12/01/15 – Megan O’Toole – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the thing here, man.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show, Liberty Radio Network, et cetera.
First up today is Megan O'Toole.
She is an online journalist and producer on the Middle East Desk at Al Jazeera English and reports primarily on law and politics.
But this one is called Starvation in Yemen.
We are hoping just to survive.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me.
Very happy to have you here.
Sad for the occasion, but happy to see this journalism being done.
There's not nearly enough of it along these lines.
The war's been going on, of course.
America and Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen or the Houthi regime now in Yemen since March.
And the blockade has been going on at least as long, I guess.
I'm not really clear when, in fact, it really kicked in.
But the bombing has basically been ceaseless this whole time.
And we've been told, Megan, from the very beginning of this thing by all the human rights organizations, maybe they were overestimating somewhat, I'm not sure, that the people of Yemen, already the poorest country in the Middle East, are 80 to 90 percent dependent on foreign imports of food and that the blockade was, you know, risking basically millions of lives and were subject to the threat of starvation.
And so but then again, that's a lot of months have gone by without a lot of food.
So could you please fill us in on just how bad it's been, how bad it is now, what's being done, what can be done?
Go right ahead.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, it is it's become a massive humanitarian crisis now in Yemen.
I mean, this war, as you said, it's been going on since March.
There are people across the country who have basically reached a crisis point.
The latest numbers actually are saying that basically around 14 million people in Yemen, so that's more than half of the people who live in Yemen, have become food insecure.
And of those, seven million are severely food insecure.
So, you know, a huge amount of the population is having trouble just putting food on the table.
And of course, there's a variety of reasons for that.
There are various areas that are under siege.
There are the port's difficulty in getting any ships in because of the situation in Yemen.
You know, jobs, people have lost their livelihoods.
They've been displaced from their homes.
They've had to leave everything behind.
You know, you don't have functioning water in a lot of homes.
There's just this confluence of factors that have led to millions of people being in a state that's really it's an emergency state is what it's categorized as.
And there is a risk of, you know, mass famine in Yemen.
It's reached a point that people are starting to realize something needs to be done.
And of course, there are humanitarian organizations trying to do what they can, but it is quite challenging to operate in Yemen today, unfortunately.
Well, and that's really a big part of it, right?
Is even the relief organizations and the media have so much trouble traveling there compared to the average war zone, Megan?
I don't know.
Seems like they're not able to help very much, huh?
Yeah.
I mean, it's difficult.
I mean, obviously, you know, the fighting has has targeted some key infrastructure.
I mean, there's bridges that have been damaged and destroyed.
There's borders that have been shut down.
There are issues getting food in and out of the port areas because, of course, there's this arms embargo that's been in place.
And so there's a lot of inspections that need to be done on any large commercial ships.
And some of them have been turned away.
Yeah, it's a very difficult area.
There's parts of the country that are very difficult to reach as it is, and even harder when you have some of the main roads and key infrastructure like that destroyed.
So as much as there are groups that are trying to assist, it's challenging.
We have cities like Taiz as well, where basically the Houthis have laid siege to the city now.
So, you know, everyone in there is kind of trapped in this worsening state.
I mean, across the country, it's really it's really difficult right now for people.
Are people actually starving to death?
They always seem like they're on the brink of it and more and more on the brink.
But are they really dropping dead of no calories or how's it going?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that there's necessarily figures on exactly what that is.
I'm sure we'll start to see more of that as this continues.
But certainly families that we've spoken to at Al Jazeera have talked about how difficult it has become for them.
I mean, it just in order to put meals on the table for their family at night.
So there's a variety of ways that people are coping.
I mean, some people have started cutting down the number of meals that they're having per day.
So maybe they'll just have one meal a day instead of instead of three.
They might skip a meal.
They're just they're eating different foods as well, which is which is also a bit of a problem, not getting necessarily all of the nutrients they need because more expensive foods are cut.
