The Brotherhood's ambitions for Shabwa oil.. The hidden truth amid the noise of the Ataq battle
English - Wednesday 10 August 2022 الساعة 05:34 pm
Shabwa, NewsYemen, private:
For the second day in a row, the city of Ataq, the capital of Shabwa, is still a battlefield between military and security formations under the authority of the governor and others that are rebellious against him and whose leadership owes allegiance to the Brotherhood.
The confrontations erupted against the backdrop of Governor Awad bin Al-Wazir’s decision, last Saturday, to dismiss the commander of the Special Forces, Brigadier General Abd Rabbo Laakab, as a result of his rebellion against previous decisions of the governor and his involvement in the explosion of the fighting inside Ataq in the middle of last month.
The objection of the Minister of Interior, Major General Ibrahim Haidan, who is close to the Brotherhood, to the governor’s decisions to dismiss Laakab was the spark that ignited the situation in Ataq at dawn on Monday, between the Axis and Special Forces on the one hand, and between the Shabwa Defense Forces and the Giants on the other.
The continuation of the confrontations comes despite the issuance of the decisions of the Presidential Command Council, which indirectly supported the decisions of the governor through the dismissal of Laakab next to the leader of the axis affiliated with the Brotherhood after the involvement of his forces in the confrontations, in addition to the dismissal of the director of security and the commander of the second brigade defense of Shabwa, and the appointment of their replacements.
The fierceness of the confrontations, the use of heavy weapons such as tanks and cannons, and the deployment of snipers inside the city of Ataq by forces affiliated with the Brotherhood raised controversy and questions about the real goals of detonating these forces, the situation in Shabwa, in light of data indicating that what Ataq is witnessing is not just an armed rebellion led by a leader who was dismissed from his position.
What reinforces this is that the explosion of the confrontation did not come from the Special Forces led by Laakab in response to his dismissal, but came from military brigades affiliated with the Ataq axis, and security formations such as the Rescue Force entered the line of confrontations, and all these security and military formations loyal to the Brotherhood were not It has nothing to do with the governor's decisions and his struggle with the Special Forces.
It was also noticeable that the detonation of the situation by the Axis forces came by attacking the forces of the Southern Giants, which incurred the largest number of casualties during the confrontations as a result of targeting them in a focused manner, reaching the extent of bombing their camps and their positions in Ataq with tanks and mortar shells.
Observers see data that reflect part of the reality of the battle that the military formations loyal to the Brotherhood are waging in Ataq against two targets, namely the governor and the Giants Forces, in the hope that the oil province will return under the group’s influence, as was the case during the era of the Brotherhood’s former governor, Muhammad bin Adio, who was overthrown late last year, after the fall of the western Bayhan districts to the Houthi militia without a fight.
The fall of the Brotherhood’s authority in Shabwa by the dismissal of Ibn Adio was followed by the fall of their grip on the governorate’s wealth represented in the oil fields. This was embodied in practice when the Giants forces took over the fields of Jannah Hunt in late May, the fifth sector in the Asilan district, which is one of the largest oil fields in Yemen, and the volume of its production was 40 thousand barrels of oil per day before the war.
Since its restoration last November, the Yemeni government has confirmed its intention to restore production from the fifth sector, and yesterday, Monday, the Minister of Oil and Minerals Saeed Al-Shamasi met in the capital, Aden, the leadership of the Petro Masila Company and the governmental Oil and Mineral Investment Company to discuss practical steps to restart the sector and overcome all obstacles facing the operation process.
Media news and reports also indicated that the Giants Forces and Shabwa Defense Forces were assigned the task of protecting the recently established oil pipeline to transport oil produced from the Marib and Shabwa fields to the Al-Nashima oil port, which during the half of this year exported about 3 million barrels of oil from the production of Shabwa oil fields.
