Guerrilla History - History and Impacts of the Blockade Yemen w/ Shireen Al-Adeimi

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

This episode of Guerrilla History is a continuation of our Sanctions As War miniseries (get the book here).  In this critical episode, we bring on the wonderful Shireen Al-Adeimi to discuss the history and impact of the blockade on Yemen, and how this blockade is intimately tied to the geopolitics of the region.  Get the word out and share this with comrades involved in the anti-sanctions movement. Shireen Al-Adeimi is an assistant professor of language and literacy at Michigan State University, and is an expert on the war and humanitarian crisis in her country of birth, Yemen. She writes for In These Times and Responsible Statecraft, and speaks and writes frequently on Yemen for media globally.  You can follow her on twitter @shireen818, and help support the Yemen Relief & Reconstruction Foundation. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember Den Van Booh? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, podcast that acts is a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons

of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki. Join, unfortunately, as of now, by only one of my co-hosts. We do have Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada here right now. Hello, Adnan. How are you? I'm really doing well, Henry. It's great to be with you. It's tremendous to have you here. Unfortunately, at the moment, we're not joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, who of course is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast, but he is hoping to make it before the end of the conversation. So listeners, if he does come in at some point, that is who you are hearing coming to the conversation later

on. And we are certainly hoping that he's able to make it. Today is another continuation of our Sanctions as War series. And I want to make sure to announce that this is our first edition of the Sanctions as War series that will be coming out now that the Hayman Market books edition of the book is available. So in the previous editions of this series, we were saying, you know, keep your eyes peeled for when the cheaper edition from Haymarket would be coming out. And now it is out. So if you have been enjoying the Sanctions as War series, which we've been getting a lot of really positive feedback on, now is the time to go to the Haymarket Books website and get yourself a copy. They're much cheaper than it would

have been to get before, like a factor of eight or so cheaper. So now is the time. And in this continuation of our series, we have an excellent guest and a very timely topic. We're joined by Professor Shireen al-Adini, who wrote the chapter in Sanctions This War titled The Blockade on Yemen. And the professor is joining us from Michigan State, where she's an assistant professor of language and literacy. Hello, Professor. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it's an absolute pleasure to have you here. So like I said, this is a pretty timely topic. There's been some recent developments in the blockade and the war on Yemen, particularly the war on Yemen. But before we get to those recent developments, I think it's important that

we lay out the history, the recent history of Yemen as well as the history of the blockade on Yemen, because I think that even though in many of the left circles that listeners of guerrilla history are probably entrenched in, they know vaguely about what's going on in Yemen, but even within left outlets, there's not typically a very granular analysis or a very deep dive into the history of Yemen and this blockade. So I want to make sure that we are able to lay this groundwork so everybody is on a level footing before we dive into the specifics of this blockade. And so, Professor, with that, feel free to proceed however you see fit. Just tell us a little bit about the recent history of Yemen and how this blockade, this sanctions regime, has come into place on Yemen.

Yeah, so I think if I were to trace a kind of an origin, a convenient origin story would be 2011 with what was called the Arab Spring. And Yemen was among the earlier countries that, you know, where people joined the protests. And of course, the context in it is very different than Tunisia or Egypt, but I think there was some signaling for the population in Yemen that this is maybe possible to topple a dictator. And in Yemen we had had a dictator. His name was Ali Abdullah Salih. I'll just refer to him as Salih from now on. And he had been ruling initially North Yemen from 1978 and then a united Yemen. from 1990 onwards.

And so by 2011, he had already been in power for 33 years, very much dictator style. But Yemen is unique in that particular region. So our neighbors are Saudi Arabia, Oman, and all the other Gulf countries, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and so on. But Yemen is the only country among those neighbors in the peninsula and the lower peninsula

that is not a monarchy. It's not a sultanate, it's not a monarchy. So we had, you know, supposedly a republic, but we also had this dictator who kept winning elections every five years by over 99% of the vote. And so people felt like hopeful that, you know, protests would maybe bring about change just as they were seeming to bring about change in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. So I guess it started there with, you know, massive peaceful protests. And within just a few months of, Fortunately, that all changed when certain political allies turned into rivals of President Saleh and saw an opportunity to kind of co-opt the people's revolution.

And that's when this movement became violent. And Salah's life was threatened as an assassination attempt. And he eventually, by the end of that year, stepped down. Now, uniquely, instead of stepping down and kind of like, you know, facing prosecution or going into. exile as other Arab Spring Presidents have or, you know, basically doubling down and for a war to ensue. Sada ended up negotiating a deal with the Gulf Corporation Council and so it was mediated by them and he basically got to stay in the country, not face any prosecution at all. He handed over power to his vice president of 20 years, whose name

is Heidi and got to stay in the country as the most powerful man in Yemen who's the commanded, you know, parts of the large parts of the military and was going to face no consequences at all. And so in the meantime, Heidi was tasked with, well, you know, forming some kind of unity government that brought together all different factions. And he was given two-year term, which expired and then extended, and at some point he resigned. And so he was clearly failing to bring together any kind of lasting agreement among the various parties in Yemen. And so now we're in late 2014 had these still in power

Sada is still hanging around kind of watching things unfold and we see a lot of content among various groups the general population of course but also different factions that had previously

like in the 90s and early 2000 caused rifts in Yemeni unity so you have the southern secessionists in the south and in northern Yemen you had a group called De Hothis. And so I know I'm kind of, we're getting into a lot of detail here, but essentially

summer of 2014 was a turning point where the Houthis, you know, kind of took over the capital late in that, in fall 2014 to try to apply pressure to President Hadi. That's a very useful initial sketch to orient listeners. A couple questions about this early period of the kind of latest phase of the conflict, but also how it might have had some roots in, you know, previous developments. You mentioned that interestingly, Yemen is the only non-monarchy in the Gulf sort of region, and that of course it had been for a period of some decades, been divided between a North Yemen and a South Yemen. And perhaps you could mention a little bit about some of those factors that might have, you know, made it a much more kind of

radically oriented or democratic, you know, where these kind of waves of resistance come from because South Yemen was a communist country, a Marxist country that had, you know, overcome British and whether that has made some kind of a role in the foreign. kinds of opposition that have taken place, maybe under different auspices, but in this contemporary period, since it seems that the unity of the country has been somewhat unstable after unification under President Saleh. Yeah, absolutely. And so if you think of the Yemeni population, resistance has been something in our blood for centuries. And the north-south divide came about as a result of,

you know, colonial powers. So you had the Ottomans in the north who have been vying northern Yemen, and they attempted, you know, there was an occupation in the 1500s. It was met by a lot of resilience. And when I say north and south, I think it's also helpful to understand that about 80% of the population lives in the north and about 20% live in the south. And even though the south is geographically larger than the north, most of it is desert, but it's, you know, mostly densely populated in the north. And so you had opposition. to the Ottomans to the Turks in the 1500s and then again in the 1800s

there was opposition to their second occupation and resistance that led with ousting the you know I mean the Ottoman Empire kind of broke down in 1918 and then you had a monarchy established in northern Yemen and there was resistance to that monarchy as well there's a spirit of this revolutionary

spirit among Yemenis and so there was a long fought out battle eight years to establish a republic in northern Yemen. And that was finally achieved in the late 60s. And so that was, well, that was happening in northern Yemen. In southern Yemen, you had the British come and occupy, Aden, which was, actually, it's where I'm from where I was born.

