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All right.
Introducing Iona Craig, again, writing for the Intercept and again, writing about war crimes in Yemen.
This one is called Villagers Say Yemeni Child Was Shot As He Tried To Flee Navy SEAL Raid.
Welcome back to the show, Iona.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
Thanks very much for having me.
Very happy to have you here.
Another sad story.
Another successful raid, as they call it.
A catastrophic success, as George W. Bush might say.
In Yemen, supposedly, Al-Qaeda members killed and five civilians as well.
Yes.
And another five injured, from what the people in the village told me, yeah.
And so can you tell us where exactly in Yemen is this?
I presume in the south somewhere, this small village?
No, it's actually sort of to the east of Sana'a.
So if anything, it's sort of northeast, really, in a province called Marib.
It was actually only about 40 miles away from where I went to the raid in Al-Baidah, which happened on the 29th of January.
And I visited that site about 11 days afterwards.
This raid wasn't that far away from the first one.
And Marib is actually really the heart of the Saudi-led coalition, who are on one side in the civil war, where their troops are really based, and it's very close to the front lines of the fighting in Yemen's civil war as well.
OK.
And then, so can you go ahead and tell us your best understanding as to what happened here?
Well, it was a very similar situation to the last time they chose a near-moonless night again just before the holy month of Ramadan started.
This time, they chose to come in on higher ground, whereas last time, they'd had the disadvantage of the Navy SEALs when they came in on low ground.
So they took the high ground outside the village first, and that's when the people inside the village first became aware that there were U.S. soldiers on the ground is when they heard then the firefight ensuing.
And as that happened, and they were engaging with local tribesmen and what did appear to be some al-Qaeda militants, people in the village then obviously woke up.
It was about 1.30 a.m. in the morning.
And then, as last time, Apache helicopters came in and started strafing the homes in the villages.
And again, like last time, because people became afraid when these projectiles started firing into the roofs of their houses where they were sleeping, the women and children started to run out to try and escape that gunfire.
And as they did, those Apache gunships opened fire on them.
And this is how one of those civilians was killed, at least, the 15-year-old boy that you mentioned at the beginning.
And he was gunned down as he was running with women and children away from that Apache helicopter gunship fire.
And the locals that spoke to me estimated there were between 40 to 60 soldiers, U.S.
Navy SEALs involved, and eight to nine attack helicopters and other aircraft that were involved in both bombing the village and with a helicopter gunship fire as well.
I wonder, I mean, what difference does it make, as Hillary Clinton would say, but I wonder if, you know, they just, their information, their so-called intelligence, had it that every house in this village supposedly was al-Qaeda, guys?
I mean, you said you got, they killed seven people in one house who, apparently, that's not in dispute that those guys were AQAP fighters of whatever description.
But then, was this, I mean, I guess there's really no way to know, right?
But they thought they were attacking a bunch of other al-Qaeda, too?
Or they thought this was collective punishment on the civilian population of this village that that's what you get for tolerating the presence of these al-Qaeda guys?
That's kind of what it sounds like to me.
Exactly.
It's not clear whether everybody, therefore, in the vicinity is seen as a threat, or perhaps even worse still, that this boy was singled out amongst the women and younger children he was running with because he's considered a military-age male from visibility.
He was not armed, but as he would have been viewed from a distance or perhaps aerial footage as a male, he would be considered a military-age male, and we know going back through the Obama administration that they're able to keep down the numbers of civilian casualties in drone strikes and military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere by counting any military-age male as a combatant.
But as a 15-year-old, he's not even military-age, but perhaps he was considered that from those viewing from afar.
Oh, man.
So, well, I don't know, I guess, have you ever seen, you know, in terms of American policy in Yemen overall over the last couple of years, or maybe, you know, you mentioned there's been at least 80 raids or strikes or so forth in Yemen this year under Donald Trump.
Are there any indications that make you think that maybe there has been a change, that they're deliberately targeting civilians, as Trump promised to do?
That's unclear, but what does appear to be happening is there is certainly less concern or less consideration given to civilian casualties.
