05/19/15 – Conn Hallinan – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Live here, noon to two, Eastern Time, 11 to 1 Texas time on the Liberty Radio Network.
First guest today is Colin Hallinan.
He's got this piece at Foreign Policy in Focus and it's also at antiwar.com.
It's called Yemen's War is Redrawing the Middle East's Fault Lines.
A very interesting story here.
And by the way, his blog is dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com.
And again, he writes for Foreign Policy in Focus.
Welcome back to the show.
Colin, how are you doing?
I'm doing fine, Scott.
How about you?
I'm doing really good.
Appreciate you joining us on the show today.
Sure.
All right.
So it says here, Saudi Arabia's ongoing war in Yemen does more to highlight the kingdom's isolation than its power.
How so?
Well, what's happened is that when Saudi Arabia had this, you know, they have this new king and actually an enormous sort of shake up in the succession for the kingdom in Saudi Arabia, the designated person who would have taken over after the current king has been demoted and the king put his own kid into place and kind of shook up the whole establishment and then launched this war in Yemen.
So when it started out, the Saudis just assumed that they were going to get full support from what you think of as the major power centers in the Islamic world, Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey.
But what's happened is, is that Pakistan decidedly backed away.
They don't want anything to do with the war in Yemen.
And they're getting pressured now to maybe join the air war.
But they made it quite clear that they're not going to send any troops or anything like that.
And there was a debate on it in the Pakistani Congress and ended up there wasn't a single vote in favor of Saudi Arabia's request for military help.
The Egyptians have been pretty much the same way.
They have been supportive of the war, but they're not going to send any troops.
The Saudis don't have any troops and not certainly ones capable of fighting the Yemenis.
And even Turkey, which is, again, supportive publicly of Saudi Arabia, has very much, you know, said, well, we'll support you.
We're firmly behind you.
But nobody is out front.
And so what's happened is, is that there's this kind of breakdown of what you think of as the traditional alliances in the Middle East, because Saudi Arabia has been basically bankrolling Egypt, bankrolled Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, has been a major source of support for Turkey as well.
And yet all of these countries sort of backed away from the Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.
And it's a reflection of a lot of things that are going on, not just in the Middle East.
I mean, partly Pakistan is kind of backing away from Saudi Arabia a little bit because it's getting much closer to China.
China has agreed to spend $46 billion building up the Pakistani infrastructure.
And that means that Pakistan is looking more to China than they're looking to Saudi Arabia.
China's not happy with Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia, the standard religion of Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabi section of Islam, helps fuel some of the resistance groups to the Chinese in Western China, and some of the anti-government elements in Pakistan as well.
So it's sort of interesting.
I mean, here you have this small war, because Yemen is not a very big country.
And the Saudis sort of launched this air war.
And then you start seeing all of these kind of traditional alliances and traditional ties and everything beginning to strain and kind of reconfigure themselves a little bit.
And I think it's going to continue.
And I think in the future, you're going to see a very different kind of coalition around Syria as well.
So it's interesting that this, you know, what is really relatively of a small war has sent pretty powerful reverberations throughout the region and even to a certain extent throughout the world.
And so, I mean, it sounds like you're saying a big part of this is just because the Saudis, the new guy, didn't really think this through, I guess, what was going to happen, right?
Well, he announced that Pakistan was part of the coalition without asking the Pakistanis.
But it's really not a really good idea.
The other side of it is, is that the militaries in Turkey and Egypt and Pakistan, and particularly Pakistan, which is which has a really quite experienced military because it's fought several wars with India and is fighting an ongoing war in in North Waziristan and South Waziristan.
They saw what the Saudis were doing, and the Saudis essentially said, what we're going to do is we're going to use air power to force the the Houthis, which is the major insurgent group in Yemen, to give up their weapons, accept the the the old president of Yemen that they overthrew back into power and essentially surrender.
Well, any military worth its salt knows that there's no such thing as an air war that can get anybody to do anything unless it's accompanied with with ground forces.
And the Saudis don't have any ground forces, certainly not ones capable of fighting the Houthis.
