Saudi Arabia resumes airstrikes in Yemen

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Confused yet?

(CNN)Saudi Arabia resumed airstrikes in Yemen on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after announcing the end of its "Operation Decisive Storm," a nearly month-long campaign against Houthi positions.

The strikes returned after rebel forces launched an attack on a government military brigade not under Houthi control, security sources in Taiz said. The brigade quickly fell to the rebels, they said.

It was unclear if the fighting represented a resumption of the operation or was a short-term resumption of hostilities.

When the Saudi-led coalition announced the end of the operation it said a new initiative was underway.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/22/middleeast/yemen-crisis/

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. It's like saying you're giving up smoking, just before going to sleep

and then taking it up again first thing in the morning.

[bemildred]

3. You can accumulate quite a lot of abstinence that way, avoids the withdrawal symptoms too. nt

[Jefferson23]

2. Did someone call the Saudi assholes and say, hey, you look weak..you need to make

sure you're declared the winnah! So go back in?

What the hell are they doing?

[bemildred]

4. Presently I interpret it as "thrashing around", but I'm speculating.

In the background my sense is there are a lot of people trying to calm the loonies down before things get really ugly.

[bemildred]

5. Yemen’s indecisive storm

IT WAS a short-lived ceasefire. On April 21st Saudi Arabia declared the end of “Operation Decisive Storm”, a three-week long campaign of air strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, which had supposedly achieved its objectives. But a few hours later Houthi fighters claimed control of a Yemeni army compound in Taiz, Yemen’s third city, and the Saudis resumed air strikes. The conflict in Yemen has quickly become one of the region’s proxy wars between a Sunni coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which backs the government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and Iran, which backs the Houthis, who are Shias (though of the Zaydi branch, rather than Iran's so-called “Twelver” branch).

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/04/daily-chart-11

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6. Saudis Declare Victory Over Iran In Yemen

Saudis reacted to the declaration of the end of Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen with delight, and bragged about their military victory, not over the Houthi rebels they’ve been targeting in airstrikes, but rather the regional power reported to be backing them: Iran.

They took to Twitter to post support for their military, which led the nearly-month long series of punishing airstrikes on civilian as well as military targets in neighboring Yemen, leading to fears of an impending humanitarian crisis. They in particular praised the new young defense minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with the hashtag #thankyousalman, and #GameOverIran.

At the same time, residents in the hardest-hit cities in Yemen have expressed relief that the bombing was over. However, on Wednesday Saudi airstrikes resumed, targeting the city of Taiz.

http://www.vocativ.com/usa/nat-sec/saudis-declare-victory-over-iran-in-yemen/

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7. Yemen Houthi Rebels Release Exiled President Hadi's Brother And Defense Minister, Demand End To Airs

Yemen's Houthi militia released the deposed defense minister, an army general and a brother of exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi Wednesday. The Iranian-backed Shiite group also demanded an end to airstrikes and a return to negotiations a day after the Saudi-led coalition said it would stop bombing their forces. The airstrikes have reportedly continued into Wednesday, however.

"We demand, after a complete end to the aggression against Yemen and the lifting of the blockade, to resume political dialogue ... under the sponsorship of the United Nations," Mohammed Abdulsalam, a Houthi spokesman, said in a statement obtained by Agence France-Presse.

Abdulsalam made the remarks after three top officials of Hadi's deposed government were freed Wednesday. The trio has been held by the Houthis since late March, and their release was a result of mediation led by the head of Yemen’s military police in Ataq, a source close to mediators told AFP.

“Defense Minister Gen. Mahmud Al Subaihi, Gen. Nasser Mansour Hadi [the president’s brother], and Gen. Faisal Rajab have been freed,” the source said Wednesday, adding that the three Yemeni officials had left the Houthi-held capital of Sanaa and were heading to Ataq, capital of the southern province of Shabwa.

http://www.ibtimes.com/yemen-houthi-rebels-release-exiled-president-hadis-brother-defense-minister-demand-1892238

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8. A rival caliphate emerges?

IT HAS been a rough decade for al-Qaeda. America and its regional allies assassinated its top leaders from Yemen to Iraq and made it harder for the group’s branches to communicate with a central leadership. In 2011 America killed Bin Laden, its chief. Since Islamic State (IS) emerged a year later it has outflanked al-Qaeda, attracting more foreign fighters, cash and headlines. But one branch is an exception. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen, is on the up. In the past month or so, it has widened the territory under its control, including a port and an airport.

Today’s war in Yemen between the Houthi rebels and government backed by the Saudi-led coalition, is helping AQAP. It expanded after the ousting of President Abdullah Ali Saleh in 2012, only to be pushed back by a subsequent army offensive. But the government’s gains have now been reversed. On April 2nd AQAP freed members of its group from a prison. It took Mukalla, a port on the Gulf of Aden, and its nearby airport. American drone attacks, that previously kept AQAP on the back foot, have almost stopped since the Americans pulled out their intelligence-gathering special forces in the past few weeks.

http://www.economist.com/news/21649424-jihadists-gain-dangerous-ground-yemen-rival-caliphate-emerges

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9. War rages on in Yemen despite Saudis' vow to ease airstrikes

A scaling-back of the Saudi Arabia-led air war brought some relief Wednesday to residents of Yemen’s capital, but intensive bombardment continued in the city of Taiz, and street fighting raged in the port of Aden, the country’s commercial center.

The warring parties in Yemen -- Shiite Muslim rebels known as Houthis, defectors from the armed forces who joined the insurgents, and forces loyal to exiled President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi -- pressed ahead with battles despite calls for a political solution to the conflict.

The fighting over the last month has killed nearly 1,000 people across Yemen, according to the World Health Organization, with about three times as many people injured.

Saudi Arabia launched its air offensive nearly a month ago with the stated aim of stemming the Houthi offensive. With criticism of the campaign mounting along with civilian deaths and injuries, the kingdom indicated Tuesday that it would reduce, but not halt, bombardment, and would continue to move militarily against the insurgents using other means.

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-yemen-fighting-20150422-story.html#navtype=outfit

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10. An Intelligence Vet Explains ISIS, Yemen, and "the Dick Cheney of Iraq"

Well, this is different.

Today marks the beginning of what I hope will be many opportunities to introduce true practitioners in the world of spying and killing to Phase Zero readers. Our first guest is Malcolm Nance, a 34-year veteran intelligence officer who has worked the Iraq mission since 1987, fighting in all of our Middle East wars since 1983. He has lived in and out of Iraq since 2003.

The death of former Saddam General Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri last week provides an opportunity to ask Nance about who the insurgent commander was, how he evaded capture or death for so many years, and what the hell is really going on in Iraq. In addition to his time on the ground, Nance has written defense intelligence textbooks on the subject—books that are occasionally dense but “are exhaustively detailed for a reason,” he says. “I am not here to entertain, but to share hard intelligence, won by the blood of dead soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and intelligence officers and explain the deep history of these groups which leads you to ISIS.”

He is not shy about the why of knowing: So that “we kill the right people with what we learned.” Nance runs his own analytical organization, TAPSTRI, the Terror Asymmetrics Project and is author of, most recently, The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency, 2003-2014.

Nance will be in comments—his actual, swear-to-god Kinja user name is “kingpindaddyhoho”—at noon eastern to answer your questions.

http://phasezero.gawker.com/an-intelligence-vet-explains-isis-yemen-and-the-dick-1699407909/+LeahBeckmann

[geek tragedy]

11. Sounds like the east Ukraine playbook is in effect nt

[bemildred]

12. I see lots of similarities, but have not convinced myself any of them mean much.

So far.