An infuriating and telling video has resurfaced showing CNN"s Wolf Blitzer call out Rand Paul for questioning the slaughter of civilians in Yemen, noting that the military-industrial complex needs war for jobs.
The post WATCH: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Says Slaughtering Kids in Yemen is Worth It Because It Creates Jobs appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
A double airstrike targeting a wedding was launched by a United States-backed coalition, killing mostly women and children—including the bride.
The post As Media Obsesses Over Royal Baby, US-Backed Coalition Bombs Wedding, Kills Bride & Children appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
[image: U.S. President Donald Trump holds a chart of military hardware sales as he welcomes Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst]
In cahoots with Riyadh, Obama escalated what they begin, further escalated by Trump allied with Saudi aggression.
Already the region’s poorest country, years of war caused the world’s severest humanitarian crisis, over 80% of Yemenis dependent on way inadequate amounts of aid to survive.
US-backed Saudi air, sea and land blockades prevent enough essentials to life from entering the country.
Countless numbers of Yemenis perished from war, related violence, untreated diseases, malnutrition and starvation.
Official UN figures way understate the toll from years of war, blockade and deprivation – perhaps hundreds of thousands of Yemenis perishing needlessly post-9/11, notably since March 2015.
According to separate UNICEF figures, at least one Yemeni child under age five dies every 10 minutes from starvation alone.
Famine stalks the country, along with endless aggression – genocide against its people neither the Trump administration or Congress is willing to address.
On Tuesday, Senate members rejected a resolution to end US military support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen – voting 55 – 44 against it.
The vote came while Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) was in Washington meeting with Trump.
During a White House photo-op, Trump boasted about billions of dollars in US weapons sales to the kingdom – ignoring their use for aggression, supporting terrorism and domestic repression.
Crown prince/defense minister MBS orchestrated Saudi aggression on Yemen, supported by Washington, Britain and other nations.
Ahead of Tuesday’s Senate vote, Defense Secretary Mattis wrote GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, turning truth on its head saying:
“(R)estrictions (on) US military support (to Riyadh) could increase civilian casualties, jeopardize cooperation with our partners on counterterrorism and reduce our influence with the Saudis – all of which would further exacerbate the situation and humanitarian crisis.”
MBS is a despotic future Saudi king, a rogue actor, a war criminal – disgracefully invited to Washington, other Western capitals, Wall Street, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Big Oil in Houston, other US corporate headquarters, along with events at Harvard and MIT.
It’s part of his three-week US charm offensive, aiming to improve the image of the Arab world’s most ruthless regime, along with seeking US investments to diversify Riyadh’s economy.
It’s MBS’ so-called Vision 2030, seeking economic modernization, including industrial development and tourism.
The kingdom enlisted Western PR firms and other image-makers to present him as a new breed of future Saudi leader – a similar strategy used during a three-day visit to Britain, meetings arranged with political, military and business officials.
MBS’ March 18 appearance on CBS News’ 60 Minutes preceded the start of his US tour, beginning in Washington with Trump and other administration officials.
He’s no reformer. He’s like his father King Salman and others earlier throughout the kingdom’s sordid history.
Trump strongly supports its regime, ignoring its despotic agenda, Riyadh his first foreign trip destination after taking office, lucrative trade agreements signed during his visit, especially US weapons sales.
Arms and security project director at the Center for International Policy William Hartung said MBS’ policy agenda is polar opposite the “public relations version of who he is and what he’s trying to do,” adding:
During his US visit, “the question is how critical will the media be? Will Yemen be an afterthought, or will it be front and center in the conversation?”
So far, it’s very much the former, not the latter.
The post Senate Rejects Ending US Support for Saudi Aggression in Yemen appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Coming March 26, 2018 Saudi Arabia will have been at war with impoverished Yemen for a punitive 3 years.
Three years of an implacable and murderous military campaign that witnessed the death of over 15,000 people – of which mostly unarmed civilians; saw the destruction of civilian infrastructures to the point where Yemen’s health and sanitation systems have all but collapsed; and architected a humanitarian blockade that led to a grand famine and the spread of diseases.
Yemen’s 26 million people are in a race against time for powers greater and richer than their own seek to impose their will, and their design onto a nation whose only ambition has been to stand free, sovereign and independent.
Yemen has become a terrible statistic – one of death, misery, hopelessness and devastation.
Yemen one would argue exists beyond all manners of contention … when an entire nation sits on the verge of famine, plagued by pestilence, it skies darkened by warplanes, politics quickly becomes irrelevant. And yet, politics we have been told has demanded that more violence still be spent on a people whose lives are but hanging by a thin thread.
When the infamous 1 percent discharges lead and chemicals onto the weakest of the weak, one wonders what point exactly that 1 percent is trying to impress on those it labelled as enemies beside absolute devastation. It seems western liberalism has found its match in the towering ambition of Saudi Arabia’s reactionary theocracy.
For western capitals to argue in the one breath human rights, democracy-building and nation-wasting by military desolation is a paradox we have all learn to dissociate from.
But guilt cannot be rationalised by arguing sociopolitical cognitive dissonance – not if we consider the implications of our disinterest. When hunger becomes a reasonable assymmetrical weapon of war, and political self-determination the privilege of an elite, we might as well consider hanging Democracy and Civil Liberties on the public square and be done with it.
What value can we put on Freedom if we are not committed to it on principle?
If controversy indeed exists, it has more to do with survival than political preferences, or even ideological inclinations. Political debates have become a luxury Yemenis have lost all taste for … it is death after all which has breached the sanctity of their homes.
Death still, that threatens to steal the very future a people once imagined to be its own to formulate.
Yemen’s war, if once a complicated affair of overlapping and contradictory ambitions, has been reduced to a very simple reality indeed. Millions stand to die … No! millions will die unless war is brought to an end.
The only question left to ask really is: how long before we intervene in favour of peace? If yesterday should have been our first choice, several tomorrows away will do little by way of assuaging our collective guilt.
World Health Organization established that of the 1 million people affected by cholera 600,000 are children.
When it comes to Yemen numbers and statistics are euphemisms hiding an unpalatable reality.
And so it goes: over 2 million children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and will not live to see their next birthday, 100,000s have been made homeless, over 15,000 have been killed, 10,000s have been injured with no hope of adequate medical care and millions of civilians are awaiting death by starvation, diseases or war.
Add to the above a widespread propensity to redact mathematics to better manage public opinion, readers will … I hope, grasp that Yemen’s plight is one of despair beyond despair itself.
“The situation in Yemen – today, right now, to the population of the country – looks like the apocalypse,” Mark Lowcock, the head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told media in early 2018.
To put it bluntly we all have been lied to. Yemen’s war is not a military exercise aiming to restore constitutional legitimacy; civilian casualties are not involuntary victims of war – they are the targets.
Saudi Arabia we ought to learn is not at war with Yemen but rather its people. Saudi Arabia in all its theocratic might intends to make Yemenis bow to its will just as if they were its subjects.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia you see is not like any other … the kingdom is a breathing institutional anachronism which firmly belongs to the past. Unless of course we regard feudal tribalism and theocratic absolutism as desirable traits in a system of governance. Don’t answer that …
Saudi Arabia is in the business of allegiance and obedience under threat of death, not so much Freedom.
Peace we have been told is a complicated affair … Let’s not reinvent the wheel shall we and let’s begin where it mostly hurts – rather literally in fact.
