Members of white nationalist group charged with planning riot at Idaho pride event

A police officer holds one of a group of men, among 31 arrested for conspiracy to riot and affiliated with the white nationalist group Patriot Front, after they were found in the rear of a U Haul van in the vicinity of a North Idaho Pride Alliance LGBTQ+ event in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, US June 11, 2022. (Reuters)

Reuters
Published: 12 June ,2022

Police in northwest Idaho arrested more than two dozen members of a white nationalist group on Saturday and charged them with planning to stage a riot near a LGBTQ pride event, authorities said.

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Lee White, police chief in the city of Coeur D’Alene, told reporters 31 members of Patriot Front face misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot and additional charges could come later.

A local resident spotted the men, wearing white masks and carrying shields, getting into a U-Haul truck and called police, telling the emergency dispatcher it “looked like a little army,” according to White. Police pulled the truck over about 10 minutes after the call.

Video taken at the scene of the arrest and posted online showed about 20 men kneeling next to the truck with their hands bound, wearing similar khaki pants, blue shirts, white masks and baseball caps.

Police recovered at least one smoke grenade and documents that included an “operations plan” from the truck, as well as shields and shin guards, all of which made their intentions clear, White said.

“They came to riot downtown,” he said.

The men come from at least 11 states, White said, including Texas, Colorado and Virginia.

Patriot Front formed in the aftermath of the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when it broke off from another extremist organization, Vanguard America, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

White supremacists are riling up thousands on social media



The Associated Press
Published: 10 June ,2022

The social media posts are of a distinct type. They hint darkly that the CIA or the FBI are behind mass shootings. They traffic in racist and sexist tropes. They revel in the prospect of a “white boy summer.”

White nationalists and supremacists, on accounts often run by young men, are building thriving, macho communities across social media platforms like Instagram, Telegram and TikTok, evading detection with coded hashtags and innuendo.

Their snarky memes and trendy videos are riling up thousands of followers on divisive issues, like abortion, guns, and immigration.

The Department of Homeland Security warned Tuesday that such skewed framing of the subjects could drive extremists to violently attack public places across the US in the coming months.

These type of threats and racist ideology have become so commonplace on social media that it’s nearly impossible for law enforcement to separate internet ramblings from dangerous, potentially violent people, Michael German, who infiltrated white supremacy groups as an FBI agent, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

“It seems intuitive that effective social media monitoring might provide clues to help law enforcement prevent attacks,” German said. “After all, the white supremacist attackers in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and El Paso all gained access to materials online and expressed their hateful, violent intentions on social media.”

But, he continued, “so many false alarms drown out threats.”

DHS and the FBI are also working with state and local agencies to raise awareness about the increased threat around the US in the coming months.

The heightened concern comes just weeks after an 18-year-old white man entered a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, with the goal of killing as many Black patrons as possible. He gunned down 10.

That shooter claims to have been introduced to neo-Nazi websites and a livestream of the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings on the anonymous, online messaging board 4Chan.

In 2018, the white man who gunned down 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue shared his antisemitic rants on Gab, a site that attracts extremists. The year before, a 21-year-old white man who killed 23 people at a Walmart in the largely Hispanic city of El Paso, Texas, shared his anti-immigrant hate on the messaging board 8Chan.

References to hate-filled ideologies are more elusive across mainstream platforms like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Telegram. To avoid detection from artificial intelligence-powered moderation, users don’t use obvious terms like “white genocide” or “white power” in conversation.

They signal their beliefs in other ways: a Christian cross emoji in their profile or words like “anglo” or “pilled,” a term embraced by far-right chatrooms, in usernames.

Most recently, some of these accounts have borrowed the pop song “White Boy Summer” to cheer on the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion on Roe v. Wade, according to an analysis by Zignal Labs, a social media intelligence firm.

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta banned praise and support for white nationalist and separatists movements in 2019 on company platforms, but the social media shift to subtlety makes it difficult to moderate the posts.

“We know these groups are determined to find new ways to try to evade our policies, and that’s why we invest in people and technology and work with outside experts to constantly update and improve our enforcement efforts,” David Tessler, the head of dangerous organizations and individuals policy for Meta, said in a statement.

