Guerrilla History - The History of Modern Yemen & the Struggle Against Zionist Imperialism w/ Shireen Al-Adeimi & Rune "Aldanmarki" Agerhus

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

In this blockbuster episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on two outstanding guests to discuss the modern history of Yemen, as well as their ongoing struggle against Zionist imperialism and opposition to the genocide in Gaza.   Shireen and Rune bring fantastic insight and analysis, making this complicated history accessible and utilizable for individuals in our movement against imperialism in all forms, and Zionist imperialism specifically at this moment.  Be sure to take in all that our guests say, and share this episode with comrades you believe would similarly benefit! 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. Rune Agerhus Political Commentator & Member of the International Commission for Solidarity with Yemen (ICSY).  He is the founder of Hamra Books, which Iskra Books and Guerrilla History have just announced a partnership with in order to release materials from the socialist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. You can follow him on twitter @Aldanmarki. 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, Ben, boo? 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 Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as 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, joined as usual by my two co-hosts, Professor Adnan-Hussein, historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. That's wonderful to be with you, Henry. Absolutely, always nice seeing you. Also joined as usual by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio,

and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. You're looking sharp today. Well, thank you, Henry. I deeply appreciate that. Yeah, I'm doing well. I'm very excited for this episode. This is a really important, obviously, issue. And I think that the global left could be benefited immensely by understanding the history and the struggle of the Yemeni people. So I'm happy for this episode. Yeah, absolutely. And you tease the episode a little bit. But before I introduce the topic and our guests. I want to remind the listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this

by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can follow us on Twitter and keep up with all of the things that we're putting out individually and collectively at Gorilla underscore pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. As Brett mentioned, this episode is going to be devoted to Yemen, particularly contemporary Yemeni history and how Yemen is relating to the

ongoing genocide in Gaza. We have two absolutely fantastic guests today, one of whom is a returning guest and one of whom is making his debut on the show, although we have been in contact for a while on Twitter. And it's really nice to be able to talk with both of you. We have Shirin al-Adimi and Runa Ehirhus on the show. Hello to the two of you. It's really nice to have you on the show. Hi, it's good to be here. Yeah, it's an incredible honor to be here today. Absolutely. I would like to have both of you introduce yourselves and talk a little bit about how you got involved with writing about Yemen and analyzing Yemen. I know Shireen that we had previously had you on the show to talk particularly about the sanctions regime on Yemen,

and I will link to that episode in the show notes. So listeners, that was part of our Sanctions, this war series, really terrific episode that Shereen was able to join us for. So the listeners are probably somewhat familiar with you. So why don't we start with you? Can you just tell them a little bit about your background and how you got involved with the work regarding, you know, writing and talking about Yemen?

Sure. My day job is an assistant professor at Michigan State University where I study classroom discourse. and I teach pre-service teachers about literacy. And of course, this has nothing to do with politics. They were probably wondering how I got involved with all of this. I was a doctoral student when the war in Yemen began in 2015. And I noticed very early on that my U.S. government,

I wasn't a citizen at the time, by the way, but I had been living in the U.S. for quite a while. and the Obama administration was heavily involved in the war in Yemen. They were calling it the Saudi-led war, but none of it would have happened without the Obama administration's support and green lighting of it. And so I started speaking out against that very specific form of support. I've always been an anti-interventionist and anti-imperialist.

And so this was just very obvious for me as a starting point to try to bring attention to this. issue, specifically our response, our government's response. And so it started with writing and speaking about it and it became a line of work that I continued on to this day. Yeah, and your work is greatly appreciated. Anybody who doesn't follow your writings really is doing themselves a disservice. Runa? Yeah, so most people, I guess, would probably know me by my nomdiqa on Twitter as Danny Markey. But yeah, my name is

Una Ehus. I'm a 25-year-old university student doing my currently doing my last semester of my international relations masters scheduled to be writing my thesis right now, so

I got that to work on. I was I got involved with Yemen back in mid, late, late, 15, simply out of a, what should I call it, a dissatisfaction with the way the war was covered in the media, I felt. Because at that point early on, I was aware that there was a war going on, but I never saw it in the news, either in the primetime news or the morning news or in the printed press online.

Practically nowhere. My first encounter, real encounter with the country and the people was online through a Facebook, political Facebook group, like a catch-all Facebook group where I noticed these, Yemeni photographers sharing their photos.

They were like journalists, photojournalists. So I was quite interested in, you know, you know, getting to know these people and, you know, to hear why I, like, what's going on, you know, from their perspective. And they were more than willing to describe and to tell their own story. I was told or they told me about their home village, how that was destroyed during the war, what they lost, what they went through. A very personal conversation in many ways. and that sort of ignited something within myself that has, I guess, kept me going all these

years. So that's, you know, boilerplate show. My introduction was the country. Yeah, well, I speak for all of us when I say it's a genuine honor to have both of you on to cover this important topic. Now, I know most of this conversation is going to be about the contemporary, you know, situation in Yemen, going back to about 2014, up through the present day. But I do think, think it would serve us all well to have a little bit of some background history and some knowledge and some context. So with that in mind, and this question is a big question, but also I'm leaving it very broad for both of you to take in whatever direction you would like. But maybe you could tell us some of the history, particularly the anti-colonial history in Yemen, and just kind of help

listeners orient themselves to the basic historical context before we move into the contemporary era. I can start all of this traces. to Yemen's colonial history. Yemen had been historically one large southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, one large country. And then we had divisions that led to Yemen being split up

into what was commonly known as North Yemen and what was commonly known as South Yemen, even though on the map it kind of looks like northwest and southeast. And historic North Yemen was ruled by a Zadi empire, Zaddy kingdom, although there were Turkish incursions during the Ottoman Empire's time and lots of resistance to that throughout 500 years, 1500s to 1900s. So when the Ottoman Empire

collapsed in 1918, we saw a resumption of the Zadhi, Mutawakalite kingdom in particular that ruled Yemen, northern Yemen, until 1963. South Yemen had its own history with colonialism as well. There were attempts by the Portuguese in the 1500s that were not successful, but then the British East India Company showed up in the 1800s and essentially took over, which was then transferred to the British crown. In Yemen, specifically, Aden, they ruled from Aden and became their Aden colony. So you had a country that was divided essentially into North-Eman.

Yemen and South Yemen. Eventually, the North Yemenis fought against the monarchists and established the Republic or Yemen Arab Republic. And not without difficulty. It took eight years for them to actually fully succeed in that revolution. They were supported by the Egyptians during Gamad Abdin Nasser's time. And they were opposed by the Saudis at the time who were funding and the British who were funding the monarchists in order to maintain a monarchy in northern Yemen. In the south, they had their own resistance and it led to liberation from the British and the establishment of the Middle East's only Marxist, Leninist country in South Yemen, which is the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. So we had these two very different systems of government now between North

and South Yemen, but there was always a desire for both parts of Yemen to be reunited, the historic Yemen to be reunited. There were lots of attempts to unite the two countries and maybe Runa can add some historical context there about assassination of presidents who attempted that unification. But the two parts weren't actually united until 1990 when it was close to the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted renewed talks for unity. And it led to north and south Yemen, merging into one country, Republic of Yemen, under President Ali Abdullah Saleh. I'll pause there in case you have follow-ups or in case Rune wants to add more. Yeah, so, Sirena is right to say that the quest for unification has been quite the bumper right for both Yemeni nation states.

already in the early 1970s they were trying both countries to ignite the reunification process or at least, you know, have cordial talks about how that would materialize or take an effect. And at that point, you had essentially, by the 1974 and 1975, you had two left-leaning heads of states in both countries. you had in the north Colonel Ibrahim al-Hamdi who was very popular probably one of the most popular presidents Yemenas ever had

who rose the power in a bloodless coup in the in 1973 I believe or earlier and then you had in the south

you had Salim Rubei Ali who was the was spearheading what many scholars claim to be South Yemen's Maoist period so that that ranges from

the early 1970s or 1970 up until his death in 1979 but of course as history would have it the country was never reunified in the 1970s because Ibrahim al-Hamdi in the north only two days before a scheduled visit to the south was murdered at a banquet

many point their fingers at Saudi Arabia for both executing it and financing it. And then you had Salim Rubei Ali shot it in an internal power struggle within the National Liberation Front, which later became the Yemeni Socialist Party, but not in the 1970s. and then it was or looked like a spiral of absolute chaos from then onwards you had you you north yemen ended up with aliabdallah saga who would preside oh north yemen and then unified yemen for more than 30 years as a an oligarchic kleptocratic uh despotic ruler ruled with an iron fist and South Yemen would get the short end of the stake basically

by 1991 the country unified there was later the war of 1994 where South seceded once again because they felt they hadn't been heard probably enough and Sale invaded with tanks and scott missiles and jets and everything he had in his arsenal So, yeah, the quest for unification has always been there, and it has always been like a focal point of, I would say, Yemen's progressive movement, you know, across different political affiliations. But it has been quite the Bambi right, so to speak, for the mildly atheist.

Well, maybe you can both tell us a little bit more about that period since unification up to the Civil War. you know, I got the sense from Brunas account that South Yemen didn't fare too well in the context of the Reunified Republic under Ali Abdu Salih. So maybe you can tell us about what some of the tensions and issues were that have tend to be centrifugal, you know, kinds of forces here that led to the Civil War. You know, one could talk about the diversity of Yemen. Obviously, there's these highland areas of the north versus the more coastal regions that have a very different, you know, kind of social background. There's much that's always made when talking about contemporary Yemen, about religious differences. And so maybe some sense of what the kind of portrait of the religious culture of Yemen has been. and to the extent that that contributed or not, I think it's often, you know, used as a sort of fake way to explain the divisions, but it's useful to have some sort of portrait of that aspect of it as well, but also just socially and economically, as well as politically. What were the sorts of tensions, you know, in this period since 1990, you know, where it was unified after a long period of being separated?