And they ruled kind of the entire south, but really they were based in Aden, but they ruled the entire southern part of Yemen. and exploited its resources. Aden had the natural harbor and port. And so you had the British presence there for over 120 years until the South also was very resistant to occupation. And eventually ended up, you know, forcing the British to leave Yemen. And so that happened also in the 60s. So the system of governments now were very different.

In the north, you had a republic that was. was, you know, that came after monarchy. And in the South, you had a transition into communism, like you said, Marxist communism. And so it was the only Middle Eastern country to date that had that system of government. Now, the problem is that in the South, there was, you know, there were still a lot of battles among the leaders. And so in 1986, there was a civil war that lasted just for 13 days, but resulted in the killing of over 10,000 people in just the city of Aden.

and that was a struggle, a power struggle among different communist leaders. And toward the late 80s, when the Soviet Union was starting to collapse, certain leaders in the South began negotiations with the North to try to bring about a unity. They realized that they will no longer be able to enjoy the support, the financial support of the Soviet Union. And there were all of these threats to communism in a country like that. And so they decided that maybe this is the time to unify these two parts of the country. Unification had always been the goal.

If you ask any Yemeni, if you ask our parents, our grandparents, or great-grandparents, they always thought of Yemen as one entity. But by now the cultures and the systems of government and the people had developed along very different paths. And so unity was perhaps rushed and was kind of made under these, you know, less than ideal circumstances. And so it wasn't an organic development into unity. It was almost like a rushed, you know, effort to unify both parts of the country. And then that quickly resulted in Southerners feeling like this didn't really work out for them. So because they're only 20% of the population, the first selection, you know, they only gained 18% of the vote of the seats in parliament.

And that became an issue. This wasn't, you know, maybe some people understood this as potentially a 50-50. governance agreement, but that didn't pan out, even the discrepancy in the population. So resentment was very quickly developed among Southerners. And by 1994, the Southerners decided to secede from the union. And so the moment they declared secession, Salah brought in his troops and, you know, quickly over the summer of 1994, in a very, you know, kind of one-sided, asymmetrical war ended up bombing the Southerners essentially towards submission to unity. So that was his approach.

In the late 90s, there was a movement in northern Yemen that are known as the Houthis. They call themselves in Saarulah, and they were speaking out against Salih's corruption and against Saudi Arabian influence in Yemen, especially religious influence of Saudi Arabia in Yemen. And Salah also responded with violence to the... there, you know, what he was understanding as an insurrection or a threat to his rule. And so you had these two movements, one in the south, one in the north, both against Saleh for very, very different reasons. And he responded with violence in both instances and just created a lot of resentment

among the population. I was interested in that. I mean, you mentioned that unity, there has been an ideal of some kind of unity, but also you've alluded to some of the both regional and religious as well as political kinds of fractures that have happened. And so I was kind of curious about this period here, especially when you mentioned resistance to Saudi influence as allies of Saleh and supporters of Saleh and his government. Are we talking here about essentially Zaidi-Shii kind of resistance to celifist kind of religious policies being imposed in Yemen under the Sama government? Absolutely. So Salaam himself was Zadhi. So this isn't a very neat, you know, sectarian issue. Sada himself, secular, but it comes from a Zadhi family. And about 40% of the Yemeni population,

come from Zadhi, you know, have a Zadhi background. And so the sectarian issue was not an issue for Yemenis themselves. We've learned how to live side by side for thousands of years. And so it hadn't been an issue. Now, what happened in the late 80s and early 90s was the Wahhabi influence in Yemen and in Afghanistan and Pakistan, really around the world, right? And so Saudi Arabia was very intentionally exporting their version of Islam to the rest of the world, especially in countries like Yemen that are economically underdeveloped compared to

Saudi Arabia and rely on support from Saudi Arabia. And so Salih was a major Saudi ally and a major U.S. ally. And he allowed this influence into Yemeni schools, Yemeni curricula, Yemeni society, and didn't think it was going to be a problem essentially for anybody. It certainly wasn't a problem for him. But you had certain groups. So the Zadis in Sada, particularly the Houthi family, they had a member in parliament who was representing that region. And he was very vocal against the Wahhabification of Yemeni schools. You know, we had these centuries-long traditions. And now the books were literally being printed in Saudi Arabia and changed to indoctrinate Yemeni youth toward this particular framework.

And so there was a lot of resistance, but in a country like Yemen where you have a dictator, you don't speak out against the dictator's soul. Otherwise, you know, you might just be hit by a car or disappeared or whatever. And so that was a move that was not looked upon kindly by Saleh,

because even though they were making these legitimate, you know, they had these legitimate concerns, he saw this as a threat to his own rule. But yes, absolutely. So that was the issue. And in the South, the thing is the South became very susceptible to this Wahhabi ideology because they had just transitioned out of communism where religious traditions had been eroded, not just through communism, but through occupation of the British occupation in the century prior.

And so you had an erosion of the historically Muslim traditions in the South, and they became very susceptible to Wahhabi ideology. So the South of today is not the South of 30 years ago. The difference in ideology is quite pronounced, and you see the Wahhabi influence in South Yemen, much more than northern areas of Yemen, where Zadi Islam still maintained its influence, but not entirely so, of course. So that's historic sort of Shafi-Sufi kind of orientation that was very important in the trading networks and diaspora that brought, you know, kind of Yemenis all across. Southeast Asia and these networks, that has been very much altered by centuries of colonial rule, an era of secular Marxism, and then immediately following that, a lot of infusion of Saudi influence that has changed the kind of religious culture of the South.

Yes, and certain areas have maintained, so Sufi traditions are still prominent in, you know, Southeast Yemen and Hadramot and Terim in those areas. But you know, but you also see Al-Qaeda and ISIS presence in the south and not in the north. And so many of these Shafas and Sufi communities unfortunately have been susceptible to have been influenced by the Wahhabi ideology. And even in northern Yemen, there were entire Zadhi tribes that converted to, you know, mainstream Sunni Islam or, you know, kind of closer to Salafi Islam. And so there was an erosion of these traditions, certainly in the north and in the south. Well, I want to focus in a little bit more on the period around 2011 and just after 2011. So you had brought up a couple of names of individuals and groups.

I think that it will be interesting and useful for the listeners to hear about how this interplay of these characters within this story worked at this time period, because it really does lay the foundation for basically everything that Yemen has been going through since then. So you've mentioned Sela, you've mentioned the Houthis, I don't remember if you've mentioned Hadi yet, I don't think so. And then, of course, the interplay between these three then draws in external actors like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. So if you'd be able to drill down a little bit more, you've talked probably the most about Sala of these characters, but, you know, can you talk a little bit more about the Houthis? I think a lot of the listeners probably are aware that this is a group from the northern part of Yemen, but they probably don't know that much more than that because the American media basically

just sums them up as Iranian proxy group in northern Yemen, which is not really accurate whatsoever. But that is how they're summarized in Western media. So I think that a lot of the listeners that don't actively look for this information, that is going to be the conception that's in their head. even if they understand that, you know, the media portrayal of many of these groups is not going to be super accurate. So can you talk about the interplay between Sela, the Houthis, and Hadi, and then how that interplay between those three characters brings in these external actors as well? Sure. And I'm also going to add a fourth group, the Slash party. And so, so Hadi, like I said, was Salih's vice president. And now I mentioned the 1994 war.