We now know, after what happened in the first raid, that Yemen is no longer considered an area of outside hostile activities, which means you have this change from the clear guidelines that were set out by the Obama administration, although not always adhered to, of avoiding near certainty that there will not be civilian casualties in these kind of operations, whereas now the categorization that Yemen falls under is it being areas being inside areas of hostile activity means that those civilian casualties only have to be proportionate.
Yet, of course, it is the American government that makes that decision about what is proportionate or not.
But what we can see from these two raids is that there were 15 al-Qaeda militants killed, but 31 civilians killed.
So you've got double the number of civilians being killed, according to those on the ground than you have al-Qaeda members being killed, which I think by anybody's understanding for ratio wise is is pretty astonishing, really.
And certainly, you know, even the American government's own estimate in Yemen is that there are approximately 4000 al-Qaeda militants, AQAP militants in the country.
Now, if the American government decides that they want to try and kill every single one of those AQAP militants, that means at this current rate they'd have to kill 8000 civilians in the process.
So, yeah, I think it's deeply troubling now what's been happening under the Trump administration, because there seems to be seems to be a complete disregard for civilian life in these kind of operations.
As far as that goes, remember McChrystal's insurgent math for every one you kill, you get 10 more for every two you get 20.
So, yeah, and I think that was quite clear with one of the tribal leaders I spoke to after this raid was he was absolutely exasperated because he'd been trying through tribal mediation to push AQAP out of his tribal area and he'd been trying to negotiate with local tribal leaders in order to do that.
He'd been receiving no support from the government to do that or from the Saudi led coalition to do that.
And what's happened now is the U.S.
Navy SEALs went in there and killed family members of those who were needed to help push AQAP out.
So actually, they've like you exactly as you say, they've created more problems than they've solved because those people now will not only be totally alienated, but they're very much against now any kind of attempt, military or otherwise, to take action because they've lost family members to the to the U.S.
And, you know, a lot of those family members were had been fighting even on the side of the Saudi led coalition that the Americans, of course, supporting.
So they're not only killing civilians, they're shooting people effectively on their own side in this war.
And they're shooting people that are actually needed to push out AQAP and get rid of them from from the tribal areas in Yemen, where a lot of these problems are alleged to sort of take root.
Well, you know, it seems a miracle to me that this war, the latest iteration, I guess, of this war has been going on for two years.
And so far we haven't had any CIA drones shoot down any U.S.
Air Force planes.
But I'd like to see that actually for these guys to go ahead and and tangle it up, since apparently we have special forces and CIA targeting Al Qaeda and we have the U.S.
Air Force flying for Al Qaeda in their war against the Houthis.
So it seems like, you know, at one of these points, just like on the ground in Syria where you have CIA and JSOC forces going to battle against each other, that would happen sooner or later here in Yemen.
Or maybe they finally have a single command authority there.
Sure, I think the issue with that in Yemen particularly is the history of U.S. involvement there and where they get their intelligence from.
And they're working closely with the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, who were also involved in this raid.
They were involved in the previous raid.
And it appears anyway that the intelligence that they're getting is coming from the UAE and quite possibly from their old contacts within Yemen's National Security Bureau, which large parts of it were trained actually by the Americans.
Now, the National Security Bureau was on the opposite side of them in this war.
They're still loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president, who was an ally of the U.S. in the counterterrorism war up until 2014 and early 2015.
And certainly the UAE would also be relying heavily on intelligence coming from that side as well.
So it is quite possible that the intelligence that led to both this raid and the previous one is being fed to them by Saleh loyalists who were, of course, opposed to these very tribes that have been bombed and affected by both of these raids.
And I think that's a big question in all of this and something that I raised in my report this time is it really does beg some serious questions about where the Americans are getting their intelligence from for these kind of operations.
And now it does seem that they seem to be more ready to carry them out.
We hadn't seen these type of operations being used on a regular basis or any kind of basis really under the Obama administration, except for in kidnap situations, really bar one scenario.
So, yes, this is the third U.S.
Navy SEAL now raid in Yemen since the Trump administration took office.
The second one was abandoned at the last minute.
It's not quite clear why.
But yes, there are serious questions about where their intelligence is being gathered from.
Well, and so, you know, I talk with Nasser Arabi from time to time.