So things like, you know, meat and vegetables and some dairy products were among the top products that people are cutting out.
You're also seeing food prices rising dramatically.
So so things like a bag of wheat, you know, it's just I think something like 50 percent higher than it was in February now.
So, I mean, it's a challenge for people to get even the basic food items that they need.
And so people have made a lot of changes.
It's the kind of situation where if it continues like this for much longer, it's going to be very difficult for people to survive, especially as we get into the winter season.
Yeah.
Well, and and people can imagine.
Right.
I mean, if you have a bombing campaign going on at all, an aerial bombing campaign that basically means the end of all the previous distribution networks.
I mean, maybe somebody is going to set up some way of smuggling this or that good or, you know, here or there.
But all the typical ways of doing things are over.
Roads are destroyed.
You know, convoys are targeted and, you know, whatever kind of thing.
So, you know, all the all the market systems have to at least be reset if if if they can survive at all.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, access becomes a problem for everybody.
And, you know, anyone trying to get into the country, it's a huge detriment because they don't know what they're going to face.
So people either aren't coming in or they're not even being able to come in in certain areas because of the border issues or other access routes being destroyed or damaged.
So, yeah, it's very difficult.
Well, when we saw in Somalia, when the Horn of Africa was undergoing their terrible drought, the Somalis had it the worst because because of America, they'd been at war.
And so, you know, where Eritrea and Ethiopia were very hard hit, Somalia in Somalia, you know, half a million people laid down and died, something like that.
According to Fusnet, who you're citing in this article in reference to Yemen here, they said that half a million, 600,000 people, I think they said had had died.
And of course, most of those being children under five, because guess who's weakest and dies of starvation easiest?
Well, that's exactly it.
And yeah, you're talking about Fusnet.
Yeah, they've they've looked at this issue as well in Yemen with regards to young children.
And so they are actually, you know, higher levels of morbidity among children have been have been seen in Yemen as well.
So there was actually they surveyed several governors in Yemen and one of them in particular in Abyan, they it went up something like four times in the admissions of malnourished children from 2014 to 2015.
And, you know, similar data from other hospitals that were surveyed.
So, I mean, definitely the levels of death among young children are increasing.
And I mean, that's tragic because these children are, you know, they're caught in something.
They were, you know, some of them born into a situation.
They have no control over it.
And it's really just a tragic situation for a lot of people in Yemen.
Well, and it seems like, you know, the media is not doing very much coverage of this, except the coverage of reactions from the, you know, so-called, you know, international civil society and whatever.
And the NGOs, the Red Cross and the and all their clones, you know, who are concerned their their concerns are the only things that make the paper about it at all, for the most part.
Otherwise, there's virtually no coverage of it.
But they all seem to be in a real state of panic over this.
They are.
And I think, I mean, two things there.
I think that it is it's actually become quite difficult for a lot of media to operate in Yemen today because the security situation has deteriorated quite badly since this campaign began in March.
And so it has become unsafe for a lot of journalists to operate there.
I mean, there are still some journalists who are operating in Yemen, but it's increasingly challenging.
But and of course, for humanitarian organizations as well, you know, difficult for them to operate as well.
But of course, I think when when they do release this kind of data, I mean, people do sit up and pay attention because because it is quite stark when you hear numbers, you know, 14 million people, you know, who have become food insecure and seven million people extremely insecure.
I mean, these are numbers that I think it's hard for people to ignore, even if they have heard these sorts of facts in the past.
It's difficult to ignore.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
Hold it right there, everybody.
We got to take this break and then we'll be right back with Megan O'Toole writing for Al Jazeera.
This is called Starvation in Yemen.
We are just hoping to survive.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Megan O'Toole.
She's a writer for Al Jazeera, producer for Al Jazeera.
And she's the co-author of this piece, Starvation in Yemen.
We are hoping just to survive.
And as she stated at the beginning here, what it comes down to is 14 million people in danger of starvation and seven million.
I'm not exactly sure how they categorize, but seven million in bad danger, real bad, short term danger of dying of starvation here because of the American and Saudi war in Yemen.
And I know that this goes at least beyond the scope of your reporting in this piece.
Megan, I don't know whether you've reported on this in the past, but it's clearly on the record in the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal and other very, very official publications like that based on very, very official statements and sources that American military and civilian government employees are over there helping with this war, coordinating the war, maintaining the Saudis planes, providing midair refueling, helping them pick their targets.
And so it's very much America's war, even though the headlines will always usually refer to it as a Saudi war.
It couldn't possibly exist without America's aiding and abetting the entire operation.
So it's sort of plausible deniability for the, you know, Sunday morning news shows or whatever, but not for real life.
So I thought, you know, stop, make that plain here that when we're talking about these people starving to death, we're also talking about Obama could stop it today if he wanted to, but he won't.
And so important point about the responsibility on this side of the Atlantic and everything here.
But so now, as far as anything being done about it, I guess there have been a few trial balloons and whatever.
Are you are you keep a track of this?
Is there a chance of any kind of, you know, real peace talks happening anytime soon?
Because it seems pretty obvious there's not going to be a military victory for either side or any side.
Yeah, well, I mean, there certainly there have been attempts to hold negotiations and obviously, as you know, they haven't they haven't gone so well so far.
There are new efforts trying to be launched to make, you know, to have negotiations again.
But apparently, according to reports, they've been thwarted by by Hadi, who's worried that a negotiated settlement could drive him out of power.
This is according to diplomats who are following the situation.
You know, there's been a number of attempts.
And in fact, even before this started there, this whole war started, there was an attempt to negotiate a solution to the conflict in Yemen.
And in fact, some sources have said that they were quite close to striking a deal before this military intervention.
Then, you know, the Houthis started expanding south.
And so they in a way they overreached.
And this prompted the air offensive and things kind of spiraled out of control there.
But, you know, there are a number of issues.
Obviously, it doesn't look like they're close to resolving them anytime soon.
But I think it's fair to say that there have been a number of missed opportunities over the course of this conflict where parties were at the table, you know, and a number of issues had been hammered out and it was a matter of kind of getting to the finish line.
And that just hasn't happened.
And so at this point, it's not really I mean, we're not seeing an end in sight.
That's not to say it can't happen, but it's just not looking particularly optimistic at the moment.
Well, it doesn't seem like the West is very concerned with pressuring the Saudis to wrap it up anytime soon at all either, does it?
Not particularly.
I mean, it's yeah, I think you mentioned earlier that, you know, this is a conflict that hasn't received a whole lot of attention in the West.
And I think that's a fair point.
It hasn't.
And I think it's difficult for some people in the West perhaps to relate to what's happening in Yemen today.
And I suppose it's also a factor of the news cycle that stories like this that are ongoing don't tend to get as much attention.
I mean, certainly we've been following it closely and, you know, following each development closely, but it may not be getting as much attention as it should be there in order to pressure other parties to take the action that is required to kind of to try to bring this to an end.
Right.
Yeah.
If there's no political pressure to make them take it seriously or do something about it, then they'll just move right on to the next thing, I guess.
You know, Huckabee's latest statement is going to get the clicks or whatever.
Well, this is it.
And I mean, also, if you look at the situation in the Middle East region right now, I mean, there are so many other conflicts ongoing.
It's almost like this one has been somewhat sidelined by the amount of other conflicts ongoing.
I mean, the war against ISIL right now is getting the majority of attention.
And while that impacts all areas of the Middle East, obviously Yemen as well, attention is being focused right now on Iraq and Syria, the heartland of ISIL.
And I think at the moment, that's where that's what the public is watching.
That's where the resources are being focused.
And that's really the conflict that people are watching right now.
And so Yemen has kind of fallen to the wayside of it.
Well, and of course, ironically, we're fighting a war for the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, their competition there in Yemen right now, at least in effect, by fighting their worst enemies, the Houthis.
Well, yeah, I mean, what's interesting in Yemen is, of course, we've seen that al-Qaeda has they've taken advantage of the situation in Yemen to basically expand their reach.
I mean, the situation of chaos is something in which they thrive.
And so, you know, there was incidents where al-Qaeda has freed hundreds of their prisoners, you know, in parts of the country where basically things have fallen into a state of chaos and certainly taken advantage of this situation to recruit and to, you know, to bring their numbers up.
So that's that's a great concern as well, because it's known it's well known that, you know, groups like al-Qaeda can use these situations to their advantage.
And that's certainly what they're doing in Yemen.
Yeah.
And now, I guess it sounds silly to put it this way, but is it somewhat true that this comes down to a fight between a former president and his replacement vice president?
And they're the armies that each side is leading here?
Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated situation.
I think there's more to it, but I think it can be boiled down to, I mean, certainly the Houthis have links to Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president of Yemen.
And, you know, a lot of this conflict is they have been targeting supporters of the 2011 uprising and comments have been made that the reason negotiations failed in the past was because the Houthis and the Salehs, their alliance was only interested really in putting an end to Yemen's transitional period.
And that's what this conflict was about.
I mean, so it's interesting.
You're just basically watching this power struggle unfold.
And the Houthis did take over quite a bit of territory before this event started.
I mean, this was going on for a while before the Saudis intervened.
So it's yeah, it comes down to a power struggle.
Ultimately, that's the simplest way to put it, I would say.
Well, and it's amazing that Saleh has teamed up with his enemies, the Houthis, who he had attacked on four different occasions that he started real wars with, I think, four different times before.
And now he's allied with them.
And well, let me ask you about this, if you know about it.
And I'm sorry, because it's not in your article, but as long as we're talking Yemen war, the Warhawks all say, well, you know, Iran controls the Houthis, and they're Iranian backed, where they don't ever really get into details, because it doesn't seem like they have very many.
But their implication is that the Houthis are just the cat's paws of Iran.
But then the other side says, and that's not really true so much, but they don't have much of a, you know, much to say about it, you know, much of a description of what is and what isn't true to what degrees they have political or economic or military links or anything.
It seems like a very vague kind of accusation encounter on both sides.
So I wonder, you know, what you think of that?
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, certainly, I mean, Iran has faced accusations of actually providing physical military support to the Houthis.
And, you know, they've denied those charges in the past.
But I mean, certainly, this whole war is being viewed in some circles as, you know, again, Saudi versus Iran, which is the age old, you know, rivalry.
And the fact that these airstrikes are an effort, sort of a broader weapon to curb Iran's influence in the region.
Of course, that's ongoing in a number of spheres right now.
But yeah, to what extent that'll play out, I guess, remains to be seen.
Yeah.
But as far as any, you know, links between them, do you know whether the whether one side is really more right than the other?
You know, to what degree on a scale of one to 10?
How close are they?
I think there's others probably more qualified to comment on that.
But yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly been a number of yeah, there's been certainly a number of indications of military support and there have been denials.
So, I mean, we can kind of look at both sides and, you know, make our own assumptions based on that.
Yeah, I admitted before.
So I'll let you off the hook.
I did say I admit it's not in your article.
I'm not basing the question off of that.
But it just seems like something that everybody's talking about.
And both sides of the argument never seem to really make a case either way very much, you know.
Well, this is it.
I mean, I think it's difficult for anyone to kind of definitively say, you know, who's right and who's wrong.
And actually, I mean, there's a lot of accusations flying around on both sides, and there have been for many months now.
So it's kind of I think everyone has to kind of look at this and make up their own mind as to what they really think is going on.
Right.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your article here and your time on the show, Megan.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate your time.
All right.
So that is Megan O'Toole from Al Jazeera producer there and co-author of this piece, Starvation in Yemen.
We are hoping just to survive at Al Jazeera dot com.
And we'll be right back.
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