YEMEN’S HADI FILLS POSITION OF DEFENCE MINISTER
▶ Post has remained vacant for the past three years after the former minister was detained by Houthis
Yemeni President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi appointed Mohammed Al Maqdishi on Thursday as minister of defence, according to state news agency Saba.
The post had been vacant for more than three years after the detention of former minister Gen Mahmoud Al Subaihi in March 2015.
Mr Maqdishi, 56, was born in Yemen’s northern Thamar province. He is one of the country’s leading military figures and a close aid to the Vice President Ali Mohsen Al Ahmar.
In 2007 he was appointed commander of the Ataq military axis and in 2008 of the central military zone, two divisions of the Yemeni army.
In 2014, Mr Maqdishi was responsible for leading Yemen’s armed forces in the face of the Houthi uprising in September of that year. In 2015 Mr Hadi issued a decree appointing him chief of staff of the ministry of defence, replacing Maj Gen Hussein Khairan. He was later promoted to adviser to the supreme commander of the armed forces.
In his most recent post, Mr Maqdishi was given the task of temporarily filling the position of minister of defence while the Houthis continued to hold Mr Al Subaihi.
Mr Hadi also appointed Abduallah Al Nakhi as his new chief of staff and Ahmed Salem Rabeea as the new governor of Aden, the agency said.
Mr Rabeea, an engineer, was born in southern Yemen in 1970 before moving to Sanaa with his family.
In 1990 he received a scholarship to study aviation engineering in Dallas. He returned to Yemen in 2006 and was named assistant to Aden’s governor until 2015 when he became deputy governor.
Mr Rabeea is also the eldest son of prominent politician Salim Rabeea Ali, the head of state of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen from 1969 to 1978, when he surrendered and was executed. Yemenis expressed opposing reactions to the nominations, with some saying the new appointments are key in helping to stabilise the country’s fragile economy and security and others saying they will fuel the rift between the government and those calling for a reshuffle in the liberated areas.
The country’s civil war, which began when the Iran-backed rebels seized Sanaa, the capital, in September 2014, has left 22 million people – about 75 per cent of the population – in need of assistance, according to the UN.
But the world body has no upto-date estimate of the death toll in the country.
It said in August 2016 that according to medical centres at least 10,000 people had been killed.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies in the Arab Coalition intervened in the conflict at the request of Mr Hadi’s government in March 2015.
The coalition has called for the complete withdrawal of the Houthis from Hodeidah, one of Yemen’s largest ports.
The rebels have offered to hand the operation of the port facility – a vital lifeline for coalition and international aid to reach millions living under the Iran-backed group – to the UN, but under their supervision.