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Okay, you guys.
Introducing Jamie McGoldrick.
He is the United Nations Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator, and the UN Development Program Resident Representative for the Republic of Yemen.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm fine.
How are you yourself?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us on the show today to talk about the situation in Yemen and the humanitarian crisis.
Ever since the beginning of the war, almost three years ago now, the word from the international aid organizations was, hey, this is the poorest country in the Middle East.
They're already dependent on, it was said, 80 to 90 percent of their food comes from imports.
And that this war is going to be devastating and is going to push this country into famine almost immediately, etc.
Now it's been three years and the official death toll is, I don't know what, but less than 25,000 or something.
And so I just wonder if, and of course, we know that there's outbreaks of cholera and now diphtheria and all these things.
And I was just wondering if you could help sort of square these circles and explain what is the extent of the humanitarian suffering, the civilian suffering in the state of Yemen under this war?
Well, as you say, we're past 1,000 days of this war, which is almost three years.
And every day it gets all the more problematic and difficult for the average citizen in the country.
As you mentioned, the poorest country in the Middle East, before the war started, since then there's been this very terrible, catastrophic war that's gone on with no victory, military victory on any side.
Military victory on any side.
And in between all of that, you've got the general civilian population just basically suffering on many fronts, the conflict itself, the direct impact on populations, deaths and injuries.
I think the civilian targeting has been pretty dramatic.
Civilian infrastructure have not been spared in this crisis, despite the warnings we've made and the sort of the pleas we've made to the parties to respect, under international humanitarian law, civilian infrastructure.
I think also economic collapse, because the war has brought the economy to a complete standstill.
The currency has gone from 250 real to the dollar to 430 real to the dollar in the space of the last nine months.
In that time also, the banking system has gone downwards and shredded, in fact.
And so people are struggling on a day-by-day basis to survive.
People's purchasing power has disappeared.
The prices have gone through the roof.
Inflation, supplies, the impact of the blockade, the impact on millions of people with no jobs.
Then you have the health systems and the water systems, which have collapsed.
And what that means is you have outbreaks of diseases.
And the most recent one is diphtheria, which is a direct result of a collapsing health system.
And the country hasn't seen diphtheria since 1982.
And at the same time, we've had the largest cholera outbreak worldwide.
Over one million people have been affected and some 2,300 people have died.
So that's the shape of things as they are.
And so people are living as Yemenis in a very tough environment.
And the tragedy is there's no hope and there's no horizon for them to look forward to.
Political discussions are a stalemate.
The parties are dug in and status quo stuff is actually a good position for too many of them.
And we have to try and break this cycle.
OK, so it's 2,300 have died of cholera so far.
The numbers there, you say, huh?
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, basically what's happened is, I mean, with the war, water systems have been smashed or not maintained or blown up because of bombing, shelling and airstrikes.
The supply of water is something that people obviously need for a day to day basis.
It's one of the most water starved countries in the world anyway.
And if you interfere with the supply of potable clean water to people, then with no health infrastructure available and over 50 percent of all health institutions not functioning, then what you have is a situation where people are very able to get very susceptible to diseases like cholera.
And because of the systems not being in place, our ability and the system's ability to slow down the spread is a hallmark of collapse.
And now we have diphtheria, which has taken some 400 people already being killed.
That's an indication of further collapse.
And I think we're going to see more and more of that as we struggle to keep mainstream health systems going.
Only 50 percent of all system health units, health clinics are working.
And the ones that are working are working to very, very poor standard.
And it sounds strange.
I mean, I'm no doctor.
I don't know anything.
It sounds strange to hear one million people have cholera and 2300 have died of it.
Is it possible those numbers are inflated or something?
No, I mean, because the lab systems are not in place everywhere in the country, anybody who has acute watery diarrhea, which is a high level stage, you would then treat it as cholera.
So anybody who comes in with those conditions are treated as cholera.
So that's why the numbers are extremely, extremely big, because it's spread very, very fast at a place where water was in poor supply, in short supply.
