Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/2/22 Hassan El-Tayyab Explains the War in Yemen and How We Can End It

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

Hassan El-Tayyab of the Friend's Committee on National Legislation joined Scott for this Sunday's Antiwar Radio show. El-Tayyab runs through the history of how the Saudi war on Yemen began. He and Scott then stress some of the most important things everybody should understand about the war. As Congress returns from recess, El-Tayyab explains where the War Powers Resolutions to withdraw U.S. support stand and how you can help get them over the finish line.   Discussed on the show: “In Strategic Shift, U.S. Draws Closer to Yemeni Rebels” (Wall Street Journal) “US maintains intelligence relationship with Houthis” (Al-Monitor) 1833stopwar.com Friend’s Committee on National Legislation Just Foreign Policy Demand Progress Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation Hassan El-Tayyab is a musician and peace activist, who works as the lead lobbyist on Middle East policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, September the 4th, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome to show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of Anti-War.com and the editor of the new book, Hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons.

You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,700 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show and all your favorite podcatchers and things. And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show. Introducing our friend Hassan L. Tayab from the Friends Committee on National Legislation,

that's, of course, the Quaker group, FCNL.org, the great peace activist. in Washington, D.C. Welcome back, Hassan. How are you doing, my friend? Thanks for having me, Scott. Really appreciate it. Great.

Happy to have you back on the show here, Hassan. And we have such important business to talk about here. This show's airing on September 2nd, which means that this coming week, the Senate comes back from their summer break. And next week, the House comes back from theirs. And we have some extremely important business. for this audience to help us to participate in and to get down to once Congress gets back on the issue, the all-important issue of the war in Yemen. So, look, of course, we always oppose the thing

and cover the thing, but now we have a real advantage to press. So first of all, Hassan, can you please give us a very quick but deep background on the war in Yemen, and then we'll get to what we all are doing about it now. Well, again, thank you so much for having me on to chat about this. You know, quickly, Yemen's political instability began after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been in power with U.S. backing and military support since 1990. Then Vice President Hadi became Yemen's interim president for a temporary term.

and then we're going to move to a more representative form of government with regular elections. Unfortunately, that date kept getting pushed back and Yemeni frustration with, you know, corruption, unemployment, rise in fuel prices and a whole bunch of other issues. The Houthis took over Sana and put Hadi under house arrest. And with the goal of restoring Hadi the power, Saudi joined forces with the UAE. and it was backed by the U.S., UK, France, Canada, and started what we now refer to as the Yemen War. And unfortunately, this conflict has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis and large part fueled and funded by U.S. weaponry. Right.

Now, one thing we've got to get out of the way here, it's so important. Well, two major things. First of all, so that everyone understands, this is not. the war against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that bombed the coal that tried to blow up the plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 09 to help coordinate the September 11th attack. This is a whole different war than that. Is that right, Hassan? That's right. Yeah, this is a really there are, you know, the Houthis have been called by people like Chairman Adam Smith and Washington as an oppressed indigenous minority in Yemen. They were

trying to get, you know, when they were doing this national dialogue, they were trying to get some representation. Their movement largely formed to oppose Wahhabism. That's this really intolerant ideology at the heart of, you know, Al-Qaeda, you know, and what they stand for, this really intolerant version of Sunni Islam, if you even want to call it Islam. Many have called it just an ideology. And, you know, so what one of their mandates was actually trying to oppose Saudi Arabia from setting up madrasas and, you know, and spreading this really intolerant version of Sunni Islam in Yemen. And it's really important, too, and people can look this up from the Wall Street Journal

and from Almonitor in January of 2015. That's your key words right there. Wall Street Journal and Almonitor January 2015 Centcom. Our current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was then a four-star general, the head of Central command, and he was passing the Houthis intelligence to use against al-Qaeda. And it was just too, and I'm not saying that's great, but it is what it is. Two months later, Barack Obama and Lloyd Austin turned around, stab the Houthis in the back and took Al-Qaeda's side against them.

