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Yemen Crisis/Conflict & the "Decisive Storm" Coalition
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Jura The idiot
General
Al Jazeera headlineBBC Radio 4 news says that Saleh has been killed.
Yemen: Ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh killed
29 minutes ago
"Cassad" has pictures of the corpse and of the car after the ambush, inside (if you sure want to see this)
I found this NY Times item from two days ago:
It is too long to reproduce here but it suggests that the Houthies fired a missile believed to be a Burqan-2 over 1000 km to the airport of Riyadh the warhead of which dropped about a kilometre from the airport and exploded. The Saudi army launched five Patriot missiles none of which connected either with the warhead or with the rocket that fell several km away.
It is too long to reproduce here but it suggests that the Houthies fired a missile believed to be a Burqan-2 over 1000 km to the airport of Riyadh the warhead of which dropped about a kilometre from the airport and exploded. The Saudi army launched five Patriot missiles none of which connected either with the warhead or with the rocket that fell several km away.
Jura The idiot
General
saw it inI found this NY Times item from two days ago:
It is too long to reproduce here but it suggests that the Houthies fired a missile believed to be a Burqan-2 over 1000 km to the airport of Riyadh the warhead of which dropped about a kilometre from the airport and exploded. The Saudi army launched five Patriot missiles none of which connected either with the warhead or with the rocket that fell several km away.
US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
#8749 Equation, Monday at 8:23 PM
Jura The idiot
General
Jura The idiot
General
Feb 4, 2017
and now CIA says it won't confirm it has documents about Yemen raidthe Pentagon made it worse by presenting “big treasure trove of intel” from the post right above yours (https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/ye...ive-storm-coalition.t7260/page-44#post-437126), while perhaps trying to make people "think the mission was successful"
A U.S. government lawyer argued on Tuesday that even just confirming or denying that the CIA has records about a January raid in Yemen would reveal intelligence secrets.
The raid resulted in the death of a U.S. Navy sailor and Yemeni civilians. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in May seeking documents about the operation from the CIA and the departments of Defense, Justice and State.
Every agency except the CIA agreed to search for records, but the CIA has refused to confirm or deny that it has such records. The ACLU filed a motion in October asking a federal judge to order the CIA to produce documents related to the raid.
Lawyers for the ACLU say the CIA’s involvement in the raid is no secret, since then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at a Feb. 2 news conference that CIA Director Mike Pompeo was at the dinner at which the operation was approved.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Tinio suggested on Tuesday that Pompeo’s presence at the dinner doesn’t mean the CIA was involved in the raid.
“He has different hats and different roles,” she said.
Judge Paul Engelmayer asked Tinio, “So what else was he doing at the meeting?”
Tinio responded, “He could have been there to discuss other agenda items.”
The judge said he would rule later on whether the CIA will be compelled to search for documents.
Chief Special Warfare Operator William “Ryan” Owens died of wounds sustained during the Jan. 28 raid. The Navy SEAL, who was 36 years old and was from Peoria, Illinois, was the first known U.S. military combat casualty since President Donald Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20. Several other U.S. service members were injured in the mission.
The ACLU is seeking more information because of conflicting accounts that emerged after the raid. It said the military has claimed between four and 12 civilians were killed, while others, including a human rights organization and independent journalists, say as many as 25 died. The raid also resulted in the deaths of more than a half-dozen militant suspects.
Jura The idiot
General
according to Reuters Yemen's Houthis and Saudi Arabia in secret talks to end war: sources
Updated 2 hours ago
Updated 2 hours ago
Saudi Arabia and its adversaries in Yemen’s armed Houthi movement are holding secret talks to try to end a three-year-old war that has unleashed the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, diplomats and Yemeni political sources said.
A Saudi-led coalition is fighting to counter the influence of Riyadh’s arch-foe Iran, an ally of the Houthis, who deny any help from Tehran and say they are fighting a revolution against corrupt politicians and Gulf powers in thrall to the West.
Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, two diplomats and two Yemeni officials said the Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam had been in direct communication with Saudi officials in Oman on a comprehensive solution to the conflict.
“There are consultations between the Houthis and the Saudis, without a representative of the internationally recognised government, and it is clear that there is a desire of the Houthis and the coalition to go toward a comprehensive agreement,” one diplomat told Reuters.
A coalition official denied that Saudi Arabia had any negotiations with the Houthis, and reaffirmed support, in a statement to Reuters, for U.N. peace efforts aimed at reaching a political solution. Houthi officials did not provide an official comment.
Hailing from Yemen’s Zaydi Shi’ite sect, the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and drove the internationally recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into Saudi exile.
Fearing the advance was part of a regional power grab by Tehran, Riyadh and other mostly Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states armed and supported by the United States and Britain intervened to restore his rule.
The hoped-for accord would begin with a truce to pause fighting on nationwide battlefronts and culminate in the signing of a peace deal addressing the political interests of the warring parties, the sources added.
