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Coalition retakes Yemeni islands from militias
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Arab coalition forces have captured a Yemeni Red Sea archipelago used by Iran-allied Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews... militias for storing and smuggling weapons into Yemen, the Saudi-led alliance and local fishermen said on Thursday. The Saudi-led coalition has been trying to dislodge the Houthis and forces loyal to their ally, former president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... , from areas captured since September last year and to restore President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi to power. The Houthis control most of the former north Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... from Taiz in the south to Saada in the north, giving them control of Yemen's Red Sea coast. The coalition said its forces "cleansed Greater Hanish", the biggest island in the archipelago in the Red Sea's main shipping lanes, Saudi state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe? said. The islands, it said, were controlled by Yemeni militias loyal to Saleh and used by the Houthis to store weapons and smuggle them into Hodeida, Yemen's main Red Sea port. The archipelago was the subject of a territorial dispute between Yemen and Eritrea ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age... , which seized the archipelago in the 1990s, until a London-based international arbitration court granted Yemen illusory sovereignty in 1998. Posted by: Fred 2015-12-11 |
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