And America's been flying as the Yemen expert, no relation to me, but same name, Michael Horton, from the Jamestown Foundation, said then in March of 2015, we are now flying as Al-Qaeda's Air Force in Yemen. And that's the same war we've been fighting for now seven and a half years. Yeah. I mean, it is, you know, obviously tragic FCNL. We're Quaker lobby in the public interest. We also oppose the war on terror that's a, you know, that we fear really exacerbates, you know, recruitment of terrorism also creates, you know, horrendous humanitarian situation. But for the purposes of the Yemen war powers, resolution and this latest push in Congress, we're specifically trying to be narrow in our focus to do something that we have a large consensus on already, is to end support for the Saudi-led

coalition's operations, their airstrikes, their blockade in Yemen, which is leading to a lot of humanitarian suffering. And also, you know, I should add that it has not been authorized by Congress. And as Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution makes clear, the legislature holds the sole power to declare war. And unfortunately, this military aid that we've been giving to the Saudis ignores that part of our constitution and not only risks, you know, innocent Yemeni lives, but also potentially could risk, you know, U.S. service members that could get dragged into an escalatory situation in Yemen.

Yeah. And in fact, really, that's one way to put it would be that, you know, this is a moderate compromise position to end this war. If we can't end the war on terrorism, can we at least end the war for terrorism? Where we're fighting directly or very closely, indirectly, but just one degree away from fighting on the side of bin Laden's men like it's been in Libya, Syria, and Yemen for this past decade, enough of this. And opposing the war against AQAP is also hugely important and will be our next mission.

after we switch sides in the war again. But this war, and this is the real point, never even mind the treason for al-Qaeda, aka now the Giants Brigade under the protection of our allies, the United Arab Emirates. But talk about that humanitarian situation that you mentioned there,

because people just don't know this. New York Times showed some pictures one time in their weekend magazine years ago. The major media will not cover the humanitarian consequences of this war, but they're as bad as any. that's happened in our era. Yeah, I'm really glad you brought this up.

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen has been bad, and unfortunately, it's actually getting worse. The UN's projecting that you could see about 19 million people, you know, that are massively food insecure by the end of the year in December. Right now it's about 17 million plus, so they think those numbers are getting worse. And in a large part is because of the wheat shortage that's happening with also, you know, being exacerbated by the ongoing Saudi restrictions at the ports of entry. You've got millions of children suffering from acute malnutrition. You've got about half a million people or so that have died since the start of the war in 2015.

And they've died, 60% of them have died from preventable causes, like hunger and disease, things that actually could have been treated if we had the right humanitarian aid and economic assistance, you know, but it's just not getting through. So the airstrikes obviously are a huge issue, but really I want to just emphasize that there is a blockade in place that's restricting the free flow of these goods. Now, I think it's worth mentioning that there is a truce in place right now. The truce started April 2nd. Again, you know, I put truce in air quotes because there are still series. violations happening. But, you know, there has been some progress. But the deadline to extend the truce actually expires October 2nd. So that's fast approaching. And, you know, despite its

flaws, this is the first nationwide ceasefire that's lasted any length of time that has brought any relative hope to the people of Yemen. You know, the basic terms of the agreement were that they would stop offensive military operations, they meaning the Saudis and the Houthis. So the Saudis would stop their airstrikes. The Houthis would stop their cross-border attacks into the UAE and Saudi. That's actually happened. The Saudis have agreed to allow fuel ships into the ports of Hededa. So that's been happening, although still woefully inadequate to meet the humanitarian needs.

They agreed to, you know, a certain number of ships per week. A lot of those ships are getting held in the coalition holding area. and delayed that's inflating prices but really the you know yemen needs about half a million metric tons of fuel just to meet basic needs through this red seaport to sustain you know 70 or 80 percent of the population under huthy control right now in the north of the country only about 40 percent of those needs are actually getting in granted it's it's more than before the truce but that's why you still see these ballooning humanitarian figures where you know, people are still starving the death in Yemen because of the blockade.

