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Houthis Task All-Female ‘Zaynabiyat’ Militia with Drafting Child Soldiers

A child seen next to Houthi women carrying weapons in Sanaa, Yemen. (Reuters)
A child seen next to Houthi women carrying weapons in Sanaa, Yemen. (Reuters)
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Houthis Task All-Female ‘Zaynabiyat’ Militia with Drafting Child Soldiers

A child seen next to Houthi women carrying weapons in Sanaa, Yemen. (Reuters)
A child seen next to Houthi women carrying weapons in Sanaa, Yemen. (Reuters)

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have charged its all-female militia, Zaynabiyat, with the recruitment of child soldiers in areas under their control. Women fighters will attract minors to join Houthi ranks by reaching out to their mothers, local sources reported.

This comes at a time Houthi militants are mounting a fierce offensive in the central Marib governorate.

Yemenis and human rights activists have sounded the alarm against the repercussions of Houthis brainwashing children with sectarian and extremist ideology to later use them as cannon fodder at battlefronts.

Since late January, hundreds of children in Sanaa and its countryside and some governorates, such as Ibb, Dhamar, Amran and Hajjah, have been subjected to Houthi incitement and recruitment attempts.

Houthis, after practicing coercive violence and depriving targeted Yemeni children from education, incite recruited minors to undertake sectarian hostilities and join the fight against internationally recognized state institutions in the war-torn country.

“A few days ago, the Houthi Zaynabiyat militias held a number of workshops and seminars for Yemeni mothers in Sanaa’s Old City neighborhoods,” locals told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Mothers are being indoctrinated under an Iran-inspired agenda focused on demonizing pro-government forces in Yemen.

Over the last 48 hours, female Houthi militants visited dozens of homes in Sanaa to invite Yemeni women to join the militias’ sectarian seminars, locals revealed.

Women who rejected the invitation were threatened with being cut off from their share of UN aid and household gas supply.

They were also told that their families will be punished by the militias.

The Houthis have selected their most prominent cultural supervisors and religious ideologues to lecture Yemeni mothers.

According to sources, Houthis perceive Yemeni women as a weak link that can be easily exploited.

Therefore, they focusing their efforts on conditioning Yemeni mothers into accepting and encouraging to send their children to fight alongside the Houthis, especially in Marib.

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Morocco Mobile Desalination Units Quench Remote Areas' Thirst

Since 2023, Morocco has built some 44 of these desalination stations, also called "monobloc" -- compact, transportable units © - / AFP
Since 2023, Morocco has built some 44 of these desalination stations, also called "monobloc" -- compact, transportable units © - / AFP
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Morocco Mobile Desalination Units Quench Remote Areas' Thirst

Since 2023, Morocco has built some 44 of these desalination stations, also called "monobloc" -- compact, transportable units © - / AFP
Since 2023, Morocco has built some 44 of these desalination stations, also called "monobloc" -- compact, transportable units © - / AFP

In the small fishing village of Beddouza in western Morocco, locals have turned to the Atlantic to quench their thirst, using mobile desalination stations to combat the kingdom's persistent drought.

Since 2023, Morocco has built some 44 of these desalination stations, also called "monobloc" -- compact, transportable units that have come as a boon against the increasingly tangible effects of climate change.

The potable water is distributed with tanker trucks to remote areas in the country, currently grappling with its worst drought in nearly 40 years.

"We heard about desalinated water in other villages, but we never expected to have it here," said Karim, a 27-year-old fisherman who did not give his last name, gathered among dozens with jerrycans to collect his share of water.

Hassan Kheir, 74, another villager, described the mobile stations as a godsend, as groundwater in the region "has dried up".

Some 45,000 people now have access to drinking water directly from the ocean in Beddouza, about 180 kilometres (112 miles) northwest of Marrakesh, as a result of three monobloc desalination stations.

These units can potentially cover a radius of up to 180 kilometres, according to Yassine Maliari, an official in charge of local water distribution.

With nearly depleted dams and bone-dry water tables, some three million people in rural Morocco urgently need drinking water, according to official figures, and the kingdom has promised to build 219 more desalination stations.

Monobloc stations can produce up to 3,600 cubic metres of drinking water per day and are "the best possible solution" given the ease of distributing them, said Maliari.

For cities with greater needs, like Casablanca, larger desalination plants are also under construction, adding to 12 existing national plants with a total capacity of nearly 180 million cubic metres of drinking water per year.

By 2040, Morocco is poised to face "extremely high" water stress, a dire prediction from the World Resources Institute, a non-profit research organisation.

With coasts on both the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, the North African country has banked on desalination for water security.

In Beddouza, the population is relatively better off than those in remote areas further inland.

About 200 kilometres east, in Al-Massira, the country's second-largest dam has nearly dried up.

The dam has filled up to an alarmingly meagre 0.4 percent, compared to 75 percent in 2017, Abdelghani Ait Bahssou, a desalination plant manager in the coastal city of Safi, told AFP.

The country's overall dam fill rates currently average 28 percent but are feared to shrink by 2050 as drought is expected to persist, according to the agriculture ministry.

Over that same period, official figures project an 11-percent drop in rainfall and a rise in temperatures of 1.3 degrees Celsius.

As the country grapples with the increasingly volatile effects of climate change, King Mohammed VI has pledged that desalination will provide more than 1.7 billion cubic metres per year and cover more than half of the country's drinking water needs by 2030.

The lack of water also threatens Morocco's vital agriculture sector, which employs around a third of the working-age population and accounts for 14 percent of exports.

Cultivated areas across the kingdom are expected to shrink to 2.5 million hectares in 2024 compared with 3.7 million last year, according to official figures.

In 2023, 25 percent of desalinated water was alloted to agriculture, which consumes more than 80 percent of the country's water resources.

Against this backdrop, authorities in Safi were in a "race against time" to build a regular desalination plant which now serves all of its 400,000 residents, said Bahssou.

The plant is set to be expanded to also provide water by 2026 for Marrakesh and its 1.4 million residents, some 150 kilometres east of Safi, Bahssou added.