And that is a key, key war for Southerners especially. And Heidi played a really big role in that war. So Heidi himself is from the south. And in the 80s, he fled to Northern Yemen and kind of settled in Northern Yemen. He was a military man. He was in the army. And he settled in Northern Yemen and began to gain prominence in the government there. But really, he became vice president as a result of his involvement in the 1994.

war. So he was the general who led the northern troops into South Yemen. And it was very symbolic for Salah to make sure that a southerner was bringing the South back into unity. Salah was a mastermind of, you know, kind of, I mean, Yemen is a very tribal society. And so this man stayed in power for that long because he knew how to talk with and manipulate and work with the tribes. And this was a key consideration for him to make sure that the general who was leading this fight was actually from the South, to kind of give it legitimacy of some sorts. And as a, essentially as a reward for winning back the South into unity or forced him back into unity, Haddy became vice president. Now, that's a largely ceremonial role. And so he was

just in the background for the next 20 years and didn't really become prominent until power was transferred to him by Sada. But he and Sala'u, from the same party, the, the Mottemar in Arabic, like the general people's Congress. And so they are from the same party. They had very similar politics and governors. So when Saleh transferred power to Heidi, this was not a big change. And nobody saw this as a big change.

He was just supposed to be a placeholder until elections were called and the kind of unity government was formed. Now, when the South and the North United, Salah very conveniently created essentially controlled opposition in the Islaas party. The Islaq party, you can think of as the Islamist party. So these are the Salafis in northern Yemen. And he, both Salih's party and the Slah party became basically were power sharing

in parliament, and they became, and they were allies. Like there was no, this was not a real opposition. This was like controlled opposition, like I said. And so when I mentioned that the peaceful protest in 2011 became deadly, this happened when members of the Islaq party decided that, you know, sticking by Salah was a lost cause. And here's an opportunity for them to become prominent. And so by then they had already been prominence, you know, through the Wahhabification and the Salification of Yemen, they had gained much more prominence in Yemen society. And so they saw themselves as a potential alternative to Salafi. and his party, except that when people went out into the streets to protest, they were not protesting Salah. They were protesting an entire system of which they were part. And so this was the issue where, you know, the people felt like their revolution was co-opted by this other group and that was not going to be, you know, an acceptable alternative to Salah in his governance.

So you have Salih now when Hadi who were in the same party. Then you have the Islaq party who where, like I said, this Islamist Sadiqi group. And then you have the Houthis. So the Houthis are, you know, Zadis from northern Yemen. It's really important to understand that Zadism is not the same as 12-er, you know, Thnashirism from, you know, that's practiced in Iran and in most in many Shia societies. Iraq, for example, in Iran are 12er, you know, sects. of Shia Islam. Zaidia Islam is actually

theologically much closer to Sunni Islam and you know, they just don't are the same theology as the 12-er Shias do. And I think when they get grouped as Iran proxies or Iran allies, it's just a way to minimize Yemeni agency

and it's just a way to like conveniently talk about this as a sectarian issue when it's really not a sectarian issue. And so they gained prominence in the late 90s and early 2000s when they were speaking out against Salah. And when he resorted to, you know, kind of like this armed response, unlike the South, which basically fell within two months, three months in 1994, the Houthis amassed fighters. And they became, you know, they built resistance towards Salah. And so there were six different wars that were fought between Salah and the Houthis.

in the early 2000s. And you can't say that he really won any of these fights. This is a government fighting against a group of rebels from the North who didn't really have much to fight back with. But they really are driven by ideology. And the ideology here is Yemeni sovereignty, first and foremost. So no foreign intervention, whether it's Saudi Arabia or the U.S. or anybody else. And of course, they come from a certain theological background, but it's not like they were trying to impose their own view. use on the rest of Yemen. They were trying to keep things as they were, with Yemeni being this

pluralistic society where people could actually maintain their own traditions and religions. And so that's how the Houthis came to prominence. And then in the, in late 2014, they ended up essentially just coming all the way from Sada in the north and taking over the capital. And it was just surprised for every Yemeni everywhere. Like how the this group managed to just take over the country, essentially, take over the capital. And it became clear, eventually it was confirmed, but the rumors started circulating that maybe Salah, who was in command of much of the army, decided to step back and down and just set them take over, see what's going to happen next. You know, this man loved chaos, right? And maybe he saw

an opportunity for him to rule again. And they ended up in this very strange alliance with Salah, who had fought, you know, they'd fought all these wars together. But a very strange alliance ended up forming between the Houthis and Salah. And so the second side of Arabia started bombing in March of 2015. There was an immediate kind of coalescing of Salah troops and Houthi troops. And together they formed the resistance for the next two and a half years until late 2017. And, of course, then it fell apart and, you know, Sala ended up being killed by the Houthis.

But from mid-2015 to late 2017, the resistance to Saudi Arabian influence and occupation intervention was actually both Sada and the Houthis. Yeah, I just want to follow up on this now to get us to talking about the more contemporary situation and the subject of your chapter, really, which is this history led to clearly a very, chaotic situation of a lot of different parties and groupings contesting for power in Yemen during these years after the first wave of popular resistance to Salas government in 2011 as part of this Arab Spring. But it led to this kind of situation that you've been describing that attracted the intervention of outside and neighboring parties, particularly Saudi Arabia, UAE, supported by and backed by Western governments, principally the United States, but also other allies like France and Britain

and other selling arms and technology, providing all this logistical and intelligence support and targeting support for the Saudi invasion, essentially, of Yemen, and attempt to intervene, I guess, on behalf of the sort of southern forces that they had kind of allied with. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about the nature and brutality of this invasion and also how this has led to the characterization of the situation as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, according to the U.N. And perhaps from there, then we can talk also about how. that has all been exacerbated by blockade and sanctions.

Actually, actually, I want to add one quick thing on to what Adnan asked. It's an excellent question, but I also think it leaves out the why. Why is there this intervention from these external forces in Yemen? This is something that you cover in your chapter in terms of, you know, why are these external forces operating in Yemen? So I think add that into what Adnan asked, and we have the whole package right there. Yeah. So why is a really good question. And that's the question that's, I think, mostly under explored when you look at any media source about Yemen. There are these snippets of what's happening and no discussion, no meaningful discussion of why. Now, I mentioned that Yemen had gone through all of these tumults in the past decades with the North and the South fighting their own battles and then each other. In every single one of these wars and others, Saudi Arabia was involved. Saudi Arabia, I had, their goals are to maintain whatever system of government works for them. Not whatever system of government works for the Yemeni people.

Whatever system of government works for them. And so you have this extremely rich country and, you know, and bordering one of the world's poorest, certainly the poorest in the Middle East and one of the world's poorest. Not because Yemenis lack any natural resources, but because we were, you know, blessed, cursed with Saleh. and Islaq Party and members of those political groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the Yemeni population. But they also were very strong allies to Saudi Arabia in the U.S.

Now, Yemen is at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and you have Babel Manddab Strait, which Yemen controls. And that is where world shipping goes through, right? So if you think of anything that goes through Suez Canal, it had to have passed by Yemen first, by Babelmendab first. So anything toward Europe through the Suez Canal or to Asia through the Suez Canal in Europe has to go to Yemen. And Yemen controls that. And so even though it's this really underdeveloped, under-resourced country, we have the strategic location that Yemenis control. And for that purpose, and besides the fact that we border Saudi Arabia, those are the reasons that Saudi Arabia had always been involved in Yemeni history. And so in the 70s, you know, they were involved in a civil war among northern Yemenis.

