Yemen update 11/23\2015.. Yemen Stands Alone

At least 15 killed in fresh Saudi attacks on Yemen

Saudi fighter jets have carried out a new round of attacks on residential areas in four provinces in northern Yemen, killing more than a dozen people.

Yemen’s al-Masirah TV said on Monday that Saudi fighter jets launched attacks on various districts in two provinces of Jawf and Sa’ada, killing 15 people.

The report said 10 of the victims were members of a family in Jawf. Five others were killed in attacks which targeted a marketplace in the city of Haydan in Sa’ada, a major stronghold of the Ansarullah movement and a repeated target of Saudi strikes over the past months.

Attacks were also reported in northern province of Sana’a, where several people were injured after Saudi warplanes bombarded houses and shops in Bani Zabyan. Bombs were also dropped in Hamdan city in the same province, with no immediate details available on the potential casualties.

Further to the northwest in Hajjah Province, Saudis attacked at least three cities, namely Mustaba, Hayran and Harad, with reports saying most of the attacks targeted trucks carrying food and agricultural products in the area.

Yemeni forces continue retaliatory attacks

The attacks came as fighters of the Ansarullah, backed by forces of the Yemeni army, continued to launch retaliatory raids on positions of the Saudi forces south of the kingdom, with a report saying that the allied forces managed to destroy an Abrams tank in al-Shurfah region in Jizan Province. The Ansarullah said on its Twitter page that attacks were also launched on al-Faridhah military camp, in south of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Americans crimes in Yemen (Sana’a)

Yemen Stands Alone – attacked by Saudi Arabia since March – Fort Russ

By: Marwa Osman – Khumaer

Yemen has been under relentless airstrike attacks by Saudi Arabia since March 26. Over 7,000 people having been killed in Yemen since the start of the vicious war on the poorest Arab country. The military aggression is supposedly meant to undermine the Ansarullah movement and bring fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, back to power.

To add to the toll on the Yemenis, Al-Qaeda terrorists have also stepped up their acts of violence in Yemen amid Saudi Arabia’s military campaign.

Despite the devastating number of civilian deaths and casualties, Yemen has never been a staple of the western media. It did pop up on the news back in the early days of the so-called Arab Spring when Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in February 2012 as president after thirty-three years as head of state.

In January this year Yemen came back to world news when the Houthis, a Yemeni Zaidi group, seized control of the government. In response to what Saudi Arabia took as a direct threat for no apparent reason, a Saudi-led, US-backed coalition started bombing the country in March to allegedly neutralize the rise of Ansarullah.

According to the Yemeni Civil Coalition, which monitors the crimes committed during the Saudi aggression against Yemen, nearly 7,500 people have lost their lives and over 16,000 others wounded in the Saudi raids since late March. The UN has, however, put the death toll at 5,700, including 830 women and children. The Saudi strikes have also destroyed the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure and most of its historical sites.

Amidst the confusion and missing institutions, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State (IS) affiliate in the region took advantage and strengthened their foothold in this corner of the Middle East.

At the humanitarian level, an all-out catastrophe has plunged on the people of Yemen wherever they reside in the war torn country. While control and checking of ships trying to bring basic supplies of food, medicines and fuel continue, ships landing are far fewer than needed, and are queuing in the Red Sea or waiting in Djibouti.

Aden port, the main one in the country, is only partially accessible due to ongoing fighting preventing its use, while Hodeida could only function at a fraction of its capacity due to shortages of fuel and electricity as well as insecurity which prevented staff from going to work and meant that all unloading had to be done manually. Sanaa and Saada for that matter are in utter destruction and deprivation.

Both cities including the province of Taaz, suffer from insecurity, occasional attacks on trucks as well as shortages of fuel.

Given the critical lack of journalists and diplomats, the hundreds of aid workers active in the country are a crucial source of updates from the field. UN agencies and charities like the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) maintain a significant presence.

It is tragic that, even before the current crisis began, 61% of Yemenis needed humanitarian aid according to UN reports. That went on for around a decade with hardly any coverage in the media, so no wonder now when the situation is in dire need of facts reporting and live and up-to-date journalism, one hears nothing about it on the western mainstream media.

With the Yemeni conflict concealed by the constant ISIS propaganda, it is still surprising that the nature of the Arab intervention in the country has failed to raise enough eyebrows even within the Arab communities. The very fact that the double standard Saudi monarchy is pushing tyrannical regimes like that of Egypt and Sudan into the gruesome attack of one of world’s worst-off countries should surely have grabbed the full attention of western media to pay a much closer look to Yemen, but it didn’t.

Or rather they just choose to look the other way. They choose to explode the internet and the media with full-coverage of the Paris attacks for example while turning a blind eye to the malicious Saudi attack inflicted upon the people of Yemen for almost ten months now.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has recently approved the sale of bombs worth nearly USD 1.3bn to Saudi Arabia amid the Riyadh regime’s intensive air strikes in Yemen. The sale includes about 22,000 smart and general purpose bombs, which will definitely not be seen falling on the heads of ISIS terrorists in the region, but rather sadly will take more lives of innocent Yemeni children.