Let’s start with the proverbial elephant in the room and call for our glorious and liberal western democracies to call back their hounds and stop all weapon sales to Saudi Arabia.
If the kingdom had less lead to dispense maybe Yemen would have enough of a breath left in its beaten and starved body to formulate a peace plan.
Peace is really not THAT complicated! But it will certainly cost war profiteers millions of dollars in lost revenues.
For weapons to be laid down and guns to be silenced, weapon sales need to be halted.
If indeed it would be folly to consider arming criminals in our streets for it would put the innocent in harm’s way, then it stands to reason to refrain from arming those who have no qualms targeting women and children to score military points.
Most western nations, might it be Canada, the United Nations, France or even Germany prohibit the sale of arms to countries with a persistent record of serious human rights violations or war crimes.
And yet those same governments have sanctioned the sale of weapons of war to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – a country which holds an abysmal human rights track record, and proved feral in its military ways.
The onus is now on those governments to abide by their respective rule of law and hold those principles they say to represent and carry.
If the old adage still holds that:He who kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed the whole of humanity … what should we say of silence?
Catherine Shakdam is the Director of Programs of the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies and a political analyst specializing in radical movements, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
(CD) — While 44 U.S. Senators on Tuesday were applauded by peace groups for voting in favor of a resolution that would have allowed Congress to begin reclaiming its war-making authority and ended the U.S. military’s backing of Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen, it was ultimately not enough to overcome entrenched opposition from the 45 Republicans and […]
During last month’s Valdai forum – one of the most prestigious in Russia, involving respected experts from around the world – there was a discussion of how the Yemen crisis could be resolved. Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, took part in the forum, clearly defining Russia’s position against a military solution to the conflict in Yemen, which is simply impossible. The attempts by the Arab coalition to force the Houthis, who triggered the collapse of the political balance that had existed in Yemen since 2014, to comply with Security Council Resolution 2216 and restore the status quo ante bellum have, so far, come to nothing.
Yes, the victims in Yemen have been much fewer than in Syria, but the country has been laid waste and three quarters of its citizens are suffering from hunger, children do not go to school, hospitals have been bombed, and the whole country is ravaged by epidemics of cholera and other diseases. Yes, the international community is making efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to the country by all possible routes, but this is clearly insufficient and is the equivalent of drip feeding a dying patient: it prevents him from dying but cannot do anything to heal him.
On March 3, after the end of the discussions in the Valdai forum, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, reflecting on the current situation in an interview with the Ethiopian newspaper “Reporter”, pointed out that it is important to accept that it is unlikely that national reconciliation can be achieved in Yemen quickly. “The opposing sides now have too many grievances against each other, in many cases with some justification. That situation explains the unwillingness of the factions in Yemen to return to a constructive discussion of how to overcome their antagonism, which today is the main obstacle to solving the crisis in the country. Nevertheless that should not be a reason to wash our hands of what is happening there,” he said.
Sergei Lavrov emphasized that the international community, and in particular the UN, must continue to press the parties in Yemen to renounce violence and sit down around a negotiating table together. Accordingly, since the beginning of the critical phase of the crisis in Yemen on March 26, 2015, when the anti-Houthi coalition led by Saudi Arabia started bombing Yemen, Russian diplomats have been focusing on exactly that, and have been actively helping the UN special envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmad to bring about a ceasefire. However, all his efforts and initiatives have been dashed because of the parties lack sufficient political will. When, at last, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country’s ex-president and one of the main figures in Yemeni politics, decided to break with the Houthis and engage in negotiations, he was killed shortly afterwards (on December 4, 2017) by elements opposed to a political solution, and the peace process reached a dead end again.
In view of the circumstances, in January 2018 Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmad decided to announce that he did not wish to continue his contract, and in February he resigned as the special envoy of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
It is already clear that the new special envoy is inheriting a difficult task and will not be able to manage without the support of the major world powers. It is no coincidence that the well-known New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, discussing the upcoming visit of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to the USA in that paper on March 7, called on President Trump to appoint an assistant secretary of state for Middle Eastern affairs and an ambassador to El-Riyadh, who would be able, among other things, to help the young de-facto ruler of the USA’s main regional ally get out of the Yemeni quagmire, as soon as possible.
Needless to say, that is good advice. It is true that it should not be forgotten that, in many ways, it was the Americans who drew Saudi Arabia into that conflict by passing on what was clearly exaggerated on Iran’s involvement in Yemen, and by supplying El-Riyadh with huge amounts of arms and pandering to its military instincts. What is more, American specialists have been servicing the military hardware sold to Saudi Arabia to ensure it is ready for use, and now Thomas Friedman talks about the importance of regulating the Yemeni conflict, which is stuck in a stalemate.
It must be admitted that Rex Tillerson’s dismissal on 13 March, and the appointment of his replacement, the CIA director and American political hawk Mike Pompeo, will do very little to help bring about the changes Thomas Friedman is calling for. Mike Pompeo has clearly been appointed to demolish, and not build, and his priorities are more likely to be to dismantle the Iranian nuclear deal and to prevent Russia from winning a final victory in Syria than to bring about an end to the war in Yemen. As is well known, the CIA has, throughout its history, focused not on collecting information but on bloody provocations and bringing about military coups, which are absolutely not the skills required to regulate the crisis in Yemen.
It is therefore highly likely that the new special envoy of the UN Secretary-General will lack the necessary support from the USA and will have to rely on his own resources, with assistance from Moscow. He will be dogged by the lack of new ideas and the dead-end situation that had emerged at the end of Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmad’s tenure.
So, what steps will he be able to take? It seems that he will have to make do with whatever ideas and proposals the Yemenis themselves offer him, especially those whose “souls suffer for their country”, to use the Russian expression. One such person is the former president of Yemen, Ali Nasir Muhammad, who presented his program for a way out of the crisis in the Valdai forum. The author has been able to obtain a full version of that plan, which, it is thought, António Guterres’ new special envoy may find useful as he begins his work. Here is a summary of the plan, which follows the text closely:
1. To end the fighting and create a suitable political climate for the renewal of the political process, by applying pressure on the regional parties to the conflict. A suitable model might be the peace agreement that brought an end to the 1960s civil war between Yemeni royalists and republicans, which was brokered by the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. The actual parties to the Yemeni conflict played no role in negotiating that agreement, and, as today, they did not want the war to stop.
2. After the ceasefire the first steps in the restoration of trust between the opposing sides will be made, and to achieve this, the following actions need to be taken:
A) the creation of a five-member Presidential Council to govern during the transition period;
B) the formation of a government of national accord containing representatives of all political forces.
3. The formation of local, regional and international military councils to collect heavy and medium-sized weaponry from the various armed groups; the collected arms will then be kept by the national Ministry of Defence.
4. The start of talks between all the political and social groups in Yemeni society, in order to reach a consensus on the form of a future federal state, which will be made up of two regions.
5. The creation of a constitution committee which will start considering proposed drafts of a constitution.
6. The formation of a general election commission, which will make arrangements for general parliamentary elections and ensure that they are transparent, in compliance with the rules observed by democratic states.
7. An address, in coordination with regional and world powers, with a request for funding of a development plan which would enable the renewal of the country’s economy.