What happened during that period to contribute to a civil war? I can start. So I was born during the PDRY, the state of PDRY, so communist South Yemen in Aden. And after the war in 86, it was an internal struggle among the different political groups in South Yemen. It was a two-week war that was pretty bloody. caused a lot of chaos. But after that, after a few months after that, my family and I left to India, and then when we came back, it was right after unification in 1991. The difference for my family who I lived in pre-unification Yemen and post-teamination Yemen was quite stark. While

everybody wanted to unify, the talks were so rushed and they didn't really involve, they basically involved Ali Abdullah Salah and Ali Saddam al-Biby, who became his vice president. And, And there wasn't an ease into that transition. It was driven out of economic concerns for the South because they were going to lose the backing of the Soviet Union. But culturally, our people had drifted quite a bit after being colonized and separated for 130 years or so. And the religious influences, as you mentioned, were quite different as well in both areas. But the main concern was South Yemenis made up about 20% of the population. still do, but they have a larger landmass. Much of it is desert, and so it's not occupied

as densely as northern Yemen. Northern Yemen is where you have the highlands and what you mentioned, also some coastal areas like Hodeida, but South Yemen is mostly coastal and desert. And people felt in the South that, you know, what did we get out of this? There were elections in the parliamentary election shortly after unity and they only won 18% of the seats, which kind of works out with the percent of the population that they represent. But there was a lot of frustration at that time because they felt like, well, with 18% of the seats in parliament, we're not going to get what we want. Our voices aren't going to be heard. And there were quickly talks about seceding. They felt like the South was becoming a lot less rigid and strict.

and maybe some people felt as organized as it had been under communist rule. Whereas North Yemenis during this time weren't really complaining very much. So it felt like the unity was working for them, whereas the South felt like there was an exploitation of resources without us really gaining much from it. But when they declared secession from the north, like Runa mentioned Salih just came out full force. And my family and I were at the receiving end of that war.

When you speak to people from Yemen, and only really people in the South had felt that war because it was completely asymmetrical. And the response was quite aggressive. And he decided to just force people back into the unity instead of initiating dialogue or talks, instead of easing, you know, saying let's think about how to make this work. He just responded by force.

And it was symbolic for him to have his defense minister, who at the time was Abdur Abdu, Abduroh Monsur Hadi. He was the defense. minister, he had been a southerner who had moved to the north after 1986 and worked his way up the ranks, became defense minister. It was very symbolic for Salih to have him lead the army into the south to symbolize to the southerners that, you know, a southerner brought you back to the fold of unity. And as a reward for winning that war, he appointed Hadi as his vice president. And so Hadi becomes an important figure, of course, 20 years later during the

Arab Spring. But that's how you end up with a lot of resentment from southern Yemenis who feel like, well, we were united for four years, it wasn't the greatest, and then we were forced back into unity for the next 20 years. And so what's in it for us? And many eventually, by the late 1990s, a movement called Al-Hirac, or the movement, they were formed as a explicitly secessionist political group. And then from that, we have another group called the STC, the Southern Transitional Council, which currently operates in South Yemen and is completely 100% backed by the United Arab Emirates, who divide and conquer is one of the things that we all know people do. And so this is one of the ways that the UAE has been able to foment discord in Yemen over the last decade by funding

this group and empowering them in South Yemen, they have goals that are completely antithetical to the Ha'i group, which is taking over Sana again and being installed as a public government. And yet they were given all of this funding and backing in order to create another sort of opposition to the Houthis. So all of this lingers till now, where you have people in the South still feeling that, well, we never actually wanted to be part of the North. and many of them have rallied around, not unanimously, of course, but many of them have united, rallied around this secessionist movement.

And also, I just wanted to add that in the period following Yemeni unification or unity, especially in the lead up to the 1993 elections, Ali Abdullah Sala did everything to rent the country of the socialists. literally he did he made socialist or trade union leaders disappear

he made the local socialist leaders disappear he hired gunmen to shoot and kill socialist leaders in the capital cities and the major cities out in the open street

did everything he could in his power to make sure that the socialist party the Yemeni Socialist Party would just be like a like a figment of what it once was

and that sort of also speaks to the end result of the 1993 elections because the general assumption was that the Yemeni Socialist Party would at least share 50-50 the power with Radi Abd al-Azada

and his General People's Congress party and you know magically that never happens and instead the party that wins the second most votes in the country is the one called Elislaj, the Reform Party

the outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood. And he had been in deep contact or in direct in deep contact with the Islam Party for a number of years, mostly because Saudi Arabia

was fearing that the socialists would return into state power in the or as a result of the elections. and did everything they could by, you know, pulling the strings and talking to the people they had to talk to in Yemen to make sure that the socialists would never get state power. And, you know, as history would have it, that's what eventually happened. Yeah, so I think that a lot of the listeners would be aware that Ali Abdullah Salah ruled for

about just under 22 years, very brutal rule. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what his rule was like between 1990 and the beginning of the Yemeni Revolution in 2011. And then also talking about the causes for the Yemeni Revolution, which I know Shereen you had mentioned was part of the broader Arab Spring. It was tied into the Arab Spring. But of course, within the Arab Spring, each individual locale has its own individual context and its own individual precipitating factors. not just like we can look regionally and say, well, the causes for all of these are the same. Like, yeah, some of the factors were the same across the region, but there is a specificity here as well.

If you can talk a little bit about that, and I know Adnan, you also wanted to ask about the role of outside influence as well. Well, yes, it's just something that's come up in the narrative. I mean, Shireen was just talking about some of these southern political formations and the fact that there was sponsorship and support from the United Arab Emirates for some of them and that that was part of the divisions fomenting kind of separate segmented rather than kind of unified national demands in the South. And in general, it seems to me, this is something that certainly came up, of course, in the sanctions as a war episode that we've had in our

discussion about what's happened to Yemen under the blockade and sea. of Yemen is how much outside parties have intervened in Yemen's domestic affairs, how much they have sponsored various groups to foment division that has led to kind of fragmentation and competition and political turmoil and war in Yemen, and how important a factor that is, particularly when you look at the fact that Yemen is actually the more populous, one of the more populous you know, nations in the region. I mean, these Gulf countries, particularly, say, the Emirates or, you know, Qatar, you know, Bahrain, these countries are pretty small in population, but of course, because of oil, they have enormous wealth, and they use this to help them, you

know, pursue their own particular political interests, their geopolitical alignments, and so many of them tend to be Western oriented. So that might be helpful to get more understanding of the role of outside intervention has played in the civil war. Yeah, I'll start with the question on Salih's regime. He had ruled in total 33 years because he had been ruling North Yemen from 1978 to 1990 and then after their spring gave up power. The question about outside influence is also linked to Salih.

But before he even came to power, Guna mentioned, you know, the assumption, the widely held assumption that Saudi Arabia was involved in the assassination of Yemen's most popular president, hands down at Hamdi. He was seen as the man who was going to move Yemen into an era where, you know, we were a sovereign, independent country and able to unite both parts of the country without outside. influence. And yet that wasn't given a chance due to most likely Saudi Arabia's intervention. And so Saudi Arabia is among Yemenis. It's known as our first enemy or historic enemy because of, you know, even issues with land grabs and three provinces in Saudi Arabia today were historically Yemen, Yemeni provinces. And, you know, when there was a struggle in northern Yemen to rid itself of the monarchy, Saudi Arabia being monarchists, wanted to make sure that Yemen was under a monarchal system and they failed after eight years. And so they've always been involved, they've always

involved themselves in Yemen's affairs. And many of these civil wars, it's difficult to think of them as civil wars when there had been so much outside influence and funding and without which they wouldn't have turned into such deadly crises. But Salah ruled with an iron fist. And, you know, Ruhna also mentioned the Slah Party, which is, kind of seen as the controlled opposition that he created. He himself was a secularist, but he didn't mind this influence of the outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, so to speak, of Islam. And, you know, their ties with Saudi Arabia remain very strong till now. Their leaders are in Saudi Arabia. And they've wreaked havoc on Yemeni society, essentially. And he's

allowed them to, with the Slah party and Thalas party. You know, they were, robbing Yemen of its resources. He created the system of, you know, oligarchs essentially that were loyal to him and in return were enriched through Yemen's natural resources and all of the deals, all of the companies, outside companies that were coming into Yemen and, you know, construction or oil companies or whatever. And they were all getting massive cuts. And meanwhile, Yemenis were impoverished. through this time. Yemen became one of the, if not one of the poorest countries in the world, the poorest countries in the Middle East economically, but it's because people were robbed of their rights and resources. Meanwhile, Salah was known as one of the richest people in the world.

