Dear Mr. Faria al-Maslami, Chairman of the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies

The Department of Information and Culture of the Executive Office of the Yemeni Islah Party - Taiz Governorate greets you with best regards and wishes you continued success in your esteemed Center.

Reference: Notes on what was mentioned in your report entitled (Taiz is the stronghold of irregular militias)

Attached to this memorandum are notes on the allegations against the Yemeni Islah Party that are mentioned in the report published by your Center entitled “Taiz is the stronghold of irregular militias.”

On September 16, 2021

Written by a writer called "Khaled Farouk".

We hope that you will publish it in the way that was done with the published article.

Best Regards,

Head of the Information and Culture Department of the Yemeni Islah Party - Taiz

Ahmad Othman

 - At the outset, the report in question is attributed to an unknown writer residing in Taiz, and this was justified by security reasons, in the context of exaggerating the portrayal of Taiz as unsafe, even though it is the city that has the highest ceiling in freedoms at the level of the Republic of Yemen, and all the people who live in it speak, sayو write, demonstrate and express their opinions without being harmed, whether because of criticizing the Islah Party or other parties, or any form of freedom of expression, and this is something that Taiz characterized with and is credited to all its sons, all its components and leadership.

Regarding the “methodology,” the writer said that he relied on interviews with unknown people and provided dangerous information, and then attributed that information to imagined fighters, and claimed that “some of them participated in camps run by the Islah Party.” Are the writer, editor and publisher aware of what it means to be the assertion that he says “camps run by the Islah Party”? Does he have evidence to support this assertion? Do the writer and editor lack the vocabulary of the political or analytical and professional article in avoiding the issue of direct assertiveness in which only a person that is filled with hatred and beginner writer falls in or performs a specific job, then how is this contained in the methodology?! Have the research centers - which are relied upon in providing content of a degree of credibility and prudence - become like Facebook pages in issuing decisive judgments and distributing instruments without the slightest decency?!

- In the introduction to the report, the writer spoke about the Houthi militia in a soft language that goes beyond the subject of supposed professional neutrality, considering that the Houthis "advanced towards Taiz in March 2015 with the aim of (securing) the city..!!". We do not know whether Taiz made a mistake when it refused and resisted the Houthi efforts (to secure it)?! Then how is this warm position consistent with the Houthi? And why this soft treatment with the Houthi while the report is devoted to criticizing the irregular forces?!

Moreover, the writer added that the Houthis "were content with the siege of Taiz" only! And here, the writer seemed not to see the siege of the city as a war crime, and as if he did not know that the Houthi did not stop attacking Taiz and killing civilians with various weapons throughout these years. And with a little reflection on the phrase “they were content with the siege of Taiz”, the writer's shocking position on Taiz and its struggle for its freedom and against the attempts to expel it from the scope of the state will be revealed to us. And to the extent that he sneered at the suffering of the people of Taiz, the writer adopted the Houthi discourse and his definition of what he is doing in Taiz, especially since he absolved him of all crimes of sniping, bombing and killing. In the writer's point of view, the Houthi did nothing except that he was content with the siege of Taiz only, and we rarely find research centers that get involved in a real confrontation such as the reality of the Houthi's crimes and violations against Taiz and its residents. It is a discouraging start, and the report is surrounded by shades of doubt and uncertainty, especially if we put his talk about the nature of the Houthi role as one item in the series of Houthi crimes and violations in Taiz, which is the item of victims of women, children, elderly and journalists who were killed by Houthi snipers and artillery.

- In the introduction, the writer indicated that extremists in the city were unabashedly raising the flags of terrorist organizations, then, in another paragraph, the writer comes to defend the extremists, when he portrays the army performing its duty in confronting them as an imposition of the dominance of the Islah Party!!

