US to reclassify Houthis as terror organisation

The US is planning to call the Houthi rebels in Yemen “global terrorists” again, according to senior officials in the Biden administration.

Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, will agree to the move while there are ongoing attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea by a group supported by Iran.

US banks will have to stop Houthi money and Houthi people can’t come into the US.

It undoes Mr. Blinken’s decision in 2021 to take the Houthis off the list.

In the last days of the Trump administration, officials called the Houthis as global terrorists and a foreign terrorist organization.

They did it even though the UN and aid groups said it could make the hunger crisis in Yemen much worse.

But in 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took office, the new Secretary Blinken changed the decision because of the urgent humanitarian crisis.

Before announcing on Wednesday, officials said they decided to reinstate the SDGT label but not the FTO label to keep aid going into Yemen.

“We made the right decision to cancel,” said one government official, explaining that it was done because of a very serious humanitarian crisis in the country and to make sure that US policies were not stopping civilians from getting urgent help.

However, they agreed that the Houthis’ continuous attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, with dozens of missiles being fired, are not acceptable.

The new SDGT title will start in 30 days. It means that people and companies in the US can’t help the Houthis.

However, officials want to make it clear that there will be exceptions in the new rules to make sure that aid can still get to Yemen, a country that has been extremely damaged by almost ten years of fighting.

“We know that the situation in Yemen is very serious and we are trying to make sure that these sanctions do not hurt the people of Yemen too much,” one official said. They also mentioned that they are working on creating special exceptions and permissions for certain situations.

The Houthis started attacking trade ships in November because they wanted to retaliate against Israel’s military operation in Gaza. Ever since then, the group has carried out many attacks on commercial ships traveling through the Red Sea, which is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world.

In reply, the US and UK bombed many Houthi targets on January 11th. The strikes started because the Houthi forces didn’t stop their attacks, despite being warned to do so. Australia, Bahrain, the Netherlands and Canada supported the strikes.

The Biden administration said the new label does not mean they think the air attacks will stop the Houthi attacks.

“We think these sanctions are part of a bigger plan to stop the Houthis from carrying out terror attacks,” said one government official. “Our sanctions are not meant to be looked at by themselves, but as part of a bigger plan. ”

After the strikes last week, the Houthis said that the US and UK will soon understand that the action was a big mistake in their history.

“America and Britain messed up by starting the war in Yemen because they didn’t learn from their past experiences,” said the group’s leader Mohammed al-Bukhaiti on social media.

Yemen has been badly damaged by a civil war that got worse in 2015. The Houthis took over big areas in the west of the country from the government that most countries approve of. Then, a group of countries with Saudi Arabia in charge stepped in to try to bring back the government’s control.

The fighting has caused more than 160,000 people to die and created a very bad situation where 21 million people need help.