The Pakistanis aren't going to give them up.
They've got they've got their hands tied up in North Waziristan.
And and they've also concerned about India.
Egypt doesn't have a big army, but they're right now concentrating on the insurgency in Sinai and the Turks are concentrating on Syria.
So they looked at what the Saudi plan was and they said, this is not doable.
We don't want anything to do with this.
This looks like an endless quagmire and, you know, we're not going to go along with it.
So it's very interesting because the new Saudi leadership has really set, you know, they've kind of put their reputation on the line in Yemen.
And that's not a war that you can win.
I mean, there are a couple of countries in the Middle East in sort of in the world that that it's a very good idea not to try and invade.
One of them is Afghanistan, one of them is Iraq, and one of them is Yemen.
And for pretty much the same reason, because in all three of those countries, there's no one center of power that can dominate for any period of time.
So if you go in and you favor one side over the other, in the long run, that's going to fail.
There has to be internal political compromise and sort of coalition style government in all three of those countries.
And, you know, you take a look at the the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan or the Russian invasion of Afghanistan or the Greek invasion of Afghanistan, no matter how you go back, they were all largely failures for that reason.
There just is no center in those countries.
And in the case of the Houthis, who are in Yemen, who have ties to Iran because the Houthis are also Shiite, kind of Shiites, variety of Shiites, which the Iranians are.
If you if you take a look at the Houthis, even though they're a minority, they're like a third of the country.
I mean, the country has like 24 million people, 24, between 24 and 25 million people is about eight million Houthis.
So the Houthis can't conquer the country, can't dominate the country.
But on the other hand, you can't fight one third of the population and hope to suppress it, particularly when they're extremely well-armed and probably the best trained military force in the Arabian Peninsula.
All right.
Well, hold it right there.
The drums mean we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Con Hallinan.
I got a bunch more questions about the war in Yemen.
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Welcome back.
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All right.
Anyway, talking with Con Hallinan.
And he's got this piece.
We're running it at AntiWar.com.
It's from Foreign Policy and Focus, originally here.
Yemen's war is redrawing the Middle East's fault lines by Con Hallinan.
And now, so pardon me for being so cynical and conspiratorial, Con, but don't the Saudis and the Turks, in fact, have ground forces in Yemen?
And aren't they called al-Qaeda, just like they're called al-Nusra in Syria?
Well, certainly, you know, it's very interesting because in theory, of course, the Saudis and the Turks are both opposed to al-Qaeda because al-Qaeda considers the Saudi regime and the Turkish regime essentially to be the enemy.
I mean, they're not really serious followers of Islam, et cetera.
But of course, the Turks and the Saudis are supporting the al-Qaeda people in the Syrian civil war.
They're opposing those groups in Iraq.
And as far as Yemen goes, I don't think you have to be cynical here.
Attacking the Houthis is giving aid and comfort to al-Qaeda because the Houthis are the major military force that opposes al-Qaeda in Yemen.
And the group is called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The major military challenge to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Peninsula are the Houthis.
So here you have the Turks and the Saudis supporting al-Qaeda in Syria, sort of splitting in the case of Iraq, which is not really doing very much, and then opposing al-Qaeda in Yemen, but attacking al-Qaeda's major, you know, sort of major nemesis.
So I don't know if you want to use the term cynical, but it's very bad-ass, something like that.
Yeah.
No, it's a problematic problem.
I'll tell you, you know, they were saying that in Mark Perry's article, the generals were saying, well, geez, we're, you know, McCain complains we're flying as Iran's air force in Iraq.
Here we're flying as al-Qaeda's air force.
And and they've got something to show for it.
Right.
They've taken an airport and an oil refinery.
They've done a massive prison break, supposedly.
They took one of these port towns anyway, not Aden, but.
No, but they took one.
They took another major port town.
You're absolutely right.
It's not just kind of theoretically like, yeah, no, really, they're making major gains.
And who the hell is going to drive the Houthis out of Sana'a anyway?
That's it's either impossible or it'll be al-Qaeda with American and Saudi flying as their air force.
