Yearbook 2009
Yemen. During the year, the government became increasingly crowded on several fronts and assessors questioned whether it actually had control of the country. In the province of Sada in the north, government troops launched an air and armor offensive against Shiite al-Huthirebeller in August. Victim information was uncertain but at least 80 refugees, many of them women, children and the elderly, were killed on September 16 when government flights attacked what was said to be a refugee camp near the border with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia also deployed combat forces during the fall against the rebels. A total of 175,000 civilians were fleeing the area, according to the UN. The UN appealed for $ 24 million in emergency aid, but the world’s response was scant. The rebels, who were part of the al-Za’idai branch of Shia Islam, demanded increased Shiite rule in the northern part of the country. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for abbreviation YE which stands for the nation of Yemen.
According to countryaah, nine foreigners – seven Germans, one British and one South Korean – were kidnapped in June in Sada. Three of them, all women, were murdered immediately. The fate of the other six was unclear, as was the identity of the perpetrators. The government also chased people suspected of belonging to jihadist al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a merger of al-Qaeda’s organizations in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. A number of suspects were arrested, accused of planning attacks against, among others, the oil industry and tourists, but many of them were released. In March, al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the murders of four South Korean tourists and one Yemenite in the city of Shibam in Hadramawt province in the south. About 30 al-Qaeda activists were killed by government flights and ground troops in December and a large number were also arrested. The US pumped money into the Yemeni defense to strengthen it in the so-called war on terror. Yemen’s key role became even clearer at the end of December when it was discovered that the Nigerian man who was trying to blast a US passenger plane into the air of all judges had planned the Yemen campaign.
At least twelve people were killed in July and another five in November in clashes in the south between government troops and armed protesters demanding independence for the country’s south. In December, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch criticized the government for violating human rights in the south. About 65 refugees, en route by boat from Somalia to Yemen, were feared to have been killed in three different incidents in September. Three of them were killed by refugee smugglers, the UNHCR reported.
A Yemeni passenger plane of the Airbus 310 type crashed near the Comoros on June 30. All of the 153 on board were killed except one 12-year-old girl who miraculously survived.
New Civil War
In the fall of 2014, the Huhira rebels entered the capital Sana. The Huthis demanded that the government resign and that the subsidized fuel subsidies be reinstated. Despite attempts to meet the rebels, among other things by dissolving the government and appointing a new cabinet of technocrats, the Huthire rebels continued a violent offensive both in Sana and the south of the country. In January 2015, the rebels managed to occupy the presidential palace and two days later President al-Hadi chose to step down and dissolve the new government. He fled to Aden where he withdrew his resignation application and re-entered the role of president, which was recognized by Saudi Arabia and some other states as well as by sections of the Yemeni military and population.
The Huthi rebels’ offensive and the collapse of the regime further intensified the conflict between Shia and Sunni in the region, which had implications for security policy. Al-Hadi joined an international coalition of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Morocco and backed by the United States and Britain in 2015 to attack the Huthirbells, which in turn were supported by Iran. At the same time, the Islamic State carried out its first major attacks in Yemen targeting Shiite mosques in Sana.
With the help of Saudi support, al-Hadi regained control of Aden, after which mediation attempts between al-Hadi’s government and the Huthirbels and their allies, the former President Saleh, were carried out without success. The destructive development continued in 2017. Later that year, Saleh was assassinated by the huthirebels, who saw him as a traitor after he initiated peace talks with Saudi Arabia.