A closer look reveals hundreds of posts steeped in sexist, antisemitic, and racist content.

In one Instagram post identified by The Associated Press, an account called White Primacy appeared to post a photo of a billboard that describes a common way Jewish people were exterminated during the Holocaust.

“We’re just 75 years since the gas chambers. So no, a billboard calling out bigotry against Jews isn’t an overreaction,” the pictured billboard said.

The caption of the post, however, denied gas chambers were used at all. The post’s comments were even worse: “If what they said really happened, we’d be in such a better place,” one user commented. “We’re going to finish what they started someday,” another wrote.

The account, which had more than 4,000 followers, was immediately removed Tuesday, after the AP asked Meta about it. Meta has banned posts that deny the Holocaust on its platform since 2020.

US extremists are mimicking the social media strategy used by ISIS, which turned to subtle language and images across Telegram, Facebook and YouTube a decade ago to evade the industry-wide crackdown of the terrorist group’s online presence, said Mia Bloom, a communications professor at Georgia State University.

“They’re trying to recruit,” said Bloom, who has researched social media use for both ISIS and far-right extremists. “We’re starting to see some of the same patterns with ISIS and the far-right. The coded speech, the ways to evade AI. The groups were appealing to a younger and younger crowd.”

For example, on Instagram, one of the most popular apps for teens and young adults, white supremacists amplify each other’s content daily and point their followers to new accounts.

To mark UN Oceans Day, divers haul trash polluting ancient underwater Caesarea port

Volunteers remove 45 kgs of garbage from between the sunken pillars and submerged ruins of historic seaport; teams worked at dozens more sites up and down Mediterranean coast

By ILAN BEN ZION 

11 June 2022, 

A scuba-diving volunteer collects trash during a World Oceans Day event in the Mediterranean ancient Caesarea's Roman-period port, Israel, June 10, 2022.

Trash, ghost nets, fishing lines, sunglasses collected by scuba-diving volunteers is on display during World Ocean Day event in the Mediterranean ancient Caesarea's Roman-period port, Israel, June 10, 2022. 

A scuba-diving volunteer shows his collected bag contains trash during World Ocean Day event in the Mediterranean ancient Caesarea's Roman-period port, Israel, June 10, 2022. 

Snorkel-diving volunteers collect trash during World Ocean Day event in the Mediterranean ancient Caesarea's Roman-period port, Israel, June 10, 2022.

A scuba-diving volunteer comes out of the water holding a chair he collected during World Ocean Day event in the Mediterranean ancient Caesarea's Roman-period port, Israel, June 10, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

AP — Divers visiting the ancient seaport of Caesarea on Israel’s Mediterranean coast occasionally find treasure, but on Friday they searched for trash.

Twenty six scuba-diving volunteers removed around 45 kilograms (100 pounds) of garbage from between the sunken pillars and submerged ruins of the historic site of Caesarea Maritima as part of a United Nations World Oceans Day initiative.

Dozens more at sites along Israel’s Mediterranean coast and on the Red Sea reefs in the Israeli resort of Eilat removed more than 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of trash.
State of Jerusalem: The MaqdasyinKeep Watching

The cleanup included bottles and bags, ghost nets, fishing lines, aluminum cans, lost towels and other odd items, including a beach lounger, that were polluting coastal waters.

The events were organized by the Israeli Diving Federation with support from the Environmental Protection Ministry and Nature and Parks Authority, which manages the coastal areas, including Caesarea’s Roman-period port.

The UN marked World Oceans Day on Wednesday, but the scuba diving volunteers were taking to the water to clean the sites on Friday and Saturday, Israel’s weekend.

The UN’s environment program says the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic is dumped into the ocean each minute. Plastic waste can take centuries to degrade, and causes extensive damage to marine ecosystems.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Pair’s disappearance in Brazil’s Amazon tied to ‘fish mafia’

Aerial view showing a boat speeding on the Jurura river in the municipality

 of Carauari, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon Forest, on March 15, 2020. (AFP)

The Associated Press
Published: 12 June ,2022

A main line of police investigation into the disappearance of a British journalist and an Indigenous official in the Amazon points to an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in Brazil’s second-largest Indigenous territory, authorities said.

