Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America, and by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN, like, say our names, been saying, saying three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Jonathan Fenton Harvey.
He's a journalist writing this time for Middle East Eye.
And it's a very important article, how the UAE is destroying Yemen.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Jonathan?
I'm great.
Thank you for having me, Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
And, well, just as you say in this piece, we focus a lot on the US role and the UK role.
Well, probably not as much as we should on the UK role, but certainly the US and the Saudi role.
But the role of the UAE, which they really have much more of the ground force in in this war than the Saudis do, for example.
And they've really taken advantage of American and Saudi air cover to seize much of the south of Yemen, as they call it, I guess, the kind of southeast of the country.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, this support has kind of essentially justified the UAE expanding itself into the south.
And they've been able to establish that influence a lot more there because of this guise of fighting terrorism, which the US, of course, supports.
It kind of links to the war on terror.
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because, in fact, they're fighting with al-Qaeda and for al-Qaeda forces on the ground there.
There's a brand new report, which we've known this all along, that at least de facto, they've been fighting for al-Qaeda by fighting al-Qaeda's worst enemies, the Houthis in the country.
There's this new report in the Associated Press today.
Well, and I should give credit to Michael Horton, the expert on Yemen.
I've been saying we've been flying as al-Qaeda's air force this whole time.
And Nasser Arabi has talked about how al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has seized towns and military bases and armories and all these things for years now under the protection, basically, of the Americans.
Well, at the same time, the CIA has continued to fly drone strikes against them, and Donald Trump famously sent special operations forces after them on at least a couple of terribly botched raids.
So we're fighting for and against both sides in this war, I guess, as far as that goes.
But in this new report from the Associated Press, the Fox News version of the headline is, U.S. allies strike deals with al-Qaeda in war on rebels.
And by rebels, they mean the people who seized the capital city three and a half years ago and are rebelling against the so-called legitimate government that was elected in a one-man election that Hillary Clinton held for them in 2012 and have been hiding in a hotel in Riyadh for three and a half years.
So to whatever degree that makes them the legitimate government, I guess you tell me.
But according to this, according to the AP here, they've been making deals on the ground.
And I guess particularly the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, have been working with AQAP on the ground in the Yemen war.
Well, like I said, on the surface, it seems like the UAE is fighting a legitimate counterterrorism war against AQAP.
But the issue is, it does help them kind of establish a greater presence in the region.
So their AQAP's presence is very beneficial for the UAE.
In the long run, it helps them achieve their overall aims of kind of carving out a southern state in Yemen and expanding further towards Africa.
So it works out well.
Yeah.
And I guess they just kind of use them as shock troops, right?
They don't have to really give them the ground.
But you guys go in there, clean out our opposition for us, and then we'll take the territory, push you out of the way kind of thing, huh?
Yeah, pretty much.
And it's led to a lot of abuses as well.
As Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and AP News Agency have reported, there have been a lot of cases of torture against innocent Yemenis who have been linked to terrorist groups.
So this is clearly justifying a broader human rights abuse campaign by the UAE against Yemen.
Well, yeah.
So talk about that a little bit more.
There was a report, guess what, about a year ago where they were roasting prisoners on spit.
Yeah.
It's crazy stuff.
And now like sexual assault as well against Yemenis in prison.
This is the gruesome stuff that was reported by AP News Agency just last month.
I mean, there has been knowledge of it, but you just can't cover this stuff up because the UAE is doing it on such a wide scale, it is just surfacing increasingly.
And you talk about disappearances here too, which generally means murder, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, people can be left wondering for weeks about what's happened to their family member for something he probably even hasn't done.
It's just these kind of disappearances are very indiscriminate.
And it's just a way for the UAE to kind of establish itself as a regional power, essentially, to say, right, I'm the boss here.
You know, we're going to control southern Yemen.
We'll talk more about that.
You talk about in the article here about their long term goals.
Yeah.
Well, the UAE has had an eye on Yemen for over a decade now.
And since 2006, it's been trying to control the port of Aden.
And if it did that, it would help Dubai to have greater ship access or trade routes to the rest of the world, essentially.
So Aden is a key price for the UAE.
It has struggled to, though, under previous regimes, like especially Hadi.
I mean, the UAE and Hadi, even though the UAE is part of a coalition to allegedly prop up his regime, in the long run, they want him gone because he poses a threat to their interests in the country.