When northern Yemenis tried to get rid of the monarchy, now the monarchy was a Zedishia monarchy. But when they tried to oust that monarchy and former republic, Saudi Arabia was firmly on the side of those Zadis, firmly on the side of the monarchy. And for eight years, they supported the men who was, you know, the son, the brother. of the ousted monarch in order for him to regain control in Yemen. And they failed eventually, and there was even a siege of Sana'a, and finally they failed when they realized that this isn't going to happen. But it was Saudi Arabia, British forces, and even Israel, who all worked together to support the Zaidi monarch in his quest to regain the monarchy.

So again, kind of just highlighting the fact that this is not a sectarian issue, this is an issue about governors and what's important for Saudi Arabia, which at the time was monarchy. So then when the monarchy was ousted, and we had a republic, they found a really, you know, useful ally in Salih. And so it was really important for the Saudis to maintain Salah and, you know, keep him in power. But they were thrown off by the fact that Salah ended up working with the Houthis. And so the next best thing was going to be Hadi, who was basically Salah 2.0, just not as clever or as popular, the Saddam. And so the Saudis then just had their interests.

were in basically maintaining whatever public government was going to serve their needs. And that was the reason they had involved themselves in this war in 2015. Now, if you read the works of, and if you listen to the UN envoy at the time, his name is Shibar bin Omar, he was tasked with trying to bring all of the different factions together under a UN negotiated deal. And he talks about having reached a deal in March of 2015 that was going to cover the legislature, legislature and the executive, as he says, and he said it was 10 weeks of 10 painful weeks of negotiations that at the end, even though Heidi by this time was, you know, under house arrest and the Houthis had taken over the presidential council and had he had already resigned once

and then, you know, changed his mind. Even with all of that going on, Jamal bin Omar managed to sit with all of these different Yemeni factions. The Houthis, the southern secessionists, the members of the national dialogue, which, you know, happened after 2011, Salih's party, the Slav party, and they all came up with the unity government negotiated by the UN. And they were on the phone with Saudi Arabia trying to figure out where to have the signing ceremony, because he said the Saudis were interested in having the signing ceremony in Riyadh. And this is something he writes about in Newsweek in 2022, I believe, his piece was published. And he said, you know, two days after these conversations took place about where should the

signing ceremony take place, bombs started falling down, right? And so clearly the Saudis were not interested in this unity government. They felt the need to disinterven and to just restore Heidi to power, you know, reset everything, not give the Hothis any power. Why on earth would they want the Hothis in, you know, any kind of capacity in government when they know that they've, the Houthis have been their longtime enemies? In the six wars that the Houthis fought with Salaich, at some point, Salah had listed the help of the Saudis because he made the case that, hey, these guys are at your border. And so you should be just as concerned about them as I am and actually did get the Saudis involved and the Saudis were defeated in many of these battles. And so they know that the

Houthis were going to be a problem for them. And so they kind of rushed to intervene thinking that they can just restore their man, Hadi, and reset and then everything can go back to normal. They called a decisive storm. You know, they were talking about this being like one week. two weeks mission, right? Here we are over eight years later, and they've still not won this war, so to speak, right? They haven't been able to achieve any of the goals that they said they wanted to achieve. And it was, it's also not surprising that this happened right as the transition of power happened in Saudi Arabia. So the previous king was, the Lala was smart enough to intervene from afar, but not directly intervene in Yemen.

then you had you know he passed away and in January of 2015 Muhammad bin Salman became or King Salman became king and his son Muhammad bin Salman was made deputy crown prince at the time now he's crown prince and he was also made the defense minister and there were all of these questions about well who is this young prince how old is he where was he educated is he married nobody knew anything about him And so he basically saw this as a resume war, that he could just come in, install his puppet, and leave on behalf of what he's calling the legitimate governments of Yemen, the quote unquote internationally recognized government of Yemen, which is President Hadi. And the members of the Slash party, the Salafis, of course, they're going to gravitate towards Saudi Arabia, you know, Salafis and Wahhabis, basically, you know, very close ideologically.

And so he was trying to restore Hadi to power on behalf of Hadi and the Islaq Party and didn't expect that there was going to be such resistance to this occupation essentially and these bombardment campaigns that took place. I mean, within the first 48 hours, they disabled the Yemeni Air Force. And so they thought this was going to be easy to win. But, you know, I'm not a military strategist, but I hear that you can't just win wars through air campaigns. I think the Americans tried that in Afghanistan and elsewhere in Vietnam. And they didn't count on there being so much resistance on the ground. Maybe you can follow up with some of the

consequences of that. So, you know, the humanitarian devastation and consequences of this brutal and failed military campaign, but it's nonetheless, you know, caused havoc for the Yemeni people. and also how the blockade has come into effect or came into effect and with what consequences. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess in short form, we call this a war, but really it's just, you know, it's in this asymmetrical attack in occupation because, I mean, we can count on one hand maybe the number of civilians inside Arabia and UAE who have been killed or injured as a result of this war. whereas, you know, at the very low estimates in Yemen put the toll, the death toll, at least 377,000 civilians who have been killed just by the violence, and then millions more are starving. And that's the result of the blockade.

So the blockade has certainly taken a much bigger toll than even the bombs, even though the bombs have been, you know, just so devastating. So what happened was they just began a military campaign that just began bombing and they were saying that they were targeting, you know, weapon depots. And initially they did. They targeted weapon depots. The problem is that many of these weapon depots are right in the heart of the son of the heart of cities that are very densely populated. And Salih being a long time, U.S. ally had amassed all of these weapons. It was just getting all of these shipments from the U.S. and his so-called. called war against terror, right? And so the loss of life has been tremendous in Yemen. The airstrikes have killed hundreds of thousands of people. And the blockade came as a result of basically U.N. Resolution 2216, which the Saudis drafted themselves. And again, Jamad Ban Amr talks about this.

He kind of just pulls the curtain back. And it's really interesting to hear his perspective because he was the UN envoy at the time and usually don't hear such, you know, clear accounts of what happens behind closed doors. And he says the Saudis drafted this resolution themselves and thought that maybe Russia would veto. And Russia didn't veto or they abstained.

And so it ended up passing. And it legitimized the entire war in Yemen in the occupation. It legitimized these member states, the Gulf member states, to intervene in Yemen's conference. conflict. They called in the Houthis to back down to give up every last thing, you know. I mean, the conditions were just ridiculous at that point. They were just asking the Houthis to just give up and go back to Sada and forget what happened. And they said that they were imposing a basically an arms embargo, what they called an arms embargo. And they were going, that gave them the right to check every single ship that was going to come through the ports in Yemen. And so you have two ports, the port of Hadeda, where, you know, it's called the lifeline of the Yemeni population. Because Yemen having been so under-resourced was actually importing 90% of its food prior to the war.

And so we relied on that port, especially the port of Hadidah, but also the port of Aden. And UN Resolution 2216 gave the Saudis the right to inspect every ship and every vessel coming in through Yemeni waters. in order to supposedly make sure that arms from Iran are not coming through. Now, what that did is that essentially it allowed the Saudis to decide what comes in and what doesn't come into Yemen, and they decided to use food as a weapon very, very early on, food and medicine as a weapon. And so they decided to reroute ships out of Yemen to only let in a small number of ships containing fuel, but, you know, depriving essentially, essentially the Yemeni population of the very

basic needs. Think about all of the things we need to run fuel hospitals and, you know, schools and transportation. All of these things were essentially shut down because people couldn't get the fuel that they were needing because of this blockade. And food became an issue too. So prices became very high and people couldn't afford. Yemen, you know, is also a country that because of decades of mismanagement has very little groundwater. And so agriculture is an issue. It's a highly water stressed country. And so it's not like Yemenis could just grow their own food. They were relying on these imports that Saudi Arabia was now using.

