Ned Whalley

4 weeks ago | sanaacenter.org | Ryan Bailey |Ned Whalley

A US aircraft carrier in the Red Sea region // Photo credit: US Central Command X account At a May 6 press conference with the Canadian prime minister, US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire with the Houthis (Ansar Allah). Trump said the group had agreed to end attacks on the US Navy and maritime shipping transiting the Red Sea in exchange for an immediate halt to US airstrikes in Yemen. Each side claimed the other had backed down.

2 months ago | sanaacenter.org | Ned Whalley

“This [is] not about the Houthis.” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, March 2025.[1]Recently leaked US attack plans, shared inadvertently with Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, were startling not just in their disclosure but in what they disclosed – that the Trump administration may have no intermediate or long-term plan for how to deal with the Houthis.

Feb 5, 2025 | sanaacenter.org | Casey Coombs |Ned Whalley

On January 23, the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) detained seven UN staff members working in Sana’a.[1] In response, the UN halted the movement of all staff working in Houthi-controlled territories[2] as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the UN workers’ immediate release.[3] But the incident is just the latest in a string of disappearances and detentions of UN, NGO, and civil society staff in Yemen, who are often held without charge and denied contact with lawyers or family...

Jul 23, 2024 | sanaacenter.org | Ned Whalley

Threatened with new attacks, Saudi Arabia has forced the Yemeni government to abandon efforts to cut off the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) from the international banking system. Financial sanctions enacted by the government-aligned Central Bank of Yemen in Aden (CBY-Aden) were perhaps the government’s last card in its efforts to negotiate economic relief or affect the power imbalance ahead of presumptive peace talks.