I guess I need to catch back up with him again.
But, you know, he's a former New York Times reporter, runs Yemen Now, Yemen Alon dot com and reports out of Sana'a.
And he says that the Saudi forces and the al-Qaeda forces have basically been indistinguishable from each other, that the people on the ground that the Saudis are backing, he calls them al-Qaeda, ISIS, one in the same, only kind of with a hyphen or something, because he says that the well, for example, like the Nusra ISIS split in Syria is far more severe than the split between the two groups in Yemen, where they're much more interchangeable.
But he's saying that, in fact, even some of the leaders, some of the people in the Hadi government, the pseudo Hadi government, the would be Hadi government are actually on the State Department, Treasury Department's terrorist list, that these guys are al-Qaeda financiers and al-Qaeda guys.
That's who we're fighting for there, which I guess I'd like to know everything you think about that.
And then also, if you can go back to the role of the UAE and and whatever splits there are between the Saudis and the UAE and their coalition about what it is exactly that they're trying to achieve and who it is that they're backing, because I guess we've seen them on opposite sides in Libya and on at least somewhat different sides in Syria sometimes.
Yeah, I think just to address the first point, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has always been a tool used by the political powers in Yemen and by the regime and by the political elites.
Now, of course, what's happened in Yemen because of the civil war, that political elite is split.
So you have Saleh on one side and his former most senior commander, a guy called Ali Mohsen al-Akmar on the other.
Al-Akmar is now the vice president, and they both have a long history of using al-Qaeda for their own political gain in the past.
But of course, they were both on the same side in the past.
So now, yes, certainly al-Qaeda militants have been fighting on the side of the Saudi led coalition.
I've seen them myself on the front lines in the fighting, certainly in the south, in Aden and in the central city of Taiz.
But then if you look at the asymmetrical attacks, things like the suicide bombings, assassinations, those have all been happening against the Saudi led coalition and Emirati forces and have been attacking the anti-Houthi side.
And I think this is where you see it playing out.
Therefore, you've got the actual fighters being used by the Saudi coalition side, if you like, the anti-Houthi side, whereas these asymmetrical attacks which are happening and the assassinations particularly appear to indicate that they're being influenced by the Houthi-Saleh side in this war.
So I know that's probably quite difficult for people to get their heads around.
But I think if you look at AQAP rather than as this scary monster that we like to put them up as and rather as a local armed group, like any other tribe, let's say in Yemen, you can find tribes in Yemen and certainly in that area of Marib where the latest raid happened.
You'll find people from the same village and some of those men will go and fight during the day on one side of the front lines with the Houthis and some from the same family will go and fight on the other side and they'll still come back and live together.
And that's a kind of quite a Yemeni quirk, if you like.
But that's the reality.
That's what happens in this war.
And so, yes, I would say both sides have been manipulating AQAP and using them for their own ends.
And certainly there are fighters on the ground who are being both aided and supplied weapons by the Saudi-led coalition side in the conflict.
The Saleh side of using them asymmetrically is much more murky, but there is data, quite clear data leading up to the war that shows that it was Saleh's opponents who were being killed off by the assassinations and asymmetrical attacks that were going on.
To address your second point about the UAE and Saudi split, I think where we've seen that most obviously has been in the south, particularly in Aden, even this week, there has been fighting between the UAE and the Hadi government.
And that, again, is because the UAE is very anti-Islam, which is Yemen's manifestation of the Muslim Brotherhood, if you like, and is closely aligned to the vice president, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who I already mentioned, and is tied to Hadi in the same way.
So the Emiratis really, despite the fact that they are fighting Saleh and the Houthis, would rather see Saleh back in power than let the likes of Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and Isla, i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood, back in power in Sana'a.
So you have now an inter-conflict going on within the Saudi-led coalition side, which pits Hadi and Isla and his vice president, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, against the Emiratis who have now taken on the cause of the southern separatist movement, who are calling for succession from the north.
And you've seen fighting in the south as a result.
There's been fighting this week.
There was fighting when I was there back in February.
And that looks set to continue.
The Saudis are slightly stuck in the middle of all that.
