Last week, the Yemeni Alliance for Monitoring Human Rights Violations published a report that confirmed the use of torture on prisoners held by the Houthis around the north of Yemen.[1] The human rights organization recounted over 450 cases of torture from September of 2014, shortly after the war began, until December 2018.[2] All of these cases were observed in prisons controlled by the Houthis, many of which may have been established after the onset of the conflict.[3]

On September 5th, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with the provincial heads of the AKP party. During the meeting, Erdoğan accused the European Union (EU) of not upholding their end of a 2016 agreement to assist Turkey in addressing the large influx of Syrian refugees over the past several years. In his statement last week, Erdoğan noted that: “We haven’t been given as much support for the refugees in our country as we expected, especially from the EU and the international community.

This forthcoming October, Karbala in Iraq will host the pilgrimage of Arbaʿīn, one of the largest religious gatherings on earth that easily competes with the Ḥajj in Mecca in term of numbers. In 2018, the number of participants in Arbaʿīn has reached nearly twenty million, including two million Iranians.

More than 10 days have passed since the Syrian Army announced the resumption of military operations against rebel factions in Idlib, the remaining rebel bastion in the north. The army’s decision followed a futile attempt to maintain a truce that lasted for five days between the contested parties amidst mutual accusations of the agreement’s violation. The agreement, which was brokered in Kazakhstan at the end of July, stipulated a ceasefire in Idlib during which Turkey and Russia would guarantee the implementation of the Sochi Deal of 2018.

On August 4th, Turkey announced a new plan to launch a military operation in Kurdish controlled northern Syria, east of the Euphrates. Immediate negative responses from the Kurdish forces in the region and the United States government have since resolved. On August 7th, the United States and Turkey reached a deal that would establish a “safe zone” in the region.

Turmoil continues to undermine any future prospects of stability in Yemen. One can say that the country’s four years of ongoing conflict continue to fail in differentiating between those who are civilians and those that are not. Not even peripheral areas that are situated in remote of the contested areas have escaped the fires.