People couldn't afford to get water trucked to them, clean water trucked to them.
We have difficulty having getting fuel into the country.
There's been a blockade for a while.
It's now been lifted partially.
That fuel price makes it very expensive.
We have to pump water and then we have to deliver water by trucking.
All of it requires fuel.
We need fuel for the hospital systems to keep going as well.
So all of these have exacerbated the situation at a time of economic collapse, at a time of poverty, at a time of conflict.
And these are the perfect storm of conditions.
Put on top of that the maintenance, put on top of that the lack of water and sanitation, the sewage systems don't work, the garbage is not collected, and then you have some rainy seasons that kick in.
And all of that turns this into the perfect situation, the perfect cocktail for this disaster.
Yeah, oh man.
And yeah, and now part of that, I think you mentioned there was they moved the central bank.
Did you say that?
They moved the central bank from Sana'a down to Aden and that meant all the civil servants stopped being paid and so all the garbage stopped being collected.
And whatever waterworks hadn't been bombed, there was nobody to even run what was left.
Yeah, I mean the moving the central bank took place last year and that was done by the government of Yemen who moved it to their temporary capital in Aden in the south.
And as you mentioned what that happened is as a result of that 1.25 million people did not receive their salaries on a regular basis or at all.
And with that you have family members, so that would affect some 7 million people straight away.
And they haven't been paid regularly or at all for over one year.
And that has a massive impact on people's ability to survive.
And all of the conditions of poverty, all the conditions of the conflict, all the conditions of just collapsing systems, not having the money to maintain and feed your family is one of the reasons why the toll of cholera, the toll of malnutrition have been so high in this country.
Yeah, and now so and how are things in the south?
Because I guess the Houthis have attacked the south from time to time, although mostly I guess they're just holding their ground from Sana'a and then the land north of there if I understand it, the battlefield layout, right?
But so what about in al-Qaeda territory and what about in the territory of the so-called government, the Aden and the Saudi and UAE backed forces there?
Yeah, I mean the country, the lines of the country haven't changed much the last three years.
As I mentioned earlier, there's been no military gains or military victory of any great note in the last months.
And because of that, you have these lines and you have forces occupying it.
The government of Yemen have set up in the temporary capital and the Aden in the south.
But there are some parts in Aden, some parts in the southern governorates which are facing the same challenges, like for example, cholera is as widespread in the south as in the north.
These diseases don't know any boundaries.
They don't respect lines of battlefield or control.
And the same for the nutrition levels, nutrition status, the same for the health systems and the salaries.
All of it affects the whole country, regardless of who's in charge.
So it's a nationwide, despite the country being broken into different areas at the moment, some of the same impacts are having a nationwide footprint, shall we say.
All right now, so about that number 10,000 that hung around so long, I mean, I guess those were those who had been directly counted by, I'm not sure who, who had been killed in actual airstrikes or in fighting on the battlefield.
And then we have this whole other category, right, of what they call the excess deaths and the increased death rate of civilians.
And that's something.
So it's, I guess, two real questions there, which is, what do you think is your best estimate of how many people have actually died from the fighting?
And then, you know, Scott Paul from Oxfam was on the show and was saying, you know, people are dying from the common cold and dying from the flu and dying from the kinds of things that they would never die from if they weren't already suffering from such malnutrition and such desperation and cut off from access to hospitals and this kind of thing.
So these are the kinds of numbers that we're not going to really find out till later.
I mean, you're right.
You're right.
I mean, I think what you've got is a category of people who die silent deaths.
You know, 50 percent of all the health facilities don't function.
And that's normally where people go for treatment.
And that's where normally death certificates are filled out.
That's not happening anymore.
Half of the facilities that are out there.
So there's a number of people who die back in the villages who can't afford the money to take themselves to a hospital or can't afford the treatment.
And therefore, they die maybe of something that people say is a respiratory infection or a chest infection or a cold.
But underlying all of it is the nutritional status.