8. The UN Security Council should approve this road map and require it to be implemented.
If these proposals are analysed it will be seen that some of them duplicate the measures that Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmad attempted to put into effect, while others draw on lessons learned from the ceasefire that ended Yemen’s civil war in the 1960s.
What conditions are required for this plan, which clearly needs to be drawn up in more depth and detail, to work? First of all, at a minimum, the USA must not try and obstruct it. Secondly, El-Riyadh would have made a political decision to cease the conflict without achieving a military victory over the Houthis, and agree to their taking part in the political life of their country. Thirdly, the political platform of national reconciliation, developed after the launch of the Gulf Cooperation Council states’ initiative to bring about peace in Yemen, and begin a national dialogue, must at least be taken into account. Any proposals for federalization included in the results of this dialogue may turn out to be productive and could prevent the break-up of the country.
Russia is able to provide positive political support for the implementation of this plan and can exert the necessary influence on Iran to ensure that the latter, motivated by the anti-Saudi feelings that are so powerful in that country, does not sabotage the plan.
Obviously, that would be a challenging path, strewn with thorns rather than roses. But the tortured country of Yemen has simply has no option other than to seek a political solution. And the sooner the parties to the conflict, including the Houthis, understand that for themselves, the greater the chances of peace for the the proud and ancient nation of Yemen.
Maksim Egorov, a political observer for the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
(COMMONDREAMS) — As the Trump administration continues to expand the U.S. military’s role in fueling the Saudi-led coalition’s deadly assault on Yemen—which has killed at least 10,000 civilians and sparked “the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis“—a coalition of senators led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bipartisan joint resolution on Wednesday that calls for the removal of American armed forces from […]
If few were ever under the illusion that Saudi Arabia could manifest its hegemonic ambitions in Yemen by sheer military force, the recent collapse in Aden of Riyadh’s tentative alliance with the UAE only serves to underscore the pending demise of the kingdom’s so-called coalition, and with it, Yemen’s war narrative and rationale.
What legitimacy is there to call your own when your allies challenge the very premise of your rhetoric? More pertinently, what hope is there to architect an international consensus when Yemen has so clearly become a pawn in a move for regional control?
The idea that monolithic Saudi Arabia wishes to liberate its neighbour has become too far-fetched and divorced from reality for any serious party to even attempt to rationalise.
Yemen’s war is colonial in nature, sectarian in its language, and genocidal at its core. Very much to the image of its commander in chief: Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen has been cruel, unjust and irrational.
We ought to remember that it was in the name of constitutional legitimacy that Riyadh declared war on Yemen back in late March 2015.
To protect and reassert the presidency of one Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi after he very publicly resigned (twice if one wishes to be pedantic with such details), the kingdom saw fit to rise a war coalition strong of several super-powers to hammer down one of the poorest nations in the world.
Iran’s influence in Yemen the world was told needed to be contained to the tune of one illegal humanitarian blockade, the use of illegal weapons of war, and undiscriminating bombing. Under the imperious need to free the region from Tehran’s pestilence death had to be dispensed as one would do chocolate on Easter.
Before the rubbles of a nation whose only crime had been to imagine itself free and independent from foreign meddling, Riyadh has argued former President Hadi to be the cornerstone of Yemen’s future, and prerequisite for peace – pluralism and democracy be damned
Entered the United Arab Emirates …
As of January 28, 2018, the UAE and Saudi Arabia stand on very different side of the river: the latter now backs southern secessionists against Hadi’s government along the very lines interestingly enough, Ansarallah movement invokes: the right to political self-determination.
“In Aden, legitimacy is being overturned,” Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher said in a statement in the wake of armed clashed in the seaport city of Aden – the seat of Hadi’s government.
He added: “What is happening is very dangerous and affects the security, stability and unity of Yemen… This wrongdoing is no different than the crimes committed by the Houthis in Sana’a.”
Those crimes bin Dagher is referring to are those challenges Yemen’s Resistance Movement offered before Hadi’s rising authoritarianism when his mandate dictated he overviewed Yemen’s transition of power and democratic empowerment.
In more ways than one, South Yemen separatists are refusing Hadi’s rule and legitimacy for the same reasons Ansarallah did. One could argue that Hadi has become the odd one out. A president in exile with no real popular mandate, no political party and no tangible hope for a future, Hadi looks more like a liability than anything else – and yet Riyadh remains committed to his return.
Clashes erupted in Aden after Hadi’s army, who is supported by Saudi Arabia, tried to prevent separatists, backed by the UAE, from entering the city. At least 10 people were killed and 30 wounded in the fighting, hospital sources were quoted as saying.
The Southern Transitional Council (STC) – a movement demanding secession for southern Yemen – had given Hadi’s government a seven-day ultimatum to either dismiss his prime minister and cabinet, or face an overthrow.
Hadi’s legitimacy, or lack thereof aside, the opening of such a new frontline right at the heart of those territories Saudi Arabia has claimed control over by way of the UAE, betrays a geopolitical dispute that is unlikely to disappear.
By moving against Hadi’s government, it is Riyadh’s hold over the region Abu Dhabi came to challenge.
Beyond that, this new standoff underscores Yemen’s geopolitical importance. Yemen’s war was never ever about democracy-building and/or Iran’s alleged pull.
Yemen it is painfully obvious, has become Gulf monarchies’ new military playground as they battle for influence over the region. Each to its own, the Emirates and the kingdom came to muddy dangerous waters indeed.
More likely than not, Yemenis will end up bearing the brunt of it all with both their lives and security.
But there is opportunity in Aden’s stage rebellion against Saudi Arabia’s diktat, or more to the point maybe, MBS’s influence (Mohammed bin Salman, son and heir to King Salman).
It is not so much the kingdom, the UAE is challenging to a proxy duel, and more that ambitious prince, who, to finance his war in Yemen, so diligently pursued his family from the confines of the Carlton-Ritz hotel. More than 200 members of Saudi Arabia’s elite, including 11 princes, were detained under allegations of corruption before they were tortured, and their wealth raided to the benefit of the crown in late 2017.
MBS is not exactly a popular prince those days and many among the Gulf elite are dreading his ascension to throne.
But where does this leave Yemen? I would personally argue: an opportunity at peace by way of negotiations with the only protagonist whose hands could command enough international traction to make it happen: the UAE.
For all its ambitions in Yemen, the UAE stands a lesser evil than Saudi Arabia. Unlike Saudi Arabia, the UAE does not have an irrational fear of Ansarallah, nor does it wish to annihilate Yemen’s religious traditions to stamp its own.
The UAE also offers a degree of rationality the kingdom profoundly lacks. Given the stakes, pragmatism dictates one considers the possibility.
There is an interesting aspect to Aden’s standoff that few experts have openly discussed as yet, and that is the position western capitals will be forced to take should tensions escalate further. There most probably lies Yemen’s immediate political future.
Catherine Shakdam is the Director of Programs of the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies and a political analyst specializing in radical movements, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
While Trump is correct in accusing the mainstream media of spreading false information and misleading the public, WikiLeaks pointed out that Trump himself has the same reputation.
While the media obsesses over Russiagate, it ignores the Pentagon"s admission to aiding genocide in the Middle East with ground troops and airstrikes.
At the beginning of the month, the highly influential former President of Yemen Abdullah Saleh was assassinated in one of his residences. It is reported that his body was demonstrated to the people to show them that the “traitor” was murdered, while making “an attempt to escape.” It is believed that this longtime Yemeni strongman was shot by a Houthi sniper.