Freelance journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous official Bruno Pereira were last seen last Sunday morning near the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which sits in an area the size of Portugal bordering Peru and Colombia.

The two men were in the Sao Rafael community. They were returning by boat to the nearby city of Atalaia do Norte but never arrived.

After a slow start, the army, the navy, civil defense, state police and Indigenous volunteers have been mobilized in the search.

On Saturday, federal police said they were still analyzing human matter found the day before in the area where they disappeared. No more details were provided.

The scheme is run by local businessmen, who pay local fishermen to enter the Javari Valley, catch fish, and deliver it to them. One of the most valuable targets is the world’s largest freshwater fish with scales, the arapaima.

It weighs up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) and can reach 3 meters (10 feet). The fish is sold in nearby cities, including Leticia, Colombia, Tabatinga, Brazil, and Iquitos, Peru.

The only known suspect in the disappearances is fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as Pelado, who is under arrest.

According to accounts by Indigenous people who were with Pereira and Phillips, he brandished a rifle at them the day before the pair disappeared. He denies any wrongdoing and said military police tortured him to try to get a confession, his family told the Associated Press..

Pereira, who previously led the government’s Indigenous agency, known as FUNAI, has taken part in several operations against illegal fishing. In such operations, as a rule the fishing gear is seized or destroyed, while the fishermen are fined and briefly detained. Only the Indigenous can legally fish in their territories.

“The crime’s motive is some personal feud over fishing inspection,” the mayor of Atalaia do Norte, Denis Paiva, speculated to reporters without providing more details.

The AP had access to information police shared with Indigenous leadership. While some police, the mayor and others in the region link the pair’s disappearances to a “fish mafia,” federal police do not rule out other lines of investigation. The area has a heavy narcotrafficking activity.

Fisherman Laurimar Alves Lopes, 45, who lives on the banks of Itaquai river, where the pair disappeared, told the AP he gave up fishing inside the Indigenous territory after being detained three times. He said he endured beating and starvation in jail.

“I made many mistakes, I stole a lot of fish. When you see your child dying of hunger you go get it where you have to. So I would go there to steal fish to be able to support my family. But then I said: I’m going to put an end to this, I’m going to plant,” he said during an interview on his boat.

He said he was taken to local federal police headquarters in Tabatinga three times, where he was beaten and left without food.

One of the arrests was made by Funai official Maxciel Pereira dos Santos. Lopes said he was falsely accused of hunting in an Indigenous area this time. He said he spent a night in the local FUNAI base before being sent to Tabatinga.

In 2019, Santos was gunned down in Tabatinga in front of his wife and daughter-in-law. Three years later, the crime remains unsolved. His FUNAI colleagues told the AP they believe the crime is linked to his work against fishermen and poachers.

Lopes, who has five children, says his family’s primary income is $80 monthly from a federal social program. He also sells watermelon and bananas in Atalaia do Norte’s streets, which earned him around $1,200 last year. He claims he only fishes near his home to feed his family, not sell.

Rubber tappers founded all the riverbank communities in the area. In the 1980s, however, rubber tapping declined and they resorted to logging. That ended, too, when the federal government created the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory in 2001. Fishing has become the main economic activity since then.

A fishing trip to the vast Javari Valley lasts around one month, according to Manoel Felipe, a local historian and teacher who also served as a councilman. For each illegal incursion, one fisherman earns at least $3,000.

“The fishermen’s financiers are Colombians,” Felipe said. “In Leticia, everybody was angry with Bruno. This is not a little game. It’s possible they sent a gunman to kill him.”

In mayor Paiva’s view, it is not a coincidence that the only two killings of Funai officials in the region occurred during the administration of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who has often advocated tapping Indigenous territories’ resources, particularly minerals, by the non-Indigenous and companies.

“This government made people more prone to violence. You talk to someone today and he says he has to take up arms. It was not like this before,” he said.

Some religious leaders 'have fuelled' South Africans' hesitancy to take Covid-19 vaccines

Suthentira Govender - 
© Provided by Times Live


Conspiracy theories, the belief that one could be saved from Covid-19 only by faith in God, and that vaccines are the work of the devil and corrupt DNA have fuelled vaccine hesitancy among some South Africans.

This is what emerged at a University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) discussion among experts on how religious institutions, beliefs, leaders, and practices are contributing to the pandemic.