Thousands of Saudi-led air strikes have killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians, while Houthi-led cross-border rocket attacks on Saudi Arabia have led to hundreds of casualties. Coalition forces have made modest territorial gains but appear far from seizing back the capital from seasoned Houthi fighters.
With no victory in sight, and as the war pushes the country towards famine, Saudi officials including the powerful crown prince and Defence Minister Mohammed bin Salman have expressed a desire to wrap up the conflict.
NEW ENVOY
Diplomats said the Saudi-Houthi dialogue had been going on for about two months and appeared aimed at providing a framework for a resolution to coincide with the arrival of a new U.N. envoy to Yemen, former British diplomat Martin Griffiths, who began his term on Sunday.
But it was not immediately clear how much progress had been achieved. U.N.-backed peace talks between the Houthis and the Yemeni government were last held in Kuwait in August 2016.
That round of dialogue and two previous ones in Switzerland, where there was no Saudi presence, ended without success.
The current talks appear to have bypassed Yemen’s Riyadh-based government, whose restoration was the justification for the Saudi-led intervention, underlining a series of deepening Yemeni squabbles which have hobbled the coalition war effort.
Two Hadi government officials contacted by Reuters were unaware of the dialogue, and their criticism of the coalition has mounted in recent days, accusing them of barring Hadi and other Riyadh-based officials from returning to the country.
Hadi has mostly resided in Riyadh, while government-held areas in Yemen experienced a series of deadly attacks by Islamic State militants. He last visited in February 2017.
Jura The idiot
General
here's BreakingDefense story
The Saudi intervention in Yemen is a strategic catastrophe that has added to regional chaos and fostered the most acute humanitarian crisis on the globe. President Trump must stop making the Saudi intervention in Yemen possible.
The Saudi intervention in Yemen is a strategic catastrophe that has added to regional chaos and fostered the most acute humanitarian crisis on the globe. President Trump must stop making the Saudi intervention in Yemen possible.
source:The Saudi intervention is a strategic catastrophe that has added to regional chaos and fostered the humanitarian crisis on the globe.
During‘s visit to Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May was to “raise concerns” about the humanitarian situation in Yemen. “She will acknowledge the steps taken recently by Saudi Arabia to address the crisis,” May’s office , “but stress the importance of full and unfettered humanitarian and commercial access, including through the ports.”
This may be better than nothing but May and President Trump, now that bin Salman is in America for his two-week long visit, must do more than “raise concerns.” They must stop making the Saudi intervention possible. The U.S. gains nothing from taking sides in a Mideast civil war.
It is no exaggeration to say the coalition campaign would not happen—at least, not anywhere near its present scale—without Western backing. As Sen. Rand Paul explained at on the subject last year, the United States is “supplying the Saudis with bombs, refueling the planes, picking the targets.” In addition to the weapons sales, refueling, and intelligence support Paul listed, Washington further enables Riyadh’s war by to enforce the Saudi blockade which is quite literally starving the Yemeni populace.
The reasons for severing American and British support for the Saudi-led coalition are many. From a strategic standpoint, involvement here drags the United States deeper into the regional Sunni-Shiite power struggle, a theo-political battle Washington cannot (and shouldn’t attempt to) solve with U.S. military might. Furthermore, while it might be in Saudi Arabia’s interests to contain the violence of civil war in a neighboring country—though, to be clear, the coalition’s actions have not contributed to Yemeni stability—the United States has no comparable interests at stake, let alone of a vital nature. Washington’s role cannot be labeled defense.
The wisdom of subsidizing the Saudis becomes even more dubious when we consider the intervention’s side effects for terrorism.
While the coalition fights the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who seek to overthrow Yemen’s internationally recognized government, the local branch of al Qaeda . Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is considered the organization’s , and it has made ample use of the chaos and anger the Saudi coalition’s airstrikes and blockade have engendered.
“As the coalition campaign began, its numbers and war chest by staging a massive jailbreak, seizing military hardware and robbing the central bank,” Elisabeth Kendall, a senior research fellow in Arabic at Oxford’s Pembroke College, notes in a commentary for The Washington Post. Taking what Kendall described as a “gradualist approach to governance,” AQAP has increased its influence by working with tribal leaders in Yemen, ingratiating itself with the population by focusing on basics like utilities over extremism. The ? “As coalition bombs rained down in Yemen’s west, crippled by the Saudi naval blockade, AQAP’s territory looked like a haven of stability.”
AQAP has grown wealthy because of the blockade, too, because it is willing to coordinate imports legitimate businesses cannot. And it has grown popular because of the U.S.-Saudi airstrikes, which serve as a constant source of anti-American messaging. “You think that Yemenis don’t know where the bombs are coming from?” Paul asked incredulously at the hearing last year. They do know, because AQAP tells them, feeding off the U.S.-facilitated Saudi war to fill its coffers, spread its false narrative, and expand its power. That growth means supporting Riyadh not only fails to defend the United States but actually makes us less secure, for while the chaos of the Yemeni civil war is far from U.S. shores, AQAP’s is to perpetrate terrorist attacks on American soil.