Because with him in charge, he scrapped a lot of deals, which the UAE had with Aden to extend itself in the port originally.
But now it's difficult with him there.
So that's why they've been supporting a new southern government called the Southern Transitional Council, which would be friendly to the UAE.
And from there, they would be able to have control of the south and the port and move further towards Africa, which is another long term goal of theirs.
So, pardon me.
So this is a, in a sense, there's a proxy split between the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates on this, too, where Hadi is the Saudi puppet.
Yeah, absolutely.
And this could cause problems in the long run as well.
Because for now, they're focused on fighting the Houthis and securing their own short term ambitions.
But once the Houthis are gone or that threat is diminished and Saudi Arabia and the UAE are faced with creating a new political solution for Yemen, then what could happen?
There'd be sharp disagreements.
And this makes Yemen, the situation there a lot more dangerous as well.
Because it could cause more instability and divisions and there could be a mild clash between the two over the country.
So there's this reporter based out of Sana'a named Nasser Arabi that I've been talking to for about three and a half years now, really, since I guess right before the war really broke out.
And he talks about how there are leaders from the south who have made peace with the Houthis and who are prepared, who wish to keep the country together.
Despite the fact that, and I don't know exactly who's who and how much power they really have.
But according to him, if the UAE wasn't on the ground there with their ground forces and their mercenaries, et cetera, that there really wouldn't be this split.
The South Yemen doesn't really want to break off from the north, even if they don't like the Houthis necessarily.
They would prefer that to secession.
But I don't know.
What do you think about that?
Well, I mean, I think in the long run, many analysts do believe that southern secession is increasingly plausible.
I mean, in Yemen, there are two central banks and two governments effectively.
You've got the north and which is mostly controlled by the Houthis and the south.
So in my opinion, I think that moving towards the north and the south would be like a split between the two, sorry, would be ideal for many people on the ground.
But the way the UAE is doing it by establishing a military presence there and reportedly exploiting resources as it has been proven to do in the island of Socotra.
This could not be an ideal split or solution for the people of the south of Yemen.
So if there is going to be a split, it should be done by the people's wishes and not the wishes of the UAE or any other outside parties.
Yeah.
Well, and so back to the human rights abuses and so forth.
The reports about the people being tortured on spits from back a year ago, that's these are all just military prisoners of war.
Well, like I said, it's kind of mixed.
I mean, some would be oppositionists, like from other groups who are fighting against UAE backed forces, such as the Hadroni elite brigades or the Southern Belt, as the unity of the factions is called.
The Unified Coalition, sorry.
But others, you know, they might be just innocent Yemenis who were picked up in the fighting and just targeted because it is a way for the UAE to kind of create an increasingly strong security apparatus.
So for me, it's a way of the UAE kind of justifying an increased expansion in the region by creating a security apparatus, which it can try to maintain.
And then you talk about in here, too, how the Saudis are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudis hate the Muslim Brotherhood.
But I guess in Yemen, they support this group, Isla, and while the UAE is outright supporting al-Qaeda.
Yeah, I mean, this is kind of representative of the Yemeni conflict as a whole.
Often two parties with differing long term ambitions will come together just to achieve a short term goal.
For Saudi Arabia, al-Isla is a kind of helpful enemy to have on the ground.
Well, helpful ally to have on the ground, which can act as an enemy against the Houthi forces.
So the Saudi Arabia in this case is glad that the Isla party is there.
But in the long run, they would understandably try to contain them.
There's some kind of clicking going on in the background there, or tapping something or something.
Try to watch that.
No problem.
I can cut it.
So it'll be all right.
All right.
So and now how's that going?
By the way, the war between al-Qaeda and Isla there, Saudi versus UAE on the ground?
Well, the UAE have supposedly had some success in countering al-Isla because they haven't just supported al-Qaeda, they've supported other groups which have been non-hostile towards al-Qaeda.
And these include the so-called moderate security forces, which they've been backing.
Al-Isla doesn't even have a significant presence in Yemen anymore compared to what it used to be like.
I mean, a lot of the members had to flee after the Houthi insurgency in 2014.
So it seems out of the two, al-Qaeda is gaining more prominence in the region.
And this will, of course, allow the UAE to gain more power itself in the long run.
And now the UAE, how much of a ground army do they have?
I guess I remember reports from a couple of years ago that they were using Nigerian mercenaries and God knows who there.
