The D Brief: U.S. trainers to Ukraine; Siege in Yemen over for now, but dangers persist; Navy fires the Gitmo base commander; What were Iraqis from Anbar doing in the Pentagon?; And a bit more.

Despite signing a deal yesterday to end the standoff in Sana’a, Houthi militiamen in Yemen are maintaining their control on the streets of the capital. AFP this morning: “Under a nine-point deal reached late on Wednesday, the militia pledged to withdraw from government buildings they seized this week during two days of violence that left at least 35 people dead and dozens wounded.

“In return for concessions over a disputed draft constitution, they agreed to vacate the presidential palace, free top presidential aide Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, withdraw from areas surrounding the residences of Hadi and Prime Minister Khalid Bahah, and abandon checkpoints across the capital. The Huthis agreed with Hadi to ‘normalise’ the situation in Sanaa, calling for people to return to work and schools to reopen. However, by early Thursday the terms of the agreement had yet to be implemented.” More here.

The reasons why Americans should care about what’s happening in this Gulf country are many. The NYT’s Robert Worth on Page One: “…The latest Yemeni crisis raises the prospect of yet another Arab country where the United States faces rising dangers but has no strong partners amid a landscape of sectarian violence. Although the Houthi rebels who now effectively control the state are at war with Al Qaeda, they are also allied with Iran and with Yemen’s meddlesome former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“The Houthis’ rise to a dominant position may set off local conflicts in ways that would give more breathing room to Al Qaeda’s local branch, which has repeatedly struck at the United States. Yemen’s elected president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is a stalwart American ally but has almost no domestic support.

“…In Washington, military and intelligence officials expressed grave concerns on Wednesday about the violence in Sana and the impact any further deterioration could have on one of the Obama administration’s staunchest counterterrorism partners. Michael G. Vickers, the Pentagon’s top intelligence policy official, said analysts were still trying to determine the Houthis’ ultimate goal.” More here.

Meantime, the U.S. will not be releasing any Gitmo detainees—well over half of whom are actually from Yemen—to Yemen any time soon, AP’s Nedra Pickler reports: “Nearly two-thirds of the remaining 122 detainees are from Yemen, including 47 of the 54 who have been approved for transfer… While Obama approved sending detainees back to Yemen nearly two years ago, his administration has yet to use that authority. And officials say deep concerns about the threat posed by a Yemeni-based al-Qaida offshoot have removed that option for the foreseeable future, although that could change if conditions improve.” More here.

John McCain says this is required reading: How Syria and Yemen are where the U.S. is making the same mistakes twice, by Danya Greenfield and Faysal Itani for The Atlantic Council, here.

Marines are/were poised to respond to crisis in Yemen if it persists, Marine Corps Times’ James Sanborn, here.

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The U.S. is sending troops to Ukraine this spring to train four companies of national guard soldiers. Paul McLeary for Defense News: “The number of troops heading to the Yavoriv Training Area near the city of L'viv—which is about 40 miles from the Polish border—is still being determined… The training mission has been the subject of plenty of discussion among US policy makers for months, and the United States has already earmarked $19 million to help build the Ukrainian National Guard... In addition to US trainers, Washington is beginning to provide heavier military equipment to the government in Kiev.” More here.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should cause more than a hiccup in relations, the WaPo’s editors write this morning here.

President Obama’s address Tuesday night was a rallying cry for greater cyber security. But the president’s proposed changes could also be a “pretext for expanded, unchecked surveillance that may not actually make the nation safer, according to our tech editor Patrick Tucker: “The proposal that the president rolled out will…allow for the sharing of user data with the government outside of privacy laws... [since] ‘The White House proposal relies heavily on privacy guidelines that are currently unwritten…’ “‘Unless there is a carve out for research, the liability for clicking on links to security tools alone is worrying…even more so if RICO style laws are applied due to their broad nature and potential for abuse by aggressive prosecutors,’ said Jeff Moss, the founder of the famous Black Hat and DEF CON conference.”

When friends spy on friends: South Korea is no angel. While South Korea’s online espionage program may be mostly focused on its neighbor to the North, that program in Seoul is also monitoring the U.S., and no one here is making a big deal about it, The Daily Beast’s Shane Harris reports, here.

Meantime, our story from 2013 in re-runs: Is South Korea stealing military secrets? It’s still an issue. Read Lubold’s story here.