The description that he launched on Taiz that it is “a model of internal fighting,” which is a term through which the writer tried to define what is happening in the Governorate as internal fighting, dropping the main battle of Taiz with the Houthi, who was the first cause of this entire situation at the level of the country in general and Taiz in particular as the writer’s attempt to cover up the Houthi role in this suspicious way, where the description of the internal fighting takes the Houthi out from the war equation, even though he is the aggressor and besieged the Governorate for years, and the people of Taiz alone bear the responsibility for their besieged situation and the victims who fall by Houthi snipers and artillery. As for the issue that (Taiz is a model of internal fighting), the writer did not tell us how he reached this conclusion. For him, what are the criteria for the meaning of internal fighting? And choosing Taiz among all the cities of Yemen, especially since there are other cities that witnessed a security deterioration in which politicians lost security for their lives, and other cities that witnessed a major political and regional displacement. It's a good idea to specify your way of arriving at the final conclusions, especially when you're describing an entire Governorate in a negative description. And here, the townspeople are concerned with what you have said about them, and you must reveal it so as not to appear as an opponent of all those who might be included in the description you launched. There are no standards or methodology that have been adhered to by the writer, which in our view made him fall into major mistakes.

(A model of internal fighting) It is a title in which the writer got involved and put him in a double predicament. On the one hand, it led him to grant the Houthi a testimony of innocence of crimes he committed against Taiz, and on the other hand, he will not find a convincing justification in the security dealing with criminal cases as internal fighting or his disregard for the legality and legitimacy of the army and security in Taiz as two legitimate institutions that have national missions within the framework of the legal powers due to protect the stability and enforce the law. The army in Taiz has moved twice; In the first time, the army moved to prevent the establishment of a private militia state within the state, and in the second time the army implemented the decision of the President of the Republic, handing over the work to the military commander who was appointed and preventing any rebellion within its unit, which are limited events that were resolved by the state within the framework of legal powers.

And in front of this predicament in which he fell, the writer did not find a way out for him other than to deal through misleading and fallacies that hardly gather patchwork evidence to prove the validity of his alleged model as a form of tampering with the facts of things and taking the function of journalism and outsmarting to readers in an open attempt to adopt and market a vexatious viewpoint against the Islah Party and against Taiz Governorate in general.

And in our estimation, that the goal of "speaking the Islah Party" is that caused the writer to exaggerate and distort the meanings and facts of reality. While in fact, he is taking advantage of Taiz and within a propaganda path to demonize the Governorate under the pretext of targeting the Islah Party as a mistakes' hanger that is the favorite of all opponents of the republic and restoring legitimacy.

- Was it difficult for the writer or editor - if the writer did not want to reveal his identity - to take the viewpoint of the Islah Party through one of its well-known leaders, instead of quoting from an unknown person?! Or return to its official website, when he accused dozens of accusations and attributed them to the Islah Party without making any effort to research whether there is a position issued by the Party, and referring to it even out of a matter of “professional modesty”! Even if we believed the allegations of fear for the life of the unknown writer because of his presence inside Taiz. The center that is located outside Yemen can communicate with the leaders of the Islah Party known to it instead of quoting from unknown persons and taking their opinion on the subject of the report. And I do not think that such a matter is impossible and that it does not have a thing that threatens the lives of the center's staff.

- The report stated that the advisor of the Taiz Axis receives orders from the Chairman of the Islah Party, Mr. Muhammad al-Yadumi, and this is an open propaganda fabrication that lacks a plot. It would have been appropriate for your report to be published in a Facebook post of someone working as a recruited person within a propaganda machine and not in a research platform that is supposed to have professional rules for making such accusations personally, against a well-known political leader. How and why the writer got involved and the center passed it on to such an accusation without providing evidence to support it!

- The report claimed, according to an imagined source, that the Islah Party sees Tariq Saleh's forces as a "greater danger than the Houthis," and this is also a propaganda phrase that is refuted by the statements issued by the two aforementioned parties. Houthi is the enemy of everyone, and our battle is with the Houthi militia, and this is what we always affirm and believe, and in this regard, we do not need to defend a well-known position like this, if it were not for what is required to clarify the fallacies in the published article.

