Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 37 - Yemeni Civil War Part 1: An Outsourced War

Episode Date: February 4, 2019

Travis takes Joe through the history of Yemen and the nearly constant foreign meddling in it's affairs that brought us to the Yemeni Civil War. He also takes us through the coalition arrayed against the Houthi uprising and how the US and other western powers support rampant war crimes. Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Or TeeSpring: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Follow the show on twitter: @lions_by Joe: @jkass99 Travis: @Haycraft_travis

Turning now to one of the deadliest conflicts in the world. Yemen's civil war has been going on for nearly three years. Iran supports one side while Saudi Arabia supports the other. More than 10,000 people have died. Two million others have been displaced amid a horrific cholera epidemic. CBS News foreign correspondent Holly Williams recently got rare access to Yemen thanks to the Saudi government. She was able to see their version of the war. These fighters are taking us to the front line, which is at the top of this mountain range. For nearly three years, Saudi Arabia has been backing these Yemeni government soldiers, fighting a brutal war against Houthi rebels who have seized swaths of land.

a brutal war against Houthi rebels who have seized swaths of land. Yemeni General Nasser al-Debani told us Saudi airstrikes are helping him win back these barren hills. Hello and welcome to another episode of Alliance Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is Travis from Kurdistan again. Hello. And it's nice that you didn't get disappeared by the Asayish after our episodes together. So, progress. No, it's true. This morning I had to go into the Asayish office close by in order to like

file some paperwork for an apartment move and uh in the back of my head i was thinking like you know uh what if what if what if they listen to the episode you're gonna get kashogi i'm not gonna walk out of this office and somebody will in your clothes yeah i'm gonna go out the back and like a series of trash bags but luckily luckily i don't think there are any big fans of the lions led by donkeys podcast in the uh kurdistan regional government asayish uh department um at least for the the pdk party so you know we're in the clear for now it's kind of weird so the assayish is kind of like the secret police right or like the intelligence service uh it's kind of um so the way it works

not to get into too much detail is you've got the uh so you've got the peshmerga which is like the military and then you've got the assayish which is kind of a combination of secret police intelligence like internal and cell intelligence and just like normal general security they're more like i'd say the fbi um with an extra level of like just normal police um on top of that because like i'm i went to file just like look like i am living at this apartment in this neighborhood so like um then they're just like normal dudes it's not like secret police kind of stuff it's pretty standard day-to-day is that because you're a foreigner or do they make everybody register with

them i think everybody has to do it but most of the time it's not as formal but since i'm a foreigner um sponsored by a company like it's a little more intense um to get that done uh but yeah so then the assayish is kind of i would say like the standard the kind of security force that everybody will deal with in their not necessarily day-to-day life but like on a relatively normal basis there's also the normal police but they're just like traffic cops um and like crowd control kind of stuff and then there's parastin which is more of the like legit secret police with like the you know the massage dungeons um and uh massage dungeons yeah they're the ones who disappear people to really great vacations um yeah of course all done yeah uh and then there's also the,

I think they call it the directorate or the department or something. That doesn't sound awful. And then Kurdish, I think they call it the agents. But that's more like the, it's kind of more like the NSA, like signals intelligence.

So it's not actually as scary as uh as it sounds i think paristan is the one people are like legit scared about and like don't you don't want to talk about paristan um with just like normal people in the street because they probably work for paristan and so it's like the the kurdish stasi everybody works for him in one way or another yeah i mean like if you um like are working for a big company or something uh like they probably know like everything about you because somebody is informing on you be it someone at your apartment someone at your office like the the security guard at the office like they know like and they're watching all the time so like there's really not um like the security services here are very you could say effective in certain ways that's terrifying yeah well they learn from the best because basically all the money the u.s gave

to the krg either went into corruption or into funding a massive like state security apparatus that's unbranded yeah pretty much and of course that's you know tens of billions of dollars yeah it's basically the entire economy of care g is uh the u.s giving them money to spend on like new ways to spy on people so that they can offer them really great kitchen packages well speaking of people that the u.s. spend money on you like that pivot today we're gonna be doing something a little different which is kind of I guess Travis a nice thing whenever you come on we tend to break the mold a bit we're not gonna be talking about something in history we're going to be talking about something that's still going on, and it's in the Middle

East, which is why Travis is perfect for this. He's the closest thing to a Middle East expert that'll give me the time of day. And that is the Yemeni Civil War. It's also been called the Arab Coalition War, or Iranian-Saudi Proxy War, whatever the fuck you want to call it.

