With airstrikes escalating against the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, the United Arab Emirates is demanding that the Houthi rebels unconditionally capitulate and agree to withdraw from the port.
Hodeidah is the main aid port into Yemen, and the only port under the control of the northern Houthi rebels. This means the port is the lone source of food for about 8.4 million people. The fall of the city is expected to spark a mass famine.
There are also an estimated 250,000 civilians left in Hodeidah. With airstrikes against the city on the rise, officials for the attacking forces say that only withdrawing from the city can “save the population.”
The Saudi and UAE-led forces started the attack on the port last week, but haven’t actually entered the city itself yet. They have, however, made gains around the outskirts, seizing the entrance to Hodeidah’s airport, and have pounded the city itself with airstrikes and warship shelling.
UAE: Leave your house or we will have to kill your family to get your house.
Do you then leave it????
So the “coalition” is taking hostages, and all the innocent civilians the “coalition” is about to kill will be on the Houthis conscience, because they didn’t capitulate fast enough to the invading forces. This takes “blaming the victim” to a whole new level.
The portrait of the Yemen tragedy has been from the beggining flawed. There are no Houthis — as this is a name of just one tribe. Houthi’s are THE POPULATION IF FORMER NORTH YEMEN, ancient Yemen Zaidi civilization. Look how easy it is for the West, Saudi or UAE potentates to keep Yemeni South under control. These are Sunnis on the South, pragmatic trading culture, with no attachment to the land. North is an agricultural old Shia culture that survived in thise mountains for milenia. Hodeida is not held by Houthis, but but Zaidi Yemenis —they are the population.
I ought to know. I lived there when North Yemen was an independent country. Before it was forcibly pushed into the union with South. Neither now desire to be put together again. Seccessionist South is not the only one wanting freedom.
But US has a different plan — and now US is out of the shadows, using UAE and mercenaries, French Napoleonic complex and waning Saudi interest — to subjugate North. For one and only reason — complete control of Bab Al-Mandeb, the straights connecting Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. By controlling Bab Al-Mandeb, US can put any kind of pressure on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan. Why not then leave North Yemen alone? The mere thought that the port of Hodeidah will remain outside HS control is unacceptable. Thus by strangulating the country, depriving it of its only access to sea — the hope is Zaidiis will surrender. Since nobody will mansge to penetrate the mountains, the hope is to starve them and pe bomb their water irrigation systems, food processing plants, even their thousands years old step agriculture walls. This is an assault on population of Hodeidah, not some “Houthi” menace. Are there no limits to our lies and depradation?