- The writer was keen to classify the military brigades politically, where he generously distributed them to the political forces, sometimes to the Islah Party and sometimes to other parties, and this is a language that lacks professionalism and a sense of patriotism, and expresses a disruptive mentality that attempts to undermine the military and the remaining pillars of the national state in favor of a rural discourse and classification in every direction in a way that threatens the fabric of society and the future of politics, in addition to it being a language that underestimates the struggle of the sons and youth of Taiz who rose to defend their city from the barbaric Houthi invasion and wrote epics of unparalleled immortal heroism, without taking into account their affiliation and background.

- In a strange and incomprehensible situation, the writer ignored the official and relevant positions of the Islah Party, especially when he was talking about the Yafrus camp, which he presented as evidence for the allegations of the Islah Party’s involvement in adopting irregular forces, and instead of returning to the declared official positions of the Party, the writer installed an anonymous speaker as well on behalf of the Party, if he followed the statements of the leaders of the Islah Party on more than one occasion and returned to the Party’s official website, he would have found an explicit and decisive position rejecting any forces that form or operate outside the official system of the army.

- And at the time when the writer referred to the positions of other parties on the subject of the report, he ignored the position of the Islah Party

in this regard, which was issued on August 20, 2018, and published on the official website of the Islah Party “alislah-ye.net” at the link (https://alislah-ye.com/news_details.php?lng=arabic&sid=1780).

And this makes the report lose the minimum level of professionalism and makes it closer to practicing open political intrigues.

As for the writer’s talk about weapons stores, it is a perplexing matter, where the writer took the trouble of providing strategic types of qualitative weapons and established stores for the Islah Party and started storing those weapons inside them, then he returned and gave them a name (The Islah Party stores!) What a new entrance to the world of journalism and research writing. Something like this only needs a phone call with an unknown fighter.

- The report mentioned that the Islah Party sent fighters for training in Marib, and this claim is unfounded but it is based on only a prior conviction as a result of a deliberate mix to target the Islah Party.

It is clear from the context of the report that he means the reinforcements that went from all the army units in all the liberated Governorates by the orders of the President of the Republic to join the army units in Marib, which is part of the fateful battle of the republic, which enjoys the unanimity of all Yemenis and in which the people participate in its widest categories, except in this studded report with provocative language, insisting on ignoring the official institution of the state and its role in Taiz specifically, in order to be able to summon the Islah Party in the context of undermining its position!

- The writer contradicted himself repeatedly. At the time when he worked on portraying the city of Taiz as a home for irregular units, he talked about military entities that do not affiliate with the legitimacy with great satisfaction, which makes us wonder about the meaning he means by the term regularity, if he meant those military entities appointed by President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the internationally recognized president, will only be those official forces that he is trying to condemn, but if he meant by the regularity those forces that are funded and managed by external parties, this is a new invention for the meaning of “regular forces” which is added to the writer’s credit.

On the other hand, Taiz today is considered the most expressive space for political, civil, pluralistic, democracy and freedoms life, and this Governorate does not deserve for civil society platforms and elites to join the queue to harm the city, as well as its political and cultural image and personality with the motives of political conflict, especially since its liberated area is the one that preserved the legacy of the civil movement and political action that disappeared in each of the two capitals, and only Taiz preserved a decent space for the expression of opinion and political position at the individual and collective levels.

- In conclusion, this partial response to some of what was mentioned in the interview stems from the keenness of the Information and Culture Department of the Executive Office of the Yemeni Islah Party in Taiz Governorate to enhance the space for serious discussion and respect for facts and not to overstep them with motives, whether ideological or otherwise, where a situation like the one that Yemen is going through currently needs critical voices with logic and an argument aimed at correcting and not reviving and embellishing the sarcasm and satire that contribute to poisoning the public scope and suffocating the political space with the fumes of vulgar propaganda, in light of open space and great popular awareness that is able to distinguish the purposes behind what is being published, especially if it was in this eloquent form contained in that report.

The Information and Culture Department of the Yemeni Islah Party - Taiz