Last thing I'll mention on the last two things I should say on the truce is that the Saudis agreed to also open up Sanaa Airport for emergency and commercial traffic. There had been no flights before that. They agreed to do two flights to Jordan and Cairo. The flights to Jordan are getting through. We've seen about 37 or so flights so far since April, but almost not. none to Cairo. So that's another major issue. Last thing I'll mention is that there's a real discord and a lack of resolution of opening up certain roads in Taz in this government in the

southern part of the country. The Saudis want access to these roads. The Houthis say, we'll get your militias out and then we'll talk about opening up the roads. So that remains another point of contention that's worsening the humanitarian crisis. all right so it's anti-war radio i'm talking with hasan el-tailleb from the friends committee on national legislation fcnl and dc and we're talking about the war in yemen and i think we've covered premise one the war is really bad it's treason and genocide right step two though is we have this ceasefire and a real potential to end the war here we're in month four of a two-month ceasefire everybody that's huge right as hasan just described it ain't perfect but it is substantial okay and then

but here is the real thing the most important point for everyone listening this morning and that is that we have war powers resolutions active ones yeah the same one that they passed over nixon's veto in 1973 the war powers act which you've heard of your whole life which congress never used against anyone until 2018 against Trump on this issue the House did and in 19 the House and the Senate passed it and Trump vetoed it at

Raytheon's behest. That's according to New York Times but it was a credible article and he vetoed it and the war continued and that was a world historical event. Well that's happening again right now and we have active war powers resolutions in the Congress

right at the time that we have this ceasefire. in this horrible war. And Congress is on summer break now, but they're just coming back. Next week, it's the Senate gets back first on the sixth, this coming week. And then the House gets back on the 11th, the week after that. And then they have these resolutions. And so now I turn the floor over to you to explain Hassan the multifaceted activist campaign that is already being spooled up, that we need every.

single listener to KPFK, and for that matter, every single other host on KPFK to get on board for, and everybody else and every one of y'all's groups that y'all are a part of, too, to get on board for this thing, to make an issue out of something that we don't have a single champion on TV, right? There's no cable TV news host that's made this their issue, not one. There's no newspaper that highlights this constantly. This is all alternative media and alternative politics, but it's been so effective already in the past. And we can do it again. And so, Hassan, the floor is yours, sir, to tell people how they can get involved in this thing and really help make a difference on the war in Yemen. Yeah. Thank you again, Scott. You know, last year,

the Biden administration announced that they were going to end U.S. participation in the Saudi coalition offensive operations in Yemen. But the U.S. is still complicit. We still provide spare parts, maintenance, and logistical support to Saudi warplanes. And the administration, you know, they never said what offensive or defensive was. And so that's what this resolution addresses. Granted, the Saudis aren't doing air strikes right now, but they easily could. You know, these ceasefires have broken down in the past. They're also continuing to enforce a no-fly zone.

planes don't fly unless the Saudis basically say that this flight can happen. So those are all really key parts of what's going on here. And so while we got this truce hanging in the balance, it could expire October 2nd or could get extended for a lot longer. The U.S. now needs to use all existing leverage to help extend the truce and revive peace talks. And, you know, lawmakers need to support these resolutions that you just mentioned, Scott. We've got rep Mace, Rep Jialpaul, Rep Schiff. A lot of your folks listening might recognize him because he's their representative in L.A.

And Rep. DeFazio, they have a House resolution, H.J. Res. 87. Senator Sanders, you know, they've got a resolution over there, co-sponsored by about eight people right now, including Warren, Leahy, Peters, Durbin, Wyden, and others. And that's S.J. Res. 56. And by making clear that the U.S. won't resume military support to Riyadh or its partners in Yemen, Congress can actually keep pressure on these parties to prevent the peace process from getting derailed. And that's also going to send a message to Biden that he's got to keep his promise to end blind support for a regime in Saudi intent on cracking down on dissidents at home and destroying Yemen. In Biden's own words, he said to end the sale of material to Saudis where they're going in and murdering children in Yemen.

So if folks do want to get active and get involved, I would welcome that. If you're in California, we need Senators Feinstein and Padilla to get on this resolution. We need all your House members on board. We set up a number, 1833 Stop War, where it connects you right to the Capitol switchboard and gives you a short prompt to say. So, again, 1833 Stop War. That's a great way to get your voice heard and help us wind this conflict down. Yeah.

