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Ed Webb

Yemen pays price for Saudis' sectarian paranoia | Middle East Eye - 1 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-sectarian-paranoia-1288005160

Yemen KSA Saudi US USA AQAP ISIS analysis military diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The success of the Houthi insurgency from the north that swept the Yemeni leadership from power, taking over the capital Sanaa, was perversely treated by the Security Council as a military coup justifying the intervention by a Saudi-led coalition. Strange to recall that the 2013 undisguised military coup in Egypt, with much bloodier reprisals against the displaced elected rulers, aroused not a murmur of protest in the halls of the UN. So goes geopolitics in the Middle East.
  • the geopolitical tendency to reduce an incredibly complex national history and interplay of contending forces to a simplistic story of Sunni versus Shia rivalry for the control of the country
  • allows Saudi Arabia to portray the strife in Yemen as another theatre of the wider region proxy war pitting Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies against Iran, which is a guaranteed way of securing US and Israeli backing
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  • not a regional politics based on sectarian priorities, but rather a pathological preoccupation with regime stability in the Saudi monarchy, with anxieties arising whenever political tendencies emerge in the region that elude its control, and are perceived as threatening
  • There is a long experience of division between the north and the south, and this means that any unity government for the whole of Yemen can only be sustained by an iron-fisted dictator like Saleh or through a genuine power-sharing federalist kind of arrangement. Beyond this, the country bears the scars of Ottoman rule intermixed with a British presence in Aden and the surrounding area, vital for colonial priorities of controlling the Suez and the trade routes to the East.Additionally, Yemen remains a composite of tribes that still command the major loyalty of people. The modern European insistence on sovereign states in the Middle East never succeeded in overcoming the primacy of Yemeni tribal identities. Any possibility of political stability requires subsidising Yemen’s tribes as Saudi Arabia did during Saleh’s dictatorship (1990-2012) or creating a multi-coloured quilt of autonomous tribal polities. When geography and tribalism are taken into account recourse to the Shia-Sunni divide or the Riyadh-Tehran rivalry as an explanation of Yemen’s strife-ridden country is a cruel and futile fantasy.
  • What is needed is establishing a political transition sensitive both to the North-South split and the strength of Yemeni tribes coupled with massive economic assistance from outside and the creation of a UN peacekeeping presence tasked with implementation
  • Such a rational path is currently blocked, especially by the intense militancy of the aggressive Saudi leadership of King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, and his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Secretary of Defence, the apparent champion of military intervention
Ed Webb

Saudi Arabia's long history of destructive intervention in Yemen | Middle East Eye - 3 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-intervention-yemen-1549856872

KSA Saudi Yemen analysis sectarianism military

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • With its mosaic of religious communities countering the Wahhabi call, cultural, tribal and historical ties to Saudi realms on its border, deep historical memory of civilizational achievement, and strategic location, Yemen was perceived as both threat and target. Keeping it split among political entities was a policy priority.
  • Subsidies to northern tribes were often another feature of the relationship
  • During Ali Abdullah Saleh’s years in charge in Sanaa Saudi cultural influence developed through Salafi proselytization. While it would be incorrect to reduce Salafism in Yemen to a Saudi implant, the Saudi connection is crucial to the spread of radical Sunni ideology and practice
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  • Saudi Arabia funds the government as well as tribal leaders to secure support for Saudi policies and prevent the emergence of a non-tribal, non-sectarian democratic culture. Yet although Saleh worked hard at building a close relationship with Riyadh, he and other Yemenis were still treated with disdain by the Saudi princes, often denied meetings with the recently deceased Abdullah for receptions with his crown prince Sultan, who handled the “Yemen file”.
Ed Webb

US arms sold to Saudi Arabia and UAE end up in wrong hands - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...yemen-lost-us-arms

