mohsen, according to Robert Kaplan in Imperial Grunts. The US is funding a jihaddi that targets Zaidi civilians with indiscriminate bombing and deliberate starvation? The Houthis have always claimed the Sa’ada war was intent on the irradication of Zaidism itself. The strategic location of Sa’ada for al Qaeda can’t be underestimated.

NY Times: Mr. Mohsen, a general who is currently prosecuting the war against a Houthi rebellion in the north, also recruited thousands of Yemenis to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. His brigades returned victorious, and Mr. Saleh has used them since to help defeat the south in the 1994 civil war and against the Houthis. Some fighters, of course, have migrated to Al Qaeda, and there are imams here more radical than Mr. Zindani.

When north and south Yemen were united in 1990, Sheik Zindani accepted Mr. Saleh’s rule and was granted this huge area of government land on the western edge of Sana for the university — adjoining a large military base, which is Mr. Mohsen’s headquarters. There are rumors that students sometimes get military training there, which Mr. Abu Ras also denies.

Ali Mohsen’s extremist office manager in Sa’ada indoctrinates the military in Friday sermons and they hand out religious tracts to soldiers that say Houthi blood is free. This is the guy who was instigating against foreign medical workers prior to the kidnapping of the Germans.

Oh my! Someone noticed that the Yemeni government is deliberately starving tens of thousands of people in the war zone in Sa’ada:

Guardian: There is no question that civilians are increasingly victimised in conflicts and further cut off from lifesaving assistance, often deliberately,” said Christophe Fournier, the MSF international council president. “In places like Sri Lanka and Yemen, where armed conflicts raged in 2009, aid groups were either blocked from accessing those in need or forced out because they too came under fire. This unacceptable dynamic is becoming the norm.”

The press release::
Five prior unsettled wars in Yemen’s northern Saada Governorate led to a sixth in 2009, the most intense so far. The Yemeni army ratcheted up its offensive against a rebel group drawn from the dominant community in the region, and the humanitarian fallout was unprecedented. Civilians and non-military targets such as hospitals were heavily affected by fighting. Hundreds of thousands were displaced and humanitarian assistance came to a virtual halt. A malnutrition emergency was discovered among children uprooted from their homes. For the first time, a foreign neighbour, Saudi Arabia, was drawn into the conflict, further complicating the plight of civilians. (Read on …)

The veneer of legitimacy is wearing thin. AFP

SANAA — A shootout erupted on Thursday at a separatist rally in southern Yemen, killing one civilian, while a senior police officer was injured in clashes in a neighbouring province, witnesses and police said. (Read on …)