Yémen: guerre du gouvernement contre les Houtis

Rappel du premier message :

Citation :

Yemen army says it killed 31 Shiite rebels


SANAA — Yemen's army said on Tuesday it had killed 31 Shiite rebels in separate operations in the rugged northern mountains where the military is pressing its month-old offensive aimed at crushing the militants.
Eighteen Zaidi rebels, known also as Huthis, were killed as they tried to capture army posts in the Jebel al-Ahmar area, some 15 kilometres (10 miles) south of Saada town, state news agency Saba quoted an army commander as saying.
A military source cited by defence ministry Internet site 26sep.net said rebel chief Abdel Mohsen Taous was killed in an attack on his vehicle at Hidan, southwest of Saada, and that another 12 rebels were killed in another attack.
Seventeen more rebels were reported wounded, the same source said.
Saada town is a rebel stronghold in the centre of the province of the same name.
"The army killed 18 of them and wounded many others, while the remaining (rebels) retreated," the unnamed commander said of the Jebel al-Ahmar clash.
He also said government forces had destroyed an arms cache and two vehicles transporting weapons in the region.
The same commander said five rebels were arrested in the Malaheez district, in Saada, the scene of heavy fighting since the military launched Operation Scorched Earth against the rebels on August 11.
On Monday, the army confirmed that seven soldiers, including a colonel, were killed in a rebel ambush in Saada on Sunday, after it had announced killing 22 rebels and capturing seven over the weekend.
The government launched last month's offensive in a bid to crush the Shiite rebellion which first erupted in 2004.
It has accused the rebels of seeking to restore the Zaidi Shiite imamate which was overthrown in a 1962 coup that sparked eight years of civil war.
An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority community in the north.
Relief groups have warned of worsening humanitarian conditions among the tens of thousands of civilians forced from their homes by the latest fighting.
The United Nations and the international Red Cross on Tuesday both called for an aid corridor to allow urgent relief supplies to reach civilians.
"The situation is not improving, it is still very tense and volatile," said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
A humanitarian corridor must be established "as soon as possible for the civilian population to get access to humanitarian aid they need."
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that gaining access to those in difficulties remains the "main challenge" for aid workers.
"Thousands and thousands of people are still in dire need of food, shelter, medical care, they depend heavily on humanitarian aid," said the ICRC's Dorothea Krimitsas.
The United Nations says that 35,000 people have been displaced over the past few weeks.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More

Citation :