Dr Mayashree Chinsamy of the DST-NRF Centre in Indigenous Knowledge Systems at UKZN said studies on current vaccination rates in different parts of the world, including SA, indicate they are lower than what governments and health organisations anticipated.

Chinsamy said medical communication and information on vaccines tend to be shared in a digital space “in which marginalised communities and social groups have no or limited access or cultural association”.

“Most governments, especially in developing countries, have not managed to invest adequately as strategic partnerships with local community leadership, opinion makers including spiritual organisations, to effectively communicate and disseminate critical information on pandemics including Covid-19 and associated vaccines.

“The focus has tended to be on partnerships with pharmaceutical companies with whom local communities have no relationship or connection in any context.”

Suleman Dangor, emeritus professor at the university's school of religion, said while the majority of Muslim theologians, doctors and scientists in SA advocated for Covid-19 vaccination, a minority of vocal religious leaders opposed it and fuelled hesitancy among their followers.

“There is a small minority of Muslim doctors who are opposed to vaccination, but this is primarily because they are not sure the vaccines will work or whether they have harmful effects. But a few of them are also influenced by theologians.

“The overwhelming majority of Muslim scholars in SA are in support of vaccination. The evidence is that the United Ulama Council of SA, the largest theological group, supports it. The general Muslim public is influenced by doctors, scientists and theologians when it comes to issues of health including vaccination and are favourably disposed to vaccination.”

But Dangor said there is a “sizeable minority who are either opposed to vaccines or hesitant”.

“For some their hesitancy is based on science, where they are not sure that the vaccines are safe enough and argue that they were not enough trials conducted to convince people that the vaccines actually work.

“Some Muslims are very big on conspiracy theories. The one assumption is that there is a plan to reduce the world's population through vaccines.

“Those theologians opposed to vaccinations may refuse to be vaccinated and also advise their followers to do the same. They give talks in the mosques, and although they are a minority, they are quite vocal.

“They believe people will die at their appointed time, so it doesn’t matter whether they take the vaccine or not.

“Some also claim that the vaccines contain 'Haram' — meaning not permissible for Muslims — substances. Scholars have spoken to scientists and they know that the ingredients are permissible.”

Dangor said some theologians argue that vaccination is not necessary if people have strong faith in God.

“There is no doubt that a substantial number of Muslims are influenced by theologians. However fortunately the majority of theologians in SA support vaccination and have also publicly announced that they have received it.”

Rev Siphiwe Ndebele, national executive president of the Baptist Convention of SA, said many Christians leaders supported vaccines, but some used their religious authority to mislead people against it.

“We need to accept that there has been a threat to vaccinations. The SA Council of Churches (SACC) identified a threat by some church leaders against it. Some pastors have used their religious authority to mislead people and place their faith in God rather than medical practice.

“Some suggest that God is punishing us because they view Covid-19 as God's wrath.

“SACC and other religious bodies continue their advocacy for all South Africans to be vaccinated.

“The belief that Covid vaccines will change the DNA of people, that it is satanic, that it contains human or animal remains and that it is the mark of the beast according to some Christians, has brought a greater challenge to church leaders.

“Many religious organisations from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith have continued with their advocacy for vaccinations, arguing that refusal is a sign of foolishness and not faithfulness.”

Ndebele said some religious leaders have promoted Holy Communion as Covid-19 medicine and some have stated that Jesus is their vaccine security and immunity from the virus.

He said it has been a battle to combat these “teachings against Covid vaccines, without being perceived as attacking someone's religion”.

“The religious sector has had to stand up and correct the wrong doctrine publicly.

“Another curveball was thrown by former chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng in his published prayer when he said 'if there be any Covid-19 vaccine, that is the work of the devil, meant to infuse 666 in the lives of people, meant to corrupt their DNA, may it be destroyed by fire'.

“In the mind of the ordinary man this sounded as if the former chief justice is against vaccination. The real danger of that statement, is that it decreased the public trust in vaccines, especially at a time when the country was starting to roll out vaccinations.”

Report: Over 37mln Americans Currently Live in Poverty

TEHRAN (FNA)- More than 37 million Americans currently live in poverty, according to Census Bureau statistics, with increases among non-Hispanic white and Hispanic individuals seen between 2019 and 2020.

