Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry holds a press conference, in Cairo, Egypt January 14, 2024. (Reuters)
12:21-17 January 2024 AD ـ 05 Rajab 1445 AH
Ethiopia has become a source of instability in the region, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Wednesday, according to a statement by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.
Shoukry, during a ministerial Arab League meeting in Cairo, warned of the consequences of Ethiopia’s “unilateral policies” and called for respect for Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, after the breakaway Somaliland region agreed to grant Ethiopia access to the Red Sea in return for recognition as an independent nation.
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Houthi fighters and tribesmen stage a rally against the US and the UK strikes on Houthi-run military sites near Sanaa, Yemen, on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. (AP)
16:17-17 January 2024 AD ـ 05 Rajab 1445 AH
The United States on Wednesday put Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militias back on its list of specially designated global terrorists, piling financial sanctions on top of American military strikes in the Biden administration’s latest attempt to stop the militants’ attacks on global shipping.
Officials said they would design the financial penalties to minimize harm to Yemen’s 32 million people, who are among the world’s poorest and hungriest after years of war.
But aid officials expressed concern. The decision would only add “another level of uncertainty and threat for Yemenis still caught in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises,” Oxfam America associate director Scott Paul said.
The sanctions that come with the formal designations are meant to sever violent extremist groups from their sources of financing.
President Donald Trump’s administration designated the Houthis as global terrorists and a foreign terrorist organization in one of his last acts in office. President Joe Biden reversed course early on, at the time citing the humanitarian threat that the sanctions posed to ordinary Yemenis.
Military strikes by the US and Britain against Houthi targets in Yemen have failed to stop weeks of drone, rocket and missile strikes by Houthi forces on commercial shipping transiting the Red Sea route, which borders Yemen.
The Houthis are one in a network of Iran- and Hamas-allied militant groups around the Middle East that have escalated attacks on Israel, the US and others since Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
The Houthis seized Yemen’s capital in a coup against the legitimate government in 2014.
War and chronic misgovernment have left 24 million Yemenis at risk of hunger and disease, and roughly 14 million are in acute need of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations says. Aid groups during the height of Yemen’s war issued repeated warnings that millions of Yemenis were on the brink of famine.
US officials told reporters before the State Department’s announcement Wednesday that the sanctions would exempt commercial shipments of food, medicine and fuel, and humanitarian assistance. The US will wait 30 days to put the sanctions into effect, officials said, giving shipping companies, banks, insurers and others time to prepare.
The administration, for now, is not reimposing the more severe designation of foreign terrorist organization on the Houthis. That would have barred Americans, along with people and organizations subject to US jurisdiction, from providing “material support” to the Houthis. Aid groups said that step could have the effect of criminalizing ordinary trade and assistance to Yemenis.
The three US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail internal administration planning, described Wednesday’s designation as part of a range of American measures designed to pressure the Houthis to stop their attacks on shipping. The US will reevaluate the designation if the Houthis comply, officials said.
Jared Rowell, the Yemen country director for the International Rescue Committee, said last week that the attacks and counterattacks were interrupting the delivery of goods and aid into Yemen, delaying shipments of vital commodities and raising prices for food and fuel.
Conservatives have pressed for the foreign terrorist designation to be reimposed ever since the Biden administration lifted it. Calls for tougher action against the Houthis and their Iranian backers have grown louder since the Israel-Hamas war.
When Biden was asked last week whether the Houthis were a terrorist group, he replied, “I think they are.”