Yahya al-Shami, the engineer of the Houthi coup
English - Saturday 03 August 2019 الساعة 04:05 pm
Aden – NewsYemen – Al-Bayan
After the failure to contain the conflict among the Houthi wings, the Houthi militias showed the Houthi militias military leader Yahya al-Shami who has been running the militias at the back scene, while the militias removed Mohammed Ali al-Houthi as the so-called as a Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee towards the Houthi Shura council
After he had presided over what I called the Supreme Committee for the Crises that have led the confrontations since the militias coup against Legitimacy, al-Shami was appointed a member of the so-called Supreme Political Council, which nominally administers areas of the militias' control in preparation for assuming the Presidency of the Council, currently run by Mahdi al-Mashat, a former director of the office of the militias' leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi, after removed Mohammed Ali al-Houthi from this council, and appointed him as a member of the Shura Council
Al-Shami is a former Yemeni army officer. His name emerged during the clashes between the two parts of Yemen in the 1980s, and was condemned during the rule of the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh of executing death sentences of a number of elements of the Leftist National Front in Ibb province before the president Saleh approved the death sentences, issued by a military court against them for dealing with the Southern part of Yemen
He was also known for leading a military campaign in that area, he stormed villages, destroyed farms and harassed the population on the grounds that they were loyal to the South-backed Front.
Since the beginning of the confrontation with the militias' rebellion against the Central Authority in Sana'a in mid-2004, his son Zakaria al-Shami, who is currently running the Ministry of Transport in the Houthi government, emerged as a military commander of the militias, although he was a member of the armed forces, and had received the rank of a military officer backed by his father
Zakaria al-Shami was arrested by the Yemeni army and he was released after getting a mediation by his father who was known the military leaders close to the former President Saleh
Zakaria al-Shami was appointed as Sa'ada governor in order to calm and normalize situations in north part of Yemen, in particular after the fifth war; during his tenure as the governor, he facilitated the Houthis to tighten control the security services and penetrate Yemen's army and its camps in the province
Mysterious person : Yahya al-Shami
The late Yemeni President awakened the mistake he made by appointing a man as a Sa'ada governor, after his dismissal from office, the situation was not changed, since that the Houthi militias had tightened their grip on more than five army camps, weapons stores and security services, and used that period to transport large quantities of Iranian weapons which were smuggled off Hajjah coasts to be stored and moved to Sa'ada under the sponsorship of the Major General Yahya al-Shami
Because the man has a mysterious character and is characterized by silence and conceal his convictions, he has been kept away from the eyes of the public and the political elite, although some military leaders realized his involvement in the sectarian project, it is often taken as a kind of a plot to take the position of the governor of Sa'ada, and he showed a clear support for the Houthi militias
In 2011 protests that toppled the late President, al-Shami's son was one of the Houthi militias' leaders who was also openly affiliated with the armed groups despite he is an officer in the Yemeni army; after storming the Capital Sana'a and signing the Partnership and Peace Agreement, he was appointed as a deputy chairman of chief of Staff
Before the invasion of the capital Sana'a, according to military sources, al-Shami played a key role in planning to storm the Capital Sana'a and divide the city into military squares as well as distribute armed cells in the city's neighborhoods in preparation for any possible confrontation
He oversaw the command
of military operations, mobilization, and leadership of confrontations with forces loyal to the late president in Sana'a at the end of 2017
Yahya al-Shami brought about 20 thousand armed men and distributed them in the southern neighborhoods of the city. Al-Shami, who appears to the public as the military commander of the militias for decades, is accused of pursuing army officers whom he knew by virtue of his position and finding lines of communication with the commanders of the units in the capital and its environs to reassure and dismantle these units by distributing their personnel and emptying them of their cadres
