WASHINGTON: As Yemen’s war enters its third year, a two-day workshop addressing the military, political and humanitarian challenges of the conflict warned of Houthi ties to Iran and their impact on legitimate institutions in Yemen.
Saudi and Yemeni diplomats both echoed the urgency for a political solution, and invited the Houthis to the table as a political party and not an armed militia.
The conference in Washington, organized by the Gulf Research Center, featured Saudi and Yemeni officials, as well as US defense experts and former US ambassadors to Sanaa. The meetings took place on Thursday and Friday at the National Council for US-Arab relations, and at the Army Navy Club respectively.
Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Yemen Mohammed Al-Jaber stressed the need for a fair political solution to the conflict. “We invite the Houthis to the negotiating table, and we are more than open to a political solution,” he said.
His invitation, however, was paralleled with heavy criticism of the Houthis as an armed militia, accusing them of “selling Iran’s provided weapons to Al-Qaeda in Yemen.”
Al-Jaber also lambasted Iran’s “clear position... to destroy and undermine Yemen,” accusing Tehran of “supporting Houthis’ terrorism.”
The Saudi diplomat defined Riyadh’s role as “non-discriminatory and non-sectarian,” stating that its aid “goes to all the legitimate parties in Yemen.”
He stressed that the Hodeidah port “needs to be under the control of the international community so that aid can be distributed to the Yemeni people.”
Yemen’s Ambassador to Washington Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak defined the goal of a “political solution that preserves the Yemeni state and institutions” in ending the conflict.
Mubarak maintained that the Saudi-led coalition forces “are pushing for a political solution” to the war.
The Yemeni diplomat however sounded the alarm over the Houthis’ armament, saying that “for Yemen’s future, we can allow the Houthis as a political party but not as armed militia.” Mubarak offered heavy criticism of the Houthis, saying that “their leaders promote just as much extremism and violence as Al-Qaeda.”
In that capacity, Mubarak said Saudi Arabia’s decision to intervene was “the only option to prevent non-state actor from taking over Yemen.”
Former US Ambassador Gerald Feierstein stressed three goals for Saudi Arabia in Yemen. First is the “need to preserve legitimate Yemeni government,” and second is to “prevent further Houthi and Iranian expansion,” while the third goal is to protect the Saudi-Yemen border.
These goals were reiterated by the head of the Gulf Research Center (GRC) Abdulaziz Sager, who warned about letting Yemen “turn into another Lebanon with (a) violent non-state actor (Houthis) dominating the country’s security forces.” Sager said that the “coalition is trying to end the war but Iran is preventing it by financing violent non-state actors.”
In that context, Mustafa Alani, a defense analyst at GRC drew a red line for Saudi Arabia in Yemen, contending that the Kingdom cannot accept Houthi control over Yemen. “It would be a major strategic threat blocking all access to the sea,” he said. “The Houthi siege was a reality check for Riyadh (in 2015) after allowing the armed Houthi movement to grow in early 2000s.” Alani pointed out the difficulties and the complexities of the war, and that “there is no magic solution.” He said that any Hodeidah operation “is a high cost with less benefits. We aren’t prepared.”
The two-day conference framed Saudi Arabia’s military role in Yemen as “one of necessity and not choice,” and noted increased US-Saudi defense cooperation following US Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ visit. It highlighted the challenging humanitarian and economic terrains in the conflict, without, however, providing a clear exit strategy.
Houthis selling Iranian weapons to Al-Qaeda, says Saudi diplomat
Houthis selling Iranian weapons to Al-Qaeda, says Saudi diplomat
Women main victims of Sudan conflict abuses: minister to AFP
- Khalifa said sexual violence has been reported on both sides, but she insisted it is “systematic” among the RSF
- Her ministry has documented more than 1,800 rapes between April 2023 and October 2025
PORT SUDAN: Women are the main victims of abuse in Sudan’s war, facing “the world’s worst” sexual violence and other crimes committed with impunity, a rights activist turned social affairs minister for the army-backed government told AFP.
The Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a brutal conflict since April 2023 that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced around 11 million and been marked by widespread sexual violence.
Sulaima Ishaq Al-Khalifa said abuses against women routinely accompanied looting and attacks, with reports of rape often perpetrated as “the family witnessed” the crime.
“There is no age limit. A woman of 85 could be raped, a child of one year could be raped,” the trained psychologist told AFP at her home in Port Sudan.
The longtime women’s rights activist, recently appointed to the government, said that women were also being subjected to sexual slavery and trafficked to neighboring countries, alongside forced marriages arranged to avoid shame.
Khalifa said sexual violence has been reported on both sides, but she insisted it is “systematic” among the RSF, who she says use it “as a weapon of war” and for the purposes of “ethnic cleansing.”
Her ministry has documented more than 1,800 rapes between April 2023 and October 2025 — a figure that does not include atrocities documented in western Darfur and the neighboring Kordofan region from late October onwards.
“It’s about... humiliating people, forcing them to leave their houses and places and cities. And also breaking... the social fabrics,” Khalifa said.
“When you are using sexual violence as a weapon of war, that means you want to extend... the war forever,” because it feeds a “sense of revenge,” she added.
- ‘War crimes’ -
A report by the SIHA Network, an activist group that documents abuses against women in the Horn of Africa, found that more than three-quarters of recorded cases involved rape, with 87 percent attributed to the RSF.
The United Nations has repeatedly raised alarm over what it describes as targeted attacks on non?Arab communities in Darfur, while the International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened a formal investigation into “war crimes” by both sides.
Briefing the UN Security Council in mid-January, ICC deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said investigators had uncovered evidence of an “organized, calculated campaign” in El-Fasher — the army’s last stronghold in Darfur captured by the RSF in late October.
The campaign, Khan added, involved mass rapes and executions “on a massive scale,” sometimes “filmed and celebrated” by the perpetrators and “fueled by a sense of complete impunity.”
Darfur endured a brutal wave of atrocities in the early 2000s, and a former Janjaweed commander — from the militia structure that later evolved into the RSF — was recently found guilty by the International Criminal Court of multiple war crimes, including rape.
“What’s happening now is much more ugly. Because the mass rape thing is happening and documented,” said Khalifa.
RSF fighters carrying out the assaults “have been very proud about doing this and they don’t see it as a crime,” she added.
“You feel that they have a green light to do whatever they want.”
In Darfur, several survivors said RSF fighters “have been accusing them of being lesser people, like calling them ‘slaves’, and saying that when I’m attacking you, assaulting you sexually, I’m actually ‘honoring’ you, because I am more educated than you, or (of) more pure blood than you.”
- ‘Torture operation’ -
Women in Khartoum and Darfur, including El-Fasher, have described rapes carried out by a range of foreign nationals.
These were “mercenaries from West Africa, speaking French, including from Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, as well as Colombia and Libya” — allegedly fighting alongside the RSF, Khalifa added.
Some victims were abducted and held as sexual slaves, while others were sold through trafficking networks operating across Sudan’s porous borders, said Khalifa.
Many of these cases remain difficult to document because of the collapse of state institutions.
In conservative communities, social stigma also remains a major obstacle to documenting the scale of the abuse.
Families often force victims into marriage to “cover up what happened,” particularly when pregnancies result from rape, according to the minister.
“We call it a torture operation,” she said, describing “frightening” cases in which children and adolescent girls under 18 are forced into marriage.