And even then, you know, it it would be a fool's errand.
The Houthis have fought.
I think this is their fourth war in the past two decades with the central government and the the area that the Houthis are are sort of native to is is northern Yemen and particularly sort of northwest Yemen.
And if you look on a map, northwest Yemen is mostly mountains and the Houthis are are mountain people.
The the last time somebody really tried to take on the Houthis in their own territory was back in the 60s when the Egyptians sent 70,000 troops into the area.
They ended up with 10,000 casualties and getting defeated.
I mean, this is this is really not a place you want to fight a war.
And but it shows how completely crazy things are at this point.
Now, the I will say this.
The Obama administration is supporting the Saudi attacks on the Houthis, they are supplying intelligence, they are engaging in in in air refueling.
They have supplied the Saudis with ammunition, resupplying ammunition, parts for airplanes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
At the same time, the Obama administration is convinced that what the Saudis doing is crazy and and not sustainable.
And and they can't they sort of can't win this war.
It's also creating an incredible humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
Yemen imports about two thirds of its food.
I mean, basically all of its wheat and rice is imported into Yemen.
The Saudis have a blockade, both air and sea.
And so none of that is none of those supplies are getting in, let alone medicine, et cetera.
So you have this incredible humanitarian crisis, which is also coupled with a widespread shortage of water in Yemen as a whole, particularly in in North Yemen.
So here you have the administration is backing the Saudis and you have this incredibly disastrous humanitarian crisis developing.
I mean, people are worried.
I saw today, yesterday that the Europeans decided they were going to kind of send their navies out to stop all these immigrants coming into Europe.
Well, most of the immigrants are the result of of Western policy in Libya, in Yemen, in Somalia, et cetera, in Central Africa, Mali, et cetera.
And then you get these big waves of immigrants.
You say, where are these immigrants coming from?
Well, you smash up their countries.
Guess what?
People are going to leave and they're going to go someplace.
Right.
And now so part of this, too.
And I don't want to get too far into the weeds, but I think it's kind of important that right now we're fighting to reinstall a guy that is the new sock puppet that replaced the last sock puppet, who is now the leader or at least allied with the Houthis who have now taken over.
Well, the guy who's the president, the guy you're talking about is Salih.
He was the former president for 21 years or something like that or more.
And he's now allied with the Houthis, even though three of those wars that the Houthis fought were against him.
So, you know, when he is the guy who's the current president, was elected in an election in which there was no opposition.
And what happened was that when Salih was was forced out, there was an organization that was really very broad based in Yemen.
It included Houthis, it included the separatists, some of the separatists in the in the south and a kind of wide variety of people.
And they formed a Congress.
And the idea what they were going to do is that they were going to set up and establish an interim government until they could have a constitution.
Well, what happened was that Saudis and the Americans sabotaged the operation and took this guy who was the vice president, a former major general.
Essentially made him president, then set up an election in which he was the only candidate.
So the idea that the Houthis have overthrown the elected government of Yemen.
Well, only if you consider the fact that the guy was in there because the Saudis and the Americans manipulated him into the into the position.
Yeah, it's really, I think, important for people to understand that in the context of the 2011 breakout of the Arab Spring, which was, of course, anti every American backed sock puppet dictator in the region.
And so Saudi and America quickly reacted.
They they hijacked and co-opted the one in Libya and the same thing in Syria against expendable Qaddafi and an enemy, supposedly Assad.
But then in the rest of the region, they immediately did everything they could to wage a counter revolution and make sure that it would go nowhere.
And, you know, undid the results in of the elections in Egypt, clamped down in Bahrain.
And then they did this maneuver that you just described in Yemen.
If the people rise up together and say, we want to end of this dictatorship, well, we'll give you the next dictator then.
What they wish they had been able to do in Egypt the first time.
Absolutely.
And, you know, the Saudis, what the Saudis have been doing is that they have been fine and they are terrified by the idea of this of the Arab Spring because, you know, they're a monarchy.
They basically finance the military coup against the the Morsi, the Islamic Brotherhood government in Egypt.
