Yemen: Saudi-led coalition begins battle for vital port

The Saudi-led coalition has launched an all-out assault on the Houthi-controlled Yemen port of Hodeidah in a move that aid agencies warn will cut off vital humanitarian supply lines and directly endanger the lives of up to 200,000 people living in the city.

As much as 80% of the aid, including medicines, fuel and food that reaches the famine-struck country, goes through the port, but the Saudi coalition claims the Iranian-backed Houthis use the port both to smuggle arms and raise taxes, prolonging the conflict.

The Saudi coalition, including the United Arab Emirates, mercenaries, and indigenous Yemeni forces, were mounting an air, naval and land assault designed to dislodge the Houthis.

The government of Yemen, which is still recognised by the UN and is opposed to the Houthi take-over of the country said: “The liberation of Hodeidah port is a turning point in our struggle to recapture Yemen from the militias that hijacked it to serve foreign agendas.

“The liberation of the port is the start of the fall of the Houthi militia and will secure marine shipping in Bab al-Mandab strait and cut off the hands of Iran, which has long drowned Yemen in weapons that shed precious Yemeni blood.”

The UAE foreign minister Anwar Garhgash said the coalition had given the Houthi forces nearly three days to leave the port or face an attack. “The Houthis cannot hold Hodeidah hostage to finance their war and divert the flow of humanitarian aid. Their assault on the Yemeni people has continued for too long. Their folly of trying to take over Yemen through the barrel of a gun is coming to an end”.

United Nations diplomats, backed by the British and the US, have spent days pressing the UAE and Saudi to delay the attack, but were rebuffed by the Gulf states convinced that the assault will not be as bloody, or as prolonged, as the aid agencies predict.

The coalition claims its rapid advance up the coast south of Hodeidah proved that the Houthi forces are not as entrenched as some claim. Capture of the port will shorten the three year civil war by tipping the military balance towards the coalition, forcing the Houthis to negotiate, the coalition argues.

But Martin Griffiths, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen, was due to publish his peace plan later this month, and had warned an attack would set his plans back.

The assault led a barrage of warnings and criticism, including claims that the UK, and US, both closely tied to the Saudis, had effectively given the assault a green light by not intervening more decisively to deter the Saudis.

Sweden is expected to demand an open meeting of the UN Security Council. Efforts by some Security Council members at a closed session on Tuesday to agree a statement explicitly condemning the attack in principle failed partly due to opposition from the US and the UK.

In the UK the former Conservative international development secretary Andrew Mitchell accused his government of being complicit in the attack, and said the UK was using its position on the UN Security Council to protect its ally Saudi Arabia.

Mitchell said: “A decision has been made by Britain in relation to Saudi Arabia that security and commercial grounds trumps everything else. We are getting into a very difficult territory. We are part of a coalition that is besieging this country and creating famine”.

He predicted the Saudi coalition “will attack with aeroplanes and from the ground. What happens when they have taken Hodeidah? There will be one million people that will need to be fed and watered and get medicine. They will not have a prayer of doing that. Britain will be complicit in that”.

“Britain is in a very bad place in terms of international humanitarian law, using its position on the UN security council as a permanent member to advantage the Saudi coalition of which Britain loosely is a part,” he added. “That sort of behaviour may well hasten the necessary reform of the United Nations, as Britain’s international credibility declines”.

In the US a cross-party group of Senators including Bob Corker, the Republican chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing “grave alarm at the attack”. They said the assault “will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis by interrupting delivery of humanitarian aid and damaging critical infrastructure. We are deeply concerned that these operations jeapordise prospects for a near term political resolution of the conflict.”

The attack is led on the ground by forces loyal to Yemen’s ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was assassinated by his former Houthi allies in December. The force is commanded by Tarek Saleh, nephew of the former president.

The Houthis captured Hodeidah in October 2015, three weeks after they captured the capital Saana. The International Crisis Group said a Hodeidah battle would be “bloody, prolonged and leave millions of Yemenis without food, fuel and other vital supplies.”

The organisation urged the US not to approve an attack on the port city and called on Washington to “press the UAE to halt the movement of men under its control” and instead press on with UN negotiations.

UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta H. Fore said “UNICEF estimates that at least 300,000 children currently live in and around Hodeidah city – boys and girls who have been suffering for so long already”.