An investigative journalism website has revealed that the former United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, is linked to the British spy agency MI6 through the private conflict resolution company InterMediate.
According to the Declassified UK report, the British diplomat, who currently serves as the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, is both a co-founder and an adviser to the firm, which also has ties to the Foreign Office and a number of former British military and diplomatic figures among its trustees and advisers.
Inter Mediate “focuses on the most challenging, complicated, and deadly disputes where other organizations are unable to work” and “brings together some of the world’s greatest specialists on discussion and negotiation,”
It is said that Inter Mediate “focuses on the most challenging, complicated, and deadly disputes where other organizations are unable to work” and “brings together some of the world’s greatest specialists on discussion and negotiation.”
Griffiths and Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, founded the firm in 2011. Powell has served as Inter Mediate’s CEO since its inception.
Powell and Inter Mediate have overseen a number of Foreign Office-funded programs in nations such as Burma, Libya, and North Korea.
Declassified uncovered 23 payments made by the Foreign Office to the company between 2013 and 2020.
According to Declassified, the Foreign Office “gave slightly over £4 million ($4.86 million) to Inter Mediate between 2011 and 2020 to promote work towards settling international conflicts.”
Inter Mediate, according to its CEO, began “beginning operations” in Yemen and Syria six years before Griffiths was appointed UN envoy to Yemen. The British diplomat was a senior UN adviser on Syria at the time.
Powell has been described as the Foreign Office’s “private partner” by the specialised media outlet Intelligence Online.
Close to MI6
In an email disclosed by the US government, Powell wrote that InterMediate is close to MI6.
He told a senior aide to Hillary Clinton, then the US secretary of state, in March 2012 that “we work closely with FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office), NSC (National Security Council) and SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) in London.”
The UK’s National Security Council is the main government body for discussing British security objectives and is chaired by the prime minister.
Griffiths’s links to MI6 raise questions about the supposed impartiality of the UN special envoy’s role in war-torn Yemen.
Additionally, Declassified has found that in 2019, “at least five British special forces commandos had been wounded in gun battles as part of a top-secret UK military campaign in Yemen.”
The men, from the Special Boat Service (SBS), received the injuries from battles in Sa’ada area of northern Yemen, where “up to 30 crack British troops are based.”
The operations of UK special forces are opaque, but it is known that MI6 works closely with the SBS and the army’s equivalent, the Special Air Service (SAS).
Declassified also revealed in 2021 that Britain had a secret detachment of up to 30 troops at al-Ghaydah airport in Yemen’s eastern province of al-Mahrah, where they were training Saudi forces.
Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and other Western states, launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015.
The objective was to crush the popular Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen, and reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to achieve any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