Income is also commonly cited as a social determinant of health as low income individuals are more likely to suffer from chronic disease and die from any cause in the United States, The Hill reported.

Several solutions have been proposed to address wealth inequality, which disproportionately affects people of color. These include implementing the Earned Income Tax Credit, increasing Social Security income, and raising the minimum wage.

By modeling the potential health benefits of four hypothetical income support policies, researchers found each policy could prevent thousands of deaths among working age adults annually when compared with no intervention. Findings of the exploratory analysis were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Health Forum.

The four policies modeled included a universal basic income intervention whereby each adult received $1000 per month, and a smaller transfer of $500 per month for those with a household income of less than $100,000 per year–the latter intervention being a modified version of the LIFT act.

The third intervention provided an income guarantee of at least 100 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) for 1 adult (measured at $12,760 in 2019) while the last policy was a negative income tax, which guaranteed an income equal to 133 percent of the FPL and rewarded earned income up to a threshold, researchers explained. Each policy was referred to as universal basic income, modified LIFT act, poverty alleviation, and negative income tax, respectively.

Incomes were defined based on the 2020 Annual Social and Economic Supplement and CDC data were used to estimate all-cause mortality rates.

Adults in the models were aged 18 to 64 and simulations estimated all-cause mortality over 5 to 40 years into the future.

Researchers found universal basic income averted between 42,000 and 104,000 deaths among adults each year, compared with 19,000 to 67,000 deaths averted each year from a negative income tax.

The modified LIFT act reduced deaths by 17,000 to 52,000 each year and poverty alleviation led to 12,000 to 32,000 deaths averted.

The models also showed moving individuals from low-income groups to higher-income groups yielded more pronounced benefits with regard to all-cause mortality.

Under the universal basic income scheme, researchers estimated each death averted costs between $16 to $43 million, while these numbers drop under the LIFT act model to $3.7 to $12 million.

Although the Environmental Protection Agency puts the value of a statistical life used at $7.4 million, these cost estimates “do not reflect any potential reductions in health care spending that are associated with improvements in population health like those modeled in this study, or potential productivity gains from longevity among working-age adults”, researchers stated.

Additional factors that contribute to mortality such as education, employment or wealth were not taken into account in the study, and authors note future research should include information on race and ethnicity.

“Despite decades of research that has demonstrated that income is an important determinant of health, discourse around income support policies has disproportionately emphasized their economic benefits and costs, with little to no focus on the health benefits that these interventions might provide,” they wrote.

Russia Adds Committee Against Torture To 'Foreign Agents' List

Russia has added the Committee Against Torture, a nongovernmental organization founded in 2000 to advocate for investigations into allegations of torture, to its registry of so-called foreign agents.

The Russian Ministry of Justice entered the Committee Against Torture to its updated list on June 10.

First passed in 2012, Russia's foreign agent legislation initially targeted NGOs and rights groups accused of conducting foreign-funded political activities.

It has since been expanded to punish media organizations, individual journalists, YouTube vloggers, and many other perceived opponents alleged to have even indirect ties to outside funding.

Under the law, those designated as foreign agents must comply with numerous constraints and laborious procedures, including indicating their foreign agent status in all their publications, under threat of severe sanctions.

The Committee Against Torture has fought for investigations into allegations of mistreatment at the hands of the security forces, including in Chechnya.

The organization had already been designated as a foreign agent in 2015 and again the following year but dissolved itself and reformed to try and avoid the label.

With reporting by AFP

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
USSEC Has Proof That Terra Funneled $80 Million To Various Crypto Wallets Before Collapse


By Nica Osorio @techcentrik
06/10/22 

VIDEO 01:03 Celebrities Under Fire After Crypto Market Collapses

KEY POINTS

Terraform Labs is currently being investigated by various authorities

The USSEC is also looking into the design structure of Terra

LUNA 2.0, the native token of the new Terra blockchain was trading down 0.51 percent at $3.10

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (USSEC) reportedly has proof that Terraform Labs funneled around $80 million in funds to multiple cryptocurrency wallets in the months leading to the collapse of Terra's algorithmic stablecoin UST and its native token LUNA.

