Today, Explained - Could one man’s death change the conflict in Yemen?

Episode Date: November 9, 2018

The journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder has put the spotlight on an unlikely place: Yemen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for today explained comes from Quip Electric Toothbrushes. The deal is they start at $25. The first set of refills is free. After that, they cost $5 every three months. It's a subscription-based service, and you can kick that subscription off at getquip.com slash explained. Back in June, we did a show on the war, on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Millions of people are starving, thousands have died, but go figure, the death of one person, a person who had nothing to do with Yemen,

got people to pay attention. His name was Jamal Khashoggi. Jamal Khashoggi's death put the spotlight on Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is playing a major role in the conflict in Yemen. And the United States has been supporting Saudi Arabia. Today, we're going to explain this whole conflict once more because it's crazy complicated. And after we do that, what might change now that the world's paying more attention to how horrific things are? The casualties of Yemen's war go way beyond the bombs and bullets. The disaster, hidden from the world's eyes, is malnutrition.

One and a half million children are suffering, and the pediatric emergency unit in Sana'a is under terrible pressure. A crisis that's been worsened by the Saudi blockade of ports and border crossings, which has limited food and humanitarian supplies. The country registered its one millionth case of cholera. Health officials say it's the fastest spreading cholera epidemic in history. I've been to Yemen and I fell in love with it at first sight. Joost Hilterman works at the International Crisis Group. It has a very long and rich cultural history and the architecture is astonishing. The artwork is likewise so and the of course, while being desperately poor, compared to, say, their golf neighbors, are ever so welcoming and friendly and nice. The Yemen he remembers is basically gone.

And the United Nations now says that 14 million people are on the brink of starvation. Which is almost impossible to imagine. The economic situation is desperate, the humanitarian situation is of the country and the geography, what do people need to know about where Yemen is, where it's situated, who its neighbors are, to understand everything that's going on right now? So it's located on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, so south of Saudi Arabia. The coastline is partly Red Sea and partly the Gulf of Aden

and then toward the Indian Ocean. And the coastal people are very much a mix and the cultures are very much a mix, typical of coastal regions anywhere. And it's a country of 27 million people, very poor, resource poor. It was a real problem with water scarcity. The country has some oil, but that is running out. You know, it has basically been sort of the neglected member of the Arab world. So in addition to being resource poor, the country's going through

a civil war right now. How did it start and when? There were two states, northern Yemen and southern Yemen. South Yemen was a socialist republic during the Cold War, and the two parts were unified after the end of the Cold War. But then there was a brief civil war in the 1990s. The country, throughout this period, was under control of a single autocrat by the name of Ali Abdullah Saleh. He was essentially pushed aside after the Arab uprisings of 2011

through a deal made by the Alliance of Gulf States, the Gulf Cooperation Council. They pushed them aside and put in a transitional government under a different president, Abu Rabbu Mansur Hadi. Taking over from his boss, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had led the country for three decades. And then there was a national dialogue process that was going to tackle all the difficult questions that Yemen faces, including what should happen to the south, for example, that used to be independent.

And that national dialogue process fell apart and that's what triggered the civil war. Hadi struggled to impose his authority in a country riddled with poverty, the spread of armed groups and corruption. He also couldn't fend off the rising influence of the Houthis who had taken control of the northern province of Saada and the capital Sanaa. And that was in 2014. In late 2014 the Houthi rebels who had been fighting the now former autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh during the odds, they stormed into the capital but allied with the forces of this former autocrat because he had been displaced by this new transitional president.

The Houthis, a Shiite sect, also distanced themselves from Sunni terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS. They are critical of the United States, but they told me what they're really angry about are the American-backed dictators in the region. And then after a few months, they deposed the sitting government and then tried to seize control over the entire country. That triggered foreign intervention by a coalition of states led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And that's three years ago, and so that's been going until now.

You've got 30 years of a dictator, an Arab Spring uprising, things fall apart, civil war, rebels take over. And now Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are getting involved. So who's actually in control of this situation? And are they actually in control? It's the Houthis, because they are in control of the north, where the bulk of the population lives. But their control is not 100%. Yemen is a tribal society as well. And the Houthis have support of some tribes. And their enemies likewise.

And why are other countries getting involved in this resource, poor country's civil war? Is it turning into a proxy war? What do other countries want from this conflict? Well, it's more what they don't want in the case of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They don't want a Yemen run by the Houthis, because they see them in the end as an Iranian proxy. When it comes to Iran, they're not involved directly in the conflict, not in the way they're not fighting,

they're not sending their aircraft in that direction or anything like that. But for Iran, it's been an easy way to keep Saudi Arabia on the back foot, because the real conflict for Iran is not in Yemen, but in Syria. And to the extent that the Gulf states played a role in the Syrian civil war and threatened the reign of Bashar al-Assad, who is supported by Iran, Iran felt threatened by these Gulf states. So this is a cheap way to keep them on the defensive, because the Houthis have been very effective at blocking any kind of military success on the part of the Gulf states. So they've been heavily involved for the last three years, mostly Saudi Arabia, through