But before we get into our main topic at hand, I guess we should whatever the fuck you want to call it talk about today uh but before we get into um our main topic at hand i guess we should kind of try to explain uh give like a yemeni civil war 101 on the uh huthi uprising and that is where travis comes in yeah so um i guess uh in order to really kind of see where we are today, you kind of have to talk about the history a little bit. And just as like a little bit of a disclaimer, I'm not a human expert. My specific knowledge is in stuff like Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and a little bit Syria. And obviously I live in Iraq, so like my Iraq knowledge is more than any of the others.

any of the others but i think it's important um when discussing stuff um like the yemeni civil war or other things in the middle east that um if you have the ability to like apply learned knowledge to reading the wikipedia article like that's important because if you just read the wikipedia article um without any of the other contexts, you might miss certain things or not be able to put things in their proper context. And although I haven't really spent a lot of time studying Yemen, I do know, not to sound arrogant or anything, but I do know a lot about the Middle East and its history and its present. So I'm able to put the Wikipedia article into its proper context.

However, if there are Yemen experts in the audience, feel free to send me angry DMs on Twitter at jcast99. Because I'll respond to all of your angry DMs. Just remember it's jcast99. You know, it's surprising that the only hate mail this podcast has received so far was by someone standing for PragerU. I saw that. I didn't even listen to this. I don't understand that audience.

Oh, man. If only I had one-tenth the smarts of Prager, this podcast would be a success. What if they're like a huge Far Cry 4 fan who's also a chud? Oh, man. He's definitely on the side of pagan men. But anyway, back to Yemen. So I kind of like to start the history as early as I can without getting too deep into like weird ancient history.

But the basic, the ancient history is nobody cares up until it becomes Muslim in like the 7th or 8th century, I think. And then again, nobody cares until the Ottomans conquer it until in the mid 16th century. So the Ottomans, they conquered the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt at like around the same time. They captured it from, I think, the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt and seized the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the uh in what is now saudi arabia and then also in order to ensure that the southern border of those cities was secure they moved into what is now yemen and oman and captured those um and they held them pretty firmly for about 200 years but uh in the early like late 18th and early 19th century the the Ottoman Empire started to lose a lot of power in the more like fringe parts of its empire, like in North Africa and Yemen. They were fighting a series of like really bad wars against the Russian Empire, the Safavids.

No, not the Safavids. Whatever, whatever the Iranian Empire at the time was. I think it's the Safavids, No, not the Safavids. Whatever, whatever the Iranian empire at the time was, I think it's the Safavids, but I could be wrong. Um, and then in like the 1830s or something like that, um, the,

the, the, the country that loves to fill in power gaps came in and filled in this power gap. And that's the, uh, British empire at the behest of the East India company. Um, because they, And that's the British Empire at the behest of the East India Company because their ships needed a spot to refuel or not refuel because it's like the 1830s, but resupply, I suppose.

And they brought the gunboats in, shot up the Gulf of the Port of Aden and established a little bit of like, not a colony, but like a British protectorate in a sense. The Ottomans briefly came back into the rest of Yemen until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. And so in 1918, what is now Yemen and Saudi Arabia became fully independent from the yoke of the hated Sultan in Istanbul. Um, and, uh, there was a Yemeni, um, like, I don't remember if he was a, like a tribal chief or an imam or a King, what his title was was but he came into power and what is now um north yemen

the northern part of yemen and uh formed like a semi-independent yemeni polity um and then the british also the british kind of like had him as a vassal king and also set up a protectorate in the southern part of Yemen. So as of like the 1920s, Yemen was divided into two sections. There's North Yemen, which if you're familiar with the geography of Yemen, it's basically a big rectangle at the bottom of Saudi Arabia, bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman. And, uh, so North Yemen isn't like strictly aligned through the middle that the top 50% is the North. North Yemen is specifically the kind of the Northwestern triangle that borders the Red Sea on the left or the Western side and Saudi Arabia on the Northern side. So that's North Yemen. And then South Yemen is kind of everything else. So

bordering the Gulf of Oman, the actual country of Oman, and also a little bit of the Saudi border. And so the South Yemen was dubbed the protectorate of Aden, which was under more direct British control. And then Yemen was placed under the vassal king um and so this uh this status quo lasted for a couple of decades until after the the end of the second world war led to um kind of the the wars of decolonization that in a sense were still fighting to this day like you could argue probably that every major conflict in the world right now, like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and so on, are all just extended versions of the wars of decolonization that began after the Second World War. And so, for example,

immediately after World War II, you had uprisings, nationalist uprisings in Algeria, in Palestine, Iraq, Yemen. And in most of these countries, the ideology that was the core of the uprising was various forms of Arab nationalism. There is Perin-Arabism, Arab socialism, and so on. nationalism there is apparent arabism arab socialism and so on and the most successful one at least in the context of yemen was the the coup led by gamal abdel-nasser in egypt and i think 1956 or 1958 one of the two no 19 i think 56 either it doesn't really matter 1950s um but he was a an arab very much an arab nationalist pan-arabist um kind of a side note he briefed like egypt and what is now syria were briefly one country in the 1960s yeah they even came up with like a flag and stuff right yeah united arab republic

um it didn't last very long and um ultimately it was a failed concept but this idea of pan-arabism was really big in like the late 50s in the early 1960s mostly because of the success of gamal abdul-nasser in egypt um he overthrew a british puppet king and um instituted a kind of arab socialist um pan-arab, uh, regime in Egypt that was very powerful, very influential in the Middle East and the Arab world as a whole. And this, um, his revolution inspired a bunch of others. So in Yemen, um, the, uh, in 1962, the, the kind of British puppet king, his name was Imam Ahmad bin Yahya, he died. And he was also the son of the king who had liberated it from the Ottomans back in 1918. And then there was this kind of power vacuum and a lot of disagreement over who would succeed him.

