Trump's Malevolent Yemen Policy

The reckless application of severe sanctions against such an impoverished and battered country will drive a population that has already endured almost a decade of war and starvation towards famine.

As expected, Trump has started the process for redesignating the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), and he is also going after USAID support for U.N. and humanitarian aid groups working in Yemen:

It also directs the US Agency for International Development to end its relationship with United Nations agencies, nongovernmental organizations and contractors “that have made payments to the Houthis, or which have opposed international efforts to counter the Houthis while turning a blind eye towards the Houthis’ terrorism and abuses.”

The Biden administration removed the Houthis from the FTO list for a very good reason, and it is a terrible mistake to put them back on. The Houthis are the de facto government of the part of Yemen where most of its people live. Labeling them as terrorists will do tremendous harm to the population. The sanctions that come with this designation threaten to cripple the economy, block remittances, and prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid. That is why humanitarian aid groups condemned the designation the first time, and it is why they are condemning it again now.

Scott Paul of Oxfam issued a statement in response: “We’ve seen before the devastating impacts of President Trump’s previous designation on Yemeni communities: in the months preceding the designation and during the week it was in effect, imports of necessities like food, medicine, and fuel all dropped and the economy fell into further crisis and the humanitarian situation deteriorated. The Trump administration is aware of these consequences but chose to move forward anyway, and will bear responsibility for the hunger and disease that will follow.”

The last time that Trump put the Houthis on the FTO list was at the very end of his first term. It was one of Pompeo’s parting shots to create problems for the next administration. Now we are looking at a much more grave situation where this decision will likely remain in force for at least the next four years. Trump has just delivered a death sentence to countless innocent people in Yemen so that he can look “tougher” than Biden. As Paul warned in his statement, “A designation would push the entire country’s economy from crisis into freefall.”

There have been indications for a while that Trump would once again pursue hardline policies in Yemen. It is consistent with his indefensible support for the Saudi coalition’s war during his first term and his cruel use of broad sanctions in many parts of the world. The hawks that make up his national security team have also been demanding redesignation for a long time. Earlier this month, I warned that Trump would move to redesignate the Houthis:

Placing the Houthis back on the FTO list would still have all the same severe downsides as before, but Trump and his team may not care about the destructive consequences that designation would have for the people of Yemen.

Ordering USAID to end its relationship with all these UN agencies and NGOs will have adverse effects on humanitarian relief efforts that go far beyond Yemen. Practically every major humanitarian aid organization opposed designating the Houthis the last time that Trump did it. So did the World Food Program. Presumably the Trump administration is going to hold that against them as proof that they “opposed…efforts to counter the Houthis,” but we need to remember that these groups opposed those efforts because they were cruel and destructive. Making USAID end its relationships with all these groups is unconscionable and will make it more difficult to address other humanitarian crises effectively.

The reckless application of severe sanctions against such an impoverished and battered country will drive a population that has already endured almost a decade of war and starvation towards famine. No one in the Trump administration can claim that they don’t know what the likely effects of this designation will be. Trump’s decision means that many poor and starving people will die preventable deaths from hunger and disease. This is not just a wrongheaded decision. It is malevolent.