07/10/15 – Matthieu Aikins – The Scott Horton Show

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I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, the Scott Horton Show.
All right.
Our next guest on the show today is Matthew Akins, writing for Rolling Stone magazine.
This is called Watch a Dispatch from the Scene of Saudi Arabia's Alleged War Crimes in Yemen, a road trip to the border where the Saudi-led coalition is bombing civilian areas.
Welcome back to the show, Matthew.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thanks for having me.
Good.
Good.
Very happy to talk to you again.
Pretty scary stuff here.
Tell me, how long were you in Yemen?
We were there for about eight days.
All right.
And was that the first time you've been there since the war started?
Yeah.
There really hasn't been much press coverage because the Saudis have been blockading the country by air, land, and sea.
And one of the things they're doing is not allowing foreign journalists to go in on the few aid and humanitarian flights that enter the country.
So we basically had to smuggle ourselves in in a small boat.
Oh, yeah?
Wow.
OK.
And then so you're there for eight days.
And now it says here, I think, if I read it right, that you guys were up there in the north near the in the territory adjacent to Saudi Arabia, which is being highly targeted by the Saudis right now.
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's right.
In May, the Saudis declared that the entire province, which is home to about a million people, would be a military target and that everyone there had until 7 p.m. that evening to leave.
And since then, they've been really heavily bombing it, sort of reminiscent of the free fire zones that the U.S. had in Vietnam.
So they've been accused of violating international humanitarian law, basically committing war crimes as a result, can't indiscriminately target civilians or forcibly displace civilians.
But that is what they are doing there.
Wow.
So now.
But then their excuse is you're saying that, hey, we warned you, everybody get out, everybody doesn't want to fight, run.
And then that way they can claim that anybody who stayed behind has deliberately made themselves a target, sort of like the Marines in Fallujah in 2004.
Right.
So that would be, you know, if you took the state of Rhode Island or something like that and declared a military target.
And then so tell us about what you saw there.
Just a complete devastation.
They destroyed the city of Sauda, bombed out markets and government buildings, schools, flattened whole villages, documented quite a few instances where there have been large numbers of casualties of women and children.
And so to Doctors Without Borders team at the hospital there that confirmed all that.
Yeah.
It says here shopping malls, car dealerships, restaurants, gas stations, as it looked like they're just they're they're missing with with targeted strikes or they're just carpet bombing the place.
Or I mean, I guess they don't have heavy bombers to just, you know, carpet bomb with.
Right.
So are they are they firing indiscriminately or what do you think?
They are.
No, they're using U.S. made bombs and cluster bombs, so they're using both guided precision guided bombs and they're also using cluster bombs.
And now I don't know.
I mean, this isn't in your reporting, so I don't know if you have any knowledge of this, but The Wall Street Journal reported back a few weeks ago that I think in essence this is America's war.
It's American spies picking targets and American controllers running the air traffic control.
It's basically it sounds they make it sound like it's an American war, but being fought with Saudi planes.
I think that would be going a bit far, because the thing is that the sense that I get a few people get is that Washington wasn't really on board for this war.
They would have preferred that it didn't happen.
They don't really see what what the strategic value of the conflict is.
And from the U.S. point of view, it's actually been very harmful because the main beneficiary has been al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda took over a large swath of eastern Yemen, including a port city, Makala.
And that's extremely worrying, I think, to the United States, whose main interest in Yemen has always been al-Qaeda.
So you can see some degree of reluctance, but you're right, they have gone along with the campaign.
They've supported Saudi Arabia with refueling flights, providing intelligence for targeting, and of course haven't criticized Saudi Arabia's very heavy hand in the use of air power in the conflict.
But my sense is that if they had their way, they would have preferred the Saudis didn't enter this war.
Well, yeah.
Now, that part sounds right to me.
I didn't mean to kind of I guess I probably did sort of overstate it.
It sounds like, yeah, it's Saudi wants the war, but they can't really have a war unless America is running it for them.
American planes and American battleships taking care of the technical expertise to to help them actually get it done, to get the bombs to the targets, et cetera, et cetera, to pick the targets.
No, sure.
And then we shouldn't forget that all, you know, all the weaponry that Saudi Arabia is using, the pilots, you know, training, that's mostly the U.S., the British are also big suppliers to them.
And of course, not just the Saudis, it's the Gulf states, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and also Egypt.
And, you know, the first two are the Gulf states are heavy purchasers of U.S. and Western military equipment.
And now they're really participating in the war or they're just providing financial and moral support or they they are to some degree a Moroccan fighter jet actually went down over Yemen a couple of months ago.
So they are contributing.
But the bulk of the campaign, the heavy lifting is definitely being done by the Saudis.
And it's definitely them in the driver's seat in terms of what the goals are and targets are.
The Saudis have always considered Yemen the sort of their strategic backyard, a bit like Mexico or the United States, and they see the right to intervene in the country's internal politics.