Then there’s the humanitarian toll. Yemenis mass displacement, and the Saudi blockade has created a man-made famine. Yemeni children under the are severely . Though the blockade’s sole purpose is keeping Iranian weapons out of Houthi hands, in practice, it means the medicine and food imports on which Yemen relies are increasingly impossible to obtain. Clean water is scarce, so a cholera epidemic is sweeping the country. More than cholera cases have been diagnosed already, a staggering number in a country of 27 million. The desperation of Yemeni civilians’ condition is difficult to overstate, and Saudi Arabia’s slight relaxation of the blockade was a half measure at best.
While the House of Representatives U.S. intervention in Yemen unauthorized by Congress (as the ), the resolution was nonbinding and has had no apparent effect on U.S. policy. Potentially more potent is a joint effort from Sens. Mike Lee (a Republican), Chris Murphy (a Democrat), and Bernie Sanders (the independent from Vermont) to demand a binding vote. “We believe that since Congress has not authorized military force for this conflict, the United States should play no role in it beyond providing desperately needed humanitarian aid,” they wrote in a . “That is why we are introducing a joint resolution that would force Congress to vote on the U.S. war in Yemen. If Congress does not authorize the war, our resolution would require U.S. involvement in Yemen to end.”
The senators are right in their elucidation of Congress’ constitutional war powers. Washington must recognize its support for the Saudi coalition is a counterproductive “government failure,” as the senators wrote, and it would be wise to change course. While May is busy raising concerns, Congress may finally act.
Jura The idiot
General
now Senators want to know if US military advisers in Yemen are helping or hurting the conflict
In a hearing this week, grilled a Defense Department official about what effect U.S. advisers are having on the conflict if Saudi Arabian allies keep killing civilians with their airstrikes.
“We see the Saudis acting in an indiscriminate manner and our strategy is to give them more bombs, not less,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “I think from a common-sense point of view I think a lot of people would ask, ’why we’re giving them more weapons than less.’”
The current civil war has been raging since 2014. The -backed Houthi rebel group, predominately from the northwest region of the country and followers of a Shia Islam offshoot, have fought with their predominately Sunni Islam countrymen.
In 2015, the Saudi-led military coalition entered the fight and has received several types of aid from the U.S. government.
Experts have called the ongoing war the world’s “largest humanitarian crisis” with millions facing starvation, lack of access to clean water and a cholera outbreak that likely involves more than 1 million people. In March, the Senate voted down a bipartisan resolution to remove U.S. forces from the conflict.
Defense Secretary James Mattis has said he would like to see a United Nations-brokered peace settlement between the factions involved but said that pulling military support would endanger our allies and likely result in more civilian casualties, not less.
Robert Karem, assistant secretary of international security affairs for the Defense Department, explained there are about 50 U.S. military personnel assisting the Saudi military with pilot advising, refueling and intelligence.
He did not disclose the number of personnel participating in a different mission – counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic State in Yemen.
Chief Petty Officer Ryan Owens, a Navy SEAL, died from wounds sustained in a raid in Yemen against al-Qaida targets on Jan. 29, 2017. Army Staff Sgt. Emil Rivera-Lopez died in an Aug. 25, 2017, helicopter crash off the coast of Yemen.
In a previous interview with Military Times, Air Force Capt. AnnMarie Annicelli, spokeswoman for Air Forces Central Command, said personnel share “best practices” with the Saudi pilots on how to mitigate civilian casualties.
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., raised a more frustrating point, echoed by other senators during the Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on Tuesday.
“How do you determine that we are effectively reducing the noncombatant casualties if we don’t in fact track the results of the kingdom’s military actions?” Cardin asked.
Karem said the small number of U.S. military personnel assisting the Saudis did not track all the Saudi aircraft missions over Yemen but relied on ground reporting and other intelligence to analyze the effect of bombing missions.
“Saudi and Emirati targeting efforts have improved,” Karem said. “We do not have a perfect understanding but we do get reporting on the ground of what is taking place inside Yemen.”
The larger question loomed as to how effective U.S.-involvement has been in deterring Iranian influence in Yemen as they have backed the Houthi rebels at least since the civil war erupted in 2014.
Karem said that Yemen has become a “test bed” for Iranian military activities.
“Are we less effective than we were six months ago?” Cardin asked. “Are we better today than we were a year ago?”
Paul was not satisfied with Karem’s answers nor the lack of clear strategy to end the conflict.
“I think what we’re doing hasn’t worked and we are partly responsible for the humanitarian crisis,” Paul said.
Karem didn’t answer direct questions on improvements with data but said work to reduce civilian casualties by Saudi pilots is “increasingly effective.”
“I think the Iranians are under more pressure today but their ability to operate remains a significant point of concern for the United States,” Karem said.
Jura The idiot
General
thank you Eq... for looking here; it's Forgotten War excuse meI ...
"Decisive Storm"
not just no posts here, nobody even visits this thread