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shared by Ed Webb on 11 Jul 19 - Cached
  • Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found.
  • The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels battling the coalition for control of the country, exposing some of America's sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other conflict zones.
  • The revelations raise fresh questions about whether the US has lost control over a key ally presiding over one of the most horrific wars of the past decade, and whether Saudi Arabia is responsible enough to be allowed to continue buying the sophisticated arms and fighting hardware
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  • Some terror groups have gained from the influx of US arms, with the barrier of entry to advanced weaponry now lowered by the laws of supply and demand. Militia leaders have had ample opportunity to obtain military hardware in exchange for the manpower to fight the Houthi militias. Arms dealers have flourished, with traders offering to buy or sell anything, from a US-manufactured rifle to a tank, to the highest bidder. And Iran's proxies have captured American weapons they can exploit for vulnerabilities or reverse-engineer for native production.
  • these shops don't just take individual orders, they can supply militias -- and it's this not-so-hidden black market that in part is driving the demand for hi-tech American weapons and perpetuating the cycle of violence in Yemen
  • Once the intellectual heart of the country, Taiz is now a tinder box that set off a war within a war last year, when the various militias backed by the Saudi-led coalition turned their guns on each other. Amid the chaos of the broader war, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) made its way to the frontlines in Taiz in 2015, forging advantageous alliances with the pro-Saudi militias they fought alongside. One of those militias linked to AQAP, the Abu Abbas brigade, now possesses US-made Oshkosh armored vehicles, paraded in a 2015 show of force through the city. Abu Abbas, the founder, was declared a terrorist by the US in 2017, but the group still enjoys support from the Saudi coalition and was absorbed into the coalition-supported 35th Brigade of the Yemeni army.
  • In October 2015, military forces loyal to the government boasted on Saudi- and UAE-backed media that the Saudis had airdropped American-made TOW anti-tank missiles on the same frontline where AQAP had been known to operate at the time. Local officials confirmed that the airdrop happened, but CNN's attempts to conduct further interviews were blocked and the team was intimidated by the local government. A local activist joked that the weapons had probably been sold on.
  • Recipients of US weaponry are legally obligated to adhere to end-use requirements which prohibit the transferring of any equipment to third parties without prior authorization from the US government. That authorization was never obtained.
  • "The United States has not authorized the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates to re-transfer any equipment to parties inside Yemen," Pentagon spokesman Johnny Michael told CNN. "The US government cannot comment on any pending investigations of claims of end-use violations of defense articles and services transferred to our allies and partners."
  • MRAPs like these, captured on the battlefield, have been probed by Iranian intelligence, according to a member of a secret Houthi unit backed by Iran known as the Preventative Security Force. The unit oversees the transfer of military technology to and from Tehran.
  • Iranian and Hezbollah advisers have already gotten their hands on the armored vehicles and other US military hardware
  • The flood of US weaponry is fueling a conflict that has killed tens of thousands -- among them children on school buses and families fleeing violence -- and pushed millions more to the brink of famine.
  • too many powerful political figures and key armed actors in the region have been prospering greatly from the conflict and, as a result, they lack the incentives to agree to a peace process that would threaten their financial gain
  • The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and its support is crucial to the Saudi coalition’s continuing war in Yemen.
Ed Webb

Yemen: War Profiteers | Yemen | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...rofiteers-190731100503901.html

Yemen KSA Saudi UAE UK Britain US USA France Germany EU arms weapons warcrimes jazeera video

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Aug 19 - Cached
  • According to the United Nations, Yemen today is the world's worst humanitarian crisis. In 2018, the UN appointed a panel of experts to examine the coalition blockade on Yemen and the impact of the thousands of airstrikes launched against civilians there. It concluded that these practices could qualify as war crimes. It pointed not only at Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also at the parties supplying the coalition with weapons, based on a multilateral treaty regulating arms sales that has been in force since 2014. Saudi Arabia buys its weapons from the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as from a number of European arms manufacturers, led by French and German companies.
  • The European parliament has called for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi. Although five EU member states have stopped selling war weapons to the kingdom, its five biggest suppliers, led by the UK, have not. 
  • In this film, we reveal details of the shadowy world of the so-called legal arms trade, the double-discourse of our democracies, and the shortcomings of European governments. And we pose a fundamental question: by pursuing trade with Saudi Arabia, are European countries complicit in war crimes?
Ed Webb

Separatists announce self-rule in southern Yemen | Yemen News | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ern-yemen-200426020425693.html

Yemen UAE KSA Saudi separatism pandemics politics

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Yemen's southern separatists have announced plans to establish a self-ruled administration in regions under their control in a move the country's internationally-backed government said would have "catastrophic consequences".
  • The council accused Yemen's Saudi-backed government of corruption and mismanagement. The STC is supported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
  • the separatists, who sought self-rule in the south, turned on the government in August last year and seized the interim capital of Aden. The fighting stopped when the two groups reached a deal in November. Under the accord reached in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, the STC and other regions in the south were supposed to join a new national cabinet and place all forces under the control of the internationally recognised government. Mohammed al-Hadhrami, Yemen's foreign minister, said the STC's latest move amounted to a withdrawal from the Riyadh agreement.
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  • The separatists' move raises concerns that Yemen could slide further into chaos amid the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
  • The years-long conflict in Yemen has killed more than 100,000 people and pushed the Arab world's poorest country to the brink of famine.
Ed Webb

America's Dark History of Killing Its Own Troops With Cluster Munitions - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cluster-munitions-history.html

