On May 15, 2015, I sat between two Yemeni officers in a police truck behind the Criminal Investigation Department in Sana’a. “You’ll be free in two hours,” one of the officers told me as he stared anxiously at the building, which housed a prison run by the US-backed Counter-Terror Unit (CTU).

In November, the Sana’a Center organized a visit by an international press delegation to Yemen’s Shabwa governorate. This was the third such trip the center has arranged, with previous ones being to Marib and Hadramawt, and came as part of the Sana’a Center’s continuing commitment to ensure the world, through its media, has a window onto Yemen – given the…

Although far from the frontlines of Yemen’s civil war, Al-Mahra governorate remains an important battleground for Gulf powers competing for influence in the conflict. A Saudi military buildup in Al-Mahra, purportedly aimed at slowing the flow of Houthi-bound weapons from Iran, reached a tipping point in February when fighting broke out over the mounting restrictions on cross-border trade. The clashes immediately preceded the appointment of a new governor who has been less divisive than his predecessor and has found some…

Yemenis often puzzle over the role the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plays in Yemen. Today, the main source of confusion stems from Emirati actions in the south, which raise fears among Yemeni unionists and false expectations among Yemeni secessionists that the UAE is working to redivide Yemen into two or three parts.

This policy brief on the environmental impact of the oil extraction industries in Hadramawt explores what seems to be a well-known secret among residents living near oilfield concession blocks and people from the industry: that oil exploration and production activities in the governorate may be deviating from sound environmental standards and could be posing a serious risk to the environment…

As US President Donald Trump’s administration winds down, reports have emerged that Washington is once again considering the idea of designating the armed Houthi movement, Ansar Allah, as a foreign terrorist organization. Such a move would criminalize most interactions with the Houthi movement conducted without US government waivers. The United States, a key international actor in the Yemen conflict and…

Washington’s Yemen policy, long driven by counterterrorism and broader regional interests, has substantively remained unchanged through the past three US administrations. At times, drone strikes have intensified or direct military ground operations have eased, but Yemeni internal issues — political, economic and security — consistently have been left to Saudi Arabia.

Following an escalation in recent months, there was some progress by the end of November in mediating a solution to end the struggle between the two fragmented branches of the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) over access to financial data from the country's commercial and Islamic banks and money exchange outlets

The rival branches of the fragmented Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) have recently escalated their battle for control over access to data held by the country’s commercial and Islamic banks and money exchange firms, threatening the viability of the financial sector overall and risking a broad spectrum of economic and humanitarian fallout.