12/13/16 – Scott Paul on the latest bad news in Yemen – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, introducing Scott Paul.
He is the Senior Humanitarian Policy Advisor at Oxfam America.
Welcome back to the show, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thanks for having me back on.
Yeah, I really appreciate you joining us here today.
And I won't keep you too long.
Basically, I just want the latest of the bad news from Yemen.
I know that you guys at Oxfam have a new report out.
Is that right?
We do.
Well, we're warning that Yemen is basically running out of food.
And the situation regarding hunger in Yemen has been pretty dire now for a really long time, really since the beginning of the Saudi-led intervention.
But now we're getting to a point where not only is food hard to buy and expensive and people don't have money, but the amount of food is just really declining in the country.
There's not as much money as not as much food coming in.
So we're going to see prices go up further and see some areas probably be unable to access as much food as they were before.
And unfortunately, we're going to see starvation at a much, much wider scale unless there's some real movement on the political track.
All right.
And so I think, you know, when we talked before, it may have been.
I'm not exactly sure, somewhere around a year ago or something.
And this is really from the beginning of the war.
People said that there are millions of people at risk of starvation here.
And, you know, I guess the way the the U.N. counts the numbers so far, the only way they count the numbers in the war are those actually killed by explosions or bullets in the conflict.
And we're just supposed to wait and find out the excess death rate later.
Is that basically how this works?
Because they don't seem to be saying that, yeah, no, actually, I don't know.
X hundred thousand people have already laid down and died of starvation here.
You know, there was one report that came out last spring that said 10,000 kids under five years old had died from illnesses related to malnutrition.
Another malnutrition related conditions.
So it's not great reporting and it's the news is obviously awful.
Then just in the past month or so, we've seen a cholera outbreak that's killed a hundred, almost a hundred more people.
And that number is unfortunately growing really fast.
So you're right.
The reporting, the reporting on people who aren't killed by bombs or aren't killed by artillery fire just isn't adequate.
But their lives are just as valuable and they they need assistance just as everybody else.
All right.
So what's the status with the blockade?
Because I guess they said that it was a total blockade only for a little while, but now they let in humanitarian aid.
The block is a it's a really frustrating thing to track.
And it's sort of a rhetorical device that we use to describe a bunch of sort of complementary measures that are collectively designed to starve people.
So on one hand, and it's and I should say now all of the different parties are getting in on the act and using starvation, using food as a weapon of war.
But when we when this conflict first started, when we said that Yemen was under a de facto blockade, what we were basically saying is that that the coalition Navy wasn't letting ships berth into Yemen's Red Sea ports at Yemen's Red Sea ports and unload their cargos.
So fast forward a year.
Now they can berth.
But the problem is Saudi Arabia bombed the cranes and had to end Hodeidah, which is Yemen's biggest port.
And on top of that, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis are basically combining to undermine Yemen's core financial institutions, which means no one can agree.
No one can agree what what what currency people will be paid in.
Importers can't get letters of credit, so they can't get paid out of their own bank accounts in the in the central bank of Yemen.
And the end of the day, what it means is no one's willing to import food anymore.
There's not a commercial solution.
And the humanitarian solution is just a drop in the ocean.
We're never going to be able to provide the amount of food that the market is able to provide.
And Yemen, which is a country that's overwhelmingly dependent on imports with without that kind of without that kind of functioning market, is in real trouble.
All right.
Now, I know this isn't exactly your shtick, but you must be more aware than me anyway.
You can help us understand the Saudi backed forces, the Hadi government.
How much of the country did they even control?
Because it seems like we sort of all agreed that they were never going to be able to put Hadi back on the throne in Sauna if this kept up for another hundred years.
Yeah, the situation now in terms on the military side, it seems to be a bit of a stalemate.
On one side, you've got Houthis and Salah and associated forces.
They they at least have a sense of what their shared interest is.
On the other side, you see some forces that say they're loyal to President Hadi.
But, you know, it's unclear exactly what they're interested, what their interests are and, you know, how, how, what exactly they're doing in the conflict.