And for three years of people suffering poverty, deprivation, conflict and the inability of having a proper nutritional diet for them and for their families is the reason why people are very fragile and they're not resilient enough to fight back against the common cold and these small illnesses that shouldn't kill people and the preventable diseases that are out there.
And that's one category of people.
So you'll never know that number.
We'll never have any clue of how that looks.
There are estimates out there by UNICEF saying one child dies every 10 minutes in that category of people.
And if you've got adults on top of that as well.
So you're talking about thousands and thousands of people as an indirect consequence of the war and the system's failure.
And then you have people who actually died as a result of the war.
And because the facilities are not open, because we don't have those networks on the ground who are recording the incidents of fatalities and injuries, we don't have a full picture anywhere in this country.
So these are all estimates.
The last time a figure was put out there, it was 10,000, was over a year ago.
And there's been a lot that's happened since then, both on the silent deaths, preventable deaths, and on the conflict-related deaths as well.
So it's an impossible category of population for us to do it.
And until there's a census again in the future and people can record who died during the war and what did they die of, we'll have no real term, no real understanding of the extent and magnitude.
But what we do know is that things have gotten so bad for so many people in the country.
With 7 million people at the point of starvation, you cannot help but think that thousands are dying unnecessarily of preventable diseases as well as the conflict.
And we're not in a position to say this is a categorical correct figure.
Yeah.
And now, and I'm sorry, because I asked such a clumsy question there.
But do you have some kind of ballpark of how many people have actually been killed in violence in the war?
Because it can't be 10,000, which we've been hearing for years in a row.
No, no.
No, it's not.
But no one has done a calculation on it.
I mean, you have World Health Organization who do take statistics from health units and health facilities, but only 50% work.
And they have something like around 9,000.
And then you have human rights organizations nationally who say over 13,000.
And then you have some other organizations, networks, who say up to 25,000.
So I would say right now it's impossible to come up with a figure you could say that's around the ballpark figure we're looking for, because we have no way of having the reach or having the understanding or having the ability to go village by village to hear the stories of family members have died because of this war, during this war, and as a direct consequence of this war.
All right.
Hang on just one second.
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All right.
Now, so I want to just mention real quick this article by the great journalist Matthew Akins, who has done great work on Afghanistan as well as Yemen.
And he wrote this thing, Yemen's Hidden War, where he snuck into the country, took a boat from Djibouti, and got in and went to the north.
And he talked about, and this is a couple of few years ago now, I guess two years ago.
And he said that they were just leveling the place.
They bombed the markets.
They bombed the car dealership.
They bombed the factory.
You name it, they were bombing.
And I guess, as you mentioned previously, too, the civilian infrastructure, the water, the electricity, the sewage, and already in the most desperately poor country around.
And so I guess I wonder, to what degree can you testify to that?
This is a deliberate campaign targeting the civilian infrastructure, what little water works they do have, we're dropping bombs on.
Is that really right?
Well, I think what you've got is that all the parties who are involved in this conflict on both sides, the ones who are shelling and bombing and ones who are airstrikes, I mean, they don't have as a blatant disregard for civilian infrastructure and for civilians.
And I think as a result of that, what you see is, you know, civilian infrastructure, such as roads and bridges and ports and factories and shops and agricultural infrastructure, water systems, electricity, they've all been damaged or destroyed.
Whether it's deliberate, I don't know.
But there was no way for us to measure, you know, and targeting and actually verify targeting from the various parties.
But we know that the extent of damage, because we can see it on a daily basis, and the way things have been caught up in this conflict and the way that the actual disrespect for international humanitarian law and Geneva Conventions has been one of the hallmarks of this crisis.
And I have and we have on many, many, many often occasions said that the parties of a conflict have an obligation to respect civilians and civilian infrastructure, and they have to take all the necessary steps under international humanitarian law to avoid civilians and the infrastructure for being caught up in it.
But unfortunately, that's fallen on deaf ears in many cases, because people who fight wars don't fight war on the basis of law or logic.