By the time he was killed in late 2017, the UN estimated that he had something like $60 billion overseas. And so Salah allowed this relationship with, with Saudi Arabia to also flourish and not just Saudi Arabia, but by the 90s, he was getting very, very close to the U.S. And so he has this close relationship with Bush and in the early 2000s and wants to position himself as a fighter of Islamic terrorism in Yemen. I mean, those, if you have time, go through the rabbit hole of WikiLeaks. It's just fascinating. His emails or his letters to Bush sure. Like, you know, we need F-15s. We need this. We need this. It's going to cause you about a billion dollars. But hey, we're going to get rid of terrorism in South and Yemen. Meanwhile, this guy

was basically letting al-Qaeda out and then oops, they escape. Now we need more money to capture them. We need, you know, more resources. And then, you know, so he was just playing these games. It was just one more way for him to make money off of now the Americans in Yemen under the auspices of fighting terrorism. But he allowed, you know, the drone strikes to happen. in Yemen, you know, the breach of Yemeni sovereignty, assassination campaigns by both the Bush and Obama administration later, this was all sanctioned by Ali Abdullah Salih, who was a close ally of the West, close ally of Saudi Arabia. And that became a turning point for, and we haven't talked about them yet, but Ansarulah, who are known as the Houthis. And now, if you want to think

about the different political groups that we mentioned, we have the Islaah Party who is very close to Salah, but they have a fundamentalist kind of Islamic, Islamist twist. And then you have the socialists who have been defanged, as Vuna mentioned earlier. You have the secessionists who eventually were backed by the UAE. And now you have Ansarullah in northern Yemen, who are anti-imperialists, anti-corruption, and pose yet another threat to Salah, because they are openly speaking about things that you know you're going to get assassinated for if you spoke about in Yemen. And ironically, just to hop in for one quick second, I'm sure Luna has something that he wants

to add here before one of my co-hosts will have a question. But you know, you mentioned that Sella was always promoting himself as this great fighter against terrorism. And then you brought up on Sera-O-Lah. It's funny that Sala was the one who was promoting himself as the great fighter against terrorism when in reality, if we look at who was actually being quite effective against particularly ISIS, who was it? It was on Sera-Lah.

It was the quote-unquote Houthis. It was not the government of Yemen, you know. So that's just a kind of an irony there that all of this money was being shipped there for the government for this one purpose. But on the other hand, the people that were actually carrying out that goal were still the enemies of the United States government, the people that were sending money to this dictatorial regime in the first place. Well, and the biggest irony is that now they are considered and characterized and have been for years. briefly they were taken off and then put back on as terrorists right they're the ones who fought ISIS

most effectively yeah Runa maybe you had something to add on the previous question yeah I mean there's this I know we might get to it later but there's this wild

widely held assumption that the quote unquote the hooties or unsatellized they later you know officially become known as was created like in a vacuum separated from

Yemen's history and material conditions when in reality the timeline from when the idea of the movement first began until now

is in direct response to those very material conditions Hussein and Hose was the founder of the movement was elected as a member of the parliament in 1993, representing a, at the time, a smaller, Sadie political party, Sadie Islamic political party called the Al-Hak party,

which is like the party of troops. And the funny thing is, and I hear nobody mentioned this at all, because it is widely available online also to read if you look hard enough, is that Hussain El Hose was elected on a parliamentary mandate that was pretty much secular in nature. You know, fight corruption, endemic corruption in the country, restore the social cohesion of the Yemeni nation, restore the economy, make the economy more self-sufficient, end internal strife,

internal tribal clashes which have also been been going on at that time and his parliamentary mandate was also supported by the and the Socialist Party because they found

common ground in their opposition to Ali Abdullah Sala's rule which they both already at that time perceived to be too kleptocratic to you know iron handed you know

too despotic to to be sustained basically and they were both well aware of the fact that Adi Abdelah Sala at the time was hiring, you know, guns for hire to kill his most, you know, his primary

and strongest opponents in the lead up to the elections. And Hussein of Hose, one specific incident, that there was one specific incident that got him in excuse me, in trouble with the government of Ali Abdallah, Sala.

And that was the 1994 war, the civil war between the two. Because he was so outspoken against Sala's war on the South that he had been organizing these sit-ins in his home region of Sada, where, you know, thousands of people would gather, you know, with banners and flags and slogans to protest the war that Sala had. you know, started against the people of southern Yemen. And all of that resulted in, I'm not sure, I don't recall the Sainahuzi being at the receiving end himself, but he got his house raided, eluded, stolen from basically by the Yemeni military.

And upwards of 40 or 50 of his personal family members arrested and disappeared, you know, thrown into prison. and dungeons for months on end without trial and then released, you know, without trial at some point, threatened, at gunpoint and, you know, all the horrible stuff. And it was only around the late 1990s that Hosein decided not to be re-elected for the 1997 elections and then to pursue religious education and religious studies that would later form what would then become the believing youth movement. you know, the precursor to the

to the, uh, to the unsar-law. So his engagement with Yemeni politics is rooted in those factors that were, uh, dominant at the time as, you know, direct, as a direct, you know, response to, to what was going on.

So it's, it's as rooted in as connected to the, to the history as, uh, as you could, you know, probably expected to be. Yeah. So let's kind of talk a little bit more about Ansar ala, known in the West and throughout the world as the Houthis. Many people listening will probably know them as such, but their formal name is the Ansarala. You mentioned, Shureen, that they were anti-imperialist, anti-corruption.

I was hoping you could say a little bit more about their ideological background and their sort of rise to predominance, as well as this notion that they're, whenever you hear about them, especially in the Western press, it always comes equipped with their Iran-backed. They have links to Iran. They never call Israel, of course, an American-backed apartheid regime or, you know, as I say, a Euro-American genocidal proxy force in West Asia. But for some reason, any organization with any links whatsoever to Iran are constantly beaten to our head as Iran bached. So I was hoping that you could say a little bit more about their rise to predominance, their ideological inclinations beyond anti-imperialism and anti-corruption, and then what you make of their actual links. to Iran. Yeah, so late 90s then, Hussain Badreddin al-Huthi forms of movement that is religiously oriented and rooted, as Huna mentioned, but still very much in response to geopolitics in the area and locally in Yemen. I mean, Saada is one of the most, you know, at the time,

it was one of the most impoverished areas and there was no running water, electricity in parts, Whereas like I mentioned, the president lived in castles in Yemen. You could, you would just drive for for miles and his castle, the gates, you know, the, the, uh, uh, fence of the castle that just keep going on. It would just go on and on and on. It was just this like display of wealth in a country that, you know, he was just so open about his, um, his corruption. But, um, Hussein specifically was very vocal against Saudi influence, Saudi religious. influence in Yemen. Zaydi Islam has the only place in the world where you'll find Zaydi Muslims are in

Yemen, mostly North Yemen. And they're not a minority by any means. They're 40% of the population is Zaidi Muslim. And yet, and Salah himself was from a Zadhi family. And yet there was this encroachment of Salafi and Wahhabi Islam into Yemen in the 90s that again, Salih Aloud, and the establishment of the Slash Party was not helping at all. And they were starting to replace religious doctrine in Yemen with books that were printed in Saudi Arabia.

I remember in school in the mid-90s, where all of our books, all of a sudden, you know, they're like, oh, you were getting new religious books, and they were all printed in Saudi Arabia all of a sudden. And so there was this attempt to just indoctrinate Yemenis into that, you know, sect of Islam, if you could call it that. And South Yemen was very susceptible to it because of our history with colonialism. There was a, and how do I say, one of the consequences of not just the British colonialism, but also the communist rule that followed was a disintegration of the religious. fabric in Yemen, in South Yemen, which the north didn't experience. The north were mostly Shafi, Sunnis, or Zadis Shias, co-existed for a thousand

of years, for 1,500 years. That wasn't an issue, but also firmly rooted in those theological backgrounds, whereas the South, you know, became more susceptible to the Sadafi Wahhabi version of Islam, which is why you find a lot of, there were a lot of people. from the south who went to Afghanistan, for example, to fight alongside the Taliban and whatnot. But the Houthis were like, why are we allowing our own theological fabric to be, you know, uprooted by the Wahhabis? And why is Salah allowing this to happen to our society? The Saudis came and they built one of the largest colleges or seminaries in Saada province,

where the Houthis were. And so as a, you know, a direct kind of confrontation of the strong theological roots that they have over there in Zaydi Islam. So he was preaching against that. And then the Iraq war happened and he was, you know, Salih supported the U.S. intervention in Yemen, which is a complete turn. He had not supported the first Iraq war and, you know, Yemenis paid severely for that. But the second Iraq war in 2003, he supported that. And that was another rallying call with Ansad Allah, who were very much opposed to these wanton interventions. and imperialist aggressions by the United States and our own government's support of them.

Yeah, also, I would also like to add in the extension of what Shiddin just talked about, the Hothis or the Ansala is a very interesting movement because scholars to this day, even senior leaders in the Ansatala Political Bureau are still struggling to define what it actually is. because it's not a movement in the traditional sense and it's not a political organization in the traditional sense

there are no card carrying who see members they don't exist it the like it's not like you uh apply for like a membership and then you wait like a few weeks and then you get your card in the mail that that's not that's not how it works uh with this particular movement the closest definition that I've been able to wrap my head around is that the movement is more of an idea with Saint-a-Husie starts what basically becomes not an ideology but basically an idea that

in his view would be able to rally all Yemenis despite political affiliation or Islamic sects affiliation, whether Shafi or Sadie. Based on the belief, he argued, I remember reading one of his lectures that are widely available online. He argues that the

principal understanding of the religion has been so torn up between sects and what he basically calls these privileged sort of Islamic scholars who are interpreting religion through their own eyes and not in any way connected

or in eye level with the common people. So he argues basically that the religion, which is unifying all Yemenis, should be a slogan or a rallying point where all people could like come together and fight for what needs to be fought for like independence and economic sovereignty and he uses the religion as like

an analogy to explain the conditions of Yemen at the time which is pretty interesting actually and that's sort of also being perceived as a threat by Salah because he got not just the, you know, the aftermath of the war in the South to deal with.

Major reconstruction, he, you know, he ransacked the South, basically. Everything was destroyed and looted and burned down and torn apart. It was a bloodbath, so to speak. And now he also has to deal with, you know, this, what he perceived as a rabid religious preacher in the North, being, you know, increasingly more hostile to his own government. And that all boils over, basically, in 2001, 2002 with the introduction of the infamous Houthi slogan, which comes as a direct reaction to U.S. imperialism into region, basically. So that's, it's a very interesting, you know, part of that history that I often believe gets overlooked

the old general conversation. I want to turn us to 2014. So 2014 was the formal start of the Yemeni Civil War. I remember it quite vividly. I was a year into my undergrad. My best friend at my undergrad was from Yemen. And so, of course, we watched the events unfold over the next several years together. He was the person, like, who I did all of my events and activism and stuff with.

