For Pacifica Radio, June 27th, 2021.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the editorial director of Antiwar.com and the author of the new book, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,500 of them now, going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org and at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right.
Introducing today's guest.
It's Yemeni reporter, Nasser Arabi, reporting out of Sanaa, Yemen.
Welcome back to the show.
Nasser, how are you doing, sir?
Thank you very much for having me.
Thank you, Scott.
Very happy to talk to you again and to get an important update on the worst war in the world right now, America and Saudi Arabia, UAE and al-Qaeda's war in Yemen.
But can we start with the good news?
I gather that there are talks going on in Oman that are actually meaningful as opposed to the traditional discussions as it has been over the past few years here that really seem to go nowhere.
Is that correct?
Well, it's good news, but maybe it's bad news.
But let me say it's good news.
Omanis now are trying to mediate, to facilitate between the warring bodies in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, because the UN envoy, Martin Griffiths, is going to quit this month or next month.
So Oman is now taking over, trying to help the Yemenis and Saudis to sit down and talk.
So this is then the good news is that Oman is there and Oman is being respected by the by almost all the parties, I mean, the Saudi-backed government and the Houthi here in Sana'a.
And Oman is the first time to play this role.
So they were helping, but now they are the only one who is trying to bring the parties to the table.
But it is not easy.
It is also difficult because they came here last week, the Omanis came here.
And they met all the Houthi leaders here in Sana'a.
And what we understood from that meeting is that the two parties, Saudis and Houthis, are still, each side is waiting for the other to to start.
It's something like US and Iran.
It's Houthis and Saudis want Houthis to start the ceasefire.
And then comes the humanitarian things, comes the lifting of the of the blockade and opening the airport and the Hodeida seaport.
And Houthi is saying, no, we must not link the humanitarian things with the military things.
We must start with the with lifting the the blockade, opening the airport of Sana'a without any conditions, and also opening the Hodeida airport for aids and for commercial ships.
So this is the most important point or the most sticking point now, because Saudis wants to to to start, as I told you, to start, wants Houthis to start the ceasefire.
And then if they if they stop that, if they ceasefire, if they do ceasefire, then Saudi would open the airport and the Hodeida port with conditions.
And this is the problem.
But the good news now is that Saudi Arabia is seemingly want to have some guarantees from Oman and from Iran to lift the blockade.
And then they talk about the ceasefire.
And this is something that we hope will happen.
Yes.
And now, so as I understand it from reading the Reuters story about this and reading Dave DeCamp's coverage at Antiwar.com, it looks like if and if I think I understand you right to the Houthis, they have these contrary positions here.
But the Houthis are saying, if you lift the blockade, then we'll enter talks, you know, real ones.
And that's, I guess, long.
This is the one exactly, as you said, this is the one.
So it's not just that they're demanding lift the blockade.
They're saying we'll sit down and negotiate with you, but you got to lift the blockade first, because that's really their biggest incentive that they have that they can use to try to get the Saudis to reopen the ports.
Right.
Yes, this is the this is the thing, because Houthis, Houthis find themselves having the upper hand everywhere.
So they just wait what Saudis are going to do, because ceasefire means a lot of things.
Ceasefire means two main things, means stopping the Saudi airstrikes and stopping the drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia from the Houthi side.
And also on the ground, it means also the ceasefire would mean Houthi would stop the attack on the offensive on Marib, because Marib in the central east of Yemen is the oil rich city and the only government held province is being threatened by collapse at any time, at any time, because Houthis are surrounding the city from all directions except only from one direction.
That is the eastern direction, which leads to the eastern Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, you know, I'll tell you what, Nasser, I saw some footage.
There's a guy named Gary Bretscher, the war nerd, who on Twitter he linked to some footage of the Houthis attacking.
I guess they have GoPro cameras on their helmets.
And, you know, so it's all first person point of view of their assault on a hill that was held by a Saudi militia.
And I think they identify some of the people as Sudanese as well.
But you can definitely tell the Saudis are the big fat guys.
And this is in the Saudi, this is in Geizan, yes.
Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, the footage I'm talking about, where they assault this whole time.
Yeah, exactly.
And so the impression given there is that the Saudis, you know, army, they don't have an army.