succeed him. And as a result, a group of officers in the army led an uprising against the chosen successor to the king. And a civil war broke out between royalist supporters who were supported or backed by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UK. And then they were fighting the rebels, which was kind of, I think, most of the army, the former army who were supported by Egypt. And this civil war was pretty brutal. It lasted until I think 1968. And Egypt sent considerable numbers of troops to the Yemeni, I think Yemeni civil war. And I think they ended up losing close to 20,000 soldiers. Egypt did. So it was just a really brutal war i mean this territory in north yemen is really difficult it's pretty mountainous isn't it

yeah it's very rugged territory and also um like just the fighting itself was really brutal like there's saudis saudi troops yemeni troops uh egypt Egyptian troops, um, all killing each other. It was called like Egypt's Vietnam, um, after Vietnam happened because in 1962, Vietnam wasn't really a thing that, you know, we didn't know we had lost it yet. Um, but, uh, uh, because, you know, tons of Egypt, uh, Egyptian troops died and, um, it lasted years and it kind of eroded a lot of Nasser's popularity and influence in Egypt and was a big part of why he eventually

did he leave office or was he assassinated? That's a pretty major gap in my memory. Abdel Nasser, wasn't he assassinated at a parade? Sounds right. Like a whole bunch of officers chucked hand grenades at him, I thought. It was either him or the guy who came after him. I don't remember.

Maybe he died of natural causes. Maybe he was assassinated. Either way, he was no longer the leader of Egypt soon after the end of the Yemeni Civil War and also the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. So either way, the war in Yemen, despite the fact that Egypt, it was called Egypt's Vietnam, the rebels backed by Egypt did eventually win and overthrew the British-backed king. And they would then establish what they called the Yemeni Arab Republic, I think, or the Arab Republic of Yemen, something like that. But then towards – at the same time, in the protectorate of Aden, so South Yemen, the struggle in the north inspired a similar uprising against the british government government um in south yemen um and by i think 1967 um the rebels in south yemen were victorious as well and overthrew

the british control and they formed um the people's republic of south yemen i have to uh say that um nasser died of a heart attack it was anwar sadat that got the hand grenades thrown at him just so we don't piss off our uh egyptian nationalist listeners okay um all right that's good to know i'll try and remember that for next time um but yeah so now we've got the the arab of Yemen in the north or the Yemen Arab Republic, one of the two, and then the People's Republic of South Yemen in the south. And by this point, you might kind of be wondering, People's Republic of South Yemen, that sounds like pretty commie. Right. And you'd be right, pretty much 100%. So South Yemen was very much a Marxist-Leninist state, single-party Marxist-Leninist state that after its victory enacted a radical program of nationalization and kind of top-down communist reform of the economy.

And they're also heavily supported by the ussr in other warsaw pact states so they're very much a kind of cold war communist country the north on the other hand was much more modeled after um nasser's egypt so it was kind of quote-unquote arab socialism which basically meant a strong central military government and a hefty welfare state, but not really like, not really socialist, kind of like, it's like more like social democracy, but without the democracy part. Social fascism. Yeah, in a sense. But, uh, North Yemen, despite having a more, I guess you could call moderate political ideology, never really found the same favor with foreign powers as the more radical People's Republic of South Yemen did.

And so by like 1970, you had these two countries, North and South Yemen, and they had a fairly tense relationship with each other with some skirmishes breaking out in 1972 and again in 1979. And then also in 1978, a name that we'll be talking about a lot later, Ali Abdullah Saleh was named the president of North Yemen. So remember the name. We'll be talking about it later on. But yeah, so the both sides north and south yemen pledged to unify into one state at some point um however this didn't really happen until the ussr collapsed and the kind of global cold war order of kind of the pro-nato pro-american west versus

the pro-ussr quote-unquote east that that ended, all of the kind of USSR-supported communist states across the world kind of collapsed or figured out a way to operate without the USSR. South Yemen was one of the states that just collapsed. And the two countries unified, North and South Yemen, unified in 1990 into the republic of yemen which is the name that has lasted uh through to this day um however just because they had officially unified doesn't mean the divides between the north and the south ended um the first yemeni president was um uh from the south south yemen and um obviously the north wasn't really too happy with the status quo um and so there was a civil war in 1994 um in which saudi arabia backed the south and uh however the north won and uh that guy i mentioned ali Ali Abdullah Saleh, he eventually became the president of all of Yemen in 1999.