So this is how I got interested and involved in Yemen. But in any case, we're talking about the fall of 2014. What we see is, again, the Houthis, you know, using the term that's more widely used in the West, the Houthis come in and seize control of the capital of Yemen. And over the next several months, things become very strange. Like, Hadi is proposing a plan to federalize the country, like split it into, multiple regions that are then run in a very weird way, which of course almost nobody was happy with this plan, but yet that was the proposal on the table. We have the Houthis obviously being quite opposed to this plan. And this really kicked off the Civil War in many ways. But how

quickly things moved at the beginning was really interesting in terms of one day there was relative peace. And then the next day, the next thing you know the capital has, fallen. That's something that we don't often see in these sorts of conflicts. And like I said, it was something that was really interesting to see as we, you know, we're watching things unfold together. So I'm wondering if you can take us to 2014, discuss the lead up to September of 2014, the precipitation of the events of 2014, what happened at that period. And then that next several months of like really weird, confusing stuff that I still can't quite get my head around. we're going to have to back up a little bit so of course that's always happy to

um guna mentioned you know the growing um fear by salih with hossein badreddin al houthi in saada um the response was militaristic so he launched six different wars against unsatulah between 2004 and 2010 they're called the six Sa'a wars. He enlisted the help of the Americans and he listed the help of the Saudis. The Saudis were fighting directly with the Houthis and weren't, you know, losing. And it was quite embarrassing because, Insana al-Law would post all of the battle footage onto YouTube. So it was highly embarrassing for the Saudis that, and that's what made the Houthis, or insol-Lah, banned as a military group because it was in directors they had to defend themselves in their area. Now, Salih

succeed in killing Hussein al-Houthi in the first of those wars. And so his brother took over, he was 25 years old at the time, and he's the current leader of the Houthis. So he's been in power now, or he's been the figurehead of the movement for the past 20 years. And his name is Abdul Merik al-Houthi. So they just continued to grow and to become stronger militarily through these six Sada wars. Hussein-Al-Houthi was killed. with the help of the United States. Again, WikiLeaks, you'll know all about how they trained the counter terrorism forces as they were called, quote unquote, by Salah.

And because the U.S. trained them and funded them, they were able to go and do what they did in Saada. But that just, I think if they were relatively unknown prior to that, they became very well known in Yemen and garnered a lot of sympathy for them because here was yet another group that was, you know, they weren't saying anything that they haven't. Yemeni didn't agree with. And yet Salah responded yet again the same way he responded to the South, which was by force. So they continued to assert themselves as a group of importance in northern Yemen. And by the time the Arab Spring happened in 2011, Yemenis saw, again, the conditions

are different, but they saw like, well, if this could happen in Egypt and in Tunisia, maybe it is a possibility that we could approve Salah and his folks from Yemen. And so what started off as a peaceful movement, people going out in the streets. Among them, the Southerners who wanted secession, among them the Houthis and their groups, and just the average person who was sick and tired of Salah's rule, that became co-opted by the Islaq Party. And this was just such a massive turn of events in 2011. People were not protesting against Salah as a singular person. They were protesting against the entire system, which allowed him to govern. and to rule with such corruption, which included the Islaq Party.

They held, he held the executive and they held the parliament. And yet the Islaah found a way to reposition themselves as opposition to Salah and co-opted this, the people's revolution essentially, and turned it into this armed campaign where they tried to assassinate Salah and force him to step down. So eventually by late 2011, and he agrees to step down. He transfers overpower to his loyal vice president, Heidi, who was supposed to be an interim president for two years. And in that time, like you mentioned, Henry, there was, you decided, let's just split up the country into a bunch of federations. And, you know, who was going to support that, right?

And so there was a lot of opposition to that and frustration. and at some point he resigned and at some point he took back his resignation and then he asked for one more year of extension to his presidency and it was granted. But then Houthis show up in the summer of 2014, the government lifted the oil and gas subsidies. And so there were massive protests in Yemen. And the Houthis became more and more powerful during that time because they were echoing the frustrations of the average Yemeni person. And in their frustration, they thought that they could assert force and pressure onto Hadi and force him into a solution. And so they kind of came over from Saada and they took over the capital, not with a lot of with as much resistance as we had expected. And so many people started wondering if Salah, in fact, asked his army to step down.

And I say his army because even though he had stepped aside, he was still in control of much of the Yemeni army. and he was still in Sana'a, watching things unfold. But even in those months, even as they took over the capital, they forced Hadin to house arrest. He resigned again and then resigned to take back that resignation. But the idea was that they were trying to, they were still willing and there was a UN deal that was going to bring some kind of coalition government together that the Houthi signed and everybody signed. And when you read about this very tenuous time from the envoy, the UN envoy to Yemen at the time, his name is Jamal bin Omar, he wrote about this and he speaks about this. He said a deal was on the table. Everybody came together and we were going to form a unity, a coalition government, which included the Houthis, included Heidi's party, the GPC, General People's Congress, the Eslaah, the Southerners, it was going to include many of those different factions. and two weeks later, Saudi Arabia started attacking.

So I wouldn't classify that period as necessarily a civil war. There was a lot of tension, and there was a lot of tension brewing that could have turned into full-blown civil war. But I think the moment Sad Arabia got involved, it just, I mean, it's obvious why they got involved. They didn't want the Hothis anywhere near power, given how vehemently anti-Houthi they are and how anti-Saudi the Houthis are. But they just formed a cold.

seemingly overnight, of course, with the support of the United States and the direction of the United States, and began bombing Yemen in order to just reinstate Hadid to power, just put our puppet back so that we can go to business as usual, where we had somebody in power in Yemen, given their important strategic location controlling Babad Mendeb Strait, we need somebody in Yemen to just serve as a puppet, as Saleh had for so many decades, and served Saudi interests and U.S. interests very well in that region. And they panicked that the Houthis were going to do the exact opposite of that. And so they intervened hoping that they can just install Hadi and go back to business as usual

without having a coalition government that was going to include multiple voices. It's very interesting also, as Sireen briefly mentioned, in the immediate aftermath of Fadiabullah Salas, you know, when he stepped down from power in 2012, I believe it was, the GCC deal that he essentially got. So, I mean, already there, you could argue, did the people overthrow him or did Saudi Arabia just, you know, you know, force him out, you know, in place of an even more susceptible puppet figure,

which would then be, you know, Mansour Adi. But it's a very interesting period right, like immediately after Adiabala Sala steps down, which is the National Dialogue Conference. So it was UN-sponsored and everything. So basically all the belligerent political factions got together for a period of time to figure out how Yemen was supposed to move forward from, you know, not just the Arab Spring, but, you know, decades of internal turmoil and political strife. And Abd al-Abun-Hadhi was elected on an interim basis. precisely to oversee that National Dialogue Conference

and to see it, you know, be to see it to its end, basically. And it's an interesting period because you have all of these political factions each, you know, pitching in how they would like the country to essentially be built from their own perspective.

You know, the Southerners would like more political or for themselves and, you know, be able to govern their own economy and, you know, social and, you know, security for themselves on a more, you know, autonomous basis than just the central state dictating everything. One thing that crossed my mind and raised my eyebrows was the Unsaulah Delegation to the National Dialogue Conference. Primarily led by two political figures, but the most important in my view was a certain Dr. Ahmed Sharfuddin who was the I believe she was the head of the law department at Saddam University at the time. He was representing the Unsatala, and he proposed a vision for Yemen that would alter the constitutional framework entirely. So he argued that Yemen is existing on a constitutional framework that is inherently contradictory,

because he says, nobody had paid any attention to this when you'd, the two Yemeni nation states merged in 1990, but you've got the socialist constitution of the south, the overtly secular constitution merging with a religious constitution of the north. So what they basically did in 1990 was, you know, take 50% of everything, you know, from both two states and then match them together into one constitution and then, you know, hope that it sticks. And, you know, result was it did not stick. So what Dr. Shadowfordine argues is you have one article in the Constitution saying that God is the sole source of legislation, and that legislation only rests within the hands of God. And just beneath it, you have an article saying that it is the people who are the sole source of legislation.