airstrikes mainly. Key infrastructure and hospitals have been hit. Over a 12-month period, the UN estimated 60% of casualties in the war were caused by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes. There have been numerous child victims. And the United Arab Emirates in the south, also by deploying troops on the ground and fighting also against al-Qaeda, by the way, which has had holdouts there. And just comparing this to the conflict in Syria, which you mentioned,

the United States is obviously heavily involved in that conflict, as is Russia. Are these massive proxy powers that aren't in the Middle East involved in this conflict? Well, the United States very much is. And it is playing sort of a similar role to the role Iran is playing. It is supporting militarily one side in the conflict. And this, it is, of course, the other side, it's Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And the United States is providing critical intelligence, and it's providing in-air refueling of aircraft. And of course, Western states generally, and I'm talking about Britain and France and the United States,

are all selling weapons to the UAE and to Saudi Arabia, and they're not strictly for defensive purposes. So clearly it can be used in a war that international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have already said has seen war crimes

being committed by the targeting of civilian areas. They targeted my house while there were 18 to 20 guests. The whole family was inside. Everything is gone. There's nothing left. So this is a very serious matter. And the United States has been, of course, it's been a staunch ally of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia for a very long time. And this war, which started during the Obama administration, I think the U.S. has allowed to continue through its support, in part because at the time there were negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal, and the Obama administration needed the support of the Saudis and Emiratis not to block this deal. So they provided sort of lukewarm

support to this coalition in the war against Yemen. And then with the new administration coming in, US support has continued to flow to the Saudi-led coalition. Have you been in contact with Yemenis in the country recently? I'm wondering, after years of war and instability and now famine and cholera and a travel ban to boot, is there still hope? Are people holding on to something? It's very hard to make generalizations, but you can see that people have grown very cynical. People feel that this war is being fought over their heads, that they don't actually have a stake in this so much. They have a stake in the outcome, but not in the fighting.

And so they're despondent because there are other parties that are taking decisions about their fates. It's so easy now in the entire region to find people who are suffering desperately. So Yemen is no different from that. But it's just horrendous and it is spreading and there doesn't seem to be any stop on it. The United States is either standing back or encouraging it. Other states too. I don't want to single out the United States here,

but it's still the most powerful country in the world and with preponderant influence in the Middle East in particular. And negotiated solutions are few and far between. The United Nations is at times making heroic efforts at mediating and bringing the parties together, but without unified international support, it will not work. Up next, how the death of Jamal Khashoggi might change how the United States and the rest of the world approaches

the crisis in Yemen. Thank you to all the Today Explained listeners who sent me feedback on what I should do with the Quip electric toothbrush on my desk this week. Tiana recommended I find a nice dirty fish tank to clean, make a video of the Quip versus a conventional mechanized toothbrush versus a hand-operated toothbrush to show us how effective the Quip really is. But most of you, more than any other thing anyone recommended I do, clean some grout, destroy it, find out how long the battery life lasts, whatever it was, more so than any of those things, people said donate the quip to someone in need.

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Thanks again. Alex Ward, you're a defense reporter here at Vox. You co-host the Worldly podcast. Yemen has been one of the world's worst humanitarian crises for several years now, but people are finally starting to notice, it seems. How come? They're noticing mostly because of America's relationship with Saudi Arabia, and especially after the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the hand of what seems to be Saudi officials. So it took the murder of one man to get the United States and other countries in the world to really pay attention to the starvation and death of thousands, if not more? You can make that case that the U.S. didn't care too deeply about the humanitarian consequences of its support for Saudi Arabia. There were many people around that cared about the war itself and wanted to see it end. But if they questioned America's

support for Saudi Arabia kind of stopped somewhere, now that criticism is receiving an audience after what Saudi Arabia did to Khashoggi. So what's the upshot? What are the results of everyone seeming to give a shit now? Well, the question then becomes how much support should America give the Saudi military? So the Saudis lead a coalition in Yemen against the Houthi rebels. Yeah. And the U.S. supports that mission. With arms, with finances, what? Mostly it's refueling support and it's intelligence. In sort of a grander scale,

the U.S. has sold weapons to Saudi Arabia, and a lot of those weapons are being used in the war right now, especially precision-guided bombs. If I were to stand here on this broadcast and tell you that a foreign power had bombed a school bus full of American children, there would be no bigger story. Well, today, a foreign power did bomb a school bus full of children. Only it was Yemeni children. And the Saudi-led coalition that did that bombing is backed by us, by the United States. All that's left are the scraps of schoolbooks, warped metal and a single backpack. Munitions experts tell CNN this was a U.S.-made Mark MK-82 bomb weighing in at half a ton.