So this, Saleh would stay the president of Yemen for quite some time. So between the late 90s, the ideology of much of the Middle East, really not so much the late 90s the the ideology of much much of the middle east um really not so much the late 90s but throughout the late 80s and the 90s the ideology or the the popular ideologies in the middle east shifted so in the 70s especially 60s and 70s you had uh it was kind of like nationalists and communists versus like more like royalists of some kind like pro more pro-western but like you know old school patriarchal monarchies um and the islamists they they were there but they weren't the primary voice they were suppressed by both sides um and a combination of the popularity of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution and then probably in countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and others. led to these movements gaining significant traction and popularity in opposition to the kind of corrupt like Arab nationalist or Arab socialist governments that they had.

So like, I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but, you know, in Afghanistan, during the Soviet occupation, you might talk about it in your war in Afghanistan episodes, occupation you might talk about it in your war in afghanistan episodes the pamphlets that were handed out by the cia or the textbooks that were handed out by the cia um to like afghan school children in refugee camps in pakistan would be like um one plus one equals two if you kill if there are six infidels and you kill three of them how many infidels are left um by the cia um that's magnificent yeah and uh i mean the the u.s like a very like over deliberate attempt to inspire and fund and make more popular um extremist Islamic ideologies, particularly Salafism of the brand practiced in Saudi Arabia based on the teachings of, what is his name, Ibn al-Wahhab or something.

I thought they followed Wahhabism. Well, okay, so there's this guy in the early 1800s, I think his name was like ibn al-wahhab or something like that who was who led a rebellion against the ottoman occupation and the ottomans in conjunction with the um egyptians uh brutally suppressed the rebellion however i've argued not hard enough um because ibn al-wahhab formed what is or like inspired what we call what is called wahhabism which is also called salafism it's like two words for the same thing i think salafist salafi is like a more derogatory like a lot of salafis don't like to be called salafi i think

but they mean the same thing um it's like it's a modern phenomenon like i've seen a lot people saying that um oh like wahhabism or salafism or whatever that's like old school islam that's not true it's a modern phenomenon that's about 150 years old and in terms of its popularity in the middle east is about 30 years old um because of american funding of basically saudi arabia um throughout the cold war and into the present yeah and there's an there's an interesting part that and obviously i'll go into this much further when we're on that topic but uh zia al-haq who is the president of pakistan at the time actually pivoted towards supporting them because he admired ronald reagan so much that he wanted to uh mirror his conservatism in pakistan which turned into islamic

conservatism yeah exactly yeah so thanks uh you know that gif of dj khaled being like congratulations i just want to like hold that up in front of like all of America because congratulations America you played yourself. So yeah so back to Yemen as a result of this all the stuff that I just talked about the ruling like the dominant ideologies and Yemen in the 90s and through to the present is not communism versus royalism. It's various brands of Islamism and kind of combined with just kind of general authoritarian conservatism against each other. So I guess we briefly talk about the demographics of yemen yemen is split between shia and sunni um although to be honest this factor is way it's talked about way too much in my opinion and kind of like normal western discourse on yemen because like what i'll talk to later is like the the about the houthi movement they're shia and sunni like their

majority shia but like branding them as like a uniquely Shia movement is, uh, fallacious and branding the opposition is uniquely Sunni is also not entirely true. Um, but anyway, so 2004, um,

this guy, Hussein Badraddin Al-Houthi was, um, a major, uh, Shia, Zaydi Shia figure in North Yemen who criticized the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh because he said they were corrupt, which is almost certainly true. And

he criticized the fact that they had a close relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United Um, and, uh, in response, um, the, uh, Saleh government, um, attempted to arrest, uh, Al-Huthi and, um, his supporters, which included a lot of the army, um, rose up and, uh, started an insurgency against the government. Um, the, uh, Al-Huthi himself was killed soon late, soon after, but his brother soon, like quickly took control and the movement continued. Um, and the war continued and escalated. Um, and the Huthi movement, um, eventually you'll also, by the way, the Huthis call themselves the official title of their movement is Ansar Allah, which is, I think it's like supporters of God. It's pretty like a not particularly unique title. which is, I think it's like supporters of God.

It's pretty like a not particularly unique title. But like officially, like if you want to refer to them, it's better to say Ansar Allah than Houthis because Houthis is not really like correct because it also includes large sections of the army who are Sunni. It's not just like a Shia Houthi movement. It's a lot of different like factions, but the Houthis are the biggest one. So we'll stick with the Houthis because it's also easier to pronounce.