And certainly the separatists, the southern Yemenis, are trying to show that they are still on side with the Saudis as well as the Emiratis in that fight.
But certainly the Saudis have been the main sponsor of the Isla fighters elsewhere in the country and have been sponsoring a lot of the Salafist militias as well, which have now sided with Hadi.
So, of course, now, you know, you're probably aware or some of your listeners may not be that this then feeds into a broader dispute that has broken out in the last week or so between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
And there's a there's a huge fight within the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council community between with Qatar.
And, of course, Qatar has long been a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and parties like Isla.
So all of that regional political instability also feeds into what's happening on the ground in Yemen.
Yeah.
You know, in fact, Qatar was actually who I was thinking of when I was saying we've seen the somewhat splits between them and the Saudis in Libya and in Syria when I said UAE there, because you've had like, for example, I guess Saudi back in Al Nusra while Qatar backs Arar al-Sham, which is the Muslim Brotherhood there, that kind of thing.
Right.
Sure, sure.
I mean, so they're sort of on the same side, but they're rivals on the same side.
Exactly.
And, you know, Qatar has, let's say, slightly better relations or wants to have better relations with Iran because they're more immediately affected given their geographical location.
But also, you know, going back to what you mentioned about the supposed AQAP guys being listed by the US Treasury for aiding and abetting and giving financial aid to al-Qaeda in Yemen, really, even if they are, they're the small fish in the pond.
If the US Treasury really wanted to do something about the financing of al-Qaeda largely and AQAP even in Yemen, then you'd go after the banking systems which you will find in Kuwait and in Qatar and in the UAE.
Those are where the big money is being stored.
And that's where the large amounts of funding is coming from.
And similarly in Saudi Arabia.
But, of course, those guys are all allies given the US presence in Qatar, the US support for the UAE and, of course, Saudi Arabia.
They're not going to go after their financial institutions to stop to stop their banking systems from rolling around tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
So instead, they're going after small fry who are dealing with small, maybe, you know, lightweight weapons handing over to al-Qaeda and relatively small amounts of money on the ground in Yemen.
They're pretty easy to go after.
And and yes, that's what's been happening at the moment.
You've seen relatively unimportant individuals who are being listed by the US Treasury in Yemen who are really only operating at the behest of either the Hadi government or the Saudi led coalition.
Right.
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The USA, which is behind all of this.
And as you say, can put an end to it.
The Treasury Department can flip a switch and turn off any bank in Kuwait.
That's it.
They don't even have to ask.
And you have to do anything.
You can do whatever they want.
They're the U.S.
Treasury Department is the definition of impunity.
Right.
So any of this going on that they could stop and don't.
We know that there's a reason why not.
And in fact, in this case, it's pretty easy.
We see the reason why not.
America's on Al Qaeda's side again.
Even if we are attacking, we have our seals attacking them.
The rest of our policy is to back their coalition against the former U.S. backed dictator and his allies, the Houthis, which brings me to my next question, which is, isn't it the case that more than two years into this thing, they're no closer to taking SANA and they're no closer to kicking the Sala and Houthi coalition out of power.
And this thing is just.
Mass murder without end and without even a hope from the perpetrator's point of view that they could ever actually be successful in achieving the goals that they've outlined as the reason for their policy in the first place.
Yeah, absolutely.
Although you'd kind of hope that then they're never going to attempt to a military solution to pushing the Houthis and Sala out of SANA because that would be absolutely disastrous for the civilian population.
So I think everybody hopes it would never, never come to that, that they would try and see SANA militarily.
But yes, there's certainly no closer to that aim of reinstating Hadi or removing the Houthis anyway, whether it be politically or militarily.
And of course, there's been a lot of talk about a military operation happening on the Red Sea coast against the port of Hodeidah.
But there's been a lot of talk about that happening since probably last fall, and it hasn't happened.
Primarily, it didn't happen because the Emiratis were told by the Obama administration that it was likely to be military suicide and that they weren't going to back them.
And I think now, you know, particularly after Trump's visit to Riyadh, that the Saudis were really hoping that the Americans this time would step up and increase, you know, their military involvement and certainly even involve themselves or commit to helping the Saudi led coalition in further military offenses.