Terraform Labs may have moved on from LUNA and UST, but authorities are hell-bent on trying to get to the bottom of the collapse that dragged the entire cryptocurrency down for weeks, letting them trade in a bearish market.

While authorities in South Korea, where two TFL offices were previously situated, are currently investigating the collapse, the USSEC is conducting its own investigation on CEO and founder Do Kwon and several Terra employees for potential irregularities leading to the downfall of the once-glorious cryptocurrency.

Apparently, the USSEC conducted a video survey with some of the key designers of TFL to look into the design structure of Terra, a local news agency reported. During the investigation, the team stumbled upon a situation where 100 billion won or around $80 million of the company's funds were being funneled monthly to different crypto wallets for "operating expense."

As a part of SKALE network's mainnet launch series, our CEO, Do Kwon joined Jack O'Holleran CEO of SKALE Labs and Simon Seojoon Kim CEO and managing partner from Hashed talked about bringing crypto mainstream in this panel talk. 

Photo: YouTube Screenshot/Terra Offiicial YouTube Channel

These transactions happened in the months leading to the collapse of Terra. Reports claimed that the USSEC saw it as a red flag that screamed potential money laundering activity -- something several insiders previously claimed Do Kwon maneuvered.

The USSEC secured statements from TFL employees stating that "the funds flowed into dozens of cryptocurrency wallets." One of the key informants claimed Kwon had not received any official payment from the company, triggering more suspicions.

"This corroborates the information provided by my sources (that indicated Do Kwon had silently been cashing out hundreds of millions into foreign bank accounts & bitcoin wallets)," FatManTerra, the mouthpiece of some of the TFL whistleblowers, tweeted. The Twitter user has accused Kwon of lots of allegations but has yet to provide any piece of evidence implicating the Terraform Labs founder.

LUNA 2.0, the native token of the new Terra blockchain was trading down 0.51 percent at $3.10 with a 24-hour volume of $624,790,408 as of 4:22 a.m. ET on Friday based on the latest data from CoinMarketCap.

Brazil, U.S. To Cooperate Against Illegal Timber Exports From The Amazon

By Lisandra Paraguassu
06/10/22

The governments of Brazil and the United States are in talks to jointly combat exports of illegal timber from the Amazon rainforest, as well as other unlawful environmental activities.

The talks were held on the sidelines of a meeting Thursday at the Summit of the Americas between U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and Brazil's Justice and Public Security Minister Anderson Torres and Environment Minister Joaquim Leite.

The details of the cooperation deal have not yet been defined, Torres told Reuters on Friday, but a possible agreement around collaboration would involve support from the United States, especially in the area of intelligence.

Torres said the partnership could also entail resources for setting up bases in the Amazon, adding that a technical meeting to define its model should be scheduled in the coming weeks.

"I think that if we begin to work more closely together, this collaboration will involve intelligence and information exchange, the investigation of these timber routes," Torres said.

The meeting with Kerry dealt with various issues of Brazilian environmental policy, but centered on policies for combating organized crime in the Amazon, which includes the extraction and illegal sale of wood, but also mining and other crimes.

Brazil has faced international criticism for its handling of illegal deforestation in the Amazon and other environmental issues. Brazil's Amazon deforestation in 2021 surged to the highest level in 15 years, according to official government statistics.

 

The Precarious Yemen Truce – OpEd

 June 11, 2022 

By Neville Teller

The two-month truce between the Yemeni government and the Houthis, brokered by the UN, ended on June 2 but has been extended for a further two months. The two sides are still far apart, but the truce period certainly witnessed a marked reduction in civilian deaths and casualties – down by more than 50 per cent according to published data.  It has also seen a degree of tentative co-operation between the two sides.  But the situation remains shaky, and the two sides continually trade accusations about breaches committed by one side or the other.

The truce deal included a halt to offensive military operations, permitting fuel imports into Houthi-controlled ports and some flights from Sanaa airport which has been closed to commercial flights since 2015. The Yemeni government controls Yemen’s airspace and seas.