And he argues, you know, it can't be both. It can't be God as the sole source and the people as the soul source. You know, there's a contradiction. So he argues a new constitution, completely absent of all religious wording and, you know, a constitutional framework that is completely absent from all religion, no religion at all, no religious discourse. because he says, if we have a secular constitution, there's no single Islamic orientation

that could take hold of state power, basically. There's no Yemeni political figure of one particular Islamic orientation that can take power and then have that particular Islamic orientation control the entire country, basically. And he argued that, but with this new constitutional framework, the people would be more united across

Islamic beliefs and even political orientations between north and south and geographical divides and you know would you have it? That even a year after he proposed his vision or division for the Ansar Lava

he was gone down in the street there was two gunmen on a motorbike drove out right beside him and then shot him dead basically and you know another figure also called the

Abdul Karim Jet Band he was shot dead to release later so there was a even then still you know political assassination assassinations returned to the country

because there were forces very scared of the prospect that these you know political forces would gain any momentum or power in any way in a post dialogue

Yemen so you know it essentially breaks down in early 2014 the draft constitution was never adopted and that's where the unsololab begins to really you know begins to show themselves a more and more in opposition to abderab of mansur had it's a very very interesting chapter in Yemen's contemporary history. Yeah, there's so many angles and dimensions to this history, and especially that's a period. Henry described it as a lot of confused things, and Shereen's discussion about the resigning and then, you know, taking it back, it seems that there's a lot definitely

to explore during that period. But obviously what happens and changes the direction of Yemen is the Saudi intervention and the fact that it then led to a period of devastating, you know, war, including a siege and a blockade upon Yemen. We've covered a lot of this when we talked about the sanctions there, so I don't want to rehearse every component of that. But I'm just wondering if maybe you can give us some sense of how we get from the beginnings of the Saudi intervention to the victory, essentially, of Ansarola against UAE's forces, Saudi's forces, and all supported and backed by the United States. And part of this does encourage us to go back. I don't believe anybody actually really addressed this whole question of how it was they managed to be so successful nilililaterally against, you know, Ali Abdul Salas, Sada, sort of wars. And then subsequently to that, it seems that they've been unceasingly since that period having to combat either this kleptocratic autocratic oppressive tyrant or the autocratic. oppressive tyrant from Saudi, you know, who has been intervening. And so the question is,

how have they been successful? And maybe it does go to, also, did they get support? You know, they must have had support, just as obviously, you know, the forces arrayed against them, I've been funded by the Saudis and the Emirati, supported by U.S. weaponry and so on. So maybe we can get to the kind of victory, the startling victory recently and have some sense of the status of the peace negotiations and the truce that had been under effect about a year or so ago. So how do we get from Saudi intervention to Houthi victory? I've never ever heard somebody mention it like that, but it really is a victory considering what they've been up against and what has.

happened over the last decade. Saudi Arabia begins bombing, coalition of 17 countries, and in the first couple of days of the war, first 48 hours, they target the airports, you know, the Air Force, the Army Air Force. And so all that's left is fighters on the ground, lots and lots of missiles that Salah had been stockpiling since he was a very close ally of the United States. and eventually you see like some drone attacks and things like that. But they formed an alliance.

Salah and Houthi very quickly formed an alliance in order to, I think Salih saw this as his second coming. Again, when I mentioned that, you know, the insinuation that they kind of set him aside, right? They gave him a nice cushy deal. Stay in Yemen, you won't be persecuted for anything that, you know, any crimes you would have that are alleged against you. But he still remained the most powerful man in Yemen, still remained the most powerful man in Yemen, and still remained in charge of much of the Yemeni army.

And so when the Houthis came to Sana'a and Hadi escaped his house arrest and moved down to to Aden in the south and then eventually to Saudi Arabia and was very excited about this coalition that supposedly came in response to him, but he was clueless, just your regular old puppet, and was very excited about the prospect that they were going to try to put him back into power in what was supposed to be just a matter of weeks, according to the Saudi-led coalition. They called it Operation Decisive Storm. You know, storms don't last for a decade, but they, the Houthis and Ali Abdullah Salah, despite their long history, were able to form a convenient, a political, you know, alliance, a military alliance. And so they were able to mobilize Salih's

forces, their own forces. And like Kona mentioned, this is not a group, a membership-based group, right? So lots and lots of people from the Yemeni population were joining the ranks in order to fight to defend their country from what they saw as an imperialist aggression against them, not allowing them to make decisions on their own as they were about to do, but to impose what these external factors wanted for Yemen. And so they were able to mobilize a lot of people on the ground. But fact of the matter is they did not have the kind of support that we can imagine them having as, and we, often hear about, you know, we always hear the four consecutive words, Iran backed Houthi rebels, as though you can't say one without the other. You just have to say it that way. We hear it all the time in the media. But Iran has little to do with the Houthi's inception. It has little to do with their motivations. Iran cautioned against them, taking over the capital sonah in September 2014. And the Houthis were like, who the, you know, who are you to tell us what to do? And that was the defining moment of Yemen's modern history, and yet they couldn't care less what Iran had to say about

that particular approach. They do have a positive relationship with Iran. When you're surrounded by people who are fighting you, you start to make, you know, have a closer relationship with those who are not. But Iran was not able or willing, or even if it were willing, not able to, given the blockade in Yemen, aerial blockade, naval blockade, land blockade. They were, wouldn't have been able to supply them with the kind of weaponry we imagine them receiving from Iran. I think it's a convenient political statement to say that they're backed by Iran because Saudis would rather lose to Iran than to, insaudela. The U.S. would rather lose to Iran than to inshallah. And it's also just a, you know, it's a euphemism for enemy to say Iran backed. And so

you quickly categorize these guys are the bad guys because they're backed by Iran. But But they've been able to use whatever was available in the country for the most part. Even in their wars with Salah, there was an investigation at some point because Salaf made the link between them and Iran in order to get more U.S. support for these wars. And he said, hey, these guys are getting their weapons from Iran. And the U.S. came and they, you know, there was a U.S. senator who was very interested in this. And they did an investigation and they realized that the Houthis were getting their weapons from the Yemeni black market. So that basically continued, whatever they have, they've been able to use strategically, but you don't see the kinds of weapons that were dropped on Yemen, dropping, you know,

that the Houthis were in return dropping to wear. There were missiles, but mostly this is fighting on the ground. There was no fuel to operate much of the vehicles, even that they were capturing in the war zones, you know, at the borders with Saudi Arabia because of the fuel blockade, right? And so their victory comes from essentially the stance that we're not going to allow invaders to just come and do what they want. And Saudi cowardice, because most of this, they decided they were going to bomb from the skies and hire mercenaries on the ground. And mercenaries are not as committed as people who have a homeland to protect. I just want to add in one thing.

I know Runa might have something to add here because you've been covering the armed conflict for quite some time. And, you know, I'm sure that you have insights on the same question as well. But just to add into something and to underscore what Adnan had said and what had struck Shereen is that, you know, this is very rarely framed as a victory. And in fact, I would also, you know, I don't think that I'm unique in positing that this would be a correct framing of it. An embarrassing defeat for Saudi Arabia. Not only a defeat strategically, but it was an embarrassment for them. Saudi Arabia had been cultivating their armed forces for years, and as Shireen had underscored, they were planning on this operation lasting a matter of weeks, not the decade that it eventually

unfolded. But one of the interesting things for me is that like we see with Tesbola in Lebanon, we see that at the beginning of the conflict where they're involved, they have almost no technological capacity. They have no infrastructure in which they're operating out of. They're facing what seems to be insurmountable odds. And they really hold their own despite those odds. But as time goes on, what we see as an increase in operational capacity. We see an increase in technological capacity. And of course, a lot of this is as a result of their cultivating relationships abroad as well as utilizing their resources on the black market,

as Shereen had said. But one of the things that came out of this that, you know, was, I remember cheering like it was a football match when there was an oil depot and jetta that was struck ahead of a Formula One race in 2022. When the war had started, there was no chance that the, that Ansorola would be able to strike critical infrastructure within Saudi Arabia with any sort of impact. But what we saw is that by the time we got to 2022, you know, six, seven years into the conflict between the two, not only did they have the capacity to do so, but their operational strategy was so astute that they hit that infrastructure at the perfect time to bring the utmost amount of embarrassment to Saudi Arabia on the same weekend as a Formula One race, which of course Saudi Arabia is very involved. I know we've talked about this in our football episode, our World Cup episode, et cetera, et cetera.

But Saudi Arabia is very involved in sports washing. It goes beyond football. They're very involved in boxing. In golf, they just, you know, bought or, you know, started a parallel league to the PGA. Football, of course, they're buying up teams and leagues and players. And, of course, racing is very popular in Saudi Arabia as well. They really are sweeping up and. and scooping up a lot of the international sports scene,

you know, World Cup in years to come is going to be in Saudi Arabia. This is something that they're doing to sports wash their regime. And the idea is that they would get eyes on the country in a positive light. You know, who doesn't like watching international sporting events? And what happens when they have this major Formula One race that's going to be taking place, you have billowing black smoke because the Houthis were able to strike an oil depot in the same city as this Formula One race was scheduled to take place. So the ability to think through, you know, utilizing what capacity they have in the most effective way, both operationally, as well as in terms of, you know, being an embarrassment for Saudi Arabia and, you know, other enemies as I'm sure will come to as the comfort. conversation goes on. But this is really fascinating to me that we see this growth in potential

overtime, not an exhaustion in potential, which is what one would be tempted to expect. But like I said, this is kind of parallel with what we see with Hizpola in Lebanon. So, Runa, if you have anything to add here, I just wanted to throw that out there in terms of victory and embarrassing defeat. Yeah. Actually, I would, yeah, so basically when the war begins or when Saudi Arabia begins their airstrike campaign in March 2015 it's also coupled with a

round invasion from the noise so you add you know columns of armored vehicles tanks trucks you know everything you know for logistical purposes

ready to move in when they felt they could do so into the capital city the the hosties and Adi Abdallahsada's forces

wait a number of months before retaliating. So it starts in March and we're seeing the first strikes or, you know, retaliatory strikes by Yemen in around September, November, basically. So by the end of 2015. And in that period of time, they're engaging in intense peace negotiations. They're saying, you know, they have a, back channel with Saudi Arabia and with other coalition members and they're saying you don't have to do this we were so close to a political settlement you do not have to do this if you do

this and if you continue it will be you will do irreparable damage that will damage you to in the end as time goes on and they said that they were very frank about the the results and the consequences of Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen but one thing I would like to point out on this, you know, with this whole who's he backed, or sorry, Iran backed who see rebels. You know, that's the, you know, implied assumption that we're dealing with a rack tag group, you know, armed group of people and flip-flops who maybe only have

rudimentary military training at some, you know, far away makeshift military camp, you know, what resistance would they be able to to mount against the most well-armed military force in the region? But that's where the narrative starts to crumble. Because when Saudi Arabia launches their war, we have around, I know this because military historian Tom Cooper

describes this brilliantly in a book called Hot Sky so Yemen Volume 2. He describes that by the start of the war, when the war began, there were 88 known brigade-sized units in the Yemeni military. And more than 46 of those brigades cited was the Houthi-Sahler Alliance. So that would include mechanized infantry. The Air Force also cited with the Hothi-Sahler Alliance. The missile brigades, so long-range, medium-range, short-range, ballistic missile.