Um, so the war escalated. Um, and by the end of, by around 2008, 2009, the Houthis had control over most of like the rural mountainous parts of Northern Yemen. Um, in 2009, the Saudis joined in, in, as well as Jordanian and Moroccan troops, and they invaded north Yemen to attempt to suppress the Houthis. It didn't work. The Saudis took heavy casualties. It was a brief operation, but they lost over 100 dead, like, officially,

so it's probably two or three times that. They lost several jets, like fighter jets, that either crashed or were shot down. I didn't research that enough. But either way, they lost three jets. So that's like half a billion dollars down the drain. And the fighting was intense enough that both sides agreed to a ceasefire in early 2010. However, the ceasefire wasn't particularly effective as skirmishes continued throughout 2010. In 2011, massive protests broke out in the capital of Yemen, which at the time was Sana'a in North Yemen. So the protests were kind of similar to a lot of the Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain at the time.

They're basically anti-corruption, pro-democracy. And these were against the Ali Abdullah Saleh government who remained the president and had been basically a big player in Yemen since at least 1978. The Houthi movement declared its support for the anti-Saleh protests and Houthi fighters captured a major city in North Yemen, declared a new government, basically said the Saleh government is illegitimate. We have this new government now. This is the official government of Yemen. And so the skirmishes and violence and so on escalated.

So in November of 2011, Saleh negotiated a deal with the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is basically an organization of all the Gulf Arab states. So like Saudi, Qatar, the Emirates, Bahrain and Oman, I think, maybe Kuwait. And then so the deal was there would be an election and afterwards Saleh would hand over power to whoever won the election. The Houthis rejected the deal saying that the election would be a sham and that it was basically just a ploy for Saleh to save his skin and for the Saudis to keep an ally in Yemen. So an election was held in February of 2012. And after the election, this guy mansoor al-hadi won a very legitimate 99.8 percent of the vote um and he was sworn in uh like the next day um so clearly this guy has a huge mandate right he won 99.8 percent of the vote um which is definitely real he i guess they stopped short

of him winning like 105 but that's nice i mean come on like just say he won like 56 percent and call it a day like that's how a smart person rigs an election yeah with 100 turnout yeah exactly um but of course you know this guy mansoor al-hadi who's close with the Saudis, winning 99.8% of the vote, didn't really go over great with the Houthis, and violence escalated. And the Houthis continued to solidify their control over the countryside in North Yemen. However, in Sana'a, in the capital, protests against the Hadi government continued and escalated over the next couple, like two years. So in August of 2014, protests against the Hadi government reached and escalated for over the next couple, like two years. So in August of 2014, protests against the Hadi government reached a fever pitch. And in late September, Houthi military forces entered the capital and took control, forcing the prime minister and president to resign and installing a new parliament and government.

Hadi was placed under house arrest, but somehow managed to escape and fled to Aden, which is the other major city in Yemen on the southern Gulf of Oman coast. And he declared Aden the provisional capital of Yemen with the support of Saudi, the GCC, most of Europe, the United States, and so on. So in this power vacuum, Al-Qaeda was growing in power and influence and also territory and the sparsely populated rural areas of Eastern Yemen and focused the majority of their violence against the Houthis because Al-Qaeda, they are a Salafi movement. And so as a result, they view anything that's even remotely like smells Shia as bad as basically the worst possible thing.

And they kill like the primary attack of a primary target of groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS is usually killing Shia or attempting to kill Shia, be it in Afghanistan or Yemen or Iraq. or attempting to kill Shia, be it in Afghanistan or Yemen or Iraq. So there's one like particularly brutal suicide bombing on several Shia mosques in Sana'a in, I think, March? No, or February of 2015, which killed over 150 people like in one day and wounded like three or four hundred more is really brutal and so basically all this led to in 2015 march of 2015 it basically escalated to a full-scale civil war between the houthis and the haughty provisional government and also at the same time it starts to get even more confusing because around this time, the military or most much of the military, which is loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, defected to join the Houthis, as did Saleh himself.

So the guy who killed, you know, the Al-Houthi then joins huthis um in order to fight against the hadi government so it doesn't i don't really know why but he wanted to be back in power or something i don't know yeah i mean i'm sure you know it's random power play stuff like that but what this meant is that the huthi movement and this is something that is really overlooked in um the kind of english language press is that the houthi movement isn't just like you know a couple of guys with sandals and ak-47s up in the mountains it's like a significant portion of the former yemeni army which was very well equipped by like the united states um and other countries um as like as a result of the the global war on terror so like the the houthis occasionally launch like ballistic missiles at saudi arabia mostly not very

successfully but like they do it more as like a propaganda thing than uh like an actual like attempt to kill people i think they can hit riyadh now yeah they can they hit the riyadh airport um and they've been there've been a couple of pretty successful ballistic missile attacks mostly within yemen but also on saudi arabia but the western press or at least the western government which and the western press then immediately like repeats whatever like the dod says um is that these ballistic missiles are sourced from iran but that's like that's just not true i mean they're the ballistic missiles were just what the yemeni army had before the uh the civil war broke out they're basically scud missiles like scud b missiles or yeah um iranian

made missiles that were purchased before the war like i don't know i'm gonna talk about that in a second but um so either way the the houthi rebellion revolution whatever you want to call it um by 2015 is like very well equipped um and very well staffed with manpower um so at the same time march 2015 uh al-hadi the provisional president of yemen and the guy recognized as the president of Yemen by most of the world, at least the United States, Europe, Saudi Arabia, and so on. He fled to Saudi Arabia, and he's been in Saudi Arabia ever since. So the president of Yemen does not live in Yemen. And at the same time –