That doesn't appear to have happened and hopefully will not.
There are, you know, there should be some sensible heads in the Obama administration who are advising on that, because, again, that would be an absolute disastrous situation for the civilian population in Yemen.
Yeah, well, unfortunately for us, it was the lunatics in the Obama administration that set this whole thing in motion.
And now we're relying on the lunatics in the Trump administration to keep it reeled in and from going too far, which is much, much worse.
So I don't really know.
Although I guess, as you're saying, this long rumored attack on the port hasn't happened yet.
And that must be because the Americans are saying, hold off, right?
Yeah, that was certainly the case at the end of last year.
And now, you know, it appears the Trump administration isn't willing to offer that military support that the Saudis were clearly holding out for after they saw Trump getting into office.
But, you know, I think Trump on this type of thing is almost impossible to predict.
And as many people are aware, both within lawmakers and the Trump administration, that if that military operation did go ahead, it would push Yemen into a state of famine, which it's already so close to.
But I think, you know, we know that Trump is impossible to predict and we don't you know, nobody really knows if if he's going to wake up next Wednesday morning and and make a decision that could prove catastrophic to to to the situation in Yemen right now.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the whole thing is our first premise of our understanding of the president is that he doesn't understand.
So, you know, if if James Mattis says, look, it's the rise of the Persian empire and everything wrong in Yemen right now is all Iran's fault because they're the force behind the Houthis, Trump doesn't have the wherewithal to go read a couple articles and see if that's really right or not at all.
He's basically just clay in the hands of his advisers when it comes to this kind of thing.
And so, you know, who knows?
And Mattis himself doesn't seem like he seems at least as much of a fool as a liar when you listen to him say things like, well, gee, how come ISIS never attacks Iran?
Well, because there's a whole Shiite Iraq between them.
But meanwhile, the Iranians are in that Shiite Iraq killing ISIS guys all day, every day, as they have for the last three years straight.
And in fact, if you want to go back four years, they were killing them in Syria, too.
So what is he talking about?
And I'm not even sure if he's lying there.
When I read that quote, it seemed to me like he really thought that, you know, he sounded like a complete idiot, but he sounded like he really believed that.
And that's the secretary of defense who is holding Trump in his hands, who clearly is prepared to believe the worst about and not just the worst, but just completely pervertedly wrong takes on what all is happening in the Middle East.
I mean, the one hope that I think that we do have is that Trump has proved that a lot of what he says is just purely rhetoric and particularly given the the speech he made in Riyadh recently, which was very much attacking Iran and and obviously bolstering Saudi Arabia's position in that in that regional rivalry, that a lot of what he says, whether it's about Middle Eastern foreign policy or domestic policy, is rhetoric.
And a lot of it turns out to be empty rhetoric.
And so as much as that's not going to help the diplomatic situation between the US and Iran, I also think that he's probably just as likely to to completely switch and say the absolute reverse given another two months and standing in another city behind another podium.
You know, there is a clear now sort of trajectory of flipping what he's saying to suit to suit the moment.
And so, yeah, we can only hope, certainly in the situation of Yemen, that that is the case and that they don't kind of take the Houthis to be a proxy for Iran, as the Saudis do, although Trump has already pretty much called them out as such, but certainly don't decide to push that militarily.
All right now, so to bring it back to this raid here, the real subject of our discussion, did your sources confirm the story that came from reprieve about the old man, the blind old man?
Yeah, they said he was at least 70 years old, could have been 80.
I mean, in Yemen, people don't hold I.D. cards.
And so once you get over the age of 70, you'll ask a 70 year old man how old they are.
And they kind of don't know once they get beyond a certain age.
Nobody that I spoke to could tell me confirm story about him greeting the seals when they arrived.
And I think that's probably because the people I spoke to were further down in the valley.
And as I mentioned at the beginning, the seals came in on the higher ground to take that higher ground so that they were in a strategically beneficial position.
And that appears to be where he was killed.
So so, yes, certainly that 70 year old was killed.