US USA military Yemen Iraq Vietnam Korea weapons arms

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Dec 19 - Cached
  • In December 2009, when President Barack Obama ordered attacks on two suspected terrorist camps in Yemen, at least one Tomahawk missile fired from a warship accompanying the U.S.S. Nimitz dumped BLU-97 bomblets onto the village of al-Ma’jalah. The Navy made an almost comical play for plausible deniability of America’s role. The ships steamed near shore so their cruise missiles would have sufficient fuel to fly beyond the target, turn back in the direction of the sea, release their payload onto al-Ma’jalah and then continue over the beach and fall into blue water, hiding evidence on the ocean floor.The attack reportedly killed 55 people, including 14 people suspected of being Qaeda members, 14 women and 21 children. The empty cruise missiles fell into the sea. But at least one dud was left behind at the strike scene. Before long, photos of Tomahawk missile parts appeared in news reports from Yemen, along with one clearly showing an unexploded BLU-97 — distinctive bright yellow and made in the United States. In keeping with United States policy of concealing American involvement in the Yemen conflict, the government of Yemen lied about the strike, claiming the village was attacked by Yemeni forces. Along with the accidental civilian casualties, the bungled attack had another unintended effect: Diplomatic cables exposed by WikiLeaks show that President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and Gen. David Petraeus decided to forgo future cruise missile attacks in favor of airstrikes — evidently a concession to BLU-97 unreliability and public mood.
  • Under the new policy, military commanders can now use existing cluster munitions until “sufficient quantities” of “enhanced and more reliable” replacements are developed and fielded. Though the Army has recently purchased cluster munitions that claim a dud rate of less than 1 percent, the service is buying them in such small quantities that they will come nowhere close to replacing existing stockpiles on a one-for-one basis.
  • The vast majority of cluster weapons the United States currently holds are the same as those that killed and injured dozens of troops in Desert Storm.
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  • Despite cluster munitions’ long history of fratricide, Pentagon leaders continue to assert that using these weapons can reduce casualties among Americans, partner nations and even civilians. When pressed repeatedly by The Times to explain such a scenario, and why other, newer, smaller and much more reliable munitions that have been added to its arsenal in recent years would be unable to carry out the same missions with less risk, Pentagon officials declined to elaborate.
  • A 2008 Defense Department memorandum showed that the Pentagon’s munitions stockpile in South Korea contained nearly 1.7 million cluster weapons, of which almost 1.2 million were Vietnam-era cluster artillery projectiles — the same weapons that killed many American service members in that war.
  • It’s possible that cluster weapons’ grim legacy, particularly that of the BLU-97, has been forgotten by the people now deciding how they will be deployed in the future. Those who remember are the explosive-ordnance disposal techs, who for more than 25 years have circulated Staff Sergeant Crick’s battlefield logbook as a testament of American military recklessness. It had almost no public exposure in all these years until a senior tech, who called the BLU-97 “the most dangerous weapon in our arsenal, and not just to the enemy,” shared a copy with The Times.
Ed Webb

Cash and contradictions: On the limits of Middle Eastern influence in Sudan - African A... - 1 views

africanarguments.org/...dle-eastern-influence-in-sudan

Sudan KSA Saudi UAE Egypt politics economy military militia hornofafrica

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • In Sudan, the revolutionaries who overthrew President Omar al-Bashir and who continue to organise are well aware of the threat posed by neighbouring Arab countries. Protesters’ murals show the people rejecting the interfering hands of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). One of the most popular chants is “Victory or Egypt”, voicing activists’ determination not to succumb to a military counter-revolution as happened in their northern neighbour.
  • many Sudanese believe that the 3 June crackdown in which scores of protesters were killed only came after the green light from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt
  • In this struggle between the “Pax Africana” and Arab authoritarians, there’s no doubt that the democrats have the weaker hand. But not everything is going the Arab troika’s way.
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  • Sudan wasn’t following the script of Bahrain, where the demonstrators dispersed after a single crackdown, or Egypt, where the army took control through co-option and repression.
  • A major split between Saudi Arabia and the UAE was on show in July when the latter abruptly withdrew most of its forces from Yemen. No official explanation was given, but the decision was evidently not coordinated with Saudi Arabia, which remains bogged down in an intractable war. The UAE’s decision also shows it can be mercurial and that its policies towards the Horn of Africa may be less strategic and more opportunistic than commentators have assumed.
  • Egypt prides itself on understanding Sudan and sees Saudi Arabia and UAE as newcomers seeking influence solely by dispensing money. Egypt limited its demands on Sudan to handing over Egyptian Islamists in exile, suspending the deal for Turkey to develop a naval base, and ceding its territorial claim to the Halaib Triangle.
  • As Arab countries find themselves pulled in to the internal negotiations among the Sudanese, they will face another potential point of contention. Sudan doesn’t just need democracy, but peace. This means a role for the Islamists both in Khartoum and the provinces. For a decade, the custodian of the Darfur peace process has been Qatar, the troika’s arch rival, and it will be impossible to ignore Qatar’s role or that of Sudan’s diverse constituency of Islamists. Some of these dynamics are already playing out and reveal the lack of a common strategy among the Arab troika
  • After the secession of South Sudan in 2011, Sudan lost 75% of its oilfields and an even greater proportion of its hard currency earnings. The following year, it literally struck gold and within a few years, gold was providing 40% of Sudan’s exports. As much as a third of it, however, came to be smuggled to Libya, Chad or directly by plane to the region’s biggest gold market in Dubai. The government in Khartoum, desperate to control the commodity, responded by using the Central Bank of Sudan as its sole buying agent, paying above the market price to gold traders and printing money to cover this outlay. Buying gold to convert to hard currency became the engine of Sudan’s inflation, which skyrocketed. By 2018, the price of essential commodities such as bread and fuel was so high relative to stagnant wages that the people across the country took to the streets to protest.
  • Hemedti. His RSF militia controls the gold mines and he personally owns a number of concessions. Through Sudan’s monetary policy, vast resources were transferred from wage earners in the centre of the country to militiamen and gold traders in the peripheries
  • Hemedti has also benefited massively from providing mercenaries, which may be Sudan’s second biggest source of foreign exchange today. A few months after the Saudis launched their war in Yemen in March 2015, Sudan volunteered to send troops. The first contingent was a battalion of the regular army, but then Hemedti struck a parallel deal to dispatch several brigades of RSF fighters. Within a year, the RSF comprised by far the biggest foreign contingent fighting in Yemen with at least 7,000 militiamen. Hemedti was paid directly by Saudi Arabia and the UAE for this service. He says he deposited $350 million in the Central Bank, but has not said how much he kept to himself for his own enrichment or political spending.
  • the Central Bank of Sudan has become an instrument for Hemedti’s political finance. And since becoming the central actor in Sudan’s ruling cabal in April, he has exerted an even tighter grip on gold production and exports while moving aggressively into other commercial areas. He has increased the RSF’s deployment in Yemen and sent a brigade to fight in Libya alongside General Khalifa Haftar, who is backed by Egypt and the UAE, almost certainly in return for Emirati financial rewards. Hemedti is also expanding his family business conglomerate, the Al-Junaid companies, and running his political business on the basis of personally handing out cash to key constituents such as tribal chiefs, the police, and electricity workers.
  • none of this addresses Sudan’s macroeconomic crisis: its rampant inflation, rapidly increasing arrears on international debt, and ostracism from the dollar-based international financial system
  • Sudan’s Gulf patrons are bailing out the country with a $200 million monthly subsidy in cash and commodities, but the bailout amounts needed will quickly become too big even for the oil-rich Gulf States’ deep pockets
  • a clash between Hemedti’s political market logic and Sudan’s macroeconomy is looming.  The Sudanese technocrats associated with the FFC are well aware of this, which is why the economists called upon to put themselves forward for cabinet positions have been reluctant to agree. There is a race between Hemedti’s consolidation of power and a re-run of the economic crisis and protests that led to al-Bashir’s downfall.
  • as Sudan’s economic crisis deepens, they will have to turn to the IMF and western creditors for assistance
Ed Webb

