Yemen PM: ‘Houthi Behavior Strips All Understanding’
Despite intensive efforts by the international community to extend the UN-sponsored truce, which ended in October without renewal, the Houthi group is still intransigent and rejects peace efforts. Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed stressed on Friday that the behavior of Houthi militias, Iran’s arm in Yemen, has destroyed all understandings and torpedoed the principle of goodwill.
“The Houthis have disavowed the opening of Taiz’s roads, and their approach is based on obstruction,” he said. “The Houthi rebels have responded to the settlement process with terrorist attacks,” he said, adding that “the militias are booby-trapping Yemen and spreading sectarian ideas.
The Yemeni Prime Minister also said that the Yemeni government continues to communicate with abroad to classify the Houthis as a terrorist group.
The Houthis, who took advantage of the truce to resume aggression against ports in Sharieh, have stepped up attacks on oil ports in Shabwa and Hadramawt provinces in southern Yemen with three strikes by drones, in order to pressure the legitimacy of new concessions.
The Houthis believe that exporting oil is the pillaging of the Yemeni people’s wealth by an illegitimate government, a conviction reinforced by the decline in legitimacy, both on the ground and in political negotiation, after abandoning in practice the legal principles of defining the crisis, which are represented in the Gulf initiative, its executive mechanism, the outputs of the national dialog, the Riyadh Declaration and Security Council resolutions, especially resolution 2216.
Since the deal was struck under UN supervision in late 2018, Houthi militias have attempted to carry out terrorist operations in the Red Sea, as well as use the territory of Hodeida to launch drones into Saudi territory, and persistent breaches of the ceasefire contained in the agreement.
Since the end of the latest ceasefire on October 2, 2022, Yemen has returned to square one; due to Houthi intransigence and attempts to impose conditions, which blocked UN efforts to extend the ceasefire for a third time.
The United Nations announced on August 2 that the Yemeni parties agreed to extend the truce for two more months, under the same conditions, from August 2 to October 2, 2022.
The Houthis have not complied with previous truces’ terms of reopening roads in Taiz city along with the southern provinces, despite UN and regional efforts to break the siege of the city, which is suffering from a major humanitarian crisis.
The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is the worst in the world, with the city and the countryside of Taiz, the worst affected area in Yemen, at its heart, trapped by the Huthi militia’s failure to control the city and its countryside since 2015.
According to the Taiz Human Rights Center; 3,590 civilians were killed, including 761 children, 347 women and 289 elderly people, and 13,736 were injured; “3,155 children, 1,180 women, and 764 elderly people from 2015 to 2020, due to Houthi-led bombardments and sniper attacks on the city.”