Charles. The Navy cited with the alliance. Every major brigade that could mount a resistance to this war of aggression cited with the you know, quote unquote

the Houthis. So when they begin to strike back at Saudi Arabia around September, October, November after, you know, back channel talks had broken down because Saudi Arabia was sure that their decisive storm would be so decisive that they would just roll into Sana

and oversaw the Houthi administration. Yeah, well, the first strike, if I recall correctly, was a ballistic missile attack in November 4th or September. I can't really remember the date well. But they had activated the entire ballistic missile stockpiles that the Yemeni military used to have. So they drove out this old relic of a Soviet missile launcher somewhere in a Yemeni province

and targeted a coalition military base in the Yemeni province called Madib, which is also a very contested region and Ossup still is. And they managed to kill around 46 Emirati soldiers. including a Bahraini prince who was killed in that blast and a dozen more Saudi soldiers and that particular event really shook the Saudi coalition

because they were sure enough that Yemen did not have the capacity or the capability to inflicts such huge damage on such a small concentration of land But, you know, they turned out to have lots of military surprises that would be unveiled and revealed over time. One thing that is also very important to mention is that Yemen's frontline tactic or their whole war strategy is very conventional because the field commanders that would put in place or in charge, of the brigades to do the retaliatory ground

battles around the Saudi Yemeni border, especially in the three regions that were next by Saudi Arabia in the 30s, 1930s. They were professionally trained military soldiers. They were officers who had taken years-long courses at military academies

all over the world. In Russian military academy, Soviet military academies, you have Sandhurst, people, offices also leading the the war or the resistance against Saudi Arabia.

And a very interesting mix and strategy starts to take shape because you have these conventional military officers fighting the same fight against rebel commanders who had been fighting in the Seixada was a few years

prior, who had also gained military expertise and combat expertise on the front line to add these two conventional and unconventional strategies merging into this very unique military strategy that would eventually enable Yemen to

become victorious against Saudi Arabia and that's the strategy that they develop over time and play with and the most spectacular thing is every single attack that Yemen conducts against Saudi Arabia is recorded and it's filmed by a crew of ten cameramen from ten different angles and all uploaded to YouTube and to the internet.

And, you know, war is at its core deplorable, but I can't help but become a little giggly when I see, you know, the poorest Arab country in the world taking on the fight so successfully against a military might or military power as Saudi Arabia is. Yeah. Absolutely fascinating stuff. To the point about the

Iran-backed idea, it's one way that, you know, as Shereen, I think was saying, it's a way to demonize a group without having to understand that group. It's a way to tie them to somebody that the U.S. has spent decades demonizing in the Western press, but it also robs

agency from these people. They have their interest. They're not proxies. They're allies. Like any political force in the world needs allies, especially in the context of, you know, U.S. and Saudi coalitions trying to destroy you, etc. So I just wanted to make that point. But I have to leave here in a second. But I wanted to ask my last question to both of you, which is, you know, totally understanding the amazing heroic fight and courage of the Ansar Allah. But there's also this aspect. where it was a brutal slaughter of innocent human beings. We're seeing something like that happening right now in Palestine. The UN called it the world's largest humanitarian crisis.

Shereen, in your sanctions as war essay, you mentioned that it meets the criteria of genocide. And so I wanted to sort of emphasize the human component of the suffering that the Yemeni people had to endure under this U.S. Saudi coalition bombardment. So can you talk a little bit about about that, the cruelty of the onslaught, and the sort of the human cost of all of this. Yeah. So the bombardment was described by a UN report as widespread and systematic. And so the indiscriminate bombing of Yemen was widespread and systematic. And so, you know, people were getting bombed out in their homes.

It wasn't that, you know, right now we're hearing, for example, the U.S. saying we're targeting who the targets, quote unquote. Meanwhile, they're targeting, you know, residential areas, tourist areas and airports and seaports and whatnot. That was the Saudi strategy as well, except that it was an average of 30 air strikes a day for nine years, for eight years. And so the bombardment caused a lot of destruction and death and civilian toll. Meanwhile, you don't find that, you know, they call it a war, but this was, you wouldn't find that the Houthi targets were always military targets or when they were attacking the oil fields, for example, in early 2020, which led to, serious discussions of a ceasefire finally because the Saudis and UAE were finally threatened enough, you know, their stability was threatened enough that they were willing to negotiate

seriously for a ceasefire. But you don't find that attack on civilians on the other side. Like how many Marathis and Saudis were killed in this that were not soldiers, that were not battling Yemenis, right? Maybe you can count them on one hand if that and some of it was friendly fire by the Saudis themselves. Whereas the very least, the most conservative number of civilians who were killed in Yemen, which that number, even they stopped counting in late 2021, was 377,000 Yemenis. And much of these deaths were caused by the blockade. So people were essentially starved in much of Yemen. Yemen, because of its impoverishment and because of Sala's failed policies over decades, was importing 90% of its food prior to the war. And so when

they couldn't do that anymore, the Saudis shutting down the ports and imposing in an effort, Technically, they called it, you know, they were saying that they're trying to prevent arms transfers from Iran to Yemen, but they just use that as an excuse to check every cargo that entered through the ports of Yemen and reroute them, even when they were carrying fuel and even when they were carrying medicines and food for people, or they would let them sit in the ports to rot and then allow them to transfer into Yemen. And so people were being starved. hospitals were being shut down. 50% of hospitals shut down 50% of the population didn't have any access to any health care whatsoever because there was no clean water

and there was no fuel and the fuel pump stopped working for clean water. You know, diseases like cholera and diphtaria started to spread. Yemen ended up experiencing the largest outbreak of cholera in modern history much farther and much more extensive than what we saw in Haiti.

and you know people were dying because there was no they couldn't get dialysis or cancer patients who didn't have access to medicine or COVID patients who didn't have even a way of testing let alone getting treatment for COVID or even children dying because there was no Tylenol for a fever right and so the blockade was I think most likely at least a million people have been killed but of course nobody was keeping track or of these casualties and many of these weren't counted as casualties of war. So that has been entirely devastating. And I think the most, the saddest part of all of this was that nobody cared, it seemed like. So I'm really encouraged by all of the solidarity that Palestinians are getting right now and they're people mobilizing in every major city in the world. And there's a case brought forward for, you know, by South Africa at the ICJ. Meanwhile, in the case of Yemen, we were really just left to our own devices to just deal with it. And it didn't seem like a concern for most of the international community, mostly because of media attention. There's

no way to justify this war. We had our quote-unquote internationally recognized presidents and government inside Arabia sanctioning this attack on Yemen. And lots and lots of Western countries making hundreds of billions of dollars from weapon sales. And so there was no interest in this to stop. And they just provided diplomatic cover for Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the United States and the United Kingdom as they continue to bomb and starve Yemenis for all this time. And also just to add to what Shereen is talking about, the very nature of Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign has been so beyond brutal. like it's it's almost indescribable and it's indiscriminate as well

it's not just indiscriminate as in you know whoops we made a mistake sorry about that but it's deliberately indiscriminate so you have weddings targeted funeral ceremonies targeted that was the funeral hall massacre in 2016 where they drop one bomb

on this hall funeral hall, you know, hundreds of people were gathered to, you know, pay their respects to a Yemeni politician, veteran Yemeni politician who was, you know, died of old age, and they bombed the hall and dozens of people killed instantly. And when the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the paramedics and the, uh, you know, the ambulances and the doctors arrived, they bombed it a second time deliberately to ensure that, you know, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, um, the, the, the responders will also kill and you know total carnage but I think the one event that really shook me to the to my core was the the school bus massacre in 2018 where you had a little less than a hundred kids the oldest being 19 maybe all the way down to like seven, six, even younger, maybe five, coming back home from a, like an Islamic summer school, basically. And they were parked, you know, the bus route was parked at this smaller town called

Dahian, where the main street was like a busy market street, bustling of people, you know, it was high-rise on a, I guess it was a, you know, normal workday and they were parked to like the teachers were getting refreshments for these schoolchildren and as they were inside the the shop to get the refreshments the bomb was dropped directly on the bus killing most of these school children um Saudi Arabia initially claimed that they were child soldiers on their way to a military And then, you know, days went by and even they had to like take back their statement and say, oh, whoopsie, Daisy. We made a mistake here. Sorry, guys. It's not going to have it again, but it happened again and it happened over and over and over again. Of course, the children got no compensation. They got nothing. Many of the children had to bury their own school friends in the week's after, you know, digging their graves and, you know, paying their respects and bidding their

farewells. And it struck me because up until that point, I was off to believe that I had already seen the worst in terms of Saudi military conduct, or not even military conduct, because there's no military objective to be met here in any sense of. the word. It's just, you know, want and slaughter is what it is. And then this shit happened.

So yeah, I and I felt like that was one of the events that really gained renewed attention to the conflict. So you had famous Hollywood actors tweeting about it.

You had other politicians. tweeting about it, but in the end, tweets only do so much because nobody was held accountable for it. I mean, on the contrary, Saudi Arabia got new weapons deals by Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and the Western world could not care less about how many children or civilian Saudi Arabia had killed up until that point. So that also really underscored the brutality and the barbarism of this war, basically. Very, very grotesque in every possible way. And just to add to that, I think Una mentions, you know, this turning point of the school bus bombing.