Drone warfare's deadly civilian toll: a very personal view | James Jeffrey | Comment is... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...e-warfare-deadly-civilian-toll

opinion US USA analysis UK Afghanistan Iraq Yemen Pakistan drones

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the west as a result of President Obama's increased reliance on drones. When surveying the poisoned legacy left to the Iraqi people, and what will be left to the Afghan people, it's beyond depressing to hear of the hawks circling around other theatres like Pakistan and Yemen, stoking the flames of interventionism.I fear the folly in which I took part will never end, and society will be irreversibly enmeshed in what George Orwell's 1984 warned of: constant wars against the Other, in order to forge false unity and fealty to the state.
  • in Afghanistan, the linguistic corruption that always attends war meant we'd refer to "hot spots", "multiple pax on the ground" and "prosecuting a target", or "maximising the kill chain".
  • encroachment of drones into the civilian realm is also gaining momentum. President Obama signed a federal law on 14 February 2012, allowing drones for a variety of commercial uses and for police law enforcement. The skies above may never be the same. As with most of America's darker elements, such as its gun culture, there's profit to be made – the market for drones is already valued at $5.9bn and is expected to double in 10 years.
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  • Technological advancements in warfare don't have a good track record in terms of unintended consequences
Ed Webb

U.S. Widens Terror War to Yemen, a Qaeda Bastion - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...28yemen.html

Yemen al-qaida USA CT

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Dec 09 - Cached
  • The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.
  • Yemen could become Al Qaeda’s next operational and training hub, rivaling the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where the organization’s top leaders operate.
  • Saudi Arabia, from which many Qaeda operatives had fled to Yemen
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  • the country’s chaos has worsened in the past two years, as the government struggles with an armed rebellion in the northwest and a rising secessionist movement in the south. Yemen is running out of oil, and the government’s dwindling finances have affected its ability to strike at Al Qaeda.
  • “There was intelligence that they were targeting the British Embassy and a number of government institutions as well as private schools,” Mr. Qirbi said in a telephone interview. “The second reason is that they have become more vocal, trying to show that they can undertake terrorist activities in an open fashion. So the government had to respond to that.”
  • In the past year, Al Qaeda has killed six intelligence officers in the provinces where it is based, part of an unmistakable campaign by the group to secure its sanctuary there, Mr. Alani said. The intelligence officers were trying to gather information on the group, and to disrupt its growing links with local tribes — a significant part of its strategy
Jim Franklin

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Yemen rebels show 'seized' Saudi - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...200911917305983423.html

Saudi Arabia Yemen Houthi insurgency

shared by Jim Franklin on 10 Nov 09 - No Cached
  • Yemeni rebels have released a video of a man who they identify as one of several Saudi soldiers in their custody, as fighting between Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government spilled over into Saudi Arabia.
  • the authenticity of the video could not be independently verified.
  • Saudi Arabia has denied crossing into Yemen, and has also dismissed claims that any of its soldiers have been captured. The military has admitted that a number of soldiers are missing.
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  • Saudi Arabia began a series of air raids and artillery bombardments against the Houthi group after its fighters reportedly crossed from northern Yemen and took control of an area called Jebel al-Dukhan.
  • Hundreds of people have died in northern Yemen since the country's army began an offensive against the Houthis on August 11.
Jim Franklin

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Yemen rules out truce with Houthis - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...200911723220363295.html

Iran Yemen Saudi Arabia Houthi insurgency

shared by Jim Franklin on 08 Nov 09 - No Cached
  • The president of Yemen has ruled out a truce in the escalating conflict with Houthi fighters in the north.
  • Heavy clashes had been reported at the Saudi-Yemeni border as Saudi forces battle Yemeni rebels for the fifth straight day on Saturday.
  • The Shia Houthis, fighting their own government over alleged discrimination, had also claimed to have captured some Saudi soldiers on Friday.
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  • battle that is being viewed as a proxy conflict with regional power Iran.
  • "The co-operation between Yemen and Saudi Arabia runs for a long time now, even before the Houthis.
  • group denies receiving any help from Tehran, which has offered to mediate in the conflict.
  • "Weapons are largely available in Yemen," he said.
Ed Webb