Misunderstandings mark the relationship between the two sides. On May 6 the Saudi-led alliance announced a humanitarian gesture in support of the truce.  In coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross, it said it was in the process of freeing more than 100 Houthi prisoners and transporting them back to Yemen.  In the event 126 prisoners were repatriated, of which 108 were flown from Saudi Arabia to the southern city of Aden, where Yemen’s Saudi-backed government is based.  The Houthis refused to accept them.  The head of the Houthis’ prisoner affairs committee said the list of detainees included people “unknown to us and who are not among our prisoners”.

They said that only five of the detainees were “prisoners of war”, four were fishermen “who had been kidnapped in the Red Sea” and nine of the detainees were foreigners from Africa.  The Houthi movement said it welcomed the freeing of any Yemenis, but called for coordination with its authorities – adding that, for its part, the group had freed 400 prisoners of war so far in 2022.

On May 10 Hans Grundberg, UN special envoy for Yemen, hastened to the country intent on shoring up the truce.  He had issues to resolve with both sides. He needed to persuade the Houthis to resume flights from Sanaa airport and to lift their siege of Taiz in south-western Yemen. He had also to take into account the Houthis’ accusation that the government had been impeding fuel shipments to the port of Hodeidah. 

Grundberg made progress.  The government had been insisting that all passengers on flights from Sanaa carry government-issued passports.  By May 12 Grundberg had persuaded the Saudi coalition to allow Houthi-issued passport holders to travel outside Yemen, removing the major obstacle to the resumption of commercial flights from Sanaa under the truce deal.  

Meanwhile, in the face of a potential environmental disaster, the two sides in Yemen’s civil conflict did at least agree on one issue.

The FSO (floating, storage and offloading vessel) Safer was constructed in 1976 as an oil tanker and converted to an FSO facility a decade later. It is among the largest oil tankers in the world and is currently holding more than a million barrels of oil.   Anchored off Yemen’s Red Sea coast for more than 30 years, it has been out of use since 2015 and is now beyond repair and at imminent risk of spilling its contents into the Red Sea.  The consequences would be disastrous. Fishing communities on the Red Sea coast would be devasted, and the nearby ports of Hodeidah and Saleef, the lifelines allowing food, fuel and humanitarian supplies to enter Yemen, would close. 

On May 11 the UN and the Netherlands co-sponsored a pledging conference in the Hague, in an effort to raise the $144 million required to prevent the Safer from splitting, breaking apart or exploding.  The plan is to install a replacement vessel within 18 months, and meanwhile to transfer the oil from the decaying tanker to a safe temporary vessel in a four-month emergency operation. 

In a video message to the conference, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the need for urgent action. “Today’s event is a critical step towards preventing a catastrophe that would affect Yemen, the region and the world,” he said. “There isn’t a moment to lose.” 

Some $40 million was immediately pledged by 10 donor countries plus the EU, and is now available to allow a start to be made. The UN-coordinated plan is supported by both the Yemeni government coalition and the Houthis.  

The official coordinating the UN Development Program in Yemen, Auke Lootsma, emphasized the urgent need for the rest of the funding: “If we do not receive sufficient funding urgently, the weather window to transfer the oil will close.  By October, high winds and volatile currents make the operation more dangerous and increase the risk of the ship breaking up.” 

This common danger has already generated a degree of agreement between the disputing sides in Yemen, and might well induce more. So the UN is trying to arrange for the truce to be extended beyond June 2, to allow for negotiations aimed at ending the seven-year war. 

The war can be brought to a close only through an understanding between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, but all parties will need to be realistic about the limits of the Houthis’ capacity for compromise, particularly when it comes to their relationship with Iran.  What Yemen really needs are elections, an inclusive government, and a new structure for the state. UN Resolution 2216 aims to establish democracy in a federally united Yemen. The Houthis must be given the opportunity to choose. Do they wish to remain an outlawed militia permanently, or would they prefer to become a legitimate political party, able to contest parliamentary and presidential elections and participate in government? The price would be serious engagement in negotiations aimed at a peaceful transition to a political solution for a united Yemen.

Neville Teller's latest book is ""Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020". He has written about the Middle East for more than 30 years, has published five books on the subject, and blogs at "A Mid-East Journal". Born in London and a graduate of Oxford University, he is also a long-time dramatist, writer and abridger for BBC radio and for the UK audiobook industry. He was made an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2006 "for services to broadcasting and to drama."