Anyone who’s familiar with the Houthi resistance movement would be quick to point out that this murder doesn’t fall in the pattern of typical steps that this group would make. As a matter of fact, such an approach to taking down a target is typical for professional hitmen, hired by an external power to “handle tricky affairs” in a particular fashion. It’s no secret that this latest murder will prove to be highly beneficial for at least two external players – Saudi Arabia and Israel that have dreaded the Houthi resistance as a source of Tehran’s power in the south of the Arabian Peninsula for a really long time. These two states have long been seeking for a pretext to launch strikes against Iranian forces in Syria, along with nuclear facilities deep within the territory of Iran. All that Riyadh and Tel-Aviv have been craving for was a pretext, and now they have one exactly to their liking
All through the last month, various media source across the region would report an extensive amount of meeting between Saudi and Israeli secret services taking place, aimed at establishing a common position on the ongoing stand-off with Iran. Apparently, an emergence of such a position resulted in the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemeni presidential palace and a number of government buildings that would have been left untouched through the years of Saudi aggression against Yemen. Apparently, Saudi royal family wanted to make a point with those air strikes that the old Yemen is not to be found anywhere now, while the new on has nothing but war ahead of it. Saudi Arabia has been in desperate need to find a state scrape goat to redirect the outrage of the international community provoked by the massive civilian death toll, and now the Houthis are going to be forced into playing such a role.
Now pretty much everyone tries to predict the future of the Yemeni conflict after the murder of Abdullah Saleh. But to make such a prediction one must examine the reasons behind the Yemeni war and establish the degree of interference that states like Saudi Arabia and Iran have shown so far..
The problem of Yemen is critical one, as there’s a massive gap between the industrial south that serves a home to some 20% of the total population of Yemen and the archaic north. The gap has never been overcome. Moreover, the so-called “Arab Spring” caught the country while it was still in the transitional period triggering a number of serious controversies within the Yemeni society. It is not that difficult to understand how the “Arab Spring” in Yemen has almost immediately transferred from the stage of urban population demanding their rights into a bitter inter-tribal feud. Under these circumstances, Yemen rolled back to its most stable position in no time, with the industrialized South opposing the tribal North. And Abdullah Saleh how to steer the country across this storm by striking a deal with the Houthis, thus obtaining the means to control the most archaic power of Yemen. Frankly speaking, if Saudi Arabia invasion hadn’t launched its invasion, the longtime strongman would most certainly be able to reach a safe harbor, since there’s has been no man in Yemen who would enjoy similar authority.
The murder of Saleh is mysterious in every sense. There is no internal logic in it, since the Houthis have no chances survive both politically and physically without Saleh’s support Now that they’ve pulled the short end of the stick, just like ISIS they can only count on the situation in Yemen getting really terrible as it may allow the survive the onslaught politically.
If the Houthis were indeed behind the murder of the former President of Yemen, they have indeed achieved a small tactical victory but at the same time outlawed themselves. With Saleh they had a chance for a political settlement, alone they would ultimately be crushed no matter how painfully hard they will fight, as every single other tribe be forced to join the forces aiming at eradicating the Houthis.
There’s no scenario under which Tehran could assassinate of Saleh, since his death created a long list of challenges that can hardly be overcome. Qatar, for example, has never been pardoned for stagging the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi. This former Libyan leader was eccentric and it was almost impossible to reason with him, but he was a sheikh of the highest nobility, and therefore someone had to be held responsible for his murder. The then Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani had to abandon his post solely due to this murder. Saleh in the Middle East table of ranks was standing even higher than Gaddafi, so the people of the region will find the one responsible sooner or later and will force him to answer for his actions.
Now that all of Yemeni tribes are going to be forced to unite against the Houthis, Yemen will be closed for Iranian influence, as any ties with Tehran are going to be punished. Saudi Arabia and the Arab League have received the right to push all pro-Iranian forces out of Yemen, but they will not be allowed to affect the internal feud in any way. But at this point Riyadh has ultimately achieved its goal, as Iran would be pushed out of Yemen and the Houthis will be destroyed, and the fact that weapons to the latter were supplied by the Saleh clan is only making the matter worse for them. The Houthis would still be able to fight with weapons they capture, but they won’t last for long. The only thing that the Saudi-led coalition will have to do to finish them off is by introducing a naval blockade of northern Yemen. This will not be easy, but the Royal Saudi Navy is quite capable and the purely symbolic Houthi fleet is no match to this force. Then, after finishing the Houthis off, Yemeni elites will get back to their inter-tribal feud, but from now on Saudi Arabia will be the only judge they would appeal to.
There are reports that the son of the former President Ahmed Saleh has already sent a number of the Republican Guard units to the north of the country, that are now approaching Marib. Apparently, the army and the guards are going to act together for the first time since 2011, when General Ali Mohsen raised a rebellion against the now deceased President. What we are witnessing is re-union of former opponents – the Marib and Saleh clans.
After the collapse of the coalition between the Houthis and Abdullah Saleh, all the existing maps depicting zones of control over the Yemeni territory have now lost all relevance. The south with the center in Aden is still going to be controlled by the forces of the exiled President Mansour Hadi , the north with the center in Sadah is still the territory of the Al-Houthi clan, while the center and the east of the country are now the zone disputed by the Saleh and Al-Houthi clans. In fact, Yemen from a country traditionally divided between two capitals – southern Aden and northern Sana’a – is becoming a country of three capitals, with Sadah being added to the list. It is possible that Sadah will be the subject of controversy in the future, but it’s still too early to tell as the main battles are yet to come.
Alexander Orlov, Political Scientist and Expert Orientalist, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Yemen’s longest serving president Ali Abdullah Saleh is no more! If news of his death may have left many to rejoice at the demise of a man they perceived as a tyrant – an opportunist hungry for power and wealth, Yemen’s former strongman nevertheless spoke for a vast demographic, both a power-broker, and bridge in between those parties which might not otherwise have addressed each other, nevermind consider compromising with one another.
Yemen’s longest serving president is no more and Yemen’s arduous road towards political self-determination, peace, and independence might have grown more sinuous and terrible yet.
News broke on Monday of former President Saleh’s death following a tumultuous few days – days which saw conflicting narratives as to the future of Yemen, days which saw both Yemen’s figureheads: Seyed Abdel Malek al-Houthis and Ali Abdullah Saleh level accusations against one another and in one final blow disappear what had been a tentative alliance.
For all intents and purposes Yemen’s Resistance movement has now shrunk to one faction, one position, one political line: that held by the Houthis.
If Yemen’s political landscape has been streamlined to one powerful consensus, the nation’s future has never appeared murkier, or more fraught with dangers.
Regardless of what people may have thought of former President, beyond the many grave allegations levelled against his regime, and those powers he helped propped over the decades, Saleh nevertheless held in his hands the promise of a political settlement. He may well have been despised by many of his contemporaries, but no one better than Saleh had the ability to architect a bridge in between warring parties.
Tarek Radwan wrote on the now deceased president: “Saleh leaves a complicated legacy. As the only president who ruled over a unified Yemen, his governing style was often characterized by corruption, mismanagement, and factionalism. He reportedly amassed billions in wealth as he pitted his political competitors against each other.”