The Kurds say they cleared ISIS out of a 300-square-mile area in northern Iraq yesterday. They also say they’ve cut a key ISIS supply line to Mosul. WaPo’s Loveday Morris from Baghdad: “The multi-pronged operation, which began in the early morning, involved about 5,000 Kurdish soldiers, known as peshmerga, and was backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, according to a statement from the government of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

“The Kurdish troops advanced through a string of villages and a key highway intersection, encircling Mosul on three sides and cutting supply lines between the city and nearby Tal Afar. Kurdish authorities claimed that at least 200 Islamic State fighters were killed, with the militants using 14 suicide car bombs in an attempt to fend off the assault. Three of the militants’ explosive-packed vehicles were struck by coalition airstrikes, the officials said.” More here.

Nearly two dozen foreign ministers are meeting in London to discuss the anti-ISIS campaign, which British FM Phillip Hammond says is still “months away” from starting “significant combat operations.” BBC’s James Robbins with more, here.

The flogging case in Saudi Arabia exposes the way the country approaches activists. The WaPo’s Kevin Sullivan in Riyadh on Page One: “…Badawi’s case is simply the most recent example of what rights groups call an intensifying campaign to punish activists, bloggers and anyone else who challenges the country’s political or religious leaders. People have been jailed for tweets, and two women have been held since early December for defying the ban on women driving.” Read that here.

Wanna know what the difference between Saudi Arabia’s harsh legal punishments and the Islamic State’s? Not a lot of light between the two. A WaPo blog post with an interesting chart, here.

Yesterday, Iraqi Sunnis visited the Pentagon yesterday. As part of an International Leadership Visitor Program, a group of Sunnis from Anbar Province in western Iraq visited the Pentagon after a visit at State, which hosted the group. It was really hard to find out just who the group was, who they were, why there were here or what they were doing. State didn’t seem to want to answer the question. A DoD spokesperson just told us this: “Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Elissa Slotkin met with a delegation government and local leaders from Anbar Province, Iraq for a meeting to discuss defeating ISIL, Jan. 21, 2015 at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.”

Terrorism analysts often overlook the factors which lead women to join the ranks of extremists, Jayne Huckerby, director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the Duke University School of Law, writes in the NYT today: “For example, European women in the Islamic State have spoken of how alienation and restrictions on their religious practices back home, like France’s ban on wearing burqas in public, helped push them into the group (Ms. Boumeddiene’s reported loss of her job as a cashier for wearing the niqab should be examined in this light)… despite stereotypes about their domesticity and passivity—the idea that they must always be under men’s influence or tricked into joining—women are drawn to groups like the Islamic State by many of the same forces as men: adventure, inequality, alienation and the pull of the cause.” More here.

Dog biting man: Obama and Congress are clashing on Iran sanctions. The WSJ’s Jay Solomon, Michael Crittenden and Carol Lee on Page One: “…Lawmakers from both parties vowed at a Senate hearing to press ahead with legislative plans for new punitive measures—over President Barack Obama ’s veto warnings. Top administration officials, meanwhile, disclosed at the hearing that the international talks over Iran’s nuclear program may extend beyond an end-of-June deadline. That would be the third such extension.” Read the rest here.

Meantime, to U.S. planners—for now—Boko Haram is far more of a counterinsurgency problem than a counterterrorism one, analysts at CNA Corporation write in a new 90-page report on the Kanuri-dominated militant group violently destabilizing northeast Nigeria and the surrounding region. That report, here.

France is poised to add 2,600 counterterror agents. AP, here.

The IMF just updated their forecasting report, the World Economic Outlook, for the year ahead. One notable change since October: Russia’s prospects look much “weaker, with growth forecast downgraded to –3.0 percent for 2015, as a result of the economic impact of sharply lower oil prices and increased geopolitical tensions.” Catch the full updated report, here.

France has emerged as a hawk in the Muslim world. The WSJ’s Yaroslav Trofimov in Paris, here.