Yeah.
Well, Mexico's perfect technology there, that's for sure.
All right.
Now, so their stated goal is to bomb Yemen until the whoever, I guess the Houthis or whoever replaces them, except Hadi, the last sock puppet dictator, back into power.
Is that still the the stated goal of all of this?
And does it seem like that has the slightest possibility of actually coming true?
Yeah, I mean, it's almost as if the Saudis, you know, with American weapons inherited a sort of American faith in air power.
Whole thing seems like a kind of Bush era military operation from the name Operation Decisive Storm, which then became, you know, sort of declared mission accomplished in May, I believe.
No, April.
I'm sorry.
April 21st, if I'm not mistaken.
And they said that the mission had been accomplished and we're now switching to Operation Restore Hope, which is basically the same, just different name, but they're still bombing the country to the coalition of the willing that they've assembled.
They have basically, I think, entered this war without a clear understanding of what they would do if air power didn't succeed.
And of course, the Houthi rebels have been fighting.
They fought six wars against the Yemeni government and in the last one, the Saudis as well.
They're a light guerrilla force that are used to being pounded from the air.
And that is an effect of them.
They've actually gained more territory since the start of the conflict.
And then so, now, does anybody in the country support Hadi?
I mean, I know Saleh, as bad as he was, he was in power long enough that he must have, you know, figured out ways to bribe and control and threaten and get loyalty out of somebody.
But this guy, Hadi, was just his chief of staff or something, right?
Can you compare, like, their kind of grassroots amount of power that each of them have?
Because it seems like Saleh is now trying to get himself back in there, right?
Yeah, Hadi was the vice president under Saleh.
So he was not really a very popular figure, but was picked, I think, because he was seen as someone who wouldn't stray too far from the kind of political order that had been brokered.
He wasn't someone who's independently had his own power base.
So I think he's acceptable to the various sort of heavy hitters who are, you know, involved in this power struggle in the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests in 2011 that forced Saleh to resign.
So Hadi was this kind of nobody who managed to do much in terms of reforming the country, just to...
All right.
Well, I'm sorry.
We'll take this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Matthew Akins, writing for Rolling Stone about the Saudi and American war in Yemen.
We'll be right back after this.
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I'm Scott.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Matthew Akins, writing this time for Rolling Stone.
He's got some video here.
I never could get it past my stupid broken flash player, but anyway.
It's a written article, too.
Matthew and his co-reporter here, they ran the blockade in Yemen, traveling from Djibouti by boat across the Gulf of Aden to bring us this story.
When we left off, we'd been covering Saudi bombing of civilian targets and so forth up there, but when we were interrupted by the break, we were talking about Hadi, the former vice president, who the Saudis are trying to put back in power here, and you were explaining that he didn't have much of a constituency, and I guess if I remember right, or if I ever did get around to forming it into the form of a question, it was something about, is it possible that the Saudi war could succeed in putting this guy, Hadi, back in power here?
I think the consensus is that Hadi has been so thoroughly discredited by the fact that he's sitting in exile in the country that's bombing his own country that it's unlikely that he'll ever return to Yemen, let alone to power there.
But that being said, for now, he is, at least in the eyes of Saudi Arabia and the West, the legitimate president of Yemen, and represents the legitimate government of Yemen, so he's a political tool to be played in this campaign that eventually, I hope, will be negotiated in some way.
But in the moment, the power struggle really is on the ground in Yemen, and the way that people are able to take and hold territory will determine what actually happens in terms of political settlement eventually.
All right, now, so just bombing the country until the impossible takes place and this guy becomes the president again, that doesn't seem to make any sense, but then I wonder, is it possible that if they continue bombing the Houthis that they could eventually drive them out of power in the capital and possibly even open up space for al-Qaeda or the new Islamic State affiliates in Yemen to seize power in the capital?
Are the Saudis trying to help al-Qaeda seize power in the capital?
Well, no, first I'm just asking if that's a possible outcome.
I didn't necessarily mean is that what the Saudis are going for, although I guess that could be a secondary question.
I mean, for the moment, al-Qaeda is really limited to the eastern parts of the country, places like Baida, Shabwa, and Hadhramaut, where they've seized control of this port city.
They don't really have broad support among the Yemeni population, and they're not a significant military force as compared to the Houthis, who are actually the most effective fighters against al-Qaeda in Yemen.
ISIS, for that matter, is far, far, far less of a significant force.
They basically have a group of perhaps a couple hundred guys.
It's not exactly clear.
It's just relatively new.
But there's no doubt that if this bombing and the war in general, the civil war, continues, you're going to perhaps see a situation like we have seen in Syria, where groups over time get more and more extremist, and these kind of jihadist groups do rise in prominence.
Now, as to the question of whether Saudi Arabia is deliberately supporting al-Qaeda, that is an accusation that's been raised by the Houthis and by people opposed to them.
