Fierce Battle in Yemen, Drone Attacks in Saudi Arabia // FAI ONLINE

A Yemeni boy poses with a Kalashnikov rifle during a gathering of newly-recruited Houthi fighters in the capital Sanaa July 2017 AFP

At least 90 Houthi rebel fighters are dead in just 24 hours of fighting after the latest push by the Iranian-armed movement to take the Yemeni city of Marib from Saudi-backed government forces. Houthi officials claimed to control two-thirds of the oil-rich provincial capital, making it the last major population center in northern Yemen to come under rebel control. Yemeni national forces began an intense counterattack over the weekend, killing dozens of rebels on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Houthi forces launched another series of explosive drones into Saudi Arabia on Sunday, several of which were intercepted by surface-to-air batteries. After relative calm along the Saudi-Yemen frontier for months, the Houthis began launching drones and ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia last week, targeting airports, military bases, and an Aramco production facility near the Red Sea city of Jeddah. The Saudi Royal Air Force responded hours later with retaliatory airstrikes against Houthi positions in the capital of Sana’a, calling the targeting of civilian positions in the Kingdom a “red line.” The Houthis responded again late Sunday with over 20 drone and missile strikes on the Aramco petroleum facility near Dhahran, as well as the Saudi Abdul-Aziz air force base, in what is becoming a tit-for-tat exchange between the Kingdom and Iranian by proxy. A Saudi government spokesman claimed to intercept all of the incoming craft and projectiles which posed any threat to the Aramco complex, although amateur video posted on social media showed smoke rising from an alleged impact site in a residential area of the city.

US President Joe Biden removed the Houthi movement from the State Department’s designated terrorist list in January, after former president Donald Trump had added the Iranian-aligned group to the list shortly before leaving office. The new administration justified the about face as an act in good faith before beginning negotiations with the Houthis in February, although the Saudi government and many Western analysts believe that the move only legitimized the Houthi movement and emboldened their Iranian patrons. Quiet negotiations between the US State Department and Houthi representatives in neighboring Oman have failed to produce a ceasefire thus far.

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The Houthi militia, officially known as Ansar Allah (The Partisans of Allah), is a movement which originated in Northern Yemen in the 1990’s. Drawing mostly from the Zadi Shiite sect, the Houthis claim to oppose Yemeni government corruption and the Saudi patronage which enables it. After Yemen’s president resigned during the first wave of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Houthi movement began gathering momentum. With the support of Shi’a sponsors such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hezbollah, the rebels began a multipronged military offensive in late 2014 which took the capital of San’a and plunged Yemen into civil war. Since then, the nation has fractured, with separatist Sunni tribes in the south breaking from the government, and jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) finding safe haven in the nation’s rugged desert. Already the poorest Arab nation in the Middle East, six years of war have brought Yemen to the brink of a national famine, requiring the mobilization of global humanitarian agencies in 2018-2019 to address the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world at the time. The Coronavirus pandemic has compounded the nation’s troubles even further, as the distrustful Houthi militia have often blocked international aid organizations from entering their territory to provide basic medical care.

The Yemeni Civil War has also been citied by watchdog agencies as the conflict with the highest rate of child soldiers globally, accounting for more than 80% of the world’s children employed in conflict. As many as 50,000 young boys and girls as young as 10-years-old are responsible for manning checkpoints, providing logistical support, and even fighting on the front lines, mostly on the Houthi side, as years of civil war, disease and starvation have made the recruitment of military-aged males increasingly difficult.

We would ask the Maranatha global family to join us in intercession for the people of Yemen. Harassed and helpless, we pray for servants of the Good Shepherd to gain access to the lost sheep of Yemen on both sides of the conflict, equipped with the skills and resources to provide food and medical care. We pray for Western and Arab leaders to be granted wisdom and restraint regarding their intervention into the conflict, and we pray that the strategy of the Iranian regime to stoke sectarianism and war would be thwarted and fail.

Maranatha