Can Oman help Saudis save face in Yemen? - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...yemen-saudi-isis-gcc-arms.html

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shared by Ed Webb on 12 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Muscat’s understanding of Yemeni history, where no fighting force has ever been able to seize control of the entire nation. Conflict resolution in Yemen will require a power-sharing agreement in which all sides have a voice at the table, rather than a military campaign aimed at crushing the Houthi rebel movement.
  • the Omani leadership is most unsettled by the threat that a prolonged conflict poses to the security of Oman’s Dhofar governorate, situated along the Gulf Arab nation’s 187-mile border with Yemen
  • As Omanis face the challenges associated with the succession issue, Muscat officials are unsettled by the potential for groups in the historically neglected Dhofar governorate to reject the legitimacy of Qaboos’ successor. Within this context, promoting a peaceful resolution to the Yemeni crisis at the roundtable serves Oman’s national interests.
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  • That Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest Arab country and the world’s top arms importer, cannot defeat an insurgency from the most underserved region of the poorest Arab country is a source of humiliation
Ed Webb

Chinese drones: Cheap, lethal and flying in the Middle East | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...china-drones-1492124367

MENA China mlitary weapons arms drones KSA Saudi UAE Egypt Iraq Yemen

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • China’s new hit product: the CH-4 Caihong, or "Rainbow", drone.
  • The Middle East is no stranger to drones flown by the US, which have killed thousands of people over the last decade.But more nations are entering the game thanks to a new player in the market: Chinese manufacturers offering cheap hardware with a no-questions-asked sales policy.China has been aggressively marketing the CH-4, which bears a striking resemblance to the US MQ-9 Reaper and has similar capabilities.
  • Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt are now believed to operate variants of Chinese armed drones
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  • China has not signed the international Arms Trade Treaty, or ATT, meaning it has fewer restrictions on the sale of drone technology
  • “Countries with less-than-ideal human rights records tend to use their weapons in less-than-ideal human rights manners, whether it’s a drone or a water cannon."
  • Saudi Arabia and the UAE are believed to have used the drones in their war in Yemen. While there are not verified reports of drone attacks, evidence of their use includes satellite photographs, as well as images of a drone resembling a CH-4 shot down by Houthi fighters.Saudi Arabia has been condemned by a host of bodies including the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the European Parliament for apparent indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Yemen.
  • while drones offer safety for operators, leaked reports from the US drone programme suggest that up to 90 percent of those killed in drone strikes may be unintended targets, or "collateral damage". 
Ed Webb

Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen: A view from the ground | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...n-yemen-a-view-from-the-ground

Yemen KSA Saudi US USA war analysis opinion military

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Mar 18 - Cached
  • the air campaign in Yemen is now being fought at least as cleanly as contemporary U.S. air campaigns, with stringent target vetting and, to my trained eye, extremely restrictive rules of engagement
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 29 Mar 18
       
      Given what we are learning about civilian casualty rates from US (and allied) air operations in Syria and Iraq, this bar is not particularly high, and certainly is insufficient to be certain that war crimes are not being committed.
  • It is the Houthis, not the Yemeni government or the coalition that is seeding Yemen’s farmlands with tens of thousands of landmines, who are creating a whole generation of civilian amputees. It is the Houthis who are taxing and impounding humanitarian food and fuel imports, making these commodities unaffordable to Yemenis
  • As long as the Houthi rebels control the Yemeni capital and the country’s largest port, they have no incentive to negotiate: they must fear losing these prizes to return to the peace table.
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  • it is notable that the U.N. Panel of Experts on Yemen has gradually shifted towards stronger criticism of the Houthis than the coalition in its most recent annual report
  • Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 29 Mar 18
       
      A right-leaning, pro-Israel think tank. Noteworthy that Israeli and Saudi interests overlap a lot these days. That doesn't invalidate the perspective and observations. But it is important to understand the position of sources.
  • the war is poorly understood in Washington and other capitals. In fact, U.S. military support is helping to set the military and humanitarian conditions for an end to hostilities and a reduction of famine and cholera
  • Mistakes were made, but they were corrected much faster than was the case in many U.S.-led interventions over the years.
Ed Webb

Denmark suspends arms exports to UAE over Yemen war: Report | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/k-arm-exports-uae-yemen-report

Denmark UAE Yemen Saudi KSA arms weapons exports

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Denmark announced the suspension of arms exports to the United Arab Emirates and the withdrawal of export permits approved by the Danish government, the Copenhagen Post reported on Thursday.The decision comes as a result of the UAE’s involvement in the conflict in Yemen, according to Denmark's foreign minister, Anders Samuelsen.
  • Denmark followed Germany last November and suspended future arms exports to Saudi Arabia over the kingdom's role in the war in Yemen and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October.
Ed Webb