They have these militias that they've raised up, I think, as you've explained before on the show, mostly of locals of Yemenis that they've been able to buy up in order to fight this.
Although these guys and obviously the foreign mercenaries, too.
And I think you could tell the Sudanese guys.
And if those fat guys were Yemeni, I'd be surprised, I guess.
Maybe they were Saudis, but they didn't seem to really be army guys.
They seem to be irregulars and in way over their head.
Exactly.
And not only this, but Saudis also have a lot, a lot of weapons, advanced weapons, U.S. weapons and every everywhere weapons.
And this is something that that is easily taken by by by Yemenis.
And I wish they did in that footage, too.
Yes, exactly.
OK, hang on just one second.
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And then but so the impression I got and I'm sorry, I should say, everybody reminds you it's Nasser Arabi.
He's a reporter out of Sana'a, Yemen.
He used to write for The New York Times back when the war was against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
But ever since 2015, when Barack Obama decided to turn around and take al-Qaeda's side in the war against the Houthis, a war that America's been fighting ever since then, that Biden promised to end and has not ended.
Trump never even promised to end it.
He just bragged about the money we were making.
But anyway, New York Times doesn't want to talk to Nasser Arabi anymore, but we do.
So anyway, so Nasser, and we'll talk more about al-Qaeda and their role in this later on, I guess.
But the impression I was getting from that footage was that, as you were saying, the Houthis seem to hold all the cards here other than their ability to trade internationally.
But when it comes to the battle on the ground, they seem to be ascendant.
I don't know exactly, you know, the strength of the government's, you know, the former government's, I guess, position in Marib.
But you say that it looks like the Houthis could take Marib at any time now.
And then at that point, it's pretty much game over.
But even if they don't get that far, the Saudis position in Yemen is essentially defensive at this point.
They're trying to hang on to what they've taken already.
But all the momentum is with the Houthi side.
But then that's what makes negotiation more difficult, right?
Because the Americans and the Saudis have too much to lose and they don't want to negotiate when they're not in a position of strength.
And then, but of course, they can't get into one.
They can't seem to find a position of strength to negotiate from.
So they keep kicking the can down the road and refusing to deal because they would have to essentially admit that they lost the war, right?
Yes, the U.S. envoy, Tim Lenderking, who was appointed by Biden administration, is now doing his best.
But unfortunately, they are they are going around the same circle and they think that Houthi, they still think that Houthi is going to to to to reach a point where he would say, OK, I'm surrendering.
This is the Polish things.
I mean, they they still think of this.
They still hope that this is going to happen, ignoring the threats that Houthi is posing now in Saudi Arabia and the areas under his control, under their control here in the north.
And also the people are rallying behind him and the recruitment.
The daily, the almost daily recruitment from the young people, they are joining the camps and the battles and the fronts, the front lines to fight with the Houthi against the Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia maybe understand now more, but they couldn't find the face saving.
And now they need the face saving, but nobody knows what kind of face saving they want because you don't understand what they want exactly because, you know, they keep going nowhere and talking arrogantly and achieving nothing.
So this is this is a bad thing, and especially that the US envoy is almost in this direction, not helping a lot because they can't say or they can't sway Saudi Arabia and to persuade them to to be to be at least realistic.
Not to they still talk about that, about the UN revolution, about the the UN resolution that is the 2216, which which says Houthi should surrender, Houthi should put down the weapons and surrender without any condition.
And they still unfortunately say something like this after seven years of war.
Right.
And, you know, I spoke with an expert from the Quincy Institute about that, Annel Sheline, and she was saying that, you know, that is the big push by the activists in America is to get that UN resolution revised, because as long as that's the basis for the negotiations and the Americans could just disregard it if they wanted to, by the way, and, you know, negotiate on whatever basis they feel like.
But as long as they insist on using this UN resolution, then that is essentially a poison pill.
It's made it makes it impossible for them to go forward when they have to concede that they just have not rousted this Houthi regime out of the capital city after six years of trying.
And so how are they supposed to negotiate an unconditional surrender when they don't hold the cards?
The other side does.
It's just crazy to go on this way.
This is something this is something that can be understood by by sixth graders.
It is not difficult to understand that you I mean, it's if US wants to help, they should help in changing this kind of resolution.
Yes, it's it's not realistic anymore.
