Why attack on Yemen’s Hudaydah port risks a national catastrophe

Newly launched assault on vital maritime
gateway described as ‘Yemen’s Aleppo’

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The attack is expected to lead to a protracted and bloody
confrontation, putting “literally hundreds of thousands of people…
into a life-threatening situation,” Lise Grande, United Nations
humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, told US radio
station NPR.

Yemen has been devastated by civil war, with the Houthi movement
trying to take control of the country and forcing President
Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee abroad. Forces loyal to Hadi’s
government, and allied foreign states, have been fighting the
Houthis, with jihadist militants also taking advantage of the
chaos.

The Red Sea port handles most of the country’s commercial
imports and aid supplies, and is a lifeline for some eight million
Yemenis – around a third of the population.

Bombing began after Iranian-backed Houthi rebels “ignored a
deadline set by the exiled government to withdraw by midnight” on
Tuesday, says the BBC.

UN Yemen mediator Martin Griffiths “had been holding talks with
the Houthis to hand over control of the port to the United
Nations”, in an attempt to forgo any attack, Yemeni political
sources told London-based research organisation Middle East Monitor.

The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya network reported that the
“liberation” of Hudaydah began with a large-scale ground assault
supported by air and naval cover. The coalition “have accused the
rebels of using the port to smuggle in Iranian weapons, which the
rebels deny”, says the BBC.

Reports over the weekend suggested the Lower Al-Jahah area,
south of the city, had been captured in fierce fighting. Local
experts told The Guardian that an attack on Hudaydah
would be “Yemen’s Aleppo”.

Meanwhile, diplomats in the region told The New York Times that “only pressure from
Washington, which sells tens of millions of dollars of weapons to
the United Arab Emirates and to Saudi Arabia every year, could stop
the assault”.

Although the Trump administration has developed close ties with
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, “many members of
Congress and international diplomats blame the two countries for
exacerbating what the United Nations says is the world’s worst
humanitarian crisis, with indiscriminate attacks that have been
responsible for thousands of civilian deaths”, adds the
newspaper.

This week US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a brief
statement about the Trump administration’s willingness to address
the “security concerns” of the coalition leaders while “preserving
the free flow of humanitarian aid and life-saving commercial
imports”.

The statement was a significant departure from previous American
policy and was “a yellow light to the emirates: proceed but with
caution”, says The New York Times’s Gregory D. Johnsen.

A major escalation in fighting in Hudaydah is likely to kill the
prospect of any peace talks in the short-term, and to “condemn the
children of Yemen to yet more misery”, says Save the Children.

“This major escalation in violence puts 170,000 children at risk
of death or injury and could cause the biggest single displacement
of people since 2015, pushing Yemen towards a full-blown and
entirely man-made famine,” the charity adds.