That's any good president, you know. Of course. Get a little broad. The best presidents live in other countries entirely. So at this time, 2015, the Saudi Qaeda, um, with logistical support from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and also Al Qaeda. Um, I just want to emphasize that the United States has been working with Al Qaeda and Yemen in order to fight against the Houthis. Um, that's not an exaggeration. It's true. And there was a story when the war began or the Civil War fully kicked off where the president

sent a certain amount of suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists onto the streets to be like, look, it's the global war on terror, so they get more money. Yeah, exactly. It's really sketchy and fucked up because i mean like wasn't this whole thing started back in 2001 to fight al-qaeda and now we're like working with them in yemen and in syria like hello come on people wake up the real global war on terror is the friends we made along the way. With friends like these. But anyway, so after plants, pipelines, roads,

and so on, as well as just generally civilians, like a true terror bombing campaign. They're pretty famous for conducting double and triple tap airstrikes, which for those who aren't familiar with horrific war crimes invented by the united states and israel um is uh is where you drop one round of bombs on a legitimate target for example a wedding or a crowded marketplace or a school or a hospital those are only legitimate if you're an asshole well you know you were in the military, so. That's fair. That's fair. No shade meant. But, so yeah, so they drop the bombs on, you know, the wedding or whatever.

And then when the ambulances and doctors show up to like treat the wounded, they bomb those as well. And then when all of those people have been taken to, you know, be buried, whatever's left of them has been taken to a funeral, they then bomb the funeral. That's a triple-tap airstrike. Those are more rare. Double-taps are pretty standard, but triple-taps are pretty true. I think even Saudi recognizes that maybe they should not do those very often. But I know there's been at least one, no, more than one instance where one of these airstrikes has killed over 300 people um just like in one go uh because they'll bomb like a marketplace or a wedding or something like that where they just blew up that school too full of

kids not that long ago yeah school bus yeah i'd kill like 50 kids something like that um but like school bus yeah i'd kill like 50 kids something like that um but like that's the more publicly obvious horrific war crime that the saudis are doing in coordination with the united states but like probably even worse um is the the naval blockade um which this has been even more direct by the united states because like the u.S. Navy is actively participating in preventing aid into entering Yemen. There's like Navy ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Oman, like constantly Gulf of Aden, I think. I've been saying Gulf of Oman when I meant Gulf of Aden. But yeah, there's a naval blockade of Houthi territory, which prevents food and other aid, um, and entering Houthi territory, which has resulted in the deliberate starvation of as many as 10 million people and massive outbreaks of disease, including what is currently the largest cholera outbreak in human history is, uh, ongoing as we speak in Yemen. Um, in terms of casualty estimates from all of this stuff, there hasn't been a formal study conducted since I want to say 2015, which is why usually when you read a news article and

like New York times or something like that, they'll say, um, approximately 15,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the war in Yemen. Um, and that might've been true. And it's definitely low-balled. Yeah, that might have been true in 2015. But now it's at least several hundred thousand people. Save the Children, which is a pretty reputable aid organization that I've worked with here in Iraq. And it has lots of missions around really conflict-stricken places, including Yemen. They estimated in late 2018, I think the article isn't like December November December they estimated that 85,000 children alone have starved to death as a result of the the blockade and the Saudi bombing of civilian infrastructure so if it's 85,000 children have starved to death like how many adults how many like

senior citizens um have also starved to death i mean it argues at least equal but probably greater than exactly yeah so probably that's like 150 to 200 000 people have starved to death as a result of this blockade and not to mention the cholera outbreak which official estimates are like three or four thousand people have died as a result of cholera. But it's probably more. And also cholera isn't the only thing. I mean, I'm sure there's like more standard stuff like tuberculosis, dysentery, typhus that are also like killing people. It's, you know, very it's like more indirect, but because nobody can access medicine, people are malnourished. more indirect, but because nobody can access medicine, people are malnourished. They don't have access to clean water, um, deliberately as a result of the Saudi and American, um, another

coalition partners campaign of basically not quite genocide, but like, Hmm, that's a thin line. Um, and also I want to emphasize that the United States is highly involved in this war. Um, at least publicly, we know that the United States provides aerial refueling to Saudi aircraft. Saudi aircraft, they're maintained often by American military or American contractors. And logistics and targeting and bombs. Intelligence is provided by the United States, United Kingdom. Also, we sell them all of their weapons um all the bombs that are dropped on yemen were produced in the united states and they're still stamped uh manufactured in the united states with a little flag too and uh who