Even aid became in something that they were using as a weapon of war. So the U.S. and ships themselves had to seek permission from Saudi Arabia to enter Yemen. And there were times where the Saudis would just threaten to bomb any ship that came through, even if it was containing food, if it didn't get the proper, you know, permissions to go through. Eventually, the U.N. set up a U.N. verification system. So they said that, okay, we will verify this, that this is only, you know, this ship only contains food or fuel or medicine or whatnot. And even then the Saudis were intervening because 2216, essentially gave them permission to do this

and they were even intervening in vessels and ships that were receiving permission through this UN verification system and rerouting them back to Jedda or keeping them in the port for so long that food would expire, grain would expire. You know, and using all of these tactics to essentially starve the Yemeni people

and force the Hothis to surrender. It didn't work, but this is what they had been doing for a number of years until this past year where they were finally starting to lift much of the restrictions. And the other thing they did was they shut down the airports in northern Yemen. So Sonai International Airport was completely grounded until last year. And Yemenis could not really get out of the country or come into the country unless they went through the ports in the south of Yemen, which were very dangerous to get through, of course.

So they're essentially trapping everybody in, monitoring the airspace. you know, blockading the waters, blockading land ports, all in the name of supposedly protecting Yemen from Iranian influence and making sure that Iran doesn't send weapons to the Houthis. Meanwhile, causing all of this havoc and, you know, widespread hunger and, you know, steps away from famine. And I think that famine would have been declared because, you know,

a lot of times declaration of famine is a political issue. And you had the UN capitulating to Saudi Arabia over and over, and over again throughout this entire war. For example, you know, they had put Saudi Arabia on the list of child killers and within 72 hours removed their name from the list of child killers and admitted, Bank of Moon at the time, admitted that he is pulling them out because Saudi Arabia threatened to pull funding from Syria and Gaza and other places. And so you've, Yemenis basically found themselves in the situation where the international community ganged up on them. You know, there was no representation. There was no coming to their aid. There was no. There was no

no cries of solidarity. There were all of these Western countries that just rushed to the aid of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. A lot of these Arab and African allies of Saudi Arabia who, you know, supported the coalition through fighters and through weapons and planes and whatnot.

And it became this money-making scheme, essentially, for even countries like Canada and the UK and Germany and Australia and Italy and Spain and so on and so forth. And on the other hand, you had Yemen, who, you know, was basically the Houthis and Salah in the first early years of the war, resisting with whatever they could. They had no control over their own airspace. They didn't have a single aircraft of any kind, but they did have missiles that Salah had been amassing for the last 30 years or so. And they did have fighters on the ground, and that's how they were able to resist.

Yeah, I have two quick questions. and you can be as brief with the answers as you want because one of them is somewhat tangential and the other one is kind of your personal view as you were doing your research of this and then hopefully Adnan will have time for another question before he has to leave. But you mentioned UN Security Council Resolution 2216 and like I said, this is tangential. It's something that is just interesting for me. When I was doing my background research, it also struck me that it seemed like everybody was expecting Russia to veto this resolution, and I didn't really understand the reason

why they didn't. And I'm curious if they're, so this resolution, 2216, was passed in 2015, and I'm wondering if there's any indication that you've come across that the events in my wife's native Crimea in 2014 had any impact on them abstaining, because if you look for some parallels between what this resolution was trying to basically justify and some of the things that Russia was being accused of, I could understand in that respect why they would have abstained rather than vetoed this resolution because otherwise they could have been beaten with a stick about their vote on this resolution. So I'm wondering if you came across anything like that as you were looking into, you know, this Security Council Resolution 2216 and why Russia didn't veto it when basically

everybody, as far as I could see, was expecting them to? I didn't, but what you're saying makes so much sense. I think it also parallels kind of Iran's stance in all of this. So we have to look at the events that occurred just before in order to understand how countries behaved after. So, of course, Russia vetoing something like that. I mean, Russia has no interest in Yemen per se. You know, Yemen is not... Not since the fall of the communist, you know. It's a communist in a way.

Right, exactly. And so it's not like they had, it's not like they were going to risk any of their staff or geopolitical relations for Yemen. And so I think the best they could do is abstain. Iran had also gone through the Iran deal. They had just negotiated the JCPOA in their Iran deal. And so now what people do is, don't understand, you know, they're so quick to say Iran came to the rescue, the Houthis

and whatever. First of all, there's no tangible evidence. If they did send anything, it was minute compared to all of the ways that the international community supported the Saudi-led coalition and President Fadi or, you know, whatever other factions they were. But why would Iran risk the negotiation that they fought so hard to get with the JCPOA and the Iran deal? They were you know, this is not Syria, like Iran doesn't have the kind of relationship with Yemen as they did with Syria. In all of the eight years of fighting, there's not been a single, you know, Iranian general or fighter that was found in Yemen or, you know, admitted to being part of this or in any way, shape, or form really participated in this war other than maybe through intelligence sharing and, you know, support through the media and things like that. And so I think certainly maybe that could have played a role with Russia. China also is interesting here because China's only base is built right across Babun Mendeb Strait in Djibouti.

And they started negotiating for that as soon as the war started. So they saw that as an important strategic vocation. And in 2017, they finished building their base right on the opposite side of Baben Mendeb Strait. So they know that that area is important, but they weren't going to stick their base. an ex out for Yemenis or anything like that. Yemen didn't have that kind of political clout or power. And our president was, you know, basically a traitor and based inside Arabia and getting the foreign country to invade his own. And so unfortunately, the people of Yemen were basically left to their own devices. Yeah, and I'm definitely going to ask about China, but I know

Adnan has to leave in one minute. So Adnan, if you have any final question that you would like to ask before you go out, and then I'll ask a couple more questions of the professor. after you go. Right. Yeah. Firstly, thank you so much for all of your analysis and accounts of what's been happening in Yemen. The only, you know, question I have really, at this point is, you know, I mean, in your article talks about a lot of the other devastating consequences, including diseases that have not been, you know, diphtheria, cholera, you know, various outbreaks of polio, as rumored also, I think, at the time. So it's had a huge impact on the health and well-being of those Yemeni citizens surviving the war and devastation and the blockade. So perhaps you will have a chance to further elaborate that.

But I'm kind of interested in your thoughts on more recent developments like the lifting of some of the import restrictions. The recently reported just a couple of days ago, a few days ago, I think on Good Friday. as it happens announcement. I don't know if we're going to get another good Friday agreement here, but the supposed negotiations that are taking place through the auspices of Omani sponsorship between Saudi Arabia

and Yemeni factions, including the Houthis, about a potential peace plan and lifting the blockade fully and ending, you know, Saudi's occupation, military occupation in Yemen, which would be, of course, wonderful, depending on how, you know, what the terms of all of this are. But, you know, I know that the UAE had also recently pulled its troops out because, you know,

they also had not expected this to be an eight-year war. And so the military situation has been a stalemate and now with changes that are taking place in the region, with China sponsoring negotiations between Iran and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations. Saudi also reaching out to restore relations, it seems, with Syria and invite them to the Arab League. So I'm wondering how you would frame what's happening in Yemen now, vis-a-vis current recent developments and the overall changing situation in the region, diplomatically and politically. You know, so one thing to note is while the UAE did pull out their troops physically from the ground in late 2019, they're actually, their role in Yemen has been potentially like even much more nefarious than that of Saudi Arabia's role.