Mohammed Bin Salman; A Prince Who Should Not Become A King » Deep State Radio... - 0 views

thedsrnetwork.com/e-who-should-not-become-a-king

KSA Saudi MBS opinion analysis Yemen Lebanon Iran GCC Qatar

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Jun 19 - Cached
  • In a meeting with current and former U.S officials in Washington during his last visit in the Spring, crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman said that he was interested in spending up to a hundred million dollars to arm the “Lebanese Forces”, the civil war Christian militia turned political party to transform it from a political adversary of Hezbollah into a lethal enemy. According to a participant in the meeting, the crown prince found no interest in this scheme either in Washington or in Beirut. Contrary to its name, this political party does not have an armed wing and its leadership has disavowed publicly the use of force.
  • The Qatar crisis demonstrated clearly that the new younger leaders in the Gulf see politics as a zero sum game, that they  are more willing  than their more measured and cautious fathers, to double down and burn the last bridge.
  • No Arab country could match Iran’s Shi’a foreign legions, with sectarian legions of their own. Mohammed Bin Salman is very aware of this predicament, and of the embarrassing limits of Saudi military power.
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  • In his short tenure, Mohammed Bin Salman has blazed a trail of bold and bloody moves domestically and regionally that were norm busting, counterintuitive and precedent breaking. While every Saudi monarch since 1932 had interfered in Yemen’s domestic affairs politically, militarily and often aggressively, only Muhammed Bin Salman as the leader of the wealthiest Arab country waged a war to destroy the already weak and fractured economy and infrastructure of the poorest Arab country. His air war soon turned into a rampage of indiscriminate bombings and blockades amounting to possible war crimes, creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. Save the Children organization has estimated that 85,000 children might have died of malnutrition and starvation since the bombings began in 2015.
  • Saudi Arabia has had border disputes with Yemen and most of her smaller Gulf neighbors for many years. On occasions it tried to use coercive methods mostly employing tribes to settle these disputes the most famous of which was the Buraimi Oasis dispute of the 1940’s and 50’s, involving Saudi Arabia, Oman and what is now the UAE. But ever since the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981 to coordinate economic, political and potentially military policies, disputes were expected to be resolved amicably among member states; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. The grouping never amounted to an alliance and now it is in tatters because of political, personal and ideological tensions involving mainly Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE vs. Qatar.
  • The man who condemned civilians in Yemen to a slow death, blockaded neighboring Qatar, cracked down harshly on peaceful activists at home, ordered the brutal killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi abroad, and engaged in a brazen shakedown of other Saudi royals, was in the process of trying to add to his list of depredations, the resumption of armed conflict in Lebanon.
  • Mohammed Bin Salman has trapped himself in a war in Yemen that he cannot win, but he has already lost his campaign against Qatar.
  • the case can be made that Mohammed Bin Salman’s war in Yemen made the Houthis more dependent on Iran and gave Iran and Hezbollah a military foothold on the Arabian Peninsula that did not exist before the war. The blockade of Qatar led to improved political, economic and trade relations between Doha and Tehran, and increased Turkey’s military profile in the Gulf for the first time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago.
  • Much has been written about Mohammed Bin Salman as a ‘reformer’, but most of the focus was on the ‘historic’ decision to allow women to drive, (a decision any new ruler was expected to take) to open up movie theatres, and to allow men and women for the first time to watch together sport competitions. The crown prince was praised because he wanted to diversify the ‘one crop economy’ and make it less dependent on hydrocarbon production, through greater foreign investment, an issue the Saudi elites have been discussing for years. At best these measures are necessary for any nation to survive let alone thrive in the modern world. But there was not a single serious decision to politically empower the population, or to open the public sphere even very slightly
  • the short reign of Mohammed Bin Salman has been more despotic than previous rulers. No former Saudi Monarch has amassed the executive powers, political, military and economic that the crown prince has concentrated in his hands except for the founder of the ruling dynasty King Abdul-Aziz  Al Saud. His brief tenure has been marked by periodic campaigns of repression. Long before the murder of Khashoggi, scores of writers, intellectuals and clerics were arrested for daring to object to the crown prince’s decisions. Many are still languishing in jails with no formal charges. Even some of the women activists who pushed hard for years to lift the ban on women driving, were incarcerated on trumped up charges of ‘treason’. Women are allowed to drive now – but the crown prince would like them to think that this is because of his magnanimity, and not their struggle- but they are still subject to the misogynistic and atavistic female guardianship system, which treat adult women regardless of their high education and accomplishments as legal minors.
  • Jamal Khashoggi is the last of a long trail of Arab journalists and men of letters murdered by their governments at home and abroad. But he was the first one to have a reputable, international medium, the Washington Post that published his columns in English and Arabic, which was one of the reasons that enraged the crown prince. Jamal, was the first journalist millions of people all over the world watched walking his last steps toward his violent death
Ed Webb

Senators Demand Answers From Trump Team on Yemen - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...abia-state-department-pentagon

Yemen KSA Saudi US USA military politics Iran

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Apr 18 - Cached
  • Grilling top officials from the State Department, Defense Department, and U.S. Agency for International Development at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed frustration that the administration could not articulate a clear strategy, use its influence with Riyadh to safeguard civilians, or promote a diplomatic settlement. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking member of the committee, said the Trump administration’s approach to Yemen was marked by an “alarming absence of strategy.”
  • Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) questioned whether the Pentagon could confidently say its efforts have reduced civilian casualties, given that it is not able to provide numbers to back up that claim. “The proof is in the results, and we don’t know whether the results are there or not,” he said. “This is the U.S. reputation on the line, and we expect you to know if you report something. If you can’t report it, fine. But don’t make statements that you can’t back up.”
  • the Saudi-led coalition has carried out 16,847 air raids, or an average of 15 airstrikes a day
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  • Saudi-led airstrikes were responsible for 61 percent of the civilian death toll
  • Administration officials at the hearing painted the conflict as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its regional archrival, Iran
  • Aid groups that do work in Yemen say more than 8 million people on the brink of famine, more than a million people have contracted cholera, and more than 1,300 cases of diphtheria have been reported.
  • “Absent a compelling articulation of how continued U.S. military support to the coalition is leveraging movement towards a political track to negotiate an end to the war, it is reasonable to expect that the next vote on U.S. military support may have a different outcome,”
Ed Webb