Who’s up to what today—The Senate Armed Services Committee meets behind closed doors to talk progress on the Syrian train-and-equip mission with Army Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata of Special Operations Command Central and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense For Middle East Policy Dr. Matthew J. Spence … the House Committee on Veterans Affairs holds three panels to talk about navigating the appeals system for veterans claims at 10:30 a.m. … and Army Chief Gen. Ray Odierno participates in a farewell ceremony for Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler at the Pentagon at 2 p.m. … and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence meets behind closed doors at 2:30 p.m. … Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Marty Dempsey completed his first full day of talks with counterparts in Brussels yesterday and is returning to D.C. today… Air Force Secretary Debbie James is still traveling, today in New Zealand… Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno is speaking early this morning at the AUSA Institute of Land Warfare…

Also today: Ranking SASC member and Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island holds a closed meeting with Hagel’s likely successor Ash Carter late afternoon, with a photo spray timed for 4 p.m. at 728 Hart.

Carter and McCain are besties! Carter hopes the meeting goes as well today as it did a couple of days ago with Sen. John McCain, who tweeted this picture of Carter and himself, tweeting “Great meeting today with the future Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter – I’m confident he’ll do a fine job.” Click that pic here.

The GAO just reported back to HASC on the Pentagon’s eventual cost savings plan to streamline its headquarters staff across the services. The bottom line: While the Marine Corps was most forthcoming, none of the services reviewed have yet “systematically determined how many personnel they need to conduct their missions.” DOD agreed in part to the findings, but flagged a “lack of appropriate context” in the report, which you can find here.

National Geographic’s February issue looks into how vets cope with their experiences long after exfil. But you can skip the newsstands and see the jarring, beautiful two-part “Healing Soldiers” series online now, here.

Just a thought: maybe every vet returning from war isn’t college material. Bob Dury for Men’s Health on a retired Marine’s plan: “…those vets who aren’t cut out for college? Who just might get themselves off the unemployment line and into the workforce by owning their own business but who don’t have the start-up cash? You know what those vets are? I believe the formal term is, shit out of luck. But maybe not for long.

Retired Marine Corps Major Lynn Lowder: “These young vets who choose not to attend college or trade school, particularly the ones who want to own their own businesses, are shut out from the benefits they earned fighting and risking their lives for all of us back home here… “It’s not fair. And we intend to do something about it.” 

And the Marine Corps’ Joe Plenzler is involved, too: “…So with the assistance of another former Marine, the recently retired Joe Plenzler, Lowder came up with his proposal to modify the GI Bill. As you read this, Plenzler, who has stood up his own marketing and public relations outfit, is out there knocking on congressional doors pro bono. And as you may have gathered, guys like Lowder and Plenzler are no Pollyannas. They recognize that there will be both public and government opposition to their advocacy efforts.” More here.

The Navy just fired its first commanding officer in 2015. Gitmo’s base commander was just quietly removed from his post while an investigation is under way. Navy Times: “Capt. John Nettleton was fired by Rear Adm. Mary Jackson, head of Navy Region Southeast, ‘due to loss of confidence in Nettleton's ability to command,’ the region said in a press release.” More here.

A team of more than a dozen Virginia lawmakers wrote SecDef Hagel to show their support for the Navy maintaining its 11 carrier fleet ahead of FY16 budget requests. Read the letter in full, here.

The British defense ministry’s “austerity” problems are starting to sound a lot like the Pentagon’s sequestration troubles. Ben Farmer for The Telegraph: “A Whitehall row has erupted after a former defence minister said officials were secretly looking at dramatically cutting the British Army to as few as 60,000 soldiers… Under the Government’s current Army reforms, the number of regular soldiers is already being cut from 102,000 to 82,000, while the number of reservists is growing to 30,000… Last year the Chief of the Defence Staff, Gen Sir Nick Houghton, said he would ‘fix my bayonet and fight to the last,’ to prevent further Army cuts.” More here.

Two California National Guardsmen were fortunate enough to be able to crawl out of their crashed Blackhawk Tuesday night at a local airport. Army investigators from Fort Rucker, Ala., are headed to the scene to help determine the cause. NBC San Diego’s Andie Adams with more, here.

A new film coming out in a week used a clip in its trailer from a B-52 crash at Washington state’s Fairchild AFB in 1994—and family members of the four crash victims are none too pleased. Making things worse, the film’s studio, Paramount Pictures, initially denied the allegation—then yesterday director Michael Bay confirmed it, issuing an apology and promising to cut the scene entirely. Air Force Times’ Stephen Losey has been on this story’s trail with the first report here, and the apology follow-up, here.