They fight it on the basis of aggression and the need to win a victory for whatever reason they think is the right reason.
Well, now, as you mentioned, the war is going nowhere.
It never was going anywhere in the first place.
The Houthis never really conquered much more of the land, you know, much of the land south of the capital there.
And then the UAE and Saudi and American and allied forces, their Sudanese troops and Nigerian mercenaries and whoever, they never conquered more than the territory that the Houthis were controlled in the first place.
Operation Decisive Storm, three years later, and it's like the battle lines of World War One.
So the question is, and I know this is a little bit off of your beat, but then again, you are a UN guy.
Where's the diplomacy?
Who is doing anything to stop this war?
Well, I think what we've seen recently is an uptick, actually, in diplomatic activity, and I think around the blockade and around the sort of the catastrophic situations humanitarian-wise that's taken place.
I think a lot of people, a lot of the words that are coming out from Yemen and a lot of people exposing the hardship and the poverty and the suffering, I think that's rang some alarm bells in parliaments and in government capitals.
And I think what you have now is people asking questions which they weren't asking before.
And I think because of that, I think that's the political dynamic that's starting to, I think, increase a little bit.
It's been stalemated and it's been flat for the last year and a half since the Kuwait talks last August 2016.
Nothing has happened.
I think now you start to see people saying, well, we're stuck in this groove and this groove is just a permanent situation and it can't be something that we want to be a party to.
And I think some of the big nation states, the UK, the US, and others are starting to ask questions.
Why are we involved in this when there's no victory in sight?
Why are we not doing more on the political front?
And I think that's what we'll see more and in recent times, we will see more diplomatic activity because there's been for quite a long time, there was a sort of a real lack of it.
There was a blatant lack of this gap between what's been said as words and what's been done in terms of diplomatic pressure.
I do believe that things have started to change a little bit.
And I think that's because of the good advocacy of many of the big organizations and the advocacy groups out there who've tried to highlight the impact of this war.
The fact that there's a total impasse and the fact that there's no political gains being put on the table, no consultations, I think the UN is very conscious because it has a lead role in that.
I think there's the Quad, which is this made up of four nation states, the UK, US, UAE, and the Saudis.
I think together, they all are starting now to think differently and maybe looking for a way to solve this from a political point of view.
And now the fact that the dynamics have changed in Sana'a because of the breakup between the GPC and the Houthis and the death of Salih, I think that may be an opportunity to change things.
And I think the UN's own special envoy will probably change in the coming months as well.
So I think there's a lot of things that will unfold and hopefully will create some more and bigger momentum for the political situation to change because it won't be solved anything other than by political.
Yeah.
Well, you know, of course, the elephant in the room is the United States of America.
And Saudi Arabia could not be doing this at all if it wasn't for American diplomatic cover first and foremost.
But then, of course, all well, maybe first and foremost, they're flying our planes and dropping our bombs.
And with American intelligence help and midair refueling and all these things, we all know from all the major papers, you know, no question about that.
And it seems like the president actually does not even understand this.
He apparently has been briefed that we're attacking al-Qaeda targets there sometimes, this kind of thing, and has authorized that.
But when it comes to the blockade, he very publicly, apparently not through the typical National Security Council chain of command, right?
He he saw some pictures or something and had a reaction and put out a big press release that he wants the Saudis to lift the blockade, which I meant to ask you earlier, what exactly is the status of that?
But but further on this point for just a second.
And then he tweeted just yesterday or two days ago or something about how.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
There was a quote of him talking to the prime minister of Great Britain and complaining about how he really doesn't like the humanitarian situation in Yemen.
And it seems that he doesn't know that he's the boss of it.
And he's not really been briefed on what's going on at all.
And whoever's driving American policy on it, whether it's the Secretary of Defense or the National Security Council or, you know, National Security Advisor or whoever, I'm not certain.
But it seems like that's a pretty bad variable to have in the mix when the leadership on this side is so responsible and yet so detached from the reality of the situation.