They financed the coup and then they have been pouring money into to to Egypt to continue to, you know, make certain that the military dictatorship continues.
The U.S. initially cut arms and to Egypt.
Now, they, of course, reinstated everything.
So really, I guess the last standing, you know, effect of the Arab Spring is Tunisia.
And and that has a democratically elected government.
And and that's where it began.
But beside the between the Americans and the Saudis and the militaries in in in Egypt, what you've had was that you just that the the Arab Spring was smothered.
Do I think it's going to stay smothered forever?
No, because, you know, you have a very unstable situation even in Saudi Arabia.
You know, 70 percent of the Saudi population is under 30 years of age and they don't have jobs for them.
They buy off people by by giving them, you know, minimum, you know, living expenses and a lot of stuff is free and everything like that.
But, you know, oil is going down.
Oil supplies are are are draining out 20, 30 years from now.
The Saudis are not going to have that kind of money.
So I think what you're seeing is is that for the time being, the Arab Spring has been smothered in the long run.
I don't think that that's going to be the case because the conditions that led to it, inequality, poverty, unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, all of that stuff is it hasn't gone away.
In fact, it's gotten worse.
So, you know, it's out there.
And and I think one of the even though Egypt, the military has taken over Egypt, I don't think people are going to forget that at one point, millions and millions of people poured into the streets in Cairo and Alexandria and, you know, and in Suez, et cetera, and overthrew a dictatorship and established at least a partial democracy.
And I don't think people are going to forget that.
So I tend to be an optimist in the long run.
But right now we have a crisis in Yemen.
You have a humanitarian situation which is just completely out of control.
And, you know, that the U.S. has remained silent in the face of this humanitarian crisis is just shameful, absolutely shameful.
I mean, this is a this is a country that talks about the humanitarian crisis in the Ukraine and talks about humanitarian crisis in Syria and has been absolutely silent on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which is as serious as all of those others, much more so than than it's been in the Ukraine.
All right.
And in fact, now I kept you over time here.
So let me ask you one more question as long as I got you, if you got a sec.
Sure.
Wall Street Journal said that, yeah, America's picking the targets for the Saudis.
And then I thought I knew this, but maybe I was only just assuming that our AWACS and our battleships are command and controlling the entire war there because the Saudis, they may be able to fly jets, but they can't coordinate an entire air war.
That's the Americans doing.
No, I think I think that I think that's true.
I think our AWACS and also our satellites.
We we we've admitted that we're giving them targeting intelligence.
Well, if you're giving them targeting intelligence, targeting intelligence has to be sort of instant.
And that's with AWACS.
And it's with you know, we have the fifth fleet in in that region.
It's based in Bahrain.
So in other words, America is running this war.
So America is a big part of it.
Absolutely.
A big part of it.
Even though at the same time, the administration is obvious, it's quite clear that they're not comfortable with what's what's going on because they don't think an air war can do the job and it can't.
I mean, look at what happened in Iraq.
They lost Ramadi.
Why did they lose Ramadi?
Because they said you can only use Iraqi army.
You can't use the Shia militia and we'll do it with air power.
Well, Ramadi fell because the sandstorm grounded the air power.
Air power does nothing unless it has coordinated forces on the ground.
So, you know, all you're going to do is you're going to kill a lot of Yemenis and you're going to be and you're creating this incredible humanitarian crisis.
And those people are going to leave Yemen and they're going to come someplace.
And where they're going to go is Italy and France and Germany and Greece and Spain, you know, wherever they can make a living.
Yeah, a chance at a better life because we made their lives so miserable where that's right.
All right.
I'm sorry.
We got to go.
But thanks so much.
Come back on the show.
Any time Scott.
Thank you.
All right.
So that's Con Hallinan.
He's at Foreign Policy and Focus.
And we reprint pretty much all their stuff at well.
No, I don't know.
But a lot of their stuff at antiwar dot com and including this one at original antiwar dot com slash Hallinan.
It's Yemen's war is redrawing the Middle East's fault lines.
We'll be right back with Gareth in just a sec.
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