Yeah, they trained a lot of people in Yemen at first.
Like, you know, these are ordinary Yemeni militias, but many of them are quite inexperienced.
So this hasn't been enough for them to establish a strong front in the ground.
So on the other hand, yes, they have brought in a lot of mercenaries from different parts of the world.
And now, um, so you mentioned to about, well, so well, before we get to this island, I want to talk about, um, can you, I guess, help me imagine the map here, they, they've really succeeded in breaking off the port of Aden, and all the land east of there from Houthi control at this point.
It's still quite contested.
I mean, it's not just the Houthis that pose a threat to their interest in the south, but other local tribal factions as well, which they have backed their own forces against.
And are those factions aligned with the Houthis or they're just on their own?
Just on their own.
Yemen's a very complex situation, unfortunately.
Yeah, Iona Craig was telling me the other day that there's really four separate kind of states now at this point.
Yeah, exactly.
It's hardly just a split between the north and the south.
I mean, you've got maybe even more factions than that kind of vying for independence.
Well, now the Houthis control the capital Sana'a and everything north of that, right?
Yeah, essentially.
But then...
It's very contested in Sana'a, especially.
Oh, even in the capital, you're saying?
Yeah.
And that's after the UAE tried to seize Hodeidah, that will be their interest in the long run, to occupy Sana'a.
And for them, that would essentially be the war over.
But we'll see how that goes.
Yeah, I'm not betting on them on that.
I mean, they said that they were going to take the port of Hodeidah, no problem, a couple of months ago, and they're still fighting.
Massive fighting going on.
Eighty killed yesterday.
They're far from taking the town so far, it looks like.
Yeah.
And many people really underestimate how much the Houthis can hold off Saudi or UAE forces.
I mean, they know how to fight and they know the terrain very well.
So it will be difficult for them to push out the Houthis.
Yeah, of course.
That's how they got so powerful in the first place, right?
Was the previous American-backed dictator, Saleh, attacked them four or five times and they got stronger and stronger every time that they repelled his attacks.
And then, of course, after he was regime changed out of there by the US and Saudi, he allied with them for a few years until he tried to betray them last December and got stabbed in the back himself.
Yeah.
Goes to show, though, they're not easy to whoop, the Houthis.
Yeah.
And they're capitalizing on the war, of course.
I mean, you've got many people who are displaced and have no other alternatives than to fight for the Houthis because they promise something better.
So they're capitalizing on the chaos, effectively.
You know, people try to ask me, you know, quite a few times I've been asked, well, so who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, white hats and black hats?
And my answer is, the best I can tell, the innocent civilians are the white hats and everybody else are fighters.
I don't know why anybody has to choose any side necessarily here.
Obviously, USA, UAE and Saudi are the bad guys, but that doesn't mean the Houthis are the good guys necessarily.
Yeah, exactly.
Obviously, that's a very simplistic way of looking at the war is that, you know, just because one side's bad, the other has to be good or so on.
Or people accuse you of like sympathizing with the Houthis if you criticize the Saudi led coalition's actions.
Yeah.
And yeah, frankly, I don't know anybody who's ever said anything really good about the Houthis at all.
They certainly, you know, even Obama admitted that the Iranians advised them to not take the capital city because it was going to, you know, provoke the Saudis into launching a war and then they did it anyway.
So yeah, you know, not that that's necessarily all their fault that the Saudis would do that and that Obama would back them up in the decision to launch the war, but still they're playing with pretty hot fire.
And now look at what's happened as a result.
Yeah, exactly.
And it would also help whoever occupies it, it would help them have a greater stakehold or foothold in expanding towards Africa.
So the UAE has upped its presence recently.
At first it was just there for so-called humanitarian grounds.
It helped rebuild the island after it was hit by two cyclones in 2015.
But now it's expanded a heavy military presence just a couple of months ago.
And in the process they kicked out people in airstrips and ports.
And this was a sign that, you know, the UAE is here to effectively take control of the island.
Many residents complained, as did government officials.
It highlighted further that the UAE was acting as an occupying power.
However, due to these complaints, the UAE was forced to kind of step back or back off and negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia that most UAE troops would withdraw, but they still have a presence there.
So that's something to watch out for further.
That could be the source of further tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
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Well, and so has there been any change in the degree of American support for Saudi and or UAE since Trump came into power?