Whatever his intentions may have been – whether out of greed, or a cunning sense of political survival amid fast-changing dynamics, Saleh still offered a strategic way out of Yemen’s war, Yemen’s famine, Yemen’s humanitarian blackhole … That door has now been closed shut, only to open the war-torn nation to tribal calls of revenge with sectarian undertone.
26 million people now sit ransom to calls of further bloodshed.
“I will lead the battle until the last Houthi is thrown out of Yemen … the blood of my father will be hell ringing in the ears of Iran,” Ahmed Ali Saleh was quoted as saying by Saudi-owned al-Ekhbariya TV. He called for his father’s backers to “take back Yemen from the Iranian Houthi militias”.
There can be no winner to Yemen’s new feud – not when it is played on the back of a humanitarian blockade and vengeful Saudi military campaign that has left the country’s institutions in tatters.
Political victory today will be spelt in the blood of the innocent … a difficult play to back if we consider that an entire generation stands to be claimed by famine, cholera, or diphtheria.
What now? What future awaits Yemen now that another battle line has been drawn in its sands?
While of course a case is to be made to Yemen’s Resistance movement and those men and women who, for three years, have stood through fire and lead to affirm their right to political self-determination and sovereign independence, pragmatism would also dictate to caution against political isolation.
A nation, however righteous and legitimate its cause maybe cannot stand alone against a world coalition, not without allowing for some measure of good-will – whether we like it or not Saleh was that measure of good will. His political traction, and the factions he held to his name could have permitted for negotiations to resume at a time when Saudi Arabia was looking for a way out of Yemen’s quicksand.
Although evidently there is no way of knowing whether Saleh could have made good on his promises for peace, the uncertainty his death leaves behind is more than a little troubling.
With no third party to break Saudi Arabia’s momentum, Yemen may face its toughest night yet.
If Ahmed Saleh’s language is anything to go by, it is rather evident that Yemen, and all Yemenis have now been sold to Saudi Arabia’s irrational sectarian narrative. With Muhammad bin Salman sitting at the wheel of THAT bus, one must recoil in fear of what may yet pass.
The art of conflict resolution we may want to remember is not to be right absolutely or in a vacuum but to mitigate conflicting ambitions to find a palatable solution away from war.
Yemenis have suffered too severely for anyone to be so cavalier as to dismiss the impact Saleh’s death will have on the people. This new crisis is not about the death of a would-be dictator, or even a system, but the unravelling of dynamics which could lead to an escalation in hostility.
As of December 4, Yemen has entered a new phase in its war against Saudi Arabia, a war that could carry the seeds of civil and tribal unrest now that Riyadh has a weapon to level at Yemen by way of ‘political retribution’.
Catherine Shakdam is the Director of Programs of the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies and a political analyst specializing in radical movements, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
At the end of November, a major crisis erupted in Yemen, when a former President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced his intentions to start negotiations with the Saudi-led coalition that has been trying to bomb Yemen back into the stone age. This resulted in the Houthis movement voicing accusations of treason against their former ally that they’ve been supporting in the struggle against the pro-Saudi runaway President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi . The day before these accusations were released by the Houthis they would announce that they’ve managed to hit a nuclear power plant that being built in the United Arab Emirates with a missile. Previously, a similar missile hit an airfield in Riyadh, which resulted in the latter rushing to throw Iran under the bus by spreading allegations that the Houthis are using missiles supplied to them by Tehran.
The internal conflict in Yemen has shown no signs of aggravation for a long while now, but any attempts to use it one’s own interests made by Saudi Arabia, the Arab League or even Iran may trigger disastrous consequences. After all, Saudi Arabia and Israel have been looking for an excuse to launch strikes against Iranian troops in Syria along with nuclear facilities deep inside the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Now one can expect Saudi Arabia starting to form an anti-Iranian coalition under the guise of uniting the Arab League. It is even possible that the UN is going to be drawn into this process, accusing Tehran of hostile actions against certain Arab states along with attempts to launch a Shia expansion across the Sunni domain.
Yemen is a state where tribes have been at the center stage of internal politics for a really long while. However, the south of the country has already witnessed a partial disintegration of the rigid tribal system, while in the north it hasn’t been the case. No wonder the so-called Arab Spring movement swept Yemen from south to north with main demands protesters were concerned the indecisive and insufficient steps taken in the direction of changing the social fabric of the country so that tribal leaders would have had less control over people’s lives. Even though those protests were not entirely justified, since Abdullah Saleh used to take a lot of steps against tribalism, even though those steps weren’t consistent. The division of the country into the south and the north has been developing over decades and this division is the single most important reason for the internal conflict the development of which in little to no way connected to other causes. The Yemeni situation is so unique in the whole of the Arab world that in spite of the catastrophic social conditions most Yemenis are forced to live them only a marginal part of them actually supports Al-Qaeda and ISIS. ISIS keeps its attempts to win popular support through the use of its media capabilities, releasing footage and reports of its terrorist attacks, but the support it is getting from those cannot be compared to any other state of the region.
The alliance between the Houthis and Yemen’s former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh was purely situational, which was no secret for pretty much anyone who has bee following developments in Yemen. It’s enough to note that back in the day when Saleh was still in power he would send Yemeni Air Force to hunt the Houthis down in the north of the country. For sure, external forces do influence the course of the Yemeni conflict, but northerners and southerners can be hardly described as proxy forces of Iran and Saudi Arabia, since they’ve been trying to settle their own differences and contradictions.
It won’t be an exaggeration to state that Ali Abdullah Saleh is one of the most intelligent and cunning Arab dictators of our time. One can just mention that most of regional players that used to sit together with Saleh at the same negotiation table are killed, topple, or turned into puppets of global players, while Saleh continues playing his own game. He would lead Tehran and Riyadh in opposing each other all across Yemen, while carefully eying both parties in anticipation of the best possible deal to be put on the table.
The Ansar Allah group that constitutes the main driving force between the Houthis resistance is in desperate need to sustain an alliance with Saleh and his forces for a pretty trivial reason: Yemen used to be a hub of illegal arms trade back in the day when Saleh was in control of the country, and it has largely remained one with former President still calling the shots. To a certain extent he has been in control of other forms of illegal trade like drug and oil smuggling, which would grant his forces a certain degree of independence. The only reason why Saleh would summon Iran and the Houthis to help him was that he would need to put additional pressure on Saudi Arabia, while he would only rely on the forces he has at disposal to win the integral struggle. Generally speaking, he’s still the Comander in Chief of Yemeni Armed Forces, since in a country where tribes mean more than ranks a local warlord can ignore the existing military chain of command.
The goal Saleh has been after all through these years was to return to power. The war between the North and the South should burn out eventually, even though it may take a lot of time with high unemployment rates that are common in Yemen. But sooner or later the idea of the need to unite the country should prevail across all parties, and by that time Saleh’s clan would be the single most influential force in Yemen. Upon being thrown out of the door, Saleh would pit both allies and enemies against each other in order to get back through the window.
So the gears start shifting pretty rapidly these days in Yemen. The runaway President Mansour Hadi who must have abandoned this position two years ago ordered the forces still loyal to him to assist pro-Saleh militants in hunting the Houthis. The situation plays into the hands of Saudi Arabia, as it can now take advantage of the abrupt consolidation of the Yemeni elites.