I was on an NPR show the next day speaking about the brutality of this, and I had intentionally, you know, avoided watching any footage. It was just absolutely just crushing. And as I was on this live show and I'm trying to compose myself because they're showing the footage and I can hear it and I can hear the, I understand what's being said in the background, the guest that was on the show with me, who had been doing this investigation of the UAE

and their role in assassinations in the South and they had, you know, they were operating these, prisons in South Yemen and torturing people. She won awards by AP eventually for her investigative work. She had the audacity to say, well, we don't know what these kids were doing on the bus. And the level of dehumanization, I just thought, you know, here we are just this devastating bombardment on school children on a school trip in the middle of a market. And yet the guest had the audacity to even question the humanity of these children and whether they deserved it, because we don't know what they were doing, she said.

And, you know, the Houthis are recruiting child soldiers. And so, who knows? And so that's what we see in regard to Palestine as well. Oftentimes we see these children are being educated to hate Israelis and to be anti-Semites and to be raised as killers. And therefore, we're justified in killing Palestinian children. I mean, that's the exact same rhetoric that we see every day from Americans and Israelis as well as their supporters in the Western world. That's what we see every day.

And it's also, it's also the constant second guessing of, you know, Yemeni eyewitnesses, you know, I remember the headlines after that school bus massacre and they were all, they were all talking about, you know, allegedly a bombing or so and so many people have allegedly died, you know, just like the Palestinians, the Yemenis are not killed or murdered or assassinated. They just die, you know, out of, out of the blue. You know, so it's the exact same way the media has been covering your onslaught and the genocide Gaza, how they, you know, covered what was going on in Yemen at the time, like

one to one. Or they would say, for example, when they were cornered that, oh, well, the Houthis are using children as human shields, you know, or, whoa, we're not blockading Yemen. We're just blockading the Houthis. We're not starving Yemenis. We're just hoping that the Houthis would be starved and give up, right? And it's exact same parallels. They talk about the entire, and this was not like, you know, what's happening in Gaza is like sped up and it's devastating and it's this, you know, 2 million people living in Gaza undergoing this. 30 million people in Yemen were being blockaded for nine, for eight years. The blockade is still ongoing. The restrictions have not been fully lifted, right? 30 million people. And they were all just painted with this wide brushes, though they were deserving of all of this for daring to stand up against Saudi Arabia in the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. and U.K.

Well, this is exactly what I wanted to draw parallels is that what the Saudis have been doing with U.S. support and U.N.S. backing is exactly what Israel is doing in Gaza has been doing, and that in some ways, you know, obviously we know when we talk about the situation in Gaza, we always introduce the historical context, that this isn't the first time there have been these dramatic assaults upon Gaza, where the the same kinds of explanations that we're going after terrorism. It's okay to do this collateral damage and kill civilians. And so that essentially the world has become completely inured to, I don't mean the world. I mean, you know, Western political elites have been completely inured to accepting these kinds of rationalizations that fit into their racist and orientalist paradigms where they don't value the lives of the victims of Israeli massacres, and it's exactly the same thing here in the case of Saudi Arabia versus Yemen. The sad and amazing thing is that you see that as the Gulf regions, this may be wider analysis, as these Gulf regions become, Gulf nations become increasingly militarized enclaves of extreme wealth and privilege.

and Western aligned, is that they are metamorphosing into, and we have the Abraham Accords, you know, where there's peace agreements and normalization, you know, between Bahrain and, you know, UAE with, you know, with Israel, is that those Gulf countries are essentially acting very similarly, and they proved it during their assault on Yemen. And it's a broader scale. and what it shows is that it isn't just this kind of question of, you know, Israel narrowly

in its particularities. It's that it's a model. It's a model supported by U.S. Empire for how it wants to remake the region, and we see it already have anything in the last decades, these terrible consequences. So, you know, perhaps we could talk a little bit more about the ceasefire and the status of all of this, You know, the UTIs managed to force, as we've alluded to, forced the Saudis, after UAE already pulled out from it, forced the Saudis into a ceasefire since April 2022, and that there's been an ongoing kind of process of working out what the future will be and, you know, negotiations. Given that context, to me, it's so amazing the fact that the unsarral law, after going through years and years and. years of this terrible war, blockade and siege, has been willing to kind of risk, you might say, the fragile possibilities for peace negotiations and an ending to conflict and putting Yemen finally back on track towards being a normal country, lifting the blockade, and so on, that they have

been willing to put into jeopardy that by this amazing, courageous act of solidarity in support of, you know, Palestinians. And so I wondered if maybe we could talk a little bit about what's involved there because in the media, obviously, in the Western media in particular, in addition to those tropes, tired tropes of them being Iran-backed and so on, Iran-backed proxy, is we also get statements that, well, this doesn't really have anything to do with Gaza. This is for their own kind of internal political reinforcement of their power. And the corollary to that is that they are extremely unpopular. And of course, this is at a very complex situation. There have been so many different parties and involvement. Of course, there's not going to be one unanimous, you know,

kind of Yemeni, you know, perspective on its political future. But, you know, the idea of trying to port and bringing on, you know, people who are ostensibly Yemeni figures to come on and onto Western media, I've seen a couple of these people who criticize what the Ansar ala are doing, absolutely shocking because they never show you the pictures of like the demonstrations, you know, where there's like a million people, you know, in Sanat, who are demonstrating in favor of Gaza. So given that context, to me, it's quite amazing that they have shown this willingness, you know, to risk the situation by showing solidarity.

And I wonder what your perspectives might be on this, given how distorted the media portrayals and discussions by political figures who are justifying U.S. UK aggressive. which, of course, we need to talk about as well, but to justify it, they're saying all of these, you know, things about, about Ansar al-Lan, about the political situation in Yemen. Well, just I want to hop in for a brief second because it's very funny. I had two questions planned and Adnan hit both of them in that really excellent, you know, that really excellent discussion that Adnan had. But I just also want to kind of underscore the two points that I had out of that bigger question that Adnan had. as if the question wasn't big enough for the two of you. I do apologize. But two of the things that came up in that were that, of course, we want to talk about why Ansar Ola is doing what they're doing in the Red Sea, in solidarity with Gaza,

and, you know, if you can talk about their justification for it. But then also something that came up that Rune said when discussing parallels with Palestine and how there's this different framing within the media in terms of killed versus died versus, you know, massacre versus collateral damage or something like that, you know, regarding whether it was Palestinians that were being accused of carrying out some action that resulted in death versus Israelis, you know, blatantly assassinating people. You know, my wife is a trained linguist and she's currently doing some advanced. schooling in the U.S., so a long, long time without seeing my wife. But one of the things that she had to do was, you know, a project that was looking at like metadata and, you know, narratives. And I said, well, look at the way that things are framed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

and just look at the verb usage, passive versus active, look at adjectives that are used, look at the different nouns that are being used, when the actual context, in some of these cases is actually fairly similar. And I mean, I think she knew what she was going to find. She's not she's not as politically connected as I am, obviously, because it's hard to get more politically connected than I am. But anyway, she looked at it. She was shocked, shocked. But guerrilla history listeners, I'm sure you wouldn't be. I mean, the framing is absolutely obscene the way that the media intentionally skews things and is a non had pointed out. This is exactly what we see with regard to on Sarala and their actions in the Red Sea and regarding their reasoning behind what they're doing in the Red Sea, particularly as well as how they're being framed as a group as a result of it.

So, yeah, just I know that I basically just rehashed a couple of the points that Adnan said, but I did want to kind of underscore those two points in particular because I think that not only are they particularly relevant for us to. think about in terms of what's going on currently, but also those are things that we have to face every single day when we look at the media. Yeah, I think you're always going to have these stooges of empire, you know, trying to justify or, you know, they know their audience. And so they're telling them what they want to hear, which is that they don't have to like this, of course, but they have the popular support of Yemenis. The Houthis and al-Sahullah would not have been as successful in governing.

because they've not just been fighting, but they've been governing Yemen for the most populous areas of Yemen where 80% of the population resides since 2015 without popular support. And when you see just every Friday, today's Friday, and there are millions of people out in San'a, and in every major province in Yemen, so millions of people showing up in support of the Palestinians, in defiance of the U.S.-UK.irstrike, and they had been doing that for the past decade. This is not new. And so the idea that Answadullah needed internal support, I think, is laughable because they already have internal support from the population. Maybe they don't have support from those in the south, of course.

The south is now, historic south is back under coalition control, which basically means some parts are with the Saudi-backed groups. Some parts are with the UAE-backed groups. And then you have a mishmash of terrorists in that area as well. And the UAE, which says that it left Yemen, is still operating assassination campaigns in the South, is still plundering resources, is still occupying Yemeni islands. And so in the midst of all of this, there was a, you know, peace agreement, a wider peace agreement, who was going to lift more of the blockade, allow more fuel into the country, allow more flights out of Sanai Airport, and to also reopen Hodeda Airport.

and all of this was negotiated. The Saudis who were desperate to get out of this war given how costly and embarrassing has been to them. And the agreement was supposed to be signed. You know, rumors had it by this past January. And yet, unsaharlah, we're willing to set that aside. And I think it highlights just the origin.

We talked about a lot of the origin of the movement. And it highlights that even throughout this decade of war, they've remained committed to their ideals of anti-imperial ideals, supporting and targeting very, very precisely and carefully. They're not going to go after civilians like the Saudis do or like the U.S. does or the Israelis do. They're going to understand what matters most, which is capitalism. And they understand that given their strategic location, they're able to inflict economic damage to Israel specifically. And we see the port of Israel in the port of Ilaat and Israel struggling to,

because of the blockade that they've imposed on Israel-bound ships or Israel-owned ships. The U.S. and U.K. put together a coalition called Operation Prosperity Guardian, which, again, who comes up with these names, but at least this one is very, very clear in who they're defending, and it's clearly a defense of capitalism. And they're calling it defensive strikes on Yemen every time they started retaliating, essentially, for Yemen's stance to prevent a genocide in Gaza. and the Houthis are citing the Geneva conventions on the, you know, prevention of genocide. They're saying that states have the obligation to prevent genocide.