I mean, obviously, as we all know, Barack Obama gave the Saudis the green light to launch this war in 2015.
But it seems like, you know, maybe they've gotten, well, I don't know.
Is there a difference, I guess, also, you know, the level of support, but also the level of support between the two major factions on the ground there?
I'd say there's a huge difference.
I mean, if you just look at the weapons deals, I mean, before Trump came to power, Obama had sold, well, the Obama administration had sold Saudi Arabia just around $20 billion worth of weapons.
I mean, that is a lot.
But last year, Trump signed a deal, a military deal with Saudi Arabia for $110 billion.
So that's significant.
That was kind of BS, though, right?
I mean, I remember when that was reported that that was, you know, basically public relations, but that it was really a lot less than that.
But it was from Trump's point of view, that was supposed to sound really good to the American people that, oh, wow, we're going to make all this money off of this or something somehow.
But it wasn't really going to amount to $110 billion by a long shot.
Yeah, well, this could be something that increases in the future, like more weapons, like it's more of a long term thing.
And of course, you know, he's been over there, you know, putting his hand on the orb and all this kind of thing.
So is that what about America's relation?
And well, and by the way, too, because I think I, I assumed something false in the premise of my question there were the Saudis don't really have ground forces, right?
The Saudis are just bombing and the UAE is on the ground.
Is that right?
Well, Saudi Arabia has supporters Yemenis to kind of fight against the Houthis to an extent.
But this is very limited.
Mostly they do rely on Yeah, an air force.
And the Islam group you talked about they support this Muslim Brotherhood group on the ground there, but they don't have they're not sending in their infantry, right?
Yeah, exactly.
It's very limited in comparison to their bombing campaign.
And then so American support for UAE, I guess, is that changed at all?
It's getting worse.
They're still continuing it.
Yeah.
But I mean, within the US government, this is quite interesting.
There have been several legal challenges in the last year or so to stop us support for Saudi Arabia.
These have been led by people like Bernie Sanders.
Of course, these have been unsuccessful so far, but it is a step is showing that there is a step towards ending, or at least limiting the support once and for all.
Yeah, two failed efforts in the House and the Senate so far.
But I think he's saying the article that there was enough of an international outcry over the UAE's expanded control over this island in the Red Sea that they had to back down a bit, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, that mostly came from Yemenis themselves.
And this was widely reported on.
So it's not just because of that.
Which Yemenis were they listening to about that?
It couldn't have been the Houthis complaining.
No, this was the so called internationally recognized government of Yemen and several news outlets like the Independent had spoken to civilians on the ground who were complaining about the UAE specific policies there.
And so now when you say the so called Yemeni government, the officially recognized one, that means Hadi and his hotel suite in Riyadh?
Yeah, exactly.
It's not doing a good job of representing the Yemeni people as it is now.
Yeah, well, I'm surprised he was allowed to say anything at all about it.
Oh, but I guess if it's complaining about the UAE, then there's sort of a Saudi UAE split represented there, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, he's outright against the UAE.
He's even called them occupiers, allegedly.
Amazing.
Well, you know, it's too late now, but and I guess, you know, I was sort of half joking at the time, but it seemed like before Saleh was killed, that if America and Saudi agreed on Saleh for all that time, 30 years or something like that, and then he was able to make an alliance with the Houthis.
And it seemed like putting Saleh back in power, or at least, you know, one of his deputies or someone close to him could have been the compromise position.
I guess that's UAE excluded from that equation for a moment.
But of course, all that fell apart last December when Saleh tried to make a deal with the Saudis, a new deal with the Saudis to betray the Houthis and take power back, which the Saudis apparently were willing to go along with.
Seems like maybe if he had not done that behind the Houthis back, but had said, hey, you know, had acted as a compromise between the two, that maybe they could have gotten away with that.
And they could have ended that part of the war.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's just made it much more complicated, though.
Yeah.
And the Houthis, you know, once he stabbed them in the back, they killed him pretty quickly.
And that was the end of that.
But so I wonder, is there anybody left that could be, you know, that the Saudis and the Houthis could compromise on?
Because the Houthis clearly are not going to give up the capital without, you know, something major breaking their way.
They wouldn't want to.
And from my perspective, it doesn't seem like there is anyone significant at the moment.
So to be honest, they would just, the solution is for countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE to step back from Yemen and allow parties on the ground to sort out their differences.