So they currently occupy the island of Soqatra and that technically belongs to southern Yemen and have set up kind of like this militarization. military zone in that area. They're also occupying other smaller islands near Baban Mandab Street, the UAE is. And Saudi Arabia has forces in Al-Mahra or is, you know, occupying Al-Mahra province in the south. And so they are so entangled, the UAE and Saudi Arabia in Yemen. And even though they are trying to now extricate themselves from this,

I think Saudi Arabia is much more intentional about extricating itself from the conflict, but I think it remains to be seen what accountability there is toward the UAE, which remains an occupying force in many areas in Yemen, and has been, you know, kind of using Yemen's resources for their own interests and whatnot, and operating a police state and, you know, that's been involved in torture, prisoners, and whatever. And so I think these newest, these latest agreements, I mean, this is a positive step, certainly, the fact that the Houthis and the Saudis have been speaking, negotiating directly since April or March of 2022. And it are now starting to, and there was a truce in place since from April 2022 to October 22 and is largely held, even though it hasn't been renewed since October. you know, there is evidence that everybody here is trying to just get out of this.

The Houthis have not been able to capture this key province in Almahra, which is oil and gas rich. But they remain firmly in control over the rest of former North Yemen. And the Saudis, even though they control supposedly South Yemen, you've got the Southern Transitional Council. This is a separatist group in the South that is funded and trained by the UAE and has been in direct operations. position to President Hadi and his government, also in South Yemen. And you have groups like Al-Qaeda in the South as well, and the Salafi, who have been buying for power. And so the South has been a mess, essentially, this area that the Saudis supposedly controlled and have controlled since July of 2015, there's been no security in that region compared to, for example,

Houthi-controlled areas in the north. But, so I don't know what this looks like for Yemeni unity moving forward. But I do hope that these restrictions that are now starting to be lifted with the blockade and the fuel restrictions, these are initial first steps. But of course, unless you have complete withdrawal of Saudi and UAE forces and complete lifting of any kind of support, financial support to any warring party, then you still have Yemen and the future of Yemen essentially controlled by Saudi Arabia or the UAE, either through direct intervention or through indirect and through intervention. So I'm hopeful, but at the same time, I know that the conflict is much larger. And the other thing that happened over the last year is that Saudi Arabia came and said to

Heidi, actually, why does it take aside and we're going to create this council of these eight people, four of whom are backed by the UAE and four of whom have been backed by the Saudis. And they created this presidential council essentially that is supposedly trying to rule South Yemen, but there's also infiding between members of this council themselves. And so it's really just a mess of a situation. And there's not a clear, you know, opposition to the Houthis as I think the Saudis were hoping to nurture and cultivate. They were hoping to find one group that's powerful enough to stand up to the Houthis. Instead, they have a completely fractured group of warlords who each have their own interests in Yemen. And they've not been able to form one

solid, you know, opposition to the Hothi's. Yeah, I think that one thing that I want to hit with regards to China is that a lot of people on the left are, you know, cheering China's role in the recent developments. And I think that that's obviously warranted. You know, there have been positive developments and China was integral to a lot of those developments taking place. There's two things that I want to look at here. One is China is obviously able to be quite successful in its goals in terms of negotiating some sort of settlement of the situation because of its geostrategic power. It's interesting to compare that to the United States, on the other hand, where I'm originally from and where you're a professor. The United States also obviously is the biggest geostrategic power in the world.

And while there have been some semi pretty isolated voices in the political establishment within the United States and the political decision-making class, particularly, there have been some of them that have spoken out against the war on Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Those voices have been very few and very far between, and the actual concrete steps that have been taken by political bodies in the United States have been virtually non-existent with regards to Yemen. So it's very interesting to compare how China basically just kind of swoops in, they throw their weight around a little bit, and all of a sudden we have positive developments versus the United States, on the other hand, which as of now is still a larger geostrategic and geopolitical power than. China is at the moment, they've basically just stayed out of the way and done absolutely nothing to try to just rectify the situation that's been called the world's worst humanitarian crisis by bodies both within the United States and without. And it's also, and I know, you know, this isn't really a question, it's just me talking. And I'm basically asking you to reflect and tell me if I'm on the right track here with my thinking.

But it's also very interesting to compare what China has. has accomplished and what the United States had not accomplished within this period of time with Oman's role in this settlement. I think that one thing that people on the left have not done a particularly good job of doing, while they have praised China for its role within these negotiations that are taking place and the potential settlement of the conflict, there's been almost no discussion of Oman's role within. these settlements, which Oman has been probably much more integral to these actually having a chance of success than China has. China gets the headlines because it's the big country, but Oman has been very integral to this process and they haven't had their name mentioned at all. So it's just interesting to think about how these countries play into what we're seeing and what could have happened if there had been a political will to do so by countries like the United States earlier on. Yeah, so few things here. So, Amman, like you said, integral in peace talks and not just now. They have been hosting talks between Yemeni groups and Saudi Arabia since I think 2016 or so. So there have been multiple attempts by Amman. And the reason Amman has been successful in many ways and hopefully, you know, we'll see an end to this war through a negotiated settlement and then they'll really be successful. is because they've not gotten involved in this conflict. So the Omanis are the only Gulf country that did not get involved in this conflict at all,

did not provide any fighters on the ground, any jets, any intelligence. They didn't let Saudi Arabia use their borders. They did not get involved whatsoever. And so they've earned the respect and trust of both Yemenis, you know, Hothis and Saddam, whoever is anti-intervention. and, you know, they're, you know, they're seen as a legitimate authority to negotiate because they have not taken sides in the conflict and have been asking for an end to the violence for many, many years. China has not taken sides, has not thrown its weight around, could have, did not. But I think this negotiated, you know, this agreement between or this resumption of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, I think that gets discussed as though it has a lot to do with Yemen and it doesn't, in my view.

I think it's unfairly, again, puts the agency on Yemen, takes the agency away from Yemen and onto Iran and positions Iran as the mastermind as the mastermind in the, and this fight between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, right? And whereas, you know, we have evidence that the Houthis, in fact, ignored the Iranians, even though they think of themselves as allies, when at a very, very key moment in late 2014, when the Houthis were taking over the capital and they'd marched all the way from Salaan and just took over the capital, Iranians told them, hey, this is a really bad idea, probably shouldn't do this. And the Houthis very publicly said, who are you to tell us what to do in our own country? And so this is not a group that has been influenced by Iran, has been directed by Iran in any way, shape, or form.

And yet now I think even with the talks resuming and diplomatic relationships resuming between Iran and Saudi Arabia, again, Yemen is kind of assumed to be part of that, even though really this isn't their big issue, right? Iran and Saudi Arabia have their own issues separate from Yemen. But I do think Armand here is the, like you said, they don't get a lot of attention, but certainly they've played a big role here. And it's because they've stayed not neutral in the sense that they didn't get involved in the conflict, but have been calling for an end to the war and have been hosting peace talks for many, many years. And I think they deserve the credit here. And also, everybody's exhausted. The Hothi's, there's just nothing more they could do. it's been a stalemate

and they showed also that they are able to reach certain targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE so the reason these talks have been having have been taken very seriously by all sides is because you know once they started attacking oil

facilities in Aramco or in Jeddah and in the UAE they realized that the stability of these countries is now at stake and so they're essentially we're able to take parts of this war to Sadiribian and UAE soil, which is what forced Sadiribian the UAE to come and negotiate with the Houthis directly in Raman. And this is why we're seeing that there

have been movement toward a peace settlement. Yeah, I have two final questions. Actually, I have a lot of questions, but being respectful of your time, I'll settle for two. The first one I have is that, you know, you've been doing work on this particular subject for years and years and years. And I've been following your work for years on this subject. And I know that it can't be easy. Not only in terms of there's not, there's so little coverage of Yemen that it's hard to even get the materials to do the research. You know, there's very few detailed analyses of Yemen that are coming out in general, but also the statistics that you find are absolutely devastating. They're heartbreaking. This is not being called the world's worst humanitarian crisis

for no reason. We have a lot of humanitarian crises all across the world. And yet for the last eight years, this has been one that really has stood out as being particularly devastating to the people that are being impacted by it. And so I'm wondering, how has your research process been? How have you gone about getting this information that you use to do your coverage of this, that really very few other people are doing? And how has seeing these statistics impacted you?