Thus, on December 4 the Houthis crossed the red line by murdering Ali Abdullah Saleh – one of the most influential people in Yemen, putting themselves out of bounds of any negotiations. The Houthis are now trying to provide an excuse for this step. Is there an Iranian trace behind the murder of Saleh? There’s no clear traces, but those who want to find them are most likely to formally succeed. The latest reports indicate that the Houthis have wounded and captured the son of Saleh Ahmed, the commander of the Republican Guard, but there’s been no official confirmation yet. However, what is already known can bring the level of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia to an all time hight. A strike against nuclear facilities launched by the Houthis can result in a symmetrical response – a nuclear strike by countries possessing such weapons. In a region where everyone is prepared for war, such can lead to instantaneous transition to a direct full-scale engagement between principal regional players.
Alexander Orlov, Political Scientist and Expert Orientalist, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
The Saudi Arabian alliance, of which the US is a member, has cut off the flow of humanitarian aid into Yemen and the results are catastrophic.
(COMMONDREAMS) — Despite warnings about the intensifying humanitarian crisis in war-ravaged Yemen, members of the U.S. Congress dodged questions from an Intercept reporter this week about why lawmakers haven’t voted on U.S. support for the Saudi-led military coalition that is bombing the impoverished country while also imposing a blockade of urgently needed aid.
Lee Fang, a journalist with The Intercept, partnered with NowThis to a produce a video that shows him attempting to question members of Congress on Capitol Hill as part of a report published earlier this week about U.S. support for the war in Yemen and the 2001 Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) that passed Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and which U.S. President Donald Trump and his predecessors have used to justify military actions around the globe without explicit permission from lawmakers.
Lawmakers Avoid Questions About The War in Yemen
Why are we at war in Yemen? Not even our lawmakers know
Posted by NowThis Politics on Tuesday, November 7, 2017
As Fang notes in his related article, while the coalition battles Houthi rebels, “Saudi Arabia relies heavily on the U.S. military for intelligence sharing, refueling flights for coalition warplanes, and the transfer of American-made cluster bombs, rockets, and other munitions used against targets in Yemen”—which continues in spite of the fact that “coalition warplanes have repeatedly struck crowded markets, hospitals, power plants, and other civilian targets.”
Fang writes:
Congress, however, has never authorized U.S. support for the war, which has caused 10,000 civilian deaths and has spiraled in recent months into one of the worst humanitarian crises of the century…. For 16 years, the executive branch has pointed to the AUMF as legal justification for its involvement in conflicts across the Middle East and Africa, a strategy that is legally questionable. But the use of the AUMF in the Yemeni context is especially bizarre given that the AUMF’s target is Al Qaeda, and the group AQAP—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—is fighting alongside the U.S.-Saudi coalition against the Houthi rebels.
Although several members of Congress brushed off Fang’s questions, some expressed frustration with the AUMF, and pointed to a recent bipartisan legislative effort to terminate U.S. involvement, which was quashed by lawmakers who support the Saudi-led coalition.
Meanwhile, about 20 humanitarian agencies and the U.N. are warning of a “nightmare scenario,” as Common Dreams reported Wednesday, after the Saudi-led coalition closed all air, land, and sea ports to the country, cutting off millions of civilians from life-saving aid.
“There are over 20 million people in need of humanitarian assistance; seven million of them, are facing famine-like conditions and rely completely on food aid to survive,” according to the agencies.
Almost 21 million people are now in need of humanitarian aid in #Yemen because of conflict.
Disruption of aid will mean
— More people will suffer
— More people will go hungry
— Lives will be lostThe latest: https://t.co/Smd20lCPF5 pic.twitter.com/c8z8L3coCF
— UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) November 10, 2017
“It will not be like the famine that we saw in South Sudan earlier in the year, where tens of thousands of people were affected. It will not be like the famine which cost 250,000 people their lives in Somalia in 2011,” warned Mark Lowcock, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, speaking to reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York. “It will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims.”
Lowcock, who visited Yemen last month, noted that “humanitarian access through the ports was inadequate even before” the blockade was announced, and said the U.N.’s World Food Programme feeds about seven million Yemenis per month. In addition to the millions who are starving, Yemen is also facing a cholrea epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
By Jessica Corbett / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
A former military and intelligence operative who has called into The Alex Jones Show on numerous occasions has been picked up by the FBI after his shocking public warning that the United States was about to fall victim to a false flag terror attack, according to a report by Infowars.com.
The caller, identified only as Zach, warned yesterday that the Saudi civil war was about to “spill over” into terror attacks within the United States that would be blamed on Yemeni nationals but actually carried out by deep state agents within the CIA.
“There are going to be attacks, by what will be described as Yemeni nationals in the United States but I’m just going to put this out there, these are CIA operatives, CIA proxies who are rogue at this point because their entire infrastructure has been dissolved by the Trump Administration,” the source warned.
“I’m just going to say it right now, during this week there is an attempt by Yemeni nationals inside the United States… false flag,” he continued after discussing who really launched the ICBM from Yemen.
Sometime after the insider revealed this bombshell information he was apparently picked up by the FBI, despite the fact that he had not revealed any classified information.
In other words, the source was seemingly taken into custody because of his false flag warning.
“We have a source who got picked up by the FBI last night, I know who the source is, and he has actually been in the news before and is a prominent member of the military and intelligence community,” Jones revealed in an update.
“The FBI came and picked him up two hours after he was on as a caller, took him in to a military facility and hes there… hes even still got his phone, they took it away and downloaded it. Took his laptop and home computer. He has a lawyer now. Over what he said on air.”
To recap, a high-level military and intelligence source not only revealed a Saudi connection to the Las Vegas Massacre, he then went on to warn about what he believed to be an upcoming false flag terror attack that would be blamed on the Middle East but actually carried out by the deep state.
He was taken into custody shortly after.
“The word is [from the source] that Yemeni terrorists are getting ready to strike in Europe and the United States as part of this civil war,” Jones continued. “Within two hours of him saying that, the FBI was at his house, had transcripts and recordings of his last 7 or 8 phone calls here.”
Stay tuned as this is a developing story that will be updated as additional information comes in.
From the moment that the Saudi-led onslaught against Yemen began, the USA has been solidly behind Riyadh. Yemen now faces a humanitarian crisis, yet the forces committed to sovereignty and economic development remain strong, nowhere near surrender. Signs now indicate that as the war continues, some circles within the US power structure may be looking at other options, including negotiations.
US media routinely distorts the conflict in Yemen. The primary narrative is that the war is a complex, internal matter with scores of different factions competing for power. Typical US media reports on the conflict in Yemen overload the reader with references, mentioning “the Houthis”, Saleh, Al-Queda, ISIS, tribal forces, etc.; leaving the reader with the impression that Yemen is simply a disastrous mess of armed factions killing each other in ways that are beyond comprehension.
In addition to the primary narrative, more explicitly hawkish publications, specifically a hardline minority in the US press closely tied to Israel and Saudi Arabia, will repeat an even more distorted narrative. FOX News and the Wall Street Journal, both part of News Corporation, which is partially owned by Saudi Arabia, will often tell a story about Iranian imperialism. They present the war as Saudi Arabia fighting off an attempt by the Islamic Republic to colonize its neighbor.
Both of these narratives distort reality. The war in Yemen is not a deeply complicated mess, and it is not a proxy war with Iran. The war in Yemen is a struggle by one of the poorest countries in the world to assert its independence. Saudi Arabia, aligned with the United States, is fighting to keep Yemen an impoverished, underdeveloped satellite state.