Yeah.
Well, now, in the in the United Nations last week, Martin Griffiths, the humanitarian this or that gave some kind of presentation and invited then the different factions to have some talks next month.
You have any optimism there?
What do you think?
To be honest, it could just collapse like all the previous ones have, to be honest.
I mean, the Houthis wouldn't want to negotiate any kind of split or compromise if they feel that this would allow Saudi Arabia or the UAE to gain more ground in Yemen.
That is essentially their biggest fear.
And that's why they haven't been willing to give up Hodeida so far.
Because from the Houthis perspective, if they gave up Hodeida, then the coalition would come for other parts.
So I think the main problem here, once again, is the fact that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are intervening in Yemen for their own ambitions.
So if these parties were left alone to sort it for themselves, it could make the process, you know, more successful, perhaps.
Yeah.
Well, it's really a shame here.
I got to bring this up that going back to the beginning here, the Obama administration, in a very official story that they put in the New York Times, it was no kind of scoop.
It was based on 13 White House officials or something like that.
And their excuse here was that after signing the nuclear deal with Iran, which obviously helped to secure Saudi Arabia's interests, if they were going to do that, they would have to sign a deal with Iran.
And if they were really afraid, which obviously they were lying, but if they were really afraid that Iran's safeguarded civilian nuclear program was ever to be some kind of nuclear weapons threat, well, that was all put way on the back burner by the new JCPOA.
But instead, they weren't worried about that.
They were worried, and quite ridiculously, that Obama, by signing the JCPOA, was signaling that he was going to start, you know, having the US tilt back toward Iran, like back in the old days.
And so they were worried about their role in America's international order.
And so to quote, unquote, placate the Saudis, Obama helped them launch this war.
Over the nuclear deal, which helped to secure their interests in the first place, their actual security interests in the first place.
And that was the only reason he did this.
No one in the world ever pretended that the Houthis were a threat to the United States of America, that they'd ever attacked the United States of America, that they'd ever done anything to the United States of America.
And yet here we've been bombing them for three and a half years, leading to famine, cholera outbreaks, and massive war crimes, and people being tortured and burned on barbecue spits, and just the absolute worst crisis on the planet, you know, at least this side of Syria, over nothing.
Yeah, it has just completely left the country in tatters.
And it will take a long time to rebuild the mess that has been caused by Saudi Arabia and international backers.
Yeah, well, and, and the American people don't even know the first thing about it, for the most part, as Fairness and Accuracy and Reporting did a thing a couple of weeks ago, about how MSNBC hasn't done a single story on Yemen for more than a year.
Not one.
And even in Britain, there was an opinion poll showing that around 50% of people aged 18 to 24 don't even know there's a war in Yemen.
And we're the second biggest, like, supporters of the Saudi regime.
So it shows kind of ignorance or lack of understanding allows this war to continue.
Hmm.
Well, I'm banned from Twitter this morning.
But I see someone on my on my Reddit group here says that there's a new thing called op desanitize operation desanitize to call out the MSM on the Yemen war.
So yeah, that sounds promising.
Yeah, I can't tell you anything more about that.
Because my account is suspended.
Let's see, I guess I could look in my other browser, where I'm not logged in.
Let's see what it says here.
Operation desanitize.
This is news, do your jobs and cover it already.
Hashtag op desanitize.
So I don't know, you know, I guess we'll see if that gets anywhere.
But yeah, and I think the solution is to focus on other forms of media, not just the traditional pro government ones, which are based on sources from the UAE or the Saudi led coalition.
Right?
Because that's the trouble with a lot of these outlets.
They do just work.
Well, it doesn't look like it at first, but they do depend on just one perspective.
So that creates a very distorted image.
Right?threatened his regime and led to the fall of his regime in 2012.
So it was the war against a QAP that has led to the current war for a QAP there.
Yeah, of course, it just shows but bombing Yemen from the US or anywhere else doesn't solve anything.
It just makes it a lot worse.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time on the show today, Jonathan, really.
It's important stuff.
And I really appreciate your great article to thank you very much.
Thanks, you guys.
That's Jonathan Fenton Harvey.
Find this great article at Middle East I how the UAE is destroying Yemen.
Twitter.com slash Scott Horton show.
Appreciate it.
And buy my book fool's errand timed and the war in Afghanistan.
