US withholds food aid to pressure Yemen's Houthi rebels

The Biden administration is withholding tens of thousands of tons of wheat destined for hungry people in northern Yemen as it plays diplomatic hardball to compel the region’s ruling Houthi rebels to ensure aid reaches those most in need.

The United States move aims to strengthen the World Food Programme’s hand in stalled talks with the Houthi leadership over the agency’s proposal to redirect food deliveries to districts with the highest levels of acute hunger.

A WFP senior official tells Colum it may have to pause its aid operations if it can’t secure an agreement with the Houthis. “We are still distributing” food in northern Yemen, says Corinne Fleischer, WFP’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, “But if, you know, we don’t come to a conclusion in our negotiations with the Houthis … we will have to pause.”

The crisis plays out against a backdrop of long-standing allegations by the U.S., U.N. investigators, and human rights advocates that the Houthis have diverted international aid to their followers, aiding the recruitment of soldiers and indoctrination of young girls and boys, while denying assistance to the families of youngsters who refused to serve in the military.

Some fear the Houthis have harnessed food distribution to radicalize the population and transform an extremist Shia movement into a regional force with ambitions well beyond the country’s border.

“They engage in public recruitment from schools, mosques, and neighborhoods and one of the ways they have managed to do this is by trading humanitarian aid,” says Baraa Shiban, a Yemeni researcher who previously served as adviser to the Yemeni embassy in London.