Saudi Arabia has plenty of problems of its own with al-Qaeda and with ISIS, so I don't think it's correct to say that they're deliberately trying to promote them.
But what they have done, I think, is use them in some cases, or use, let's say, the forces of religious fundamentalism.
I think that's beyond a doubt.
And they're having a kind of situation right now where they're sort of strange red fellows with al-Qaeda against the Houthis.
And indeed, there are reports of people linked to al-Qaeda, groups linked to al-Qaeda that are fighting side by side with pro-Houthi forces, and certainly a sort of detente that's taking place as Saudis haven't bombed al-Qaeda-controlled areas.
And even have had U.S. drone strikes against Hadi's forces, in some cases.
A bit mysterious, but clearly targeting al-Qaeda targets within the ranks of people fighting the Houthis.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, isn't that something?
I had Mark Perry on the show, Pentagon reporter, who talked about how the military, the U.S. military are pretty upset about all this.
One of the quotes was, John McCain complains that we're flying as Iran's air force in Iraq.
True enough, but we're flying as al-Qaeda's air force in Yemen, and this is just crazy.
Even if it's not direct support for them, Obama saying, excellent, let's help al-Qaeda out, or something like that, they sure are helping create the space for them.
They sure are.
In fact, they seized an armory, and an airport, and a seaport, and all this kind of stuff since the bombing campaign began, right?
Yeah, and of course, there have been a lot of drone strikes against al-Qaeda as well.
They picked up the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Wahishi.
Right in the middle of this thing, right.
Yeah, they are kind of fighting on both sides of it.
In fact, there's a new story this morning that came out that said that the new leader is declaring jihad against the United States to avenge the old leader.
We were joking on Twitter about how ungrateful these guys are, after all we've done for them in the past couple of months here.
But then again, as you've said, the more we, the U.S., and I guess Saudi, and friends, bomb the Houthis, the more powerful they get anyway.
They're not losing.
Yeah, this is a group that's been fighting for the last ten years, and I think they're comfortable with fighting.
They know how to fight.
And of course, I think in many ways bombing them is the best thing that Saudi Arabia could have done for them, because it's taken everyone's focus off the Houthis' own failings, which are many, and have given this kind of credibility as the only people standing up to it outside aggression.
Right.
Now, can you please tell us about the humanitarian crisis there, other than the people who are being cluster bombed to death, which is obviously the very worst part of it.
My understanding is that Yemen imports 90 percent of their food, and that they've been under complete blockade for now months, and that huge numbers of people, if they're not dropping dead already, they're all about to, or something like that.
Can you fill us in?
Yeah, well, Yemen is a country that was already suffering from a serious humanitarian situation before the war.
It's the poorest country in the Middle East, very high levels of malnutrition, problems with access to clean drinking water, poverty, right?
So, for a country that's already in an extremely vulnerable position, that is reliant on imports for so much of its food and gasoline and other vital necessities, to be blockaded, and not just the blockade, but the general situation in terms of fighting, which really prevents people from moving, and supplies from moving, and humanitarian agencies from doing their work on the ground, that has tipped the country over into a very serious humanitarian emergency.
The UN has declared it to be the highest level of emergency, which is only three other places, Syria, Iraq, and Sudan.
The UN is warning about impending famine, you're already seeing tons of preventable deaths, especially among children, as a result of disease, there's outbreaks of measles, and dengue fever, so the country is already in the grips of a major crisis, and largely this is due to the blockade.
And so, that's what the UN and other humanitarian actors are desperately calling for, is an end to this blockade.
Yeah, as you're saying too, because of all the fighting, just the normal distribution channels are messed up, so the local market isn't open, if anybody has any money to spend there, that kind of thing, where even there is food, it's much harder for people to trade it with each other, that kind of deal always happens during these wars.
And now, when you talk about the UN pushing for a ceasefire, there's this report from yesterday, where the UN says that different factions in Yemen have agreed to a week-long humanitarian ceasefire, scheduled to begin today, but then we've had a couple of those supposed ceasefires that never really took in the past, right?
There was one humanitarian ceasefire that took place, I believe, in May, and it lasted five days, was violated by both sides, and yeah, it didn't really change the situation on the ground, fundamentally, in terms of alleviating the humanitarian crisis.
And then, so, I mean, I guess it's not the Americans, is anybody pushing for a real end to this thing?
For real negotiations to take place that could, you know, is there any kind of end in sight here at all?
Well, I would say that, you know, this prognosis is pretty dire, unless the US can, you know, the US is really the one that can apply pressure on Saudi Arabia to come to the negotiating table, and they haven't done so far.
All right, well, thank you so much for coming back on the show, Matthew.
Good to talk to you.
Okay, my pleasure.
Take care, Scott.
All right, so that's Matthew Akins, writing at Rolling Stone.
Watch a dispatch from the scene of Saudi Arabia's alleged war crimes in Yemen.
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