Rouillé et plein de pétrole, le FSO Safer, qui flotte encore au large des côtes yéménites, a tout d’une bombe à retardement pour l’environnement. Cela fait des années qu’en dépit des avertissements répétés d’experts, ce gigantesque pétrolier totalement décrépi agonise au large du port de Hodeida, principal point d’entrée de l’aide humanitaire et des importations au Yémen, situé sur sa côte est. Avec un chargement de plus d’un million de barils de pétrole brut, les défaillances structurelles et le manque d’entretien du navire font craindre un naufrage, voire une explosion du bâtiment, aux conséquences dévastatrices. Fin janvier, l’organisation Greenpeace a de nouveau tiré la sonnette d’alarme face au danger que représente le bateau-citerne, non seulement pour l’environnement, mais aussi et surtout pour la population et l’économie du pays, avec le risque d’affecter également ses voisins bordant la mer Rouge. « Il y a urgence. Le pétrolier peut exploser à tout moment », insiste Julien Jreissati, directeur des programmes MENA à Greenpeace.Au début du mois, une lueur d’espoir est enfin apparue, lorsque le coordinateur humanitaire de l’ONU pour le Yémen s’est félicité dans un communiqué des progrès réalisés au sujet de sa proposition de transférer vers un autre pétrolier la cargaison du FSO Safer. Un signe positif après des années de négociations et d’espoirs déçus. L’initiative doit en effet être approuvée par les deux principales parties au conflit yéménite, qui avaient pourtant elles-mêmes demandé l’intervention de l’ONU sur ce dossier dès 2019. D’un côté, le gouvernement d’Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, reconnu par la communauté internationale, possède légalement le pétrolier et sa cargaison à travers la compagnie nationale Sepoc ; de l’autre, les rebelles houthis contrôlent la zone où il est amarré. Si le gouvernement d’Aden a confirmé son soutien au plan onusien, les autorités de Sanaa – entendre les groupes houthis – ont quant à elles donné leur accord de principe. L’opération comporte certes des risques, en raison des mines qui se trouveraient dans les eaux entourant le bateau. Mais les Nations unies se tiennent prêtes à mettre en place les premières mesures de contingence, disposant déjà de barrages flottants stockés à Djibouti, qui permettraient d’entourer le navire et de contenir des fuites possibles de pétrole. Dans un second temps, un autre pétrolier devra être trouvé pour jeter l’ancre aux abords du FSO Safer et permettre le transfert de sa cargaison, dont la valeur est estimée à 60 millions de dollars. Aucun détail n’a jusque-là filtré sur le devenir du chargement et sur un partage potentiel entre les deux parties yéménites concernées.
Tag Archives: Yemen
Honey and Hope: A Spark of Optimism in the Yemen Civil War
Hundreds died in the early morning. The sun had hardly risen over the mountains before the bees staggered to the ground, the old man recalls with a bitterness in his voice. Yemen government troops had set up roadblocks following an al-Qaida attack. “We were stuck. But we need to set off at night to get there before dawn so our colonies can fly out at first light! Otherwise, a lot of them will die! The bees can’t tolerate being locked in during the day!”
His comments are met with murmurs of agreement from those surrounding him. In wrap-around skirts, some with the traditional dagger strapped to their bellies, the men are squatting among a number of canisters, bottles and tin cans full of honey. As happens every year in November, the beekeepers come in from the remote valleys of southern Yemen to the small provincial capital of Ataq to sell their valuable annual harvest. The color of the honey ranges from bright yellow to deep brown; some of them are quite mild, while others burn in your throat as if made from chilis. Everywhere, people are tasting and haggling, consistencies and colorings are closely examined. Venders intent on exporting the honey to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Europe pay the equivalent of up to 1,300 euros for a 10-liter canister of the best Sidr honey, made from the tiny flowers of the Christ’s Thorn.
Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) Must Shelve His Vicious War in Yemen
This past weekend, Yemeni Armed Forces spokesman Brigadier Yahya al-Sari clinically described how Ansarallah, also known as the Houthi rebel movement, aided by what Yemenis describe as “popular committees,” captured three Saudi brigades of 2,400 ragged soldiers, plus Yemeni and Sudanese mercenaries as well as several hundred battle vehicles. At least 500 Saudi soldiers were killed, Ansarallah said. (A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition denied the claim.)
This was part of the significantly named Operation Nasrallah in Najran province, Saudi Arabia. The Houthis, who did learn a lot, tactically and strategically, from Hezbollah, duly praised mujahideen and “popular committees” involved in Operation Nasrallah.
Col. Pat Lang, in his blog, offers a particularly useful observation on the captured Saudi vehicles. Some belonged to the Saudi National Guard (SANG):
How drone attacks on Saudi Aramco might blow up US-Iran tensions
Highly disruptive drone attacks on Aramco oil facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia are arguably the most significant military operation yet against the US-allied kingdom’s critical infrastructure.
Saturday’s attacks on petroleum and gas processing plants in Khurais and Abqaiq, which Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for, knocked down approximately 5.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of total Saudi oil output.
The drone attack on the Saudi refinery is no game-changer. But is there a new ‘axis of evil’ in the Middle East?
When, a couple of days ago, Saudi Aramco’s crude-oil processing facilities were attacked with drones – it is thought by the Houthis in Yemen – our media repeatedly characterised this event as a “game-changer”. But was it really this? In some sense yes, since it perturbed the global oil supply and made a large armed conflict in the Middle East much more probable. However, one should be careful not to miss the cruel irony of this claim.