Tearing Yemen apart As clashes revive fears of a Saudi Arabia-Iran proxy war,
the US is focused on al-Qaida's presence in a troubled nation
Renewed fighting in northern Yemen between government and rebel forces is feeding fears that a Middle Eastern proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is spreading to the ungoverned spaces of the southern Arabian peninsula. But western analysts are staring boggle-eyed at quite a different spectre: the prospect that the biggest beneficiaries of Yemeni weakness will be the fanatical jihadis of al-Qaida.
UN agencies raised the alarm last week after 55,000 people, mostly women and children, fled clashes in and around Sa'ada city in northern Yemen between the forces of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's Sunni-led government and the Zaydi Shia followers of Sayyid Abd al-Malik al-Houthi. The exodus brought to 150,000 the number of people rendered homeless since July by a conflict that rekindled in 2004 but whose roots reach back to 1962.
The UN complained that its $23m emergency appeal launched on 2 September "has not yet received a single cent" despite the refugees' acute need. "Internally displaced people from Sa'ada governorate who fled to Amran arrived traumatised and exhausted, having spent three to five days walking in the desert," the UN said. Access to the remote area was hazardous and attempts were under way to open a humanitarian corridor from Saudi Arabia.
Yet according to the Houthi rebels, the Saudis are part of the problem. Claiming Riyadh is arming and supporting government forces, they issued a video last week purporting to show captured Saudi mortars. They also claim to have been bombed by Saudi jets. "We are placing before everyone the fact of direct Saudi support," a rebel statement said. "The regime has ceded sovereignty [and] delivered the country to foreign interests." Saudi Arabia denies the charges.
Saleh's government in turn accuses Iran and its Iraqi Shia ally Muqtada al-Sadr of backing the Houthis, who say they want greater autonomy. They also oppose the spread of Saudi-inspired Wahhabi teaching – an ostensibly reasonable aim given the links between Wahhabism and Sunni extremism. Saleh told al-Jazeera television that unnamed Iranians were in direct communication with the rebels and had funded secret "cells" within Yemen's security apparatus. Iran's ambassador to Yemen was recently warned of "negative consequences" should Iranian media continue "to be a tool in the hands of the subversives in Sa'ada".
Saudi Arabia's concerns about its neighbour's plight go beyond northern instability. Reviving separatist tendencies in southern Yemen are combining with shrinking national earnings (caused by declining oil revenues), high male unemployment, corruption, kidnapping and a chronic water shortage to undermine the central government's ability to hold the country together. Last month's assassination attempt on a Saudi minister was launched from Yemen.
For its part, Iran believes it has good reason to be suspicious of the Yemeni government's pro-western stance, suspicions stoked last week by a visit to Sana'a by John Brennan, the White House's counter-terrorism chief. Ignoring the complex nuances of the war in the north, Brennan delivered a letter from Barack Obama declaring that "the security of Yemen is vital for the security of the United States" – a surprisingly brash commitment – and promised increased US and international assistance. Obama stressed partnership in confronting the "common threat" posed by al-Qaida and Islamic extremism in general.
"Even if the actual foreign material support in Yemen's civil strife is minimal, the conflict is probably the newest front in a broadening proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia," said Robert Haddick of Small Wars Journal. "Lebanon is one front. Iranian attempts to gain influence over Shia populations in eastern Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Persian Gulf is another." Now Yemen must be added to the list, he said, with Saudi officials nervous that Tehran's ultimate aim was control over Red Sea shipping lanes.
All this is worrying enough for the Obama administration and allies such as Britain with its own colonial era links to Aden. But as Brennan's mission suggested, al-Qaida's ongoing, apparently successful effort to establish a regional base in Yemen, taking advantage of a weak, distracted government, remains Washington's uppermost concern.
"Only Pakistan's tribal regions rival Yemen as a terrorist Shangri-La," the Wall Street Journal commented recently. Osama bin Laden was of Yemeni extraction, while about 100 Yemenis were held in Guantánamo Bay, it noted. It went on to quote Yemen's estimate that up to 1,500 al-Qaida-linked jihadis are based in the country – including Nasir al-Wahayshi, al-Qaida's "emir of the Arabian peninsula" and Jamal al-Badawi, wanted for his role in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour. The editorial accused Saleh of double-dealing, by pursuing "a tacit non-aggression pact" with al-Qaida that allowed him to deal with other challenges.
"If left unaddressed Yemen's problems could potentially destabilise Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states," warned author Christopher Boucek in a new report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The inability of the Yemeni central government to fully control its territory will create space for violent extremists to regroup and launch attacks against domestic and international targets. The international community must be realistic about the limitations of intervention in Yemen. In the near term, however, inaction is not an option."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/14/yemen-al-qaida-saudi-arabia-iran

ca ressemble a un SU 20/22

Pauvre saoudien, ils font honte au peuple arabe si il existe encore
Je trouvais sa bizzard le faite qu'ils ne communiquaient plus avec autant de ferveur sur la bravoure de leur armée
Ils doivent s'estimer heureux que les rebelles ne possède pas de moyen AA sinon ils n'oseront plus envoyer leur tornado en mission AG
J'ai halluciné quand j'ai vu les pièce d'artillerie est les bradley abandonnés, donnés en cadeau

Ce que je vois confirme mes impression, une armée bien équipé mais qui niveau combativité représente le zéro absolu. Je comprend mieux comment Israël a fait pour remporter 67 et 73 .
Si ils veulent limiter les dégats il faut mieux pour eux de confier le commandement à d'autre généraux plus expérimenté. En tout cas cette affaire, est une bonne occasion pour les FAR de prouver une nouvelle fois leur valeur au combat, et leur capacité à combattre les guérillas

des PLZ 45 qui montent vers le front

Tout ça pour contrer des Houtis qui n'ont que le soutien des lointains Iraniens La honte

Samyadams a écrit:

Que font les Gardes frontières saoudiens au Yémen, Barbaros ? La pièce d'artillerie auto tractée, elle aussi saisie sur des gardes frontières ?
Tiens, je croyais que les Turcs étaient cousins avec les Saouds avec qui ils ont des liens ethniques, familiaux, religieux, etc, etc

Il suffit de zoomer et de voire le logo des gardes frontières..

Concernant, le blindés, ça peut arriver, un blindé qui à perdu sa route et aller au devant du front, c'est ce qui s'était passé avec les américains lors de la guerre d'Irak (Logistique)...

Au lieu d'aller aux champs de batailles,ils prennent des photos pour le PR.Les soldats sous la tente avec des sandales en R&R. Cela me rappelle l'egypte ,s'il ne gagne pas de bataille ils mettent un film en montrant qu'ils ont gagne.allh koun fl3awn.

Younes a écrit:

Pour moi, le message du Maroc est clair : nous sommes pret en cas de besoin de venir directement participer aux combats. Car en principe un simple message écrit suffit, mais déplacement du premier ministre en AS c'est trés lourd de sens.

Je me permet de citer mes écrits, j'ai vu juste

http://www.elimparcial.es/contenido/53058.html

la presence des FS Marocaines a été prouvée ?

