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sarcasm
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Yemen on the brink: how the UAE is profiting from the chaos of civil war (The Guardian)

Post by sarcasm » 17 Jan 2022, 08:46

Four years ago, Ayman Askar was in a prison in south Yemen, serving a life sentence for murder. Now he is a wealthy and important man whose friendships cut across the many lines of the fragmented civil war that has destroyed the country. Askar has recently been named the chief of security for a large district in the southern port city of Aden – appointed by the government of Yemen, on whose behalf Saudi Arabia has been bombing the country for three-and-a-half years. But Askar is also a friend and ally of the United Arab Emirates – the most aggressive partner in the Saudi-led coalition fighting to restore the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was forced from office by the Houthi rebellion in 2015.

The Saudis have attracted the bulk of the world’s displeasure for their bloody intervention in Yemen, but the UAE plays a more forceful role on the ground – and its allies in the south, including local militias, Salafi fighters, and south Yemen separatists who want to break away from Hadi’s government, have been known to fight against the Saudis’ own proxies in the country.

Today Askar is allied with the government of Yemen and the UAE, but not long ago he was a member of al-Qaida, the enemy of both. Thuggish and heavy-set, with a bull-like head on strong, wide shoulders, he jostled his way up the power hierarchy of prison life: he ran a grocery store in the prison yard and a PlayStation lounge in one of the cells, and befriended the strongest gang in the prison – a group of al-Qaida inmates. He prayed with them, attended their classes, grew his beard and started dressing like them, although his friends say he never joined the organisation properly because he is too opportunistic to pledge allegiance to a single cause.

When Houthi fighters from north Yemen, backed by Iran, invaded the south and toppled the government in the capital, Sana’a – forcing Hadi to flee south to Aden, and then abroad to Saudi Arabia – Askar was still in jail. But in the chaos that followed, al-Qaida fighters stormed the prison and freed its inmates. Askar joined the resistance and fought against the Houthi invaders alongside his jihadi friends, distinguishing himself as a ruthless field commander and dividing his time equally between fighting and looting.


Continue reading https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/d ... -civil-war