Qatar Crisis: A Cautionary Tale - 0 views

www.fairobserver.com/...nald-trump-news-analysis-00111

GCC US USA KSA Saudi UAE Qatar Iran diplomacy regionalism Trump

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • As ties with the Obama White House deteriorated, ruling circles in Gulf capitals became increasingly muscular in pursuing their own regional interests. This was, in part, a reaction by Saudi and Emirati officials to Qatar’s assertive approach to the uprisings in North Africa and Syria between 2011 and 2013
  • The second phase of the Gulf states’ regional assertiveness (after Qatar’s activist approach in 2011 and 2012) played out in Libya, Yemen, the Gulf and Egypt. Saudi Arabia and the UAE funneled tens of billions of dollars in financial aid and investment in infrastructure designed to kickstart the ailing Egyptian economy. The UAE coordinated closely with Egypt and Russia to triangulate support for the Libyan strongman, Khalifa Haftar, as he battled Islamist militias in eastern Libya, carving out a largely autonomous sphere of influence separate from the internationally backed political process in Tripoli. The Saudis and Emiratis, together with the Bahrainis, withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar in March 2014 and accused Doha of interfering in the domestic affairs of its regional neighbors.
  • On the international stage, King Salman of Saudi Arabia made clear his displeasure with the Obama administration by canceling his planned attendance of the US-GCC summit at Camp David in May 2015. Six weeks earlier, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had launched Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen. The Yemen war was designed to restore the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansur Hadi, ousted in 2014 by the tactical alliance of Iran-allied Houthi rebels and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s armed loyalists. Launched just five days before the initial deadline (later extended to July 2015) in the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1, the decision to take military action to counter and roll back perceived Iranian influence in Yemen represented a Saudi-led rebuke to the Obama administration’s belief that it was possible to separate the nuclear issue from Iran’s meddling in regional affairs.
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  • Another UAE-based visitor during the transition was Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos (President-elect Trump’s nominee as secretary of education). Prince had been hired by Abu Dhabi to develop a private security force after the demise of Blackwater in 2009. He “presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis” and met with a Russian official in a UAE-brokered meeting in the Seychelles shortly before the inauguration, reportedly as part of an effort to establish a backchannel of communication over Syria and Iran.
  • In the early weeks of the administration, Kushner also reached out to Saudi policymakers, including Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud — like Kushner an ambitious millennial who had entered policymaking from a business background. They shared uncannily similar nicknames: “Mr. Everything” (MBS) and the “Secretary of Everything” (Kushner). The two men grew close and reportedly stayed up until nearly 4am “swapping stories and planning strategy” during an unannounced visit Kushner made to Saudi Arabia in October 2017.
  • A president and his senior staff determined to do things their way and bypass the traditional playbook of US foreign policy and international diplomacy offered a potentially rich opening for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as did the political inexperience of many of the new appointees in the White House
  • The expectation in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi that the Trump presidency would adopt hawkish positions on regional issues such as Iran and Islamism that aligned closely with their own was reaffirmed by the appointments of James Mattis as secretary of defense and Mike Pompeo as director of the CIA
  • President Trump discussed Qatar’s “purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment because nobody makes it like the United States. And for us that means jobs, and it also means frankly great security back here, which we want.” The president’s comments made his subsequent swing against Qatar, after the Saudi and Emirati-led diplomatic and economic blockade began on June 5, 2017, even more surprising to observers of the presidency’s transactional approach to diplomacy.
  • the McClatchy news agency reported that SCL Social Limited, a part of the same SCL Group as Cambridge Analytica (the data mining firm where Bannon served as vice president before joining the White House) had disclosed a $330,000 contract with the UAE National Media Council. The contract included “a wide range of services specific to a global media campaign,” including $75,000 for a social media campaign targeting Qatar during the UN General Assembly. McClatchy observed, too, that Bannon had visited Abu Dhabi to meet with MBZ in September 2017, and that Breitbart (the media platform associated with Bannon both before and after his brief White House stint) had published more than 80 mostly negative stories about Qatar since the GCC crisis erupted
  • a striking element about the Saudi-Emirati outreach is the limited success it achieved. Officials may have seized the opportunity to shape the administration’s thinking and succeeded temporarily, in June 2017, in getting the president to support the initial action against Qatar, but that proved a high watermark in cooperation that did not lead to any substantive follow-through
  • The transactional approach to policymaking taken by the Trump presidency is not necessarily underpinned by any deeper or underlying commitment to a relationship of values or even interests. An example of this came in July 2017 when President Trump told Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network that he had made his presence at the Riyadh summit conditional on $110 billion in arms sales and other agreements signed with Saudi Arabia. “I said, you have to do that, otherwise I’m not going,” bragged the president.
  • Although the crisis in the Gulf may have passed its most dangerous moment — when for a few days in June 2017 the possibility of Saudi and Emirati military action against Qatar was deemed so serious by US officials that Secretary of State Tillerson reportedly had to warn MBS and MBZ against any precipitous action — it has had significant negative consequences for both the region and Washington. In the Gulf, four decades of diplomatic and technocratic cooperation among the six GCC states has been put at risk, threatening the survival of one of the hitherto most durable regional organizations in the Arab world.
  • It is hard to see how the GCC can recover after the sub-regional institution has failed to prevent three of its members from turning on a fourth twice in three years, and when it has been absent at every stage of the crisis, from the initial list of grievances to the subsequent attempts at mediation.
  • Washington’s policy approaches toward Qatar appear now to have settled on the view that the standoff is detrimental to American strategic interests both in the Gulf and across the broader Middle East and should be resolved by Kuwaiti-led mediation. However, the confused signals that came out of the Trump administration during its first six months in office do constitute a cautionary tale. They illustrate the vulnerability of a new and inexperienced political class to influence, which came close to jeopardizing a key US partnership in the Middle East. Unlike, say, the US and Iran, there are no clearly defined good and bad sides the US should support or oppose in its dealings with the GCC members, all of whom have been pivotal, in different ways, to the projection of US power and influence in the region.
Ed Webb

