The U.S. put a Yemeni warlord on a terrorist list. One of its close allies is still arming him.

By Sudarsan Raghavan January 1 at 3:00 PM

TAIZ, Yemen — In 2017, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a powerful Yemeni Islamist warlord, accusing him of being a “prominent military instructor” and fundraiser for al-Qaeda who had also at one point “served with” the Islamic State and financed its forces.

But Abu al-Abbas is not on the run. He is not even in hiding.

By his own admission, Abbas continues to receive millions of dollars in weapons and financial support for his fighters from one of Washington’s closest Middle East allies, the United Arab Emirates, undermining U.S. counterterrorism goals in Yemen.

The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, leads a regional coalition waging war in Yemen even as a humanitarian crisis there worsens. The coalition’s main goal is to defeat the northern Yemeni rebels known as Houthis and restore the country’s ousted government. The United States assists it with intelligence gathering, logistical support and the sale of billions of dollars in weapons and equipment — including several MRAP armored vehicles that have ended up in Abbas’s hands, according to one of the warlord’s top aides and photos publicly available online.

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