And by the way, when I say U.S. support in terms of refueling, right, or like giving bombs, I've talked to the Pentagon about this. They do not know which bombs are used. So it could be a U.S. bomb that kills, say, like 40 or so children in a bus. Or they don't necessarily know where the plane they just refueled goes to. So there's very little sort of oversight but we've heard Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis not necessarily defend the support. I mean he has defended the support but he said pretty recently that the longer term solution and by longer term I mean 30 days from now we want to see everybody around a peace table based on a ceasefire based based on a pullback from the border, and then based on ceasing dropping of bombs.

We've admired this problem for long enough down there. How did the United States get involved in this conflict in the first place? Was it al-Qaeda and terrorism? There was worry about terrorism. There was especially worry about Iran. Remember that America's support for the Saudis started in 2015. This is the Obama administration. It's continued through the Trump administration and in fact intensified. And it kind of is our support in the longstanding Saudi Iran Cold War in the Middle East. How much leverage does the United States have?

Could the United States, instead of drawing back its military support from Saudi Arabia, say, hey, Saudi Arabia, it's time to brush up, maybe change the nature of the conflict completely? The leverage is hard to know. I mean, we kind of know what the levers are, which is, no, we're not going to sell you $110 billion worth of weaponry. And by the way, that's multiple different arms deals, many of which have not been signed yet. But we do have leverage with those arms sales because Saudi Arabia has already bought a lot of American weaponry and systems.

And so if they don't keep buying American, so to speak, it would be very hard for them to kind of integrate all of their new weaponry. So for them to go find a new salesman, they could do that, but then that would be less sort of efficient for their military. What about everyone else involved in this conflict? Has anyone else decided to withdraw support for Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, France? So since the Khashoggi murder, there has been some rethinking in France and especially in Britain. There have been calls in Britain for the ceasefire like the US did. There are people in parliament who are, as there are in the US Congress, thinking about, well, maybe we should cut off funding for the support of the Yemen war. But it doesn't seem like Macron in France is cutting off ties with the Saudis.

It doesn't seem like Theresa May in the UK is cutting off ties with the Saudis. What there is is sort of a cooling period, right? Everyone's sort of relationship, when everyone was BFFs not that long ago, now they're just texting on the side, right? So I wouldn't say there's a massive reshuffle in the alliance.

I just think there's kind of a waiting period. So then I guess I wonder what the murder of Jamal Khashoggi means for the conflict and the images of starving children means for the conflict. I mean, it got the world to notice a little more. Is it going to change the nature of this conflict? Is it going to bring an end to this conflict any sooner? Now that the Democrats have taken the house, at least in the U. US, there will be a greater rethink in our support for Yemen. I've been hearing from Democratic congressmen in foreign affairs, house armed services and in house intel all telling me that we will push in some way to curtail America's support for the Saudis especially as it relates to Yemen. Now, I think we need to remember that the US relationship with Saudi Arabia has been really strong since 1945, right? The backbone of it has been oil,

finances, and geopolitics in the region. Despite horrible things that have happened, right, most of the hijackers from Saudi Arabia, the amount of human rights abuses by Saudi Arabia, the relationship survives. The support for the Yemen war in a way is kind of like, hey, buddy, let's help you out. And with Khashoggi, I don't think the U.S. is going to change a decades-long relationship, even if a Democrat were in the White House, by the way, over the death of one journalist. Now, we might think that at least a rethink or a cooling off of the U.S.-Saudi relationship may be all worthwhile. But if we were thinking that the Khashoggi murder would lead to some sort of grand redesign of our relationship with Saudi Arabia and even the redesign in our way of Yemen, well, that ignores our history.

So what about the millions of civilians in Yemen who might die of starvation? What happens to them? They continue to starve. It's a horrible, horrible situation. We, the United States, are helping that war in some way. We're not the biggest part of it, but we're definitely not helping stop it.

Alex Ward covers the military and co-hosts the Worldly podcast here at Fox. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. Thank you. A big thank you to Quip Electric Toothbrushes for supporting the show this week and so many weeks before. You can find out more about the Quip Electric Toothbrush at getquip.com slash explain. The first brush you get comes with free refills, and after that, it's $5 every three months. Sarah Cliff, you host the Impact podcast. What day does the Impact release new episodes?

Friday, as in today. Today we have a fantastic new episode from one of our producers, Jillian Weinberger, who went out to Oakland, where they are one of the rare places in the United States that gives undocumented workers free representation in court. I think probably most people have heard, you know, if you're in trouble with the law, you end up in court, you're guaranteed, you know, the right to a lawyer. We hear that all the time in the movies. That is not true for someone in immigration proceedings, even though they're facing deportation often to some very dangerous

places. So Jillian really gets into how the Justice Department is running this kind of parallel court system that plays by totally different rules. But she went out to Oakland, which is trying to push back against those rules and give folks who are facing deportation representation. And one of the things you see there is that folks who have a lawyer in immigration court, they're actually five times less likely to get deported. So it makes a huge difference. That's in the feed now, the impact, wherever you get your podcasts. How many more episodes can people who are subscribing expect?

Five more excellent weeks of exciting policy experiments. Something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season. Nice.