thieves make sure to show this to the camera like you're cluster bombing us exactly which is i believe a banned weapon per the Geneva Convention. Well, the United States has not signed that particular part of their national law. It's like that and landmines we won't sign. Yeah, basically. Like, what the fuck is the U.S. going to do with landmines? And also, as I mentioned, American naval forces are blockading Houthi territory like actively preventing aid from entering food aid medical aid and so on i think uh something that we've talked about before that's

comparable to this is like you know the u.s like well we just give them targeting and uh you know uh aerial reconnaissance and stuff and it it gives us a certain amount of plausible deniability when we did literally the exact same thing when Saddam gassed the Kurds. Exactly. Like we just gave him the logistics, like, you know, he had gas. Exactly. We knew he had gas because we helped him buy it. We kept the receipts. Like there's not even that level of deniability with Saudi Arabia, like the like Trump andama have both like openly been like yeah no this is all good like we support this um and uh it's not even like well like what

can we do as we like sell him all the weapons it's like no we have to support saudi arabia in their war against iranian proxies in yemen and also like on that point all of this american and british and so on support for the Saudi war is done under the auspices of quote unquote, preventing Iran from helping the Houthis. However, there really hasn't been any credible evidence of any substantial Iranian support to the Houthis militarily or financially, um, from several years. Like, I think the last thing I saw that was like a hard evidence of Iran providing like weapons or something was in like 2013

or something like that. But I'm not remembering that number correctly, but it was, it's been several years. So any support that Iran is providing to the Houthis is highly, highly limited to probably like financial support,

limited training, and very limited material support. So this idea that, well, like we may be supporting the Saudis, but the Iranians are supporting the Houthis. So therefore killing children is OK. That's BS. Like that's nonsense. nonsense what iran's support is like one percent of like canada's support to the saudis um so the whole idea is nonsense and also like not that iran's support for the houthis justifies any of the actions the saudis or americans have been taking no and all that does is uh help kind of further the sectarian shia sunni war as if like well, like if this if if the Saudis are fighting them, that means like since some of them are Shia, that means the Iranians must be backing them, too. And so the whole thing just makes things worse on top of, you know, all the murder and death and stuff. I mean, it's definitely a proxy war, but it's not an equal playing proxy war here.

That's like saying the Soviet invasion of invasion of afghanistan was a chinese proxy war because they gave weapons to people like they were just involved uh exactly and you were telling me like when we came up this idea a while ago and since we're on the topic of saudi arabia and the rest of this series is going to be about the uae um that the saudis so the saudi government or the saudi society and government is a lot like the UAE society and government where the population itself is rather small and it's inflated by a ton of migrant workers that they just steal their passport and can't go anywhere. Yeah, yeah. I think something like 30% of Saudi Arabia is foreign born.

Yeah. And you were telling me that they were kidnapping people going to the hajj to mecca uh and then forcing them into the military yeah no okay disclaimer this is like i i cannot confirm i did not read this from like a super reputable source. However, I don't, I think even if that specific thing is not true, the theme is true and that the Saudi coalition, which we're going to, I think the main theme of this, these two episodes is what we'll talk about is kind of how the Saudi coalition has maintained a certain degree of distance from the actual on the ground fighting and the saudis um have done a lot of funding and recruiting of particularly sudanese mercenaries or how cannon fodder whatever you want to call them and um i know that what happens on the hajj um is often very very sketchy

um like there was uh like a stampede a couple of years ago because some like south prince wanted to like drive his car in um and there and it was probably also somewhat deliberate because most of the people who died i think were iranian um pilgrims and officially i think like a hundred people died but i think people also estimate that it might've been thousands. Um, and, uh, there's like a crane collapse on the grand mosque that killed like a hundred people. That was cut on video. I remember that. Oh, it's horrible. It was horrible. Um, and just generally like the way Saudi treats, um, foreigners, particularly from Africa is, I mean mean there's been reports of people being like disappearing on the hajj and then turning up like years later and they've basically been used as like a slave and some like saudi's household um or like in construction or things like that so

i would not be surprised if that report that i saw was true about saudi arabia basically kidnapping sudanese and other like african um pilgrims to mecca and basically press gaining them into service in yemen man like imagine like being so because especially for this the hajj is obscenely expensive especially coming from such a uh a poor place as sudan or north or south for that matter um and then going like i'm finally getting to see i'm gonna get to see the kaba then you just drag off into an alley somewhere like here you go private mohammed yemen's that way yeah given like a beat-up old ak and like a pair of boots and being like all right now go fight these like incredibly effective guerrillas in these horrible mountains. And the videos that come out from the Saudi war, from the Saudi side of the war, rather, like of it's almost always Houthi videotaping ambushes on the Saudis.