What UAE's growing presence in Somaliland means for its Horn of Africa strategy - Al Mo... - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...means-its-horn-africa-strategy

UAE Somalia Yemen Somaliland Eritrea Ethiopia Tigray military trade investment ports infrastructure diplomacy analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • the UAE is locked in a struggle with Turkey and Qatar for geopolitical influence. The expansion of Emirati investments in Berbera strengthens the UAE’s ability to compete with Qatar’s Hobyo seaport project and the Turkish Albayrak Group’s 14-year contract to manage the Port of Mogadishu.
  • A Somali political analyst told Al-Monitor that Qatar would be happy if the federal government “scolds the UAE” and stated that “Turkey won’t lose a lot of sleep on the UAE move, as there is widespread support for Turkey in Somalia.”
  • even if the UAE uses its expanded presence in Somaliland as a launchpad for deeper relations with the Somali opposition, Turkey will be able to maintain positive relations with any authority that takes power in Mogadishu
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  • could reflect a sea change in the UAE’s power projection tactics on the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. On the surface, it appears as if the UAE is retrenching from the region. In October 2019, the UAE officially withdrew its military presence from Aden, and on Feb. 18, the UAE dismantled its base in Assab, Eritrea, which assisted its military intervention in southern Yemen.
  • UAE is reorienting its Red Sea strategy away from direct military intervention and toward a synthesis of economic investment and remote power projection. The UAE’s transition from a security-premised to economy-focused strategy in Somaliland, which was illustrated by Abu Dhabi’s September 2019 conversion of its proposed military base in Berbera into a civilian airport, was a critical dimension of its strategic reorientation. The UAE’s expanded economic footprint in Somaliland, which will result from Naqbi’s appointment, is complemented by its prospective construction of an Ethiopia-Eritrea oil pipeline and provisions over $200 million to Sudan’s agriculture sector.
  • UAE is also quietly consolidating a sphere of influence around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait
  • If the UAE’s closer economic cooperation with Somaliland extends to the security sphere, as Gabobe postulates, Abu Dhabi will be able to expand its maritime security role in this region, even though it is not part of the formal Red Sea coalition established in January 2020.
  • The UAE’s expanded influence in Somaliland will sharpen its rivalries with Turkey and Qatar in the Horn of Africa and complement its residual network of Southern Transitional Council-aligned militias in southern Yemen.
Ed Webb

Is Saudi Arabia finally seeking peace with Houthis? - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...a-talks-houthis-war-peace.html

Yemen KSA Saudi Oman US USA diplomacy war

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Nov 19 - Cached
  • Nearly five years into the fierce war in Yemen, signs of an end to the fighting have emerged.
  • the Houthi movement’s weapons have enabled it to achieve deterrence; the Houthis claimed responsibility for the bombing of Aramco Oil Co. in September in Saudi Arabia and has claimed to have downed drones, including US ones.
  • Riyadh has been unable to achieve any of its stated objectives, such as overthrowing the Houthis and restoring the legitimate government
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  • On Nov. 11, Saudi Vice Minister of Defense Prince Khalid bin Salman visited Oman; this overshadowed ongoing consultations between Washington and Riyadh with the Houthis in Muscat, especially after the vice minister was assigned to manage the Yemeni dossier
  • “The biggest motivation for Riyadh entering in direct dialogue with Ansar Allah [the Houthis] came after the attack on the Aramco facility. It was also due to Riyadh's disappointment with [US President Donald] Trump's apathetic reaction after the attack,”
  • “The war has exhausted Saudi Arabia financially and the worsening military situation in its south is not in its best interest. The fact that Prince Khalid has been assigned the Yemeni dossier is positive because it is a complicated issue and it needs a full-time decision-maker who [Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman trusts.” The two are brothers.
  • “Direct US-Saudi negotiations with the Houthis are very possible, especially in Muscat, since some Houthi leaders are there,”
  • Riyadh fears that the Houthis will expand their influence in Yemen if a peace agreement is signed, especially near Saudi Arabia's southern border, as the Saudis consider the Houthis to be an extension of Iranian influence in the region
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