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world's greatest libertarian thinkers and writers, including me. Check them all out at Libertarian Institute.org slash books. And for a limited time, signed copies of enough already and hotter than the sun are available at Scott Horton.org slash books. All right, so again, everybody, it's really easy, righteous thing. It ain't 888, and it ain't 866. It's 833. 833, stop war. And it's great. It's a nonpartisan, progressive group called Demand Progressive Progress, it and it's just a robot you put in your zip code and it'll connect you directly to your representatives office it's perfect and as soon as you're done with congress it forwards you on the next thing you do is you call and talk to your senate staff and so it's just it's really

fantastic it's 833 stop war and in fact there's a website i don't know why we all didn't think this our whole lives already the website is 1 833 stopwar dot com 1 833 stop war dot com 1 833 stop war and they have a little script for you to read, and hopefully that's going to get updated here soon with a little bit more information for people to use. Again, the House comes back, pardon me, the Senate comes back first on the 6th, and the House on the 11th. So that's time for everybody to get ready, for everybody to talk with all the other groups that they're members of and their friend that they know who's a member of this other group that

has some people in it and some things, and maybe especially with some influence. So we can all get ready. you know, all get loaded for bear so that when they come back, we really hit them hard with this massive phone call and email campaign that just sweeps them off their feet, right? That blows them away where they just say, wow, where all the staffers have to say to their congressmen and their senator, boy, are we getting a lot of calls about this Yemen thing. We better get out ahead of the parade on this and just give them no choice. Now, let me ask you something here.

What can people do if they live in L.A. and Congressman Schiff is a lot of. already great on this, then what's their job? Other than, obviously, they've got to focus on California senators. And obviously, they can call shifts, office, and thank him for leading on this. That's one thing. But what else can they do? Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of other members. One thing I wanted to say is we do have a lot of momentum here. We've got 114 representatives in the House right now that are on this bill. That's, we've, in co-sponsors, we already have over a half of what we need to even pass this thing. So, so this is really great. And it's a testament. Yeah, so it's a testament to a lot of folks coming out of the woodwork here and letting their

representatives and senators know that this matters. I would say California, um, you know, if your rep is not on the bill, uh, please, please get them on, get your senators on board. So if, if Schiff is already co-sponsored, definitely send a, a thank you note. I think that's really helpful. Um, you know, that's knowing that you have his back is going to help him, I think, be better because, you know, there's a lot more that needs to happen here. We need to, you know, get this on the floor in a good, good period of time. We also need to, you know, make sure that we're leveraging the support to get, you know, Padilla and Feinstein on board as well. Um, you know, so I would say thank you and then really focus on the Senate for sure. Yeah. Well, and so talk about last time. I mean, I know

you learned so much working with all these groups on pushing this thing through successfully in 2009, unfortunately against an absolutely obstinate president at that time. However, you got the House and the Senate to pass this and that took, everybody knows about all this controversy over the filibuster and everything. Got enough Republicans on the margin to support this thing in the Senate to actually pass it while a Republican was president. Essentially overriding his foreign policy or attempting to. That's huge. So how did you do it? What did you learn that people need to understand about how successful activism really can be on stuff like this? Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. I did want to make sure we covered it.

So in 2019, Senators Sanders, Mike Lee, and Chris Murphy, you know, they led this effort. And they actually made history by passing S.J. Res. 7, this war powers resolution to end all U.S. participation in the coalition's war in Yemen, that actually led to the Trump administration, even though he vetoed it, he still terminated mid-air refueling to Saudi warplains because of this congressional pressure. The advocacy effort, I mean, it mobilized hundreds of thousands of people all over the country. And UAE sent their ambassador straight to Tehran to start warming things up, too. And it wasn't because of the president. It was because of the Senate. And they were saying, Hey, if we're losing the U.S. Senate, we better start splitting our differences here.

You know, that passage actually pushed the UAE to draw down its military in Yemen. Oh, right, right. Well, they still have their al-Qaeda mercenary forces. But, yeah, they did pull out their regular troops. That's why I didn't say completely end their participation. But they pulled out their troops. They're still working through proxies. But the UAE was, they were really on, you know, they really kind of,

tried to publicly distance themselves from this conflict. It led to the Hidata ceasefire. It led to a reduction in cross-border attacks by Saudis and the Houthis. It's, you know, I think we're not where we are today because of the truce. I mean, that was a huge piece of this, that all of this pressure that the bipartisan majorities in both chambers created to basically create a situation where Biden could not run without saying something about Yemen. You know, it's not where we need to be, obviously, but this is unprecedented. No one thought this was even possible. And we are at it again to try to finalize this, seal the deal, shut the door on military

aid to the Saudi coalition's war in Yemen. And finally, you know, have one bright spot for peace and diplomacy on planet Earth right now. Yeah, I mean, this could be a huge. huge win for the anti-war movement in America and just a huge win for the American people over our establishment at this point. And I guess the presumption is here, Hassan, is this right, that it would just be much harder for Biden to veto it than it was for Trump, that he would essentially have to go along? You know, yeah, I think it would be much harder for the president to veto.