And yes, as reprieve reported, according to their accounts, he was shot dead because he was partially blind and he went up to greet the seals because he thought they were visitors coming into the village.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think it's important on one hand, it's you know, I hate to be a Stalinist, but the whole thing about the one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic and all of that.
You can on one hand say, yeah, they're, you know, X digit number of people who were on the brink of starvation and this kind of thing.
But I don't know, maybe it helps people imagine the circumstances a little bit better if you put it in this context where a bunch of shock troops arrive and black helicopters and then your grandpa goes out to see what's going on.
Hey, guys, blam.
Or maybe, you know, my dad's old now.
He's a grandpa now.
So think about that.
You know, an old person that you love and care about, that they've made it 70 years through this life and that's how they die, is being murdered by a bunch of foreign invading soldiers and how you would feel about that and how people would react about that and how, you know, they don't ever really talk about the cost benefit analysis here.
Certainly not the cost for the other side.
But that is important.
I mean, even if we weren't talking about the the way that it blows back and causes worse consequences later and drives up recruitment for the other guys and and all that kind of thing.
And just how wrong is it to murder some old grandpa?
And how many of those is it OK to do in the name of, well, protecting from some larger threat?
You know, at some point you've got to ask who we are and what we're doing here.
You know, I think.
And it's also the total lack of acknowledgment by CENTCOM or the U.S.
Defense Department to those civilian casualties.
You know, they put out a statement within hours of this operation having happened.
And they mentioned, of course, the seven Al-Qaeda militants.
But there's absolutely no mention of any civilian casualties.
And then a quite quick denial that there are any credible reports of civilian casualties.
And this happens time and time again.
It happened under the Obama administration.
It happened in the first Navy SEAL raids back on the 29th of January.
It happened when I went down to the same area to cover the wedding strike that happened in Yemen when they killed 12 civilians in a in a wedding convoy under the Obama administration.
And I think what sort of gets me is the automatic deference of the of the domestic American media in not questioning that and is always taking the official version of events of totally credible and as absolute fact and very rarely, if ever, questioning that and and even considering, you know, local reports of civilian casualties.
And I think, you know, even though this has happened time and time again, there seems to be an automatic acceptance by the American press of the official version of events.
And for me, it's quite clear that everybody should be extremely skeptical of anything that they're told by the government, particularly when it's happening tens of thousands of miles away.
You only have to look at what happens in shooting incidents by the U.S. police force, for example, back home to know that the official version of events very rarely resembles actually what happens.
So when that's happening many, many thousands of miles away, when they can almost guarantee that there will be nobody going in there to find out what really went on, that they can spin this as they like.
And unfortunately, the press just appears to lap it up.
Yeah.
Well, got to sell dish soap somehow, you know.
Well, I don't know.
I'm sorry to be so flip about that.
That really is the bottom line, though, right, is war is good for ratings on cable TV and beyond that they don't care.
So, you know, it's not like they're going to cut off all their great administration and military sources by reporting critically on the one time and lose them as, you know, bases of advertising dollars from now on.
They just won't do it.
Simple as that.
They don't even need any further control than that.
What are you going to do?
Alienate your sources?
No.
OK.
Well, I got barred from the U.S.
Embassy in Sonata, allegedly being an anti-American activist rather than a journalist, so I couldn't really give two hoots about some opinion of me.
I see you've got your incentive structure set up right.
I don't have to do access journalism.
I'm not relying on these people to give me stories.
That's that's not the kind of work that I do, thankfully.
So.
So, yeah, that's the joy of access journalism.
And no, I get to say thanks and working relationships.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
No, thankfully, that's my line.
Thankfully, you don't do that kind of work.
You do this stuff instead.
Thank you very much for coming on my show to talk with me about it again.
Not a problem, always a pleasure, Scott.
All right, you guys, that is Iona Craig.
She's writing at The Intercept.
Villagers say Yemeni child was shot as he tried to flee Navy SEAL Ray, just like the mother last time shot with the baby in her arms in the back as she's running away.
Scott Horton, dot org, Libertarian Institute, dot org, slash Scott Horton Show and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks, you guys.
So you're a libertarian and you don't believe the propaganda about government awesomeness you were subjected to in fourth grade.
You want real history and economics.
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