The “Northern Tribes” Distortion
There is no political organization in Yemen called “The Houthis.” “Houthi” is a family name associated with certain tribal entities located in the deeply impoverished northern regions of the country, where the Zaidi interpretation of Shia Islam is practiced by a religious minority.
When US media refers to “Houthis” they are using a derogatory moniker for the political, religious, and military organization called Ansarullah (Ansar Allah). The religious movement was founded by Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi. The name “Ansar Allah” literally means “supporters of God” or “helpers of God.” It should be noted that Muslims generally refer to the disciples of Jesus Christ as “Ansar Allah.”
The religious movement led by the now deceased Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi vehemently opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2002. In 2004, the group was forced to engage in military self-defense due to violent suppression by the Saudi backed central government. During the 2011 “Arab Spring” uprisings, the Ansarullah organization gained prominence and made many allies among the wider Yemeni population.
While the Ansarullah Movement has become a major leader of resistance to Saudi domination, distinguishing themselves militarily, the “Houthis” are only part of a broad coalition. Within the Revolutionary Committee which has taken power in Sanaa are members of the the Southern Movement that seeks to restore the socialist Democratic Peoples Republic of Yemen. The Revolutionary Committee also includes the Arab Spring Party, a political party formed during the 2011 uprising. The New York Times quoted Leyla Lutf, calling her a “top official of the Arab Spring party” on February 6th, 2015, as she explained the Revolutionary Committee’s agenda, saying “People have expectations, and we’re trying to fulfill those expectations.” At this point, even supporters of Saleh, the leader deposed in the 2011 uprising, support the Revolutionary Committee.
US media has worked endlessly to obscure the fact that a broad coalition is fighting against US-Saudi domination of Yemen. By branding all of the forces in Yemen resisting the Saudi onslaught as “Houthis” they obscure the nature of the conflict, and reduce it to an ethnic or tribal one.
However, Yemen is nearly unified in opposition to Saudi attack. Mansour Hadi, the President which the Revolutionary Committee deposed, took power in a sham election in which he was the only candidate on the ballot. The Yemeni people have continued to fight for two years against the fourth largest military in the world, because they are determined not to have this Saudi puppet who preaches bigoted Sunni sectarianism, dividing the population, put back in charge.
What Does The Revolutionary Committee Want?
Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the entire world. Before the war began, conditions for the population of Yemen were already bleak. According to the CIA world Factbook statistics, published in 2012, nearly 30% of the population is illiterate. The rate of infant mortality in 2012 was roughly 47 deaths per 1000 live births. The country had only approximately 1 doctor for every 4,000 people. Only 54.4% of the population had access to improved drinking water. 40% of the country’s children were underweight.
Now, as Saudi Arabia unleashes death and destruction against the population, 7 million people are living close to famine. 600,000 have been infected by cholera, due to unclean drinking water after Saudi bombs and missiles destroyed the already inadequate water treatment facilities. As they continue to slaughter Yemeni civilians, the Saudis have made it unsafe for civilian aircraft or ships to deliver humanitarian assistance. One in three people in the country is now experiencing food shortages.
The number of civilians who have died as a result of Saudi Arabia’s ruthless “foreign meddling” is in the tens of thousands. US leaders endlessly demonize governments around the world that challenge their power, yet the entire US political establishment, from Obama, to Hillary Clinton, to Donald Trump, has embraced the Saudi monarchy. The world watches as the fourth largest military on the planet flaunts international law and UN resolutions, and devastates its southern neighbor.
Why do the people of Yemen continue to fight in the face of so much suffering? If the war were merely the result of paid Iranian mercenaries, it would have ended long ago.
A clue as to what Yemenis are fighting for can be found on the logo of the Ansarullah organization. Alongside the image of a hand pointing to the sky, a reference to God, and a fire-arm, representing armed self-defense, the logo of the Ansarullah organization contains a shaft of wheat. When I was in the Gulf of Aden with medical aid workers who had been in Yemen, it was explained to me that this shaft of wheat represents economic development.
The Revolutionary Committee is fighting to break Yemen out of Saudi domination. Yemen has untapped oil resources, minerals, and a population of 28 million people. The reason it remains poor is not because of some unfortunate circumstances. The poverty of Yemen is caused by foreign domination, keeping them in a state of chronic underdevelopment. Saudi Arabia is bombing and destroying Yemen in order to keep it poor, and restore their handpicked stooge, Mansour Hadi, to the Presidential throne.
Are Negotiations In The Works?
US military Generals have advised the Saudi army in Riyadh. Saudi planes have been refueled by US war planes. The USA has sold Saudi Arabia billions of dollars worth of weapons to continue their war crimes, and satellite support has also been provided.
However, a recent article written by Harvard University research fellow Asher Orkaby seems to show a potential change in US orientation toward the conflict. The Council on Foreign Relations, a very influential Wall Street backed think tank, is one of the key crafters of US foreign policy strategy. Writing in the CFR’s “Foreign Affairs” magazine, Orkaby makes some shocking admissions about Yemen.
While Orkaby repeats some of the distortions about “Houthis” and “Northern Tribes,” he outright dismisses the FOX news narrative of Iranian proxies saying “there is no real Houthi-Iranian alliance,” and “the true target of the Saudi campaign is not Iran but the Houthis themselves.” Orkaby goes on to admit Saudi Arabia’s real relationship with its neighbor, saying “each time a popular movement or a strong central authority has looked as though it were appearing in Yemen, the Saudi government has responded with military action and financial support for pro-Saudi groups.”
The article, published in one of the most widely read foreign policy publications, goes on to suggest that the Yemeni resistance has “little intention” of fighting the USA or Israel, and points out that the Revolutionary Committee is fighting against ISIS and Al-Queda, at the same time they face Saudi onslaught.
Orkaby goes on to raise the idea that perhaps negotiations between the Yemeni Revolutionary Committee and the Saudi invaders may not be completely absurd.
It is possible that within the secretive internal discussions of the Council on Foreign Relations, accurately described as the CIA’s brain, negotiations and efforts to stop the Saudi onslaught are being considered. The publication of an article containing such glaring admissions about the true nature of the conflict is not accidental.
Openness to negotiations is probably based on the fact that the Yemeni Revolutionary Committee is not going to surrender. Despite the fourth largest military on earth, aligned with NATO and Washington, subjecting the people of Yemen to bombing, blockade, and invasion, the Yemenis continue to fight. The most powerful forces in the world have created a humanitarian crisis, and have taken thousands of innocent lives, but they have not defeated the Revolutionary Committee, which clearly has a huge base of support among the religiously diverse population.
As hopes of crushing Yemen’s aspirations for independence with brute force have failed, a strategic recalculation may very well be taking place behind closed doors in Riyadh and Washington.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse
People better start waking up and paying attention to what is happening in the Middle East, because the situation is becoming quite serious. If things go badly, we could be facing a major regional war which would involve not only Saudi Arabia and Iran, but also potentially the United States and Israel. Yesterday, I quoted an article in the New York Times that warned that tensions between the Saudis and the Iranians were raising “the threat of a direct military clash between the two regional heavyweights”. And now Jake Novak of CNBC is saying that a “direct conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as opposed to the proxy war they’re fighting in Yemen, looks inevitable.”