Syria and the Middle East SITREP November 23rd, 2015 by Rambo

• Qatar suffers its first causality in the Yemen conflict. I am truly astonished how easily GCC countries will help each other kill Arabs but not once in recent history will they send soldiers to assist Palestine or Syria or…. [Source]

• The UAE and Bahrain have already suffered a slew of causalities [Source]

• Saudi Arabia continues to unsuccessfully fight the Houthi Yemenis who are surprisingly achieving tactical victories across the board. Firing SCUD missiles into Saudi Arabia, capturing a Saudi town, capturing Saudi soldiers and even sinking a Saudi naval vessel (with some claims saying it was two). [Source][Source]

• The Saudis have traded economic favors for foreign soldiers to fight against the Houthis (from Sudan, Senegal, and Mauritania). Al-Qaeda is also fighting the Houthis for the KSA and Qatar [Source] [Source] [Source]

• Saudi Arabia’s military may consist of high-end weaponry purchased from the West but like all GCC militaries what they truly lack is competent and trained manpower to man these advanced systems.

• This has been a serious issue in Arab militaries, especially those modelled after Western-style doctrines. For example when the US wrote an Arabic manual for the M1 Abrams tank to hand out to Egyptian tank men, Egyptian officers went around and collected them. After all the officers were the only ones who had specialized information about the tanks functions, which gave them a level of prestige over their lower-ranked members. Losing this monopoly of information would directly correlate to losing prestige [Source]

• Soviet-style militaries (such as Syria and Saddam’s Iraq) were completely different however. Their only shortcomings were the export versions that were handed down to them by the Soviet Union (which continuously gave Israel and the US, the two main actors in the region, a technological edge; longer-range weaponry, more accurate fire-control, etc.). The Syrian and Iraq (Saddam) militaries were disciplined, experienced and had a high level of technical training (as seen by the competence of the core of Islamic State fighters and its ability to man weapon systems across the board; including Western weapon systems captured in Mosul thanks to the US training provided for the restructured Iraqi military).

• The UAE solution was to hire outsiders (mercenaries, private military contractors) to man weapon systems of which few domestic specialists are trained to handle.

• As a side trivia: The UAE also created a non-Muslim private-military force (Western veterans) separate from the national army in the event the military attempts to overthrow the government (or step aside like they did in Egypt). It was a subtle sign to reassure investors during the turbulent days of the Arab Spring that the UAE will not succumb to regime change. [Source]

• The Saudis seem to have expended the majority of their munitions and are ordering thousands of bombs from the United States. War is good business. [Source]

Yemeni Missiles Destroy 4 US-Made Abrams Tanks of Saudi Arabia

The Yemeni army and popular forces fired several missiles at armored units of the Saudi army in the province of Asir and destroyed 4 Abrams tanks and damaged another armored vehicle.

The Yemeni missiles hit the Saudi army’s military positions in the city of al-Rabou’a in Asir province on Sunday evening and destroyed four Abrams tanks and an armored vehicle, the Arabic-language al-Ahd news website reported on Sunday.

Meantime, the Yemeni army’s artillery unit destroyed two military vehicles of the Saudi army in an attack on Alib military base in Najran province, the Arabic-language Yemen al-Youm reported.

Also, the Yemeni forces took full control of al-Shabaka military base in Zale province after heavy clashes with Saudi Arabia’s Sudanese mercenaries and the militias loyal to the former fugitive President Mansour Hadi.

Destruction of the US-made Abrams tanks by the Yemeni army’s 40-year-old Konkurs missiles these days proves what Washington has sold to the Persian Gulf Arab countries at a high price is no more than a piece of clunker.

Recent footage released on the web shows the Yemeni army and popular forces attack an Abrams tank with Konkurs missile which fully destroyed it instantly, of course to much surprise.

Although one of the tank’s crew manages to flee the scene, the footages show the tank is set ablaze and destroyed completely.

23 Heritage Sites Ruined in Saudi Airstrikes on Yemen

The Saudi-led aggression has destroyed nearly two dozens archeological landmarks in Yemen since the beginning of Riyadh government’s airstrikes on the Arab country, the General Organization of Antiquities and Museums announced on Saturday.

The demolished archeological sites are stretched from capital Sana’a to Ma’rib, Aden, Dhale, Sa’ada, Ta’iz, Hodayda, Shabwa and Hajjah, the organization said.

A sum of six ancient cities, six castles, three museums, two mosques, four palaces and several other archeological sites have been destroyed in Yemen.

Less reported in the Saudi-led bombardments is the damage inflicted on cultural heritage sites in Yemen that have made extraordinary contributions to world civilization.

Director of Yemen’s General Organization of Antiquities and Museums Mohannad al-Sayani said that 23 sites and monuments have been severely damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the conflict.

Sixty thousand years ago, early man walked through Yemen along the Bab al-Mandab, one of the major out-of-Africa routes that Homo sapiens took to colonize Eurasia. Archaeologists have found the remnants of prehistoric cultures that navigated the Red and Arabian Seas 8,000 years ago; these early travelers and traders left behind impressive megaliths.

Then there are the prehistoric walled hilltop towns and massive cities that were ruled by the South Arabia’s kingdoms of the first millennium B.C. Yemen also boasts a rich Islamic heritage that includes some of the oldest, most elaborately decorated mosques in the world.

On June 12, the historic city of Sana’a, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was bombarded by the Saudis. This city, continuously inhabited for over 2,500 years, contains some of the most beautiful traditional architecture in the world. The deliberate targeting of a civilian district of the old city was inexcusable and raises serious questions about Saudi Arabia’s intentions in this conflict.

Ten other sites in Yemen are on the tentative UNESCO World Heritage List. One of these, the old city of Sa’ada, has also suffered extensive damage from air attack.