Houthi rebels in Yemen have been in an open war with Saudi Arabia for years, with Saudi armed forces (and the US and the UK supplying arms) practically destroying the entire country, indiscriminately bombing civilian objects. The Saudi intervention has led to one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the century with tens of thousands of children dead. As it was in the cases of Libya and Syria, destroying an entire country is obviously not a game-changer – just part and parcel of a very normal geopolitical game.
The divergent Saudi-UAE strategies in Yemen
A recent surge in fighting in southern Yemen is part of an overarching Saudi-UAE strategy to keep the Arab world’s most impoverished nation in a perpetual weak state in order to serve their own objectives, according to analysts.
The battles this month in the city of Aden between government forces loyal to Saudi Arabia-based President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the United Arab Emirates-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) have added another layer of complexity to Yemen’s already multifaceted war.
In Jemen ontdekte ik de Arabische wereld die ik alleen kende van Europese borreltafels
Zij kan hier niet blijven slapen.’ De beheerder van de kazerne, die ons een paar uur eerder vriendelijk had ontvangen, is onverbiddelijk. We zijn in een kazerne in Mokka, een havenstad aan de Rode Zee in Jemen. Na een dagje aan het front, waarbij we op sleeptouw zijn genomen door qat kauwende strijders, ons konvooi zich schietend een weg naar de oorlog baande en de frontlijn zich onverwacht snel aandiende langs een strand met mijnen links en de vijand in de struiken rechts, is het te laat om nog veilig terug te rijden naar ons hotel. Wij – mijn chauffeur, mijn fixer, een intelligente dertiger die fungeert als mijn gids, vertaler en lokale toeverlaat, en ikzelf – blijven daarom slapen op twee uur rijden van het front, in de kazerne van Mokka.
Ik ben niet dol op overnachtingen in Arabische kazernes. Dat komt omdat ik een vrouw ben. Daar is in mijn beroep niets bijzonders aan. In de conflictjournalistiek zijn de tijden van Martha Gellhorn voorbij. Was een vrouwelijke journalist aan een Arabische frontlijn begin jaren negentig nog reden tot verwondering, tegenwoordig geldt dit als het summum van doorsnee. Meer dan de helft van de Midden-Oosten-correspondenten in mijn standplaats Beiroet, Libanon, is tegenwoordig vrouw, becijferde een Amerikaanse collega vorig jaar. Dat heeft een praktische reden. In Arabische landen, waar het voor een man cultureel vaak ongepast is om lokale vrouwen aan te spreken, is het voor een vrouw gemakkelijker werken. Zij kan in tegenstelling tot een man met iedereen praten. Met een hoofddoek om valt een vrouw ook nog eens minder op, wat in onveilige gebieden een voordeel is.
While the world watches Donald Trump, it’s missing what’s really going on with US foreign policy
Our leaders know how to bang the war drums and, by and large, we go along with them. The US threatens Iran with war – so will Iran close the Strait of Hormuz and attack American warships in the Gulf? Israel strikes Iranian targets in Syria after rockets fall on Golan – so does an Arab-Israeli conflict loom closer than at any time since the 1973 conflict? Jared Kushner plans to reveal Trump’s “deal of the century” for peace in the Middle East – but is it dead in the water?
Meanwhile the real stories get pushed down the page – or “to the back of the book”, as we journalists used to say.
Take Donald Trump’s desire to furnish Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with billions of dollars of extra weapons so that they can increase the ferocity of their war in Yemen against the Houthis – whose support from Iran, such as it is, prompts much of the international abuse against the Islamic Republic. French intelligence officers in Washington have apparently discovered that this is no routine request from Riyadh but a desperate appeal to Washington, because so promiscuous has been the Saudis’ use of US munitions against Houthi rebels (and civilians, hospitals, aid centres, schools and wedding parties) that they are running out of bombs, guided and unguided missiles, drone parts and other “precision” arms to be used on one of the poorest countries in the world.
America’s persecution of Julian Assange has everything to do with Yemen
I was in Kabul a decade ago when WikiLeaks released a massive tranche of US government documents about the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. On the day of the release, I was arranging by phone to meet an American official for an unattributable briefing. I told him in the course of our conversation what I had just learned from the news wires.
He was intensely interested and asked me what was known about the degree of classification of the files. When I told him, he said in a relieved tone: “No real secrets, then.”
When we met later in my hotel I asked him why he was so dismissive of the revelations that were causing such uproar in the world.
Yemen’s woes
The withdrawal of Houthi rebels from three of Yemen’s ports as part of the December 2018 ceasefire agreement should have been the basis for further talks to expand the truce to other parts of the country. But while the withdrawal was under way last week, Houthis, who are reportedly getting support from Iran, carried out a drone attack on a Saudi pipeline, and in retaliation Riyadh launched airstrikes on Sanaa, the capital city controlled by the rebels, killing at least six civilians, including children. Yemen now risks falling back to the pre-ceasefire days of conflict with fighting having broken out in parts of the government-controlled south. What makes the resumption of hostilities more dangerous is the regional angle. Tensions are on the rise in West Asia over the U.S.-Iran standoff. The U.S. had earlier warned against possible attacks by either Iran or Iran-backed militias against American interests or its allies in the region, and has deployed an aircraft carrier and a bomber squad to the Gulf. Immediately after the pipeline was attacked, the Saudis blamed Iran for ordering it, an allegation which both Tehran and the Houthis have refuted. Whether Iran was actually behind the attack or not, the incident and the subsequent Saudi airstrikes show how the Yemeni conflict is entangled with the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/yemens-woes/article27189531.ece
Idler on a hammock 