I put those last two words in bold so that there wouldn’t be any confusion. In fact, Novak is warning that the Saudis “are marching ever closer towards a wider regional war”. Novak understands the dynamics of the Middle East, and he realizes where things could be headed if cooler heads do not prevail.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have already been fighting proxy wars against one another in Syria and Iran for quite a while, but a direct military conflict between the two could literally be a nightmare scenario.
One of the primary characters in this ongoing drama is Saudi Arabia’s extremely hawkish crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. He hates Iran with a passion, and he has already said that he believes that a peace dialogue with Iran is impossible.
And over the past several days, events in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon have moved talk of war to the front burner…
First, the kingdom squarely blamed Iran for a missile attack on Riyadh from Yemen that was thwarted by the U.S.-made Patriot anti-missile system. The Saudis called that attack “direct military aggression by the Iranian regime and may be considered an act of war.”
Second, the Saudis accused Lebanon of — figuratively at least — declaring “war” against it because of aggression from Hezbollah. That statement spurred even Saudi ally and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to publicly urge for calm.
In an article yesterday, I discussed the “purge” that is currently taking place in Saudi Arabia. Many believe that this purge is all about removing any potential obstacles to a war with Iran. Mohammed bin Salman and his father have made dealing with Iran their number one strategic priority, and they have even enlisted the Israelis as allies in their cause…
As is already well-known, the Saudi and Israeli common cause against perceived Iranian influence and expansion in places like Syria, Lebanon and Iraq of late has led the historic bitter enemies down a pragmatic path of unspoken cooperation as both seem to have placed the break up of the so-called “Shia crescent” as their primary policy goal in the region. For Israel, Hezbollah has long been its greatest foe, which Israeli leaders see as an extension of Iran’s territorial presence right up against the Jewish state’s northern border.
If Saudi Arabia and Iran go to war, it is probably inevitable that Hezbollah will strike Israel at the same time, thus getting the Israelis directly involved in the conflict.
Not only that, if a major regional war does erupt in the Middle East it would almost certainly mean that the U.S. would have to get involved as well. Here is more from Jake Novak of CNBC…
But if full blown war breaks out directly between the two countries, it’s hard to see the U.S. being able to sit it out without at least some form increased weapons support and other aid. Then it will be up to Iran’s possible allies, like Russia and China to make the next move.
If you are thinking that this sounds like the type of scenario that could cause World War III to erupt, you would be correct.
The Iranians and the Saudis both have weapons of mass destruction, and so a direct conflict between the two would seem to be unthinkable.
But rational thinking does not always prevail in the Middle East. The conflict between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam has a long and bitter history, and the bad blood between the Saudis and the Iranians is never going to subside until one side or the other ultimately prevails.
Let us hope that a “hot war” between Saudi Arabia and Iran does not erupt any time soon, because such a war would not be good for the United States whatsoever. Pretty much every scenario that you can imagine ends with enormous numbers of innocent people dead, and such a conflict could ultimately be the spark that sets off World War III.
Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.
If you want to know what is coming and what you can do to prepare, read his latest book Get Prepared Now!: Why A Great Crisis Is Coming.
Let’s consider what the original resolution had called for and what is actually going to happen now. The original resolution had called for the establishment of an independent inquiry commission. However, thanks to Saudi Arabia’s intense lobbying and coercive diplomacy, the amended version is now restricted only to sending some “eminent experts”. According to reports, Riyadh had threatened to restrict and even cut trade and diplomatic ties with the council members which had backed the much more robust version. The House of Saud also publicly appreciated the UK, US and France for their cooperation in securing a compromise on resolution. The three countries also support Saudi Arabia’s deadly military aggression against the impoverished Yemen. The UK and the US had no reason to criminalize Saudi Arabia not only because they are allies but also because the US is itself a party to destroying Yemen.
This is evident from the way the US president Donald Trumphas almost doubled the number of covert US airstrikes in Yemen. According to the data compiled by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the US has carried out about 100 strikes in Yemen in 2017 only. While the official narrative is that these strikes target Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), there are evidences that suggest that the US has been equally targeting the Houthis as well. Nothing perhaps could illustrate this ‘US vs Houthis’ phenomenon than the fact that a US drone was attacked and shot down by the Houthis in western Yemen as recently as October 2, 2017. While the US officials said that the matter was under investigation, the Houthi-controlled Defense Ministry announced that it had downed an American drone in the outskirts of Yemen’s capital Sanaa, thus rejecting the US claim that it was mainly involved in non-combatant missions in the aid of the Arab coalition.
On the other hand, what really explains the reason for the Trump administration’s decision to increase drone attacks is the policy of isolating and defeating Iran that the US and Saudi Arabia are following. Interestingly enough, perusal of this policy has caused political tension in the UK as well, where the parliament’s joint committee on human rights has raised strong concerns about the UK’s involvement in the US targeted killing programme, noting that the UK’s intelligence agencies work “hand in glove” with the US.
Given the extent of co-operation between the West and its key ally in the Middle East, an independent inquiry into war atrocities committed by the self-declared regional hegemon is unlikely to take place ever, let alone punish the wrongdoers.Besides the current UNHRC debacle, this is also evident from the way the House of Saud was able, back in July 2016, to turn upside down a UN report that had blacklisted the country after it found out that the Kingdom was responsible for 60 percent of the 785 deaths of children in Yemen in 2015. A few days later, however, the world body announced that the Riyadh regime would be scratched off the list, pending a joint review with the Arab kingdom. Sounds like really independent and impartial!
Once again Riyadh has been able to manipulate inquiry into atrocities by radically altering the resolution that had called for an independent inquiry. Could there be a greater irony than the fact that the new resolution that decided to set up a committee of experts had been set up by Riyadh itself? How come an accused set up, or even influence, a committee to investigate into his own crimes? Can such a body beexpected to be impartial and truly reveal what the Arab coalition has done in Yemen?
Answers to all of these questions have, unfortunately, to be in the negative. It is not that we are expressing pessimism, there are certainly concrete basis for what we have said. Besides the above given arguments with regard to the co-operation between the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia, the fact remains that not even the EU, the so-called champion of human rights, is able to leave a decisive impact on the situation and turn things against Saudia. For instance, the European human rights organisation had to face a lot ridicule when, despite its earlier statement that had confirmed that airstrikes carried out by the Arab coalition in the past two months had killed 39 civilians, including 26 children, the resolution was amended and the bid for constituting an independent inquiry was replaced by a committee of “experts.” Not only were their reports and arguments not accepted, but their demand that the matter be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) was squarely rejected, thanks again to the Saudi lobbying and the help it received from its key allies in the West i.e., the US and UK and France and the way it coerced countries into backing down on this demand.
According to a report of Reuters, in a letter seen by one of the diplomats, Saudi Arabia – the world’s biggest oil exporter – had warned some states of possible consequences should they support the Dutch resolution, submitted jointly with Canada, calling for a full commission. This lobbying was the perfectly echoed by French diplomatic source who was reported to have said that “there is room to satisfy everybody.”
It appears that no other party is more satisfied now than the House of Saud, the principal accused in the scene. The accused stands vindicated as it is well “satisfied” with the way things have ended in the UNHRC session and the way things will proceed in the future. It is possible that by the time the committee of experts is constituted, does its investigation and submits its report in a year from now on, the Arab coalition, which believes that airstrikes killing civilians are legally justifiable, might end up killing thousands of innocent people. Who will then the UNHRC blame for the loss?
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