It's not realistic anymore.
It's not logic anymore.
And it's only it's only wasting the time.
It's it's nothing.
I mean, Houthi is Houthi is happy to hear them talking about that kind of conditions.
Yeah, I guess so, because they keep winning and time is on their side.
And if they had to negotiate now, they might not be able to take Marie.
Right.
They might have to negotiate a new semi autonomy for Marie and try not to take it over or something like that.
But in the meantime, they might succeed in taking it with violent force.
Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly, this is this is what they this is what what is happening now.
But now isn't there there must be such tremendous pressure on them to find a resolution here when the population is suffering so terribly?
Yes, there must be, I mean, in your side, in your side, you mean, or where?
No, I mean, they're in Yemen as as in other words, they're obviously in the right to say lift the blockade no matter what.
But at the same time, the population must think that, boy, if you guys could negotiate an end to this war sooner than later, then we could get that blockade lifted.
And let's try that maybe, you know, right.
Is there not that kind of political pressure on them?
I know that the battlefield momentum is with them, but people are the population are doing really terribly here, by all accounts.
There is, there is, there is, but not that because, you know, they know that the key is not with Houthis, the key is with Saudi Arabia.
They know very well that there are a lot of demonstrations and demandings and they demand every day, for example, the oil, the petrol, the food, everything, medicine and everything they want, everything.
But they know that it's not, it's only Saudi Arabia who can do something, who can fix this problem, not anyone else.
And Saudi Arabia is weaponizing these things.
Saudi Arabia is weaponizing these things.
Yeah, well, and listen, I mean, we've seen this over and over again, they've been trying to blockade the Cubans into overthrowing their government or forcing their government to comply with American wishes for something like 60 years now.
Same thing for Iran and North Korea, Syria, of course, Iraq during the 1990s, before the invasion there.
And in the case of Yemen, it's this blockade and sanctions regime along with war.
And it never does work at what the policy mandarins here in America say it will achieve, which is turning the people against their government, making the people pressure their government into complying with us so that they can get relief from the pressure.
That really, no.
And in fact, in America, they call it the rally around the flag effect.
That's what the PhDs at Georgetown University and the Kennedy School at Harvard and whatever call it.
They understand it, especially if you're talking about Americans.
If somebody crashes some planes into our buildings, then people give George W.
Bush a 90 percent approval rating, even when it happened on his watch, just as a symbol to the rest of the world that we all stand as one independent nation that nobody else can mess with kind of thing.
And, of course, that's the same for the Iraqis and the Iranians and the Koreans and the Cubans and the Yemenis, too.
And so I think you told me before, Nasser, back, you know, three years ago now or something that, you know, something like we're all Houthis now in the sense that they happen to be the ruling regime, but they're the ones defending the population from foreign attack.
And so they have supporters who never supported them before, but certainly support them now since they're the ones defending the country.
Right.
Exactly, exactly.
The Houthis now are trying, yes, with the least, the least possibilities, the least resources, the least.
Yes.
But they are better than the government controlled areas.
I mean, Aden now, as I told you over and over again, that the dollar price is in Sana'a is good, is better than in Aden.
And now it's even better.
And maybe in Aden it's even worse because they are also printing more notes, more banknotes to to make more inflation, to make to, you know, to drown the country, to flood the country with banknotes and to make a problem.
But it always, always backfires on them because here is good, the security is good here.
It's iron first here in the south, in the north, and Aden it is very loose.
So the problem is in Aden more than in Sana'a in terms of prices, foodstuff and all these kind of things.
Yeah.
And by the way, so what exactly at this point is the position of the Southern Transitional Council?
That's the socialist leaning or dominated faction that controls the city of Aden, correct?
Yes, it's the Transitional Council is a card in the hand of Emirates.
It's the only card in their hand now, and they now come back to it, they return to it because when Houthi said no conditions for the ceasefire, no conditions for no conditions for the lifting of the blockade, they now, Saudi Arabia is again returning to Aden and to say, OK, we are going to send back the government from Riyadh to Aden.
Now they are talking about this.
They want to return the government to Aden.
Why now?
Only because they want to have any kind of card against Houthis because they don't have, they don't have any at all.
So the only card they have is sending the government back from Riyadh to Aden.