I can imagine that just going through these actuarial tables and whatever, that seeing that the devastation that Yemen is going through has got to be particularly hard on you. And if there was any statistics in particular, you know, metrics that you had been looking at that had affected you in particular, because, you know, when I see statistics like this. It affects me, and I'm not somebody who's been doing this for years. I brush my knowledge up on particular subjects and just seeing these numbers. It breaks my heart. For somebody who has to do this day in, day out for years, I really can't imagine what you have to go through. Thanks for this question. I don't think I've been asked this question before, but it has certainly taken the toll.

So as I mentioned, I was born in Yemen and I remain very connected to that place. I still think of Yemen as home, even though I've lived in many, many countries and I've lived in the U.S. longer than I've lived anywhere else. And I think my involvement in this research and this analysis in this work in general started out of a sense of helplessness. You know, we talked about one part of your question that I didn't get to earlier was, you know, China comes in and all of a sudden there's all these agreements. What about the U.S.? What is the U.S. been doing? You know, the U.S. has been fighting this war alongside the Saudis. The U.S. has been, has caused much of this destruction. And here I was, you know, and any Yemeni will tell you that this war would not have happened without being, you know, the green light of the Obama administration,

which announced its solidarity and its support of the Saudi coalition on day one of the war. Even the Saudis announcing this war, they didn't announce it from Riyadh and Arabic. They announced it from D.C. and English, you know, and so the optics are very clear here that this is a U.S.-led war. They're just not officially part of the coalition, whatever that means. And so for me, as somebody who had been living and working in the United States at the time I was studying, I was a doctoral student when this war started. I just a sense of helplessness came over me. Like, why aren't people talking about, I mean, I've always been the non-interventionists. I never supported the wars in Afghanistan or in Adop or in anywhere else, you know, I do think that sovereignty must be respected and people should, you know, sort out their own issues without foreign intervention.

And yet here we were in this modern day warfare where it's not boots on the ground necessarily, but it's intelligence sharing, it's logistics, it's training, its weapon supplies, it's targeting, it's mid-air refueling, it's all of these things that the U.S. had been doing to support the Saudi-Elet coalition, who basically could not even. even do anything but pull the trigger without U.S. support. And yet we didn't have, you know, media coverage and mainstream sources. We didn't have here in the U.S. We didn't have any kind of questioning of the Obama administration. I saw the elections happen and nobody was, somebody at one point asked Hillary Clinton what she was going to do with Saudi Arabia. And she literally just looked at them blank stare and just walked away. Didn't even feel the need to respond. And so here we were in this climate where, you know, saying Obama could do no wrong and nobody was questioning what he was doing in Yemen. And meanwhile, I'm looking at my family members, sending me

photos and videos and showing me the destruction happening around them. And the first thing I did was I created a Twitter account. The day the war started, I created a Twitter account. And that was the way for me to keep track of what was happening on the ground. I remember a cousin, years ago, it said, if you really want to know what's happening in the world, just join Twitter, you know. And so I, and so I did. And so I was looking to Yemenis on the ground to see what they were telling us. And they certainly were telling us what was happening. And that's where my research started. And that's where I felt like I needed to amplify their voices. I'm not living there, but I could certainly amplify their voices. You know, this isn't what I do for my day job. I'm a professor in language and literacy. I teach teachers how to teach reading and writing and whatnot. And so this, for me, became a personal issue, but it also became an opportunity to educate people here to think about how discourse is shaped and how atrocities such as this, even though people said, we'll never let Iraq war happen again, this idea that the press kind of went along with the mainstream narrative of the government. And there were all of these promises that never again were going to be critical from no one and whatnot. And here we are again in the context of Yemen, allowing our government to commit these. atrocities and to turn this country into the world's worst humanitarian crisis with no consequence, right? We saw the Obama

administration and Trump administration and then Biden administration. It was just continuation of their support by the Saudi-led coalition. So for me, it's really taxing. And the one thing I do to dissociate in a way is to not look at videos because I can. I'm not able to recover from watching a video of somebody going through living their life and then having to deal with, you know, bombings and killings around them and starvation. That's what I do to protect myself in order to keep this work going. But all of these statistics there, you know, some of these people I know, I know personally, I speak with them, I'm in touch with them. Some of them are my own relatives, you know, who have been killed, who have been starved. And my own family friends and people I grew up with,

These are neighborhoods that I know that I know what they used to look like before they were destroyed. And so it's taxing, but at the same time, I think to myself, you know, I don't have to live through that. The Yemenis have no choice. They have to wake up every day and choose to continue living. And I need to do what I can to raise awareness and to bring that critical lens here in order for our government to stop its own intervention in Yemen so that people. in Yemen can continue to live their lives and to determine their own course. And so I just think of them and that's my motivation to keep going. But honestly, this is the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my life. Yeah, I can imagine. And, you know, it requires different tracks

for different people. So for people like you that are doing research on the subject, you do have to dissociate. Otherwise, you just cannot keep this up. It is too devastating. But for people like our listeners, I encourage you to not associate from this. We have a tendency if we're not deeply ingrained within a particular situation, if we don't have friends and family that are directly being impacted by this, if it's not our homeland or whatever. We have a tendency to look at these statistics and see them as numbers rather than see them as people, not to see them as somebody's husband or sister or friend or loved one, whatever. These numbers that we see, they're all representative of human beings, human beings that are

undergoing extreme hardship, hardship that, you know, none of us that are listening to this can possibly comprehend. I'm saying this is somebody that's in another very heavily sanctioned country and I understand immediately that this is still something that I cannot begin to comprehend. This is not, the sort of hardship that they're going through is something that I will never have to go through. And it's because I don't have to emmish myself within these very heavy readings, these heavy statistics on a day by day basis because Yemen is not the country of my research focus. I have to remember that all of the numbers that I'm seeing are people. They are people who integrate themselves within a society.

They're people who have friends, have loved ones, and I need to not associate from that, because if I do, it's too easy to brush this aside and to say nothing about it. So it's very important that the listeners who are listening to this understand that there's different tracks for different people. If this is a day by day, this is your job, you're doing research on Yemen, you have to dissociate because people like you, professor, you would not be able to continue if you didn't. But for people, and I think that, and yet every time I give a talk, there's not been a single talk that I've given where I've not broken down crying. And I allow myself to do that because I cannot help it. You know, even those numbers get to me deeply. These are human beings. You know, these are people worthy of life just like me and you, right? And so I, the toll it's taken has been tremendous. I've dedicated this, my life. to this cause. In addition to having a day job, you know, this has been the thing I'm most passionate about. And it's because there's a sense of urgency and it's always been urgent. But I also see that people are moved by it. You know, when people learn about what's happening in Yemen, it would take a very cold-hearted person to just walk away and say, no, my problem.