South Africa is doing that in the courts and the Houthis are doing that in their ports. And so we see this as a uniting figure even now. It's a uniting campaign, even the people who were previously opposed to Houthis are now seeing so clearly because pro-Palestinism, pro-Palestine sentiment, anti-Zionism really unites Yemenis. and this goes decades into our history. And so they're really seeing them for who they really are, which is, and they're lending them even more support than before because of this stance that quite honestly is courageous, but it's also not more courageous than what they did

when standing up against Saudi in the UAE. It's within the same fame. And also to just add to what Shereen just said about the anti-Sidism being a unifying factor among Yemenis, I have yet to hear, at least in the mainstream media, one figure highlighting the historical precedent for the blockade that Dion Solilo is enacting in the Red Sea. Because one thing is anti-Sionism is deeply rooted in Yemeni's society. One could even argue that it forms like a pillar of Yemenis' understanding of, you know, their own history and also society in general all the way back to the 1940s and perhaps

even before the 1940s but the the act of blockading the red sea it is not the first time that yemen is doing this in the 1970s during the the october war in 1973 south yemen or the people's democratic republic of yemen actually blockaded the red sea for an entire month by uh installing I believe it was artillery units on the island of Perram, which is like right at the upper level of the Babelmendab Strait, which is, you know, global shipping traffic has like divert past this small island. So it was a perfect like geographical fortress to really arm to uphold this blockade. And in many practical ways it actually worked.

Also one has to mention with the help of the Egyptian, Navy was of course heavily involved in that war so that's a historical precedent for it and the Yemeni people I mean word on the street is this is entirely legitimate

and had it not been the unsadd-a-law it would have been someone else that like that's the general way the Yemeni people perceive it because when the US and the UK began their airstrikes in direct response to the Red Sea blockade, you had figureheads of many opposing parties suddenly finding common ground. So you had the advisor to the Ministry of Information of the so-called recognized government

in exile in Saudi Arabia coming out in full force against the airstrikes and saying, we as proud Yemenis object to any intervention on our country by foreign forces and you had tribal sheikhs from the south and even

from the easternmost region of Yemen called Al Mahara coming out also in full force in solidarity and united struggle with the unsadallah backing up the Red Sea blockade So, you know, the U.S. and the U.K. really shut themselves in all four feet when they started their bombing campaign.

Because at one point, it was almost like the Civil War was going to end. That's how united the Yemeni people became. And, you know, it would have been very weird for the Biden administration to inadvertent. certainly have ended the enemy civil war based on a, you know, a miscalculated bombing campaign. But, I mean, but it just speaks to, you know, how the many people perceive this in the Red Sea. Well, yes, that was probably, you know, you've been very generous with your time. And it's been an incredible discussion. We could continue on and on with this fascinating analysis and details you're bringing.

but maybe, you know, I was going to close with just a sort of final query about what you think the effect of the U.S.-UK. intervention in the Red Sea will be on, you know, Yemen, Yemeni politics. It sounds like, Runa, you're suggesting that it's the one force that might be able to bring together all bactions. And, you know, so that'll be interesting. But if you have any other remarks, I'd review about the current situation and, you know, the quandary that this puts, you know, Saudi in, you know, I think this is a quite interesting component of it as well. Please, you've been so generous, but any concluding thoughts that you have about the current situation in Yemen in relation to facing, you know, US, UK attacks for their solidarity with. Palestinians. Yeah, I mean, what Luna said about this being a unifying factor, and he mentions, you know, the 1973 PDRY blockading of the Red Sea, no matter what system we had in power, think about the monarchists who walked out of the UN in 1947 when Palestine was partitioned,

the communists who blockaded Babelman-leb Strait in support of Palestine, Ali Abdullah Salah, himself who opened up Yemen to all Palestinian leadership, especially during the Civil War in Lebanon when, you know, they weren't welcome in Lebanon. So Yasser Arafat, and even leaders of Hamas, no matter who you were Palestinian leader, you were welcome in Yemen, and Palestinians were welcome to come and work in Yemen. Growing up, I had many Palestinian neighbors who were living and working in Yemen. You know, they weren't in refugee camps, for example, like you see them in other countries. So no matter what system of power we've had, they've always been aligned with the will

of people when it came to anti-Zionism and pro-Palestine. As a colonized people, we see Palestine as not having won its liberation yet, right? And as people who have most recently been blockaded, they understand very intimately and acutely the effects of a blockade on a population, on a sibling population. And so all of this is coming out of genuine concern for the Palestinian people and in solidarity with them. And we're seeing even members of the Islam Party saying, that who've been fighting the Houthis for a decade or more, and they're saying that they

welcome this position in the Red Sea, right? And so this could absolutely unify the Yemeni people, at least those who have, you know, who matter, let's be honest, and could lead to a unifying kind of moment that the war unfortunately was able to destroy. But I also think that the Houthis are gaining a lot of clout in the region. People are finally paying attention to what Yemenis have undergone over the last 10 years or so. They're finally understanding that all of the propaganda that came out of Saudi in the UAE was false. That these people were not, you know, this rag-tag group of army that was just being such a menace and they're just a bunch of terrorists that needed to be killed, right?

They're seen now as a defender of Palestinians, which I think will absolutely, backfire for all of these Arab leaders who are sitting around and either normalizing with Israel or making an about face like Saudi Arabia is trying to do right now by putting forth this condition of the two-state solution, which was not on the table before for normalization. So they're feeling the heat. And I think it'll just show that all of this was for nothing. Whatever the U.S. intended to do and the Saudis intended to do when they attacked Yemen in 2015, the very exact opposite happened. and now their enemies are more powerful than ever, militarily, strategically.

And they're also more popular than ever, which honestly I never imagined happening until these latest attacks. Yeah, so personally speaking, as an extension of what Shredin mentioned, I don't believe the US-UK airstriks are going to do anything. so we've seen they've been bombing Yemen on and off since generated 12th

and the red sea blockade is still imposed so we have seen also an increase increasing in escalation in the Red Sea so for every for every time

the coalition airstrikes gets even more violent the unsodal strikes multiple ships at the same time more uses even bigger weapons in their arsenal. So it's not going to do anything, but I am cautiously

hopeful that it's going to, as Shirin mentioned, reignite some form of unity between the people who are you know, as we must admit, still very fractured along political and cultural and then

Islamic you know the divisions. but I do hope that their solidarity with Palestine which is shared by every single Yemeni across multiple political

and Islamic factions and anti-Zionism really becomes a unifying factor that enables the people at least to find a way out of their own conundrum and own crises because that would just be you know, an absolute dream come true, if I could even say that, you know, to put a

definitive end to, you know, a decade of aura. Well, as Adnan had said, you both have been incredibly generous with your time. I had written to Adnan in the chat about five minutes ago and said, I could do this for another two hours, but I don't think that you would be very happy with me if I kept you for that long, but I was not being hyperbolic. I certainly could do this for at least another two hours. This was an absolutely terrific conversation, and I deeply, deeply thank you for coming on the show and sharing your expertise and your insights on the plight of the people in Yemen against imperialism, as well as their valiant resistance against that imperialism and, you know, helping us understand that modern history that is sadly criminally undercovered in the West, as well as helping us understand. you know, the current events that are going on. So, you know, I thank you both. Again, listeners,

our guests were Shirin al-Adimi and Urna Erhus. I would like to ask both of you if you can tell the listeners where they can find your work. Shireen, why don't we start with you? How can the listeners follow you on social media and find your written works? Sure. I am at Shireen 818 on Twitter, now called X. And I've written extensively on this mostly for in these times over the years. Of course we'll link to that. Runa.

I can be found at Eldenmarki. And also on, I've written a bit on on Yemenedin Network, their English website. But most of my commentary work is based on X. And of course, we'll link to your profile as well. Two of the

most important follows that you can have in regard to Yemen listeners. So if you're not already following the both of them, you're doing something wrong. Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcast? Well, you can follow me on Twitter.

I'm still going to call it Twitter. At Adnan, A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N. And, you know, give a listen to the M-A-J-L-I-S. That's a podcast about the Middle East, Islamukwirl, Muslim, diasporas in the West. And we've got new episodes coming out very soon. We've had a recent

episode about the campus for Palestine, which was a co-production with guerrilla radio, a sister spin-off podcast of guerrilla history. And we've got other things coming up that you'll, you know, be interested in. So do check it out. M-A-J-L-I-S. Of course. And not the radio-free Central Asia, aka Radio Free CIA sponsored modulus podcast. It's the good one. MSGQU for Muslim Society

Global Perspectives Project at Queen's University. I finally got the acronym, right, Adnan. Excellent. I do my best. Our co-host, Brett, unfortunately, had to leave the conversation a little bit ago, but you can find all of his work at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com.

As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-K-1-995. Stay tuned for that Iskra Books collection of documents from the PLO and the Popular Front, which we wrote the forward to, and it's a co-production between us and the folks at Iskra. That'll hopefully be coming out around the end of March. So if you stay tuned on social media, you know, make sure to follow Iskra and the guerrilla history account. You'll get all of those updates. and remember all of the books that come out through Iskra,

the PDFs are available for free as well as really good-looking print editions. You can follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A-U-Skore pod. And you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this and hopefully expand. We have a lot of really big plans in the works at Nunn, which, you know, we don't have enough time, but we have a lot of plans. you can help support us and hopefully make some of those things become possible at patreon.com

forward slash guerrilla history. Again, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. You know, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.