By Maura Sokol 

Image: Ahmed Farwan - Saudi Troops in Yemen License: Creative Commons License

Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher has accused southern separatists in Yemen of attempting a coup after fighting began in the country’s southern port city, Aden. The separatists are known as the Southern Transitional Council (STC). The STC is led by Aidarous al-Zubaydi, the former governor of Aden who was forced out of his position by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Fighting first broke out on Sunday, January 28^th, when a deadline expired that the separatists had issued demanding the resignation of the government. The separatists seek independence for the southern part of Yemen, which was previously a separate country before a unification with the northern part of Yemen in 1990. The Southern Transitional Council has now demanded the removal of the Prime Minister and accused the government of corruption. In just a few days, the council has seized control of most of Aden and surrounded the Presidential Palace, which contains members of President Hadi’s government. The President himself is based in Riyadh.  

The conflict between President Hadi’s government and the separatists calls into question the stability of a coalition that has been fighting on the same side of the Yemeni Civil War since 2015. Hadi’s government is backed by Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition of nine other countries in a military intervention against the Houthi movement. The civil war began when the Houthi movement, which supports Yemen’s Shia Muslim minority, rebelled against the government. The Houthis now control Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen. Although the Saudi-led coalition has been fighting in support of Hadi’s government for the past three years, the United Arab Emirates is a key member of the coalition and supports the southern separatists. The separatists are financed and armed by the UAE, while Saudi Arabia supports Hadi’s government. Al-Zubaydi has made public comments since the fighting began declaring that the separatists remain committed to the coalition and to driving the Houthis out of Sanaa.

President Hadi’s government and the UAE have been in conflict for most of the existence of the coalition. The UAE has taken advantage of the situation to secure control over oil and gas ports in southern Yemen, and President Hadi has publicly accused the UAE of acting as an occupier in Yemen. President Hadi is also allied with the Islah Party, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and a known enemy of the UAE. 

As of Wednesday, the International Red Cross reported at least 36 killed and 185 wounded in this week’s fighting. The larger Yemen crisis has been declared the world’s worst man-made humanitarian disaster by the United Nations. According to the UN Human Rights Council, over half of the people who have been killed in the conflict are civilians, and civilians are the victims of repeated and “unrelenting violations of international humanitarian law.” Air strikes from the Saudi-led coalition are the leading cause of overall civilian casualties. Currently about 22.2 million people, or about 75% of Yemen’s population, are in need of humanitarian assistance.

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February 06, 2018

By April Kent

Photo Credit: "Clashes in Burundi" by REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic 

is licensed under CC Commercial 2.0. 

On February 15, European Union foreign ministers released a statement that they were prepared to strengthen economic sanctions on Burundi following the failure of peace talks with opposition leaders: “The EU... stands ready to impose restrictive measures against those whose actions might have led or might lead to acts of violence and repression (and) serious human rights violations.”

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that the situation in Burundi has serious genocidal overtones, “catapulting the country back to the past” more than a decade after the civil war between Hutus and Tutsis in which tens of thousands were killed. As a result of the current political crisis, at least 400 people have already been killed and 220,000 have fled to neighboring countries.

The conflict erupted on April 25, 2015, when the ruling political party in Burundi announced that the incumbent President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, would run for a third term in the upcoming election. The announcement sparked protests by those opposed to Nkurunziza seeking an unconstitutional third term in office, setting off widespread demonstrations in the capital. In January 2016, Amnesty International published satellite images it believed to portray mass graves where killings took place. That same month, the African Union announced a plan to send 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi, but the plan was shelved after President Nkurunziza declared a military intervention “too early.”

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April 19, 2016

By Megan Abbot

Police in El Salvador have begun to arrest former military officers accused in the killing of six Jesuit priests during the country’s civil war.  The murders of the Jesuits occurred in 1989, and it is presumed that the priests were killed by the regime as they attempted to broker a peace agreement that might have been too sympathetic to the guerillas.  Since 1989, an amnesty had prevented domestic prosecutions, but families of the victims now seek justice in Spain through their law of universal jurisdiction, since five of the priests were Spanish.  Elisabeth Malkin reports for the New York Times that after the US extradited one of the accused to Spain, police in El Salvador have undertaken raids to arrest several of the others accused. 

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February 24, 2016

By Sarah Akbar

Airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition destroyed a military encampment belonging to Houthi rebels in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa early Sunday morning, intensifying the hostilities in the region. The airstrike was supposedly in retaliation for the bombing of dozens of coalition soldiers by the Houthis in the coalition-controlled central Marib province. Yemen has been embroiled in civil unrest, with the Houthis allying with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the coalition backing current President Rabbo Mansour Hadi (who was originally installed by a Gulf-Arab deal that ousted former President Saleh in 2012). The struggle for control of Yemen began in March of 2015 and has only intensified among international calls for a ceasefire and pleas for aid in the ensuing humanitarian crisis. The escalation of fighting this past weekend bodes ill for both of these appeals.

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September 10, 2015