I mean, this president probably doesn't know where Yemen is at all, you know?
Well, I think there's a lot of countries who are involved in supporting the coalition in different ways and for different reasons.
I think there's geopolitical, regional political issues that are connected to that, as well as, you know, trade issues as well.
I think that, as I mentioned earlier, I think there's now a rethink on many fronts on why are we in this?
Where is this going?
And the humanitarian, you know, the consequences for nations' reputations, the consequences for the humanitarian situation.
I think all of that are some people have been question marks now that they didn't have before.
And I think if some of these public statements made about the humanitarian situation, about the blockade being opened and that type of thing, I think that will help bring attention to what's happening because of the war.
And hopefully then the next set of questions will be, what do we have to do to stop this war and get back to something else which is much more sensible?
I do believe that in capitals such as D.C. and Washington and the U.K. and London, that in Brussels and places like that, the questions are being asked in such a way they're trying to say that maybe we need an endgame for this.
Maybe there is no military solution, as we see, and the humanitarian consequences are so dire.
And the responsibility and the finger pointing will start to take place.
And maybe nations want to start thinking again.
I was in Washington in September, and I spoke to the parties there, and I found a difference in people's understanding in terms of depth of understanding of the Yemen crisis, which was different from a year before.
And secondly, I think they're also very worried about the consequences.
And so I think that there's a possibility there that we could see some change diplomatically and politically.
Because I think that's what has to happen.
And your question on the blockade, I mean, I think the advocacy out there and the statements made by people like the presidents and the prime ministers have all affected the Saudis in such a way that they've opened up the port of Hodeidah for 30 days, for example.
We're halfway through that 30-day period.
And now the question is, can we keep open longer?
Can we get more goods, more fuel, more food and more medicine?
And that's ultimately our aim from the humanitarian side of things.
All right.
Now, so on that, do I understand it right that really through the whole war, we've had a blockade against, you know, private trade and shipping.
And then the more recent stepped up blockade was against even the Red Cross, et cetera, and any humanitarian aid, United Nations, food shipments, et cetera.
And that is now what's been lifted temporarily.
Is that correct?
I mean, it sounds oversimplified, I'm sure, right?
Yeah, yeah.
No, there's always been restrictions on movements coming into the northern ports, especially Hodeidah and Salif, which are the two Red Sea ports which feed the bulk of the country.
80 percent of the population, 70 percent of the population gets fed through those two ports, food, fuel, medicines and key goods.
What's happened has been an inspection mechanism and a clearance mechanism on those ports.
And they've been very restrictive and scrutinized very heavily.
They've slowed down the port being a quite optimally used port.
And so that's been a general restrictive practice throughout the whole of the conflict.
What's happened most recently after the 4th of November airstrike in Riyadh, there was a complete block on all ports, all airports and all borders.
And then that was eased slightly, but not significantly.
And it's only the last 15 days as part of a 30 day that all goods have now been allowed back in again to the port of Hodeidah.
And so we have fuel and we have food and we have medicines, et cetera, coming through both commercial and humanitarian.
There was a time when there was no UN flights, there was a time when there was no Red Cross flights.
But that's now changed into Sana'a and the Hodeidah port has opened back up again.
And hopefully, as I mentioned, it will stay open now for longer so we can continue the flow.
Because if we have it interrupted again and there's a break in the pipeline, we're living in a very fragile time in terms of fuel supply, in terms of food supply.
And if we cut that pipeline, people who are living a very fragile existence or who are living solely on humanitarian goods, we won't be able to save their lives.
All right.
Well, listen, thanks very much for coming on the show and talking about this with us today.
I really appreciate it.
No problem.
All the best.
All right, you guys, that's Jamie McGoldrick.
He is the United Nations Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator and UN Development Program Resident Representative for the Republic of Yemen.
And you know me, I'm Scott Horton.
Check me out at scotthorton.org for the show, antiwar.com for articles, libertarianinstitute.org for more articles.
My book, Fool's Errand, is at foolserrand.us.
Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks.
