Hadi gives pro-Saudi general top military post

Yemen’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, has given a top military post to a veteran pro-Saudi general with links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi groups.

General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar was named as deputy supreme commander of the pro-Hadi forces currently fighting against the Yemeni army, Houthi forces and allied Popular Committees.

Ahmar, who served as Hadi’s presidential adviser for military affairs, fled to Saudi Arabia when Houthi fighters took control of the Yemeni capital in September 2014.

Hadi himself resigned in early 2015 before fleeing to Aden. Later, he also fled to Saudi Arabia when the Yemeni army and Houthi fighters overran the Mediterranean port city.

Ahmar is the half-brother of former Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted in the country’s 2011 revolution. At the time, the powerful military figure defected from Saleh’s military and joined a restructured army under Hadi in 2012.

Political observers are pointing to the Saudi role in Ahmar’s appointment, coming at a time of heavy losses suffered by pro-Hadi militants near Sana’a and elsewhere in the war-torn country.

EA