CAIRO (AP) – Yemeni rebels supported by Iran on Monday rejected the U.S. initiative to designate them as a terrorist organization in the last days of the Trump administration, while a leading aid agency warned that such designation would be another “devastating blow. “for the poor and war-torn nation.
The planned appointment, announced by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday night, would take effect the day before President-elect Joe Biden took office on January 20. It was not clear whether Biden would overturn the decision.
Yemen is mired in a disastrous humanitarian crisis, with millions of people in large areas of the country on the brink of starvation as a result of six years of civil war.
Pompeo said he was proceeding to designate the rebels, known as the Houthis, along with separate terrorist designations for the top three rebel leaders. At the same time, he promised that the United States would help absorb the impact on humanitarian groups and allow humanitarian assistance to continue to flow into Yemen.
Hours later, several senior rebel figures criticized Pompeo’s announcement.
“We are not afraid,” tweeted Mohammed Ali al-Houthi. “America is the source of terrorism. He is directly involved in killing and starving the Yemeni people ”.
Others said the designation was an attempt to divert attention from the U.S. political crisis in the wake of Capitol’s deadly riots and President Donald Trump’s impeachment efforts. “We are honored to be terrorists and the world’s gangsters,” tweeted Houthis media officer Abdel-Rahman al-Ahnoumi.
In Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh condemned the designation as a “doomed to fail” action at the end of the Trump administration. He said the United States would have to enter into negotiations with Yemen’s legitimate representatives – referring to the Houthis – to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.
The internationally recognized Yemeni government described the Houthis as a “terrorist militia” and in a statement issued by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for a “continued escalation and intensification of political and legal pressures on the Houthis to pave the way for a peaceful solution to the conflict. ”
Yemen, at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is the scene of the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. The war, which killed more than 112,000 people, left most of the country’s nearly 30 million people in need of humanitarian aid. The war
The conflict started in 2014 when the Houthis invaded the north and the capital, Sanaa. The following year, the Saudi-led coalition stepped in to wage war against the Houthis to try to restore the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.
In early January, Hadi’s government accused the rebels of firing ballistic missiles that were targeting a plane with Cabinet members after landing in the southern port city of Aden, an attack that killed more than 25 people. The Houthis denied being behind the attack.
After the attack, Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed told the Associated Press that the rebels must “realize that if they continue with these criminal and terrorist operations, there will be no path to peace”.
At the time, Abdulmalik said that a terrorist designation would be a “major step” and “would help to establish peace in Yemen”.
Previous rounds of peace negotiations and ceasefire agreements have failed and aid agencies, which operate mainly in areas controlled by Houthi, fear that any attack on the rebel group will have an impact on the entire population.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the main active humanitarian agencies in the country, said on Monday that the sanctions planned by Pompeo “will hamper the ability of humanitarian aid agencies to respond” to the humanitarian needs of millions of Yemenis.
“Yemen’s faltering economy will suffer yet another devastating blow,” said Mohamed Abdi, group director for Yemen. “Taking food and medicine to Yemen – a country 80% dependent on imports – will become even more difficult.”
Humanitarian aid organizations have long warned that sanctions could be catastrophic for efforts to help starve Yemeni civilians caught in the conflict between the Houthis and the Yemeni government, supported by a Saudi-led coalition at war with the rebels.
In his announcement, Pompeo said the United States recognized that the designation could impact the humanitarian situation and would take steps to contain it.
“We are planning to implement measures to reduce its impact on certain humanitarian activities and imports into Yemen,” he said. Those measures will include issuing special licenses by the US Treasury to allow US aid to continue to flow to Yemen and for humanitarian organizations to continue working there, he said.
Separately, the United States suspended millions of dollars from its aid donations to areas controlled by Houthi after reports of theft and aid looting. UN agencies have long complained about rebels who steal and redirect food aid.
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Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.