US likely to blacklist Yemen’s Houthis as ‘terrorist’ group amid fears of humanitarian tragedy

Assistant US Secretary of State David Schenker has raised the possibility of Washington designation of Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement as a terrorist group during a recent visit to the Persian Gulf state of Oman, its top diplomat confirmed.

“Yes, that was raised,” Oman’s Foreign Minister Sayyed Badr al-Busaidi said on Saturday during a summit in Bahrain while responding to a question on whether the potential blacklisting had been mentioned by Schenker during his visit to Muscat before heading to Saudi Arabia earlier on Saturday.

“I don’t think there is a solution based on classifying or blockading one key player in that conflict and not bringing them to the negotiating table,” al-Busaidi then added.

“My question to that (a US designation) ... is that decision going to resolve the Yemeni conflict given that this group is a key player? ... Or is it better to really support what the United Nations envoy is trying to do by inviting everyone including that group to the table,” he further emphasized.

Schenker traveled to Muscat on December 1 as part his six-day tour of Oman and Saudi Arabia “to discuss regional security and economic cooperation as well as a way forward on the conflict in Yemen,” according to a State Department press release earlier in the week.

Schenker will then head to Saudi Arabia on December 5 “to discuss the Yemen conflict and [Persian] Gulf unity, and to bolster economic partnerships,” the statement added.

This is while two sources familiar with the matter were also cited in a Reuters report as statubg last month that US President Donald Trump’s administration had threatened to blacklist the Houthi movement, which has been resisting a Saudi-led military aggression against neighboring Yemen since 2015.

The development came a day after the United Nations and international aid agencies warned Washington against its plan to label the popular Yemeni movement as a foreign terrorist group, prompting major concerns that the move would prevent life-saving aid reaching the war-wracked country and would derail a related $700 million aid program.

UN, international aid agencies warn US against plan to blacklist Yemen’s Ansarullah

The UN and international aid agencies warn the US against blacklisting Yemeni popular Ansarullah movement, stressing the move would exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in war-torn Yemen.

David Beasley, executive director of the UN's World Food Program (WFP), told the Washington Post daily newspaper earlier this week that the designation could hamper aid deliveries.

Beasley’s warning came following his meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in which he expressed “grave concerns” about the blacklisting of Ansarullah.

“WFP is deeply concerned about the potential impact of a decision by the US to designate Ansarullah as a foreign terrorist organization,” an unnamed WFP spokesperson said.

Moreover, Scott Paul, the humanitarian policy lead at Oxfam America, warned that terrorist designation of the Ansarullah movement would create a situation in which all aid work in Yemen would be criminalized, and no licenses or authorizations for aid work would be available.

Paul further emphasized that the US government's failure to issue licenses for humanitarian assistance to Somalia in 2011 led up to a famine that took the lives of a quarter-million people in the Horn of Africa nation.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched their aggression against Yemen in March 2015 aimed at bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

The Ansarullah movement, backed by Yemeni armed forces, has been defending their country against the Saudi-led military aggression, preventing the aggressors from fulfilling the objectives of the atrocious war.

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