Il ne faut pas compter sur les autorités marocaines pour confirmer, ni même pour démentir. Mais il semblerait bien que ce soit le cas, ce qui est en outre conforme à la nature des relations entre les deux pays

j espere que les satrapes Saoudiens ne les enverreont pas au casse-pipe a leur place pendant qu'ils prennent le thé avec leurs servantes phillipines dans leur tentes climatisées

Non mais t'as vu comment est-ce que les soldats saoudiens semblent se terrer dans leur tente On ne dirait pas que ce les descendants des bédouins qui sillonnaient le désert et avaient mis chez eux à genoux l'Empire Ottoman.
Nos troupes sont rodées à ce genre de climat et de terrain, pourvu que l'état major saoudien les laissent s'y prendre comme ils savent le faire

Samyadams a écrit:

Non mais t'as vu comment est-ce que les soldats saoudiens semblent se terrer dans leur tente On ne dirait pas que ce les descendants des bédouins qui sillonnaient le désert et avaient mis chez eux à genoux l'Empire Ottoman.
Nos troupes sont rodées à ce genre de climat et de terrain, pourvu que l'état major saoudien les laissent s'y prendre comme ils savent le faire

Sa sera un bon exercice grandeur nature, avant je l'espère le grand bouquet final prêt de nos frontières. Une sorte de répetition général
Plus sérieusement, c'est une occasion pour nos troupes d'acquérir encore plus d'expérience et de savoir faire , le tout au frais de la princesse

allez au combat dans une zone aussi montagneuse avec des MP 5 Kurz et des Hummer de base ou des blindés legers sans infanterie d'accompagnement ca va vite tourner au desastre . Les Saoudiens devraient peut etre faire appel a Bel Laden ou aux Talibans pour leur filer un coup de main

Citation :

Yémen : les combats contre les rebelles chiites se poursuivent

L'armée yéménite affirme avoir réussi à ''purifier'', selon ses termes, des rebelles chiites la Vieille ville de Saada, au nord-ouest du pays. Au cours d'une opération d'envergure, elle a tué 2 chefs des rebelles et arrêté 24 autres individus.

guysen.com

J'espere pour eux que c'est vrai et que c'est pas une opeation de com foireuse.

Ce genre de communiqué de convainc plus personne Glaive, sinon, l'armée yéménite aurait invité les chaînes de télé à venir constater la prise de contrôle de la ville de Saâda par elles même

D'apres le site intelligence online des observateurs militaire americains,francais et jordaniens assistent les forces saoudiennes depuis le 20 novembre dans la guerre contre les pions de teheran

les américains sont déjà présent sur le territoire saoudi, c'est assez logique... mais je pense pas que ça soit vrai pour les français

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Soixante-treize soldats saoudiens ont été tués et 26 sont portés disparus depuis le début des combats avec les rebelles zaïdites yéménites début novembre, a annoncé mardi un haut responsable saoudien de la Défense. (...) "Le nombre de blessés a atteint 470, dont la majorité ont été soignés et ont quitté les hôpitaux, et il n'en reste que 60 hospitalisés", a-t-il ajouté. (...) Depuis le début du conflit, les combats récurrents ont fait des milliers de morts et plus 150.000 déplacés, selon des organisations internationales.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gsUTK2NFjvcyffnGfpKHKHM4B2ZA

rafi a écrit:

Citation :

Soixante-treize soldats saoudiens ont été tués et 26 sont portés disparus depuis le début des combats avec les rebelles zaïdites yéménites début novembre, a annoncé mardi un haut responsable saoudien de la Défense. (...) "Le nombre de blessés a atteint 470, dont la majorité ont été soignés et ont quitté les hôpitaux, et il n'en reste que 60 hospitalisés", a-t-il ajouté. (...) Depuis le début du conflit, les combats récurrents ont fait des milliers de morts et plus 150.000 déplacés, selon des organisations internationales.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gsUTK2NFjvcyffnGfpKHKHM4B2ZA

73 soldats tués

Citation :

NYT: U.S. quietly takes terror war to Yemen
Covert front against al-Qaida was opened a year ago, military officers say
By ERIC SCHMITT and ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON - In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.

A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent many field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.

As American investigators sought to corroborate the claims of a 23-year-old Nigerian man that Qaeda leaders in Yemen had trained and equipped him to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, the plot casts a spotlight on the Obama administration’s complicated relationship with Yemen.

Refuge for jihadists
The country has long been a refuge for jihadists, in part because Yemen’s government welcomed returning Islamist fighters who had fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The Yemen port of Aden was the site of the audacious bombing of the American destroyer Cole in October 2000 by Qaeda militants, which killed 17 sailors.