And now, of course, the government is not safe.
They know it's not safe.
And even Saudi Arabia, they can't do anything for Saudi Arabia to secure it.
So this is what's happening.
But let me tell you one thing, one thing important, the good news also that we can talk now for your audience is that it's all now, it all depends on what's happening, at least partly on what's happening in Vienna with the Americans and the Iranians, because it's also now it's in a way or another, it's it's it's inside this thing.
I mean, this is why this is why they launched the war back in 2015 was as the Obama people told The New York Times to placate the Saudis who were upset that they were signing the nuclear deal with Iran.
And they wanted to reassure the Saudis that, no, you guys are still number one in the American order in the Middle East.
And we're not going to start tilting back toward Iran.
We're just taking war off the table here.
And so we'll help you start a war to prove America's loyalty to Saudi Arabia.
And then so now here they are, as you're as you mentioned, they're negotiating.
Supposedly, they don't seem to be making much progress, but here they're supposedly negotiating America's reentry to that deal that Donald Trump left with the Iranians right now and now in the aftermath of their presidential election as well.
So I'm sorry.
Go ahead there and elaborate.
Exactly.
They need now.
I think that the Americans, the Biden administration, would need maybe to placate the Houthis now as they tried to placate the Saudis at the beginning before this war.
Now they are trying or they are seemingly trying to to placate the Houthis by the special envoy, the U.S. special envoy.
And by what he's saying, I mean, Tim Lenderking about Houthis.
And so I think there will be something like this to push Saudis or to persuade them that Houthis must be involved in this and in that in a way that they deserve.
Not in a way that they that that they imagined seven years ago or or that in a way that in a way that the UN resolution is saying or something like this.
I think in this case, if they do something like this, if the Americans do something like this, and I am optimistic that it would happen in a way or another, it would happen over these few days or few weeks, because they want to do it before mid-August, before the new president, the Iranian new president.
So they could do something, I think, for ending the war in Yemen.
And this is what we hear from the statements, the Iranian statements now and from also the Americans and some Americans who look at it realistically.
Yeah.
And now give us a word here real quick at the end here before we have to go, Nasser, if you could, about, well, no, I was going to say talk about al-Qaeda, but we'll have to catch up with that next time.
Talk about the humanitarian consequences.
The UN says 400,000 children will die this year.
We're halfway through the year.
And, you know, the UN and their hundreds of thousands of dead children can be debated from time to time.
But I guess the takeaway from that is that, according to them, this is clearly the worst year of the famine and the destitution from the consequences of the war now, six years in.
Is that correct?
Yes, it is.
It is the worst and nobody can imagine what the worst means in Yemen.
It is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
And we we see it and we have everything.
We see everything with our own eyes that it is the worst with all senses of the of the world.
I mean, it's it's it's something that it's the only thing.
It is made it was made deliberately, intentionally by Saudis, but it doesn't work and they don't understand that.
They never understood that it is not working.
It is not working.
They made this kind of famine, they made this kind of starvation and humanitarian crisis as a weapon in the war, but it is not working and it is not going to work.
Never, ever, because of many things, because of many things, because people would rather die if Saudi Arabia wants to to bring them to their knees this by this by this way.
Many people now in the world started to understand that this kind of war, that is the weaponization, is not working and they are helping.
And we hope now that it's this kind of new pressure from the human rights, from the observers, from the independent in the world, from also from the from the U.S. Congress.
Many Congress people would understand and they they talk about Yemen in a good way, in a positive way, in a in a favorable way.
But today, Saudis is still looking for face saving that is not understood easily by the people who try to help Saudis.
Yeah.
All right.
We have to leave it there.
He's so right, everybody.
There are powerful congressmen and senators, including Elizabeth Warren, recently wrote a letter to Joe Biden about this that was signed by a bunch of others who really are pushing to end the blockade.
This is something you can do.
This is something where activism really counts and really can be important.
It's on the margin, but it's the most important one of all.
So it is the kind of thing we're contacting your congressmen and your senators has to make a difference.
And so there you have it.
That's Anti-War Radio for this morning.
Thank you so much for doing the show, Nasser.
Great to talk to you again, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
All right, y'all.
And that is Anti-War Radio for this morning.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
We'll see you next Sunday from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
See you next week.