So your idea that they're using vast amounts of what is effectively slave labor in their military kind of checks out to me because you don't expect a country that gets so much money poured into it for its defense to be driving around in a combat zone in a pickup truck. You know, you've got kind of two kinds of forces fighting or really three kinds of forces fighting in Yemen right now. You've got the official Saudi army, which is the guys you'll see driving around on like MRAPs and M1 Abrams and stuff. And generally with like no real idea of what they're doing. Right. Um, and then you've got the guys in the pickup trucks who are usually officially Yemeni army. Um, but I think these are the guys that the saudis are press ganging like sudanese people into fighting they're officially in the yemeni army um but like everything is like funded and created by the saudis um so the actual saudi army is involved but in a more limited capacity and they're also not particularly competent on their own they have fancy toys i know the uae's military is involved much more heavily

on the ground which was what our next episode is going to be about since this is now going to turn into a three-parter uh jesus sorry no no totally fine uh but yeah it's uh they they've taken some pretty grievous casualties like i know um i believe they had a missile strike which is probably a Scud missile on one of their bases and they said it killed 50 people but probably more like the Houthis videotaped the explosion and that was a fucking mushroom cloud that killed way if there was 50 people in there

and it killed them it's because there's only 50 people in there like that yeah or that's all they could find at the end yeah yeah yeah but I think that the Emirat, Emirates is even more casualty averse than Saudi is because it's a much smaller country. Yes. And the actual, if I remember correctly, the Emirates has conscription only of Emirati citizens. So that does not include, you know, all the like Malaysian or Filipino or Sri Lankan migrant workers.

um, you know, all the like Malaysian or Filipino or Sri Lankan migrant workers. So the law, the loss of an Emirati soldier in war is felt much more heavily in the Emirates than, for example, a Saudi soldier dying is felt in Saudi because of this very small population. And it's also a much wealthier, more educated country, even in Saudi. Um, and so they're like kids who were going off and dying in yemen like their families are probably like comfortably middle class yeah um which is why they do the things which you know we will be talking about for i guess the next two episodes um that's actually a really good pivot uh because the next two episodes focus specifically on the uae's mercenary army that they built uh led by westerners um but yeah that's

a really good uh thing to point out is uh you the the emirates have about 1 million citizens um uh give or take but the country is i think emirates are uh are outnumbered like three to one by non-citizens um and the vast majority of those people just cannot leave because when you move there to work and you're not a white guy uh they take your passport and you can't leave um but that is a really good pivot into the next episode so uh stay tuned and uh next week we're gonna talk about stuff that isn't depressing and full of cholera oh man i don't know how like i don't know i i know a little bit about of what we're going to be talking about in the next two episodes and you may be saying that now

but stay tuned it may not be 85 000 children starving to death level of depressing but it's more of a like man my country of america really is shitty kind of depressing australia gets some australia gets some credit here too all right you gotta spread it around yeah i mean i think you got australia i don't know if yemen has south africa involved yes they sure do of course why what is it with all these like psycho i mean i guess i'm answering my own question when i say white south africans um like why are they all psycho um i think it has something to do with the mercenary culture there um ever since the end of apartheid yeah ever since the collapse of apartheid you had a pretty large population of well-trained special forces operators and they were very well-versed in very racist and very very well-versed in uh doing shit that other people

wouldn't do uh which is why you have like executive outcomes being deployed to the ivory coasts um in sierra leone and everything like that um and actually the guy who the executive outcomes uh was so effective that it's actually the reason why uh south africa has a law on the books banning pmcs from south africa so none none are actually based there they're just full of south africans yeah no i mean i haven't i mean in in the line of work I'm in, I've, I've heard about some of the kind of like security people. Um, uh, this kind of, I don't want to spend too much time at the end of the episode, but like I read an article about the U S military base outside of Baghdad and the company that is responsible for base management there.

Um, I forget the name of the company, but it's a major like defense contracting company. And the base there, like the contractors there consist of like South African, white South Africans who are like the management who are like so racist and like have formed basically segregation on base. They basically enforced apartheid within the company um on the base i know i shouldn't laugh at that but it's like yeah of course they did yeah and it's like so bad that um and one thing that i think is really funny if i'm remembering the article correctly is basically it was only broken up because um one

of the popular mobilization units the like what the like new york times loves to call iranian backed shia militias basically like moved on to the base and the american military was like all right like you just have to like you can't fight back like you have to just like move you can't apartheid the iraqis exactly um and but it was really bad the stuff i was reading like they were like swastikas being like written on like the um the doors of like black employees or like asian or uh middle eastern employees and like if you were non-white like you were basically unable to really get anything but like latrine cleaning duty um but yeah like they have a bad reputation they don't do their sums any favors so with that since everybody's sad again

we'll see you next week hi this is nate bethea and i'm the producer of the lions led by donkeys podcast this show is brought to you by Audible. And as it just so happens, Audible is offering our listeners a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership. Just go to audibletrial.com forward slash donkeys and browse the selection of audio programs. Download its title for free and start listening. Once again, that's www.audibletrial.com forward slash donkeys to get started.