But Qaeda militants have made much more focused efforts to build a base in Yemen in recent years, drawing recruits from throughout the region and mounting more frequent attacks on foreign embassies and other targets. The White House is seeking to nurture enduring ties with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and prod him to combat the local Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, even as his impoverished country grapples with seemingly intractable internal turmoil.

With fears also growing of a resurgent Islamist extremism in nearby Somalia and East Africa, administration officials and American lawmakers said Yemen could become Al Qaeda’s next operational and training hub, rivaling the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where the organization’s top leaders operate.

“Yemen now becomes one of the centers of that fight,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who visited the country in August. “We have a growing presence there, and we have to, of Special Operations, Green Berets, intelligence,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Pivotal point
American and Yemeni officials said that a pivotal point in the relationship was reached in late summer after separate secret visits to Yemen by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American regional commander, and John O. Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser.

President Saleh agreed to expanded overt and covert assistance in response to growing pressure from the United States and Yemen’s neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia, from which many Qaeda operatives had fled to Yemen, as well as a rising threat against the country’s political inner circle, the officials said.


“Yemen’s security problems won’t just stay in Yemen,” said Christopher Boucek, who studies Yemen as an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “They’re regional problems and they affect Western interests.”

Al Qaeda’s profile in Yemen rose sharply a year ago, when a former Guantánamo Bay detainee from Saudi Arabia, Said Ali al-Shihri, fled to Yemen to join Al Qaeda and appeared in a video posted online. Several other former Guantánamo detainees have also joined the group.

Yemen’s remote areas are notoriously lawless, but the country’s chaos has worsened in the past two years, as the government struggles with an armed rebellion in the northwest and a rising secessionist movement in the south. Yemen is running out of oil, and the government’s dwindling finances have affected its ability to strike Al Qaeda.

Ties to plots against U.S.
Meanwhile, there have been increasing Yemeni ties to plots against the United States. A Muslim man charged in the June 1 killing of a soldier at a recruiting center in a mall in Little Rock, Ark., had traveled to Yemen, prompting a review by the F.B.I. of other domestic extremists who had visited the country.

A radical cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, has been linked to numerous terrorism suspects, including Nidal Malik Hasan, the American Army major who faces murder charges in the shooting deaths of 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November.

In the latest issue of Sada al-Malahim, the Internet magazine of the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, the group’s leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, praised the use of small bombs — not just big ones — to attack an enemy, in an eerie foreshadowing of Friday’s episode on the plane to Detroit.


Yemen escalated its campaign against Al Qaeda with major airstrikes on Dec. 17 and last Thursday that killed more than 60 militants.

American officials have been coy about the role of the United States in the strikes, saying that they have provided intelligence and “firepower” for the efforts.

Yemen’s foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, said Sunday that Yemeni military cooperation with the United States and Saudi Arabia had increased in recent months as fresh intelligence confirmed Al Qaeda’s greater assertiveness in the country.

“There was intelligence that they were targeting the British Embassy and a number of government institutions as well as private schools,” Mr. Qirbi said in a telephone interview. “The second reason is that they have become more vocal, trying to show that they can undertake terrorist activities in an open fashion. So the government had to respond to that.”

Intelligence from U.S.
The recent airstrikes were planned for two or three months, Mr. Qirbi said, but could not take place until there was fresh intelligence about the location of the Qaeda operatives who were the targets.

He called that intelligence — which included information provided by the United States — “the most important element” in the successful strike on the Qaeda members.

Mr. Qirbi added that although the United States provided Yemen with military hardware, the airstrikes were carried out by the Yemeni military alone.

Although the most important intelligence came from the United States and Saudi Arabia, other countries in the region have increased their financial assistance in recent months to help Yemen, said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. “There was a fear inside and outside Yemen that Al Qaeda was taking new ground, establishing training centers, making some parts of Yemen no-go areas,” Mr. Alani said. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait in particular provided assistance, he said, because “they feel that sooner or later they will become targets too.”

In the past year, Al Qaeda has killed six intelligence officers in the provinces where it is based, part of an unmistakable campaign by the group to secure its sanctuary there, Mr. Alani said. The intelligence officers were trying to gather information on the group, and to disrupt its growing links with local tribes — a significant part of its strategy, Mr. Alani added.

The airstrikes of the past two weeks have been successful, but have come at a price, Yemeni officials said. “They have been hit hard, but they have not yet been disabled,” said one high-ranking Yemeni official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic issues involved. “The problem is that the involvement of the United States creates sympathy for Al Qaeda. The cooperation is necessary — but there is no doubt that it has an effect for the common man. He sympathizes with Al Qaeda.”

As if to reaffirm that message, Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate released a statement to Internet sites on Sunday that put strong emphasis on the American role in the recent raids, deriding the Yemeni government for claiming responsibility.

The New York Times