You know, not my problem. When our tax dollars, no matter almost anywhere you are living in the Western world, your tax dollars are supporting this war, are causing this stuff. starvation and destruction. These people you're voting in and are causing, you know, are creating policies that are, or ignoring, you know, their own constitutional powers in order to facilitate these, um, these wars. And so I see people moved by our advocacy and it's not just me. It's, you know, people who are either connected to them or not who have taken up this cause. And it's taken a few, a small number, but they're very committed group of people who have even been able to, create legislative actions.

None of them have been successful necessarily because of vetoes and whatnot or threats to veto. But, you know, the first war powers resolution that was passed in Congress was in 2019 for Yemen, where Congress got together in a bipartisan way to direct President Trump

to end his unconstitutional war in Yemen. This has never happened since the War Powers Act became law in 1973 that prohibits any U.S. president to go to war without Congress's permission. So the fact that we've been able to get this far and to get that kind of attention is important. And there have been, you know, certain small victories, I would say,

but we've kept this issue alive because, you know, it's just the worst thing that our government is involved in, the worst event happening in modern times, the worst humanitarian crisis. And yet, you know, nobody came to Yemen's aid. nobody's flying the Yemeni flag around right in solidarity nobody's talking about those poor Yemeni children who died the rate of one every 75 seconds even as we speak right and in fact people have just justified reasons why Yemenis deserve this why the Hothis are so horrible that the rest of the

Yemeni population deserves to starve and to be bombed into oblivion and so it's been very the hypocrisy, it's really hard to see, but also I am moved by the solidarity of people who don't know Yemen, but hear about it and are very moved to do something about these atrocities. Yeah, absolutely. So listeners, that's, you know, the call to you to keep Yemen in your thoughts and keep Yemen in your heart as they go through these hardships. So final question for you, Professor, and I do want to appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. The final section of your essay within sanctions, this war is titled Winners and Losers. So I'm just wondering if you can close us out by talking about the winners and losers of the blockade on Yemen, the war on

Yemen, as well as prospects for the near future, because I know that we've talked about perhaps we have this maybe negotiated settlement in the works that's being brokered by Oman and China, but realistically, and then in your best case scenario, what are some of the prospects for the near future for Yemen. I would say the winners have been the war makers, right? The weapons manufacturers here in the U.S. who have earned hundreds of billions of dollars worth of contracts to sell their weapons to Saudi Arabia, it was very deep pockets.

Saudi Arabia and the U.S. you have very, very deep pockets, but make nothing in their own country. And so they rely on these weapons, shipments, and deals. the you know sad arabia seems to just be like teflon and so this the united states in the UAE right and so they have been involved in these atrocities and yet you know nobody's i mean personally have boycotted places like saturday in the UAE but like that's not a mainstream thing right people still Muslims still go to haj in sad Arabia and fund their war making that way inadvertently of course and people still, you know, no sanctioning Saudi Arabian oil or anything like that. All of the things we've seen with Russia in the last year, nobody's made any kind of attempts

or even half attempts to talk about Saudi Arabia that way. But the, so I guess in a way, they've been able to just come destroy an entire country, do what they please, and have kind of gotten away with it, right? I would want to see retribution in the sense of, you know, like restoration toward Yemen and not charity, but, you know, it's Yemenis right to receive funds to rebuild their country from countries that have played a role in destroying their country. And so I would hope to see that, you know, any kind of justice would require an accountability of all of the lives lost and all of all. of the people who have been destroyed. And, you know, things like a child dying of a simple fever because there's no ad in the pharmacy. That doesn't get counted as a war death, but it is, right?

And so the toll on Yemeni society had been immense. And so I would hope that, you know, these negotiations, first of all, would lead to a permanent peace among different warring factions, not just between Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the Hothis, but among different warring factions. warring factions. And I have, and I'm certain that Yemenis, if left to their own devices without foreign intervention, could come to the table and resolve their own issues. They've done it once before in 2015. They will do it again. They've always been shifting alliances and they will do what's best for them and for the Yemeni people, who I hope will get a chance to also choose a government that works best for them through democratic means. But I would, I mean,

it's just been in many ways it just feels so pointless you know like all of this the last eight years what were they for at the end of the day nothing changed Yemen is still there are all these warring factions the Houthis are not just a small group now that they're they're in fact very powerful and so if the Saudis had any kind of intention to um to obliterate the Houthis they've done the exact opposite. But I would hope that they would face accountability, that the U.S. would face accountability, and the UAE would face accountability in all of these countries who are very comfortable, you know, calling out other countries and don't look at their own actions. I would hope that they, too, are held accountable for all of the destruction that they've caused in Yemen.

I don't really see any winners here. The losers, of course, the biggest losers have unfortunately been the Yemeni population who are going to have to deal with ramifications of this war for decades to come because even those kids who maybe weren't starved to death but we're starving they're going to have to live with the impacts of that for the rest of their lives and so I'm hopeful that things will change but I'm also just really really sad that we've allowed this to happen in our modern times. We've allowed these incredibly powerful countries to just come and destroy a country the way they destroyed Yemen, but I'm also, as a Yemeni, to be honest, very proud of the way my people have been able to resist in whatever means they could in the face

of such massive armies and destruction. Well, on that note, again, listeners, our guest was Professor Shireen al-Adimi. We've been talking about her. chapter of the sanctions as war book, The Blockade on Yemen, a reminder that sanctions as war is now available from Haymarket for a reasonably affordable price as opposed to the previous edition, which was not. So go out and be sure to get sanctions as war from Haymarket. Professor, how can the listeners find you on social media and how can they keep up with your work and anything else that you would like to direct them to? I still use Twitter as a medium to kind of stay on top of things and highlight voices out of Yemen, as well as

here in the U.S., different groups that have advocated for the cause of Yemenis. And I also still write for, in these times, I have a piece coming out this week in these times to talk about the current situation. I'm a non-resident fellow with the Quincy Institute, so I also write for responsible state craft sometimes there. So I would hope that people could check those resources out and also look at organizations like Action Corps and Yemeni Alliance Committee. And if people are looking to donate toward relief in Yemen, I would encourage them to look at Yemeni Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. So YRF YemenFemfoundation.org. But I also just appreciate you taking the time to spotlight Yemen and such a big issue and to really just give it the time to to delve into

these details. Yeah, of course, it's our pleasure and it was great to have you on the show. Listeners, as for me and my co-hosts, you can find Adnan on Twitter at Adnan A-Husain. That's A-D-N-A-N-A-N. You can find Adnan's other show, the M-A-J-L-I-S, wherever you get your podcast that's focused on the Middle East and Muslim Diaspora. Very interesting show. Just make sure that when you search for the Mudge List, you do not pick the radio-free Central Asia one, because that is not a nods. No radio-free CIA here.

As for Brett, he unfortunately was not able to make it today, but you can find Revolutionary Left Radio and the Red Menace, as well as guerrilla history on the Revolutionary Left Radio.com website. As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. That's H-U-C-K-1-9-5. Just a heads-up that we are done with the translation and editing of the Domenico-Lasurdo book. That's Salvatore Engel de Mauro and myself have finished editing and translating the Stalin history and critique of a black legend book. So keep your eyes peeled.

That'll be coming out soon. And I will be sure to update everybody on Twitter where you'll be able to get the free PDF or the low-cost print edition. And you can follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Podcast. G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod, consider supporting the show on Patreon. That helps us keep the lights on by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, gorilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. I'm going to be able to be.

Thank you.