But I'll just point to the fact that we didn't, you know, President Trump vetoed it, but still ended critical components of military aid to the Saudi war in that mid-air, that mid-flight refueling. And so just by forcing the question, we're moving the ball in the right direction. So, you know, none of this is futile, even if, you know, we don't like pass this thing tomorrow, you know, just the buildup of pressure is really giving, I think, negotiators at the UN, more leverage they need to actually start addressing some of these concerns like the blockade, which is, I think, a major obstruction to getting a longer-term peace deal.

Right. And you know what? This is a point that I brought up in my rambling that is worth revisiting here. I think that we really don't have any major figures in America who are championing this, right? There's no billionaires. There's no major TV hosts. This is all alternative politics and alternative media that has already gotten this through both houses once and really it's a litmus test for an entire reordering and realignment of American politics in a lot of ways

can we get the people who don't feel like they're in on power in D.C. To all work together on this thing, to end this worst thing our government is doing right now. Maybe we can't. Yeah, you know, I'm hopeful that if we, you know, if more and more people just reach out, I mean, like you said, we did it before. That's the one of those things.

You don't have many issues on the peace movement where you're like, you've already passed the bill. Now all we've got to do is get it over the finish line one more time and finally shut the door on U.S. aid to this horrible conflict. And let's be real, I don't think that this is going to magically bring, you know, a utopia. in Yemen. Yemen's got a long road to peace and healing, but we have a ton of leverage to persuade Saudi and its proxies to extend this truce past this October deadline and hopefully get something, you know, six months to a year long where we can actually start to see the economy come back to life. Right now it's on life support. And I really think it's time Congress and the administration use all of its leverage to end this war.

Yeah, absolutely right. All right, you heard it, Los Angeles, and for everybody else listening to this in podcast form later, all around the country and everything else, people are always asking, yeah, but what can we do? I mean, obviously, we're going to cover the war in Yemen no matter what. But here's really a thing that we can do. The most horrible war, but we got to ceasefire,

and we have war powers resolutions, an advantage to press. And all you've got to do is get with all your friends and all your family members and all your co-workers. and all the groups that you're a part of and get everybody all doing this together at once. 833 Stop War. And you can go to 1-833 Stopwar.com. They'll have some scripts for you there to read or, you know, to get some talking points from

to talk to your congresspeople and your senators about this. And, you know, the old adage about, oh, I'm going to call my congressman. It sounds foolish. What difference does it make if you call your congressman? But that's just completely wrong if we're all doing it together. If there's tens of thousands of people, maybe 100,000 people making phone calls, sending emails, being absolutely relentless on this issue, we could end the worst thing our government is doing right now in this Yemen war. So that's every single one of you listening. And it actually is also a call out to the other hosts on KPFK as well.

I know that all of you are good on this and have been. been doing great work on it anyway, but this is what we're doing now, FCNL, and in fact, this is a great place to end it. Can you name for us some of the other groups that are involved, especially the leftist groups that the KPFK audience might be interested in looking up who are leading on this issue, Hassan. Yeah, thank you so much again for having me. You know, FCNL.org is a great place to start. There's also just foreign policy. Demand progress is great. Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. They're a transpartisan org and think tank in D.C. They work with everybody. Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. And really a whole bunch of others, too. And really appreciate

you always shining a light on this issue, Scott. Absolutely. Well, we got to end it. And we can. we actually have a chance to do something about something everybody so thank you everyone out there for your support on this again it's 833 stop war and one 833 stopwar dot com to read a little bit more about it and again that is the great hasan l taiab from the friends committee on national legislation that's fcnl dot org thank you again hasan thanks all right you guys and that has been anti-war radio for this morning. I'm your host, Scott Horton. Full interview archive is at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show to sign up for the podcast on your favorite podcaster there. And I'm here every Sunday morning from 9 to 930 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in

LA. See you next week.