We know there's fighting.
We know there's lots of disparate parties fighting for their little piece of the pie.
For us, it's really hard because our job throughout all of this is just to navigate all of these different parties, talk with different people in the community and somehow find a way to get food and clean water and sanitation to people who are caught up in all of this.
So I think even for the average Yemeni, this is a really confusing, a confusing map to navigate.
Right now.
So I was talking with Nasser Araby.
He's a reporter based out of Sauna, Yemen.
He was saying that I guess they had moved the central bank, had had been under control of the sauna government.
And they I'm not exactly sure how this happened, because he was saying, I'm not sure in the retelling.
I'm sure the way he told it made sense.
But anyway, that the the the Hadi government had basically run off with the central bank and and brought it to the south.
And and therefore had basically cut the rest of the country out of the ability to participate in any international transactions.
I think you're referring to that a little bit before only you were making sense.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a horrible situation, really complicated, as as you mentioned before.
Basically, it's it's it's an amazing story that's been really underreported.
But basically, for the first year and a half of the war, the central bank continued to operate as an independent institution in the country.
You know, it was pressured by both sides of the conflict and had to give a little here and give a little there.
But it it went about its business regulating the currency, paying off its debts, paying salaries nationwide, regardless of what side people were fighting on or what side people were working for.
It was really a force for stability.
A lot of people working in that in that institution were patriots.
They were really just trying to help people.
And essentially what happened is last summer, President Hadi decided that he will use his sovereign prerogative to move the bank.
What does that actually mean?
Well, you're not you're not talking about picking up the building and putting it in Aden.
But essentially, you're carrying the flag.
You're taking the flag from the central bank in Sana'a and you're putting it over a new institution in Aden.
And that that new institution was suddenly meant to have access to all of the accounts, all of the funds and, of course, all the liabilities and responsibilities that the central government, the central bank used to have in Sana'a.
Unfortunately and predictably, no one has actually put money into that bank and the technical capacity that was promised to get it up and running hasn't materialized.
And basically now what you've got is two banks, neither of them able to carry out the core state functions that need to be carried out in order for people to survive, get paid salaries, support and underwrite imports and pay off debts.
So that's that's a lot of what's sort of accelerating this catastrophe.
Yep.
All right.
And now, well, I guess politically speaking, obviously, no one in America cares, you know, because of partisan politics and that kind of thing.
I don't mean no one, but I mean, no, no one with any power.
Is anybody in Europe or is anybody really pushing to try to force the Saudis to come to the table and work something out here?
Not really.
Yemen is just one of those sadly forgotten crises in the world.
And despite how indifferent our policy in many ways is, the United States is actually still the best hope for peace in Yemen, believe it or not, because the U.K. government has a similar policy, but less leverage and is actually less willing to push the Saudis towards an agreement.
And so here we are in a position where the only the only foreign power that's that's still caring to some degree about Yemen is still unfortunately primarily viewing it through the lens of its bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia.
And that's, I think, partly why Yemenis feel so forgotten by the international community as they look around.
And the only one that's the only countries that are, you know, really saying that they want to be friends to Yemen are fueling the conflict that's really destroying their lives.
So I think it's hard for Yemenis to make sense of this.
And the fact that there's no there's no real champion of Yemen in the international community is making things worse.
Well, yeah, you know, and the thing is, too, like Ron Paul used to say that if you think that you can just go around the world bombing people with no consequence, then you do that at your own peril.
You're going to end up putting yourself in a situation where, you know, people on this side get hurt, too.
And, you know, we already saw back in 2009 in response, it seemed, to the start of the CIA's drone war there that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula started trying to attack us.
And now that we've actually taken their side in this war and help build them up in the power vacuum and really flying as cover for them as they fight the the Saleh and Houthi combined forces.
However, this shakes out, whoever ends up, you know, at the end of this dominant, al-Qaeda is going to be more powerful than ever before.
And even though we're flying as Air Force now, it's not like they're going to be grateful about that.
We're still in fact, the CIA is still drone bombing them at the same time, according to news reports.
So we're helping grow.
When we're bombing them, we're helping grow them bigger.
When we're fighting for them, we're really helping grow them bigger.
But then we're still bombing them and making sure they hate us anyway.
So, you know, I'm really looking forward to 2018.
In other words, you know, we're going to have blowback coming down the line.
It's going to keep coming down the line from this.
And I mean, you said it, this happens in a lot of places where you see a political vacuum.
And Yemen is unfortunately, I think, you know, from a U.S. perspective, one of the places our government would least like to see a power vacuum.
When I was in Yemen over the summer, I was really struck by the fact, I'd read before that, according to public opinion surveys, the U.S. is less popular in Yemen than almost any other country in the world, and almost every country in the Middle East.
And that was before the war.
And now when you go talk to people, I've had this experience a lot, that the single question that people kept asking me is, why is your country bombing us?
And, you know, the nuance of, well, the U.S. is supporting Saudi and Saudi is bombing for its own reason, that was, I think, understandably lost on, you know, even the most sophisticated of people, because, you know, I think they view the United States as a global power that's closely aligned with Saudi Arabia and not doing all it can to bring about peace while it fuels war.
The other thing that struck me that, you know, that's really specific to Yemen was, you know, they had an Arab Spring Revolution in 2011.
And they come away from this, a lot of Yemenis I talked to, particularly the people who are wealthy and really well-educated, they said to me, you know, it doesn't make sense, the trajectory doesn't make sense, because, you know, you told us about this really nice thing, you know, called democracy after the 2011 Arab Spring.
I obviously don't mean to belittle Yemeni activists, I mean, people there know plenty about democracy, but, you know, the U.S. held itself out as a champion of democracy.
And I think to a lot of people in Yemen now, it's really difficult to understand where that commitment went when things got rough.
You don't hear people talking about democracy or the future of civil society in Yemen in the same way you did, and I think that's really confusing to people.
Yeah.
Well, they must have been confused by the one name on their ballot, too, in 2011, and how they're supposed to consider that a democratic election when they have one choice.
I mean, when I was a kid, I heard about elections.
They had elections in the Soviet Union, and there was even multiple names on the ballot, but they were all members of the Communist Party.
In this case, you only get one name to choose from in a Hillary Clinton election.
And I think, you know, so the rhetoric around President Hadi coming to power, I think, is widely accepted.
He was meant to be a transitional figure, and for a lot of people, because President Saleh wasn't in power, that was going to be acceptable for a while.
But now we're in a situation where that person who was meant to be a transitional figure is exercising sovereign power, in a way, I should say, alongside all of the other parties in Yemen.
But he's exercising sovereign power in a way that isn't in the interest of his people.
And that's, unfortunately, what Yemenis are feeling from all of the people that shaped their lives.
All of the parties are using whatever authority they have to further their own interests and not the interests of people who are really vulnerable and struggling.
Right.
Yeah, well, and that's the way it works.
And it's really too bad, too.
They've got the whole theory of economics devoted to the idea that you might believe in the national interest, but that doesn't mean anybody with power does.
They only believe in what they want.
And sometimes they'll excuse themselves, like what they're doing is for the greater good, but it's not.
It's always for themselves.
We see it every time.
To go back to a point you made earlier, I do want to really stress there are people in the U.S. who are in government who are doing a huge amount to change things.
And in Congress, I'd just single out Senator Paul, Senator Murphy, Congressman Liu, Congressman Amash.
I mean, these are folks who have really stuck their neck out.
They didn't have any particular interest in Yemen before, but they have a really keen interest in making sure that the U.S. is acting in its national interest and in the interests of people who are suffering.
And that's not something they had to do, but it's a kind of farsighted leadership.
I wish we saw more these days.
Yeah, I was really pleasantly surprised to see Rand Paul, now that he's not running for president anymore, get out there and stand up for something that was right.
If only someone had told him that maybe that would be the way to get ahead in presidential politics, too.
Might have seen a different campaign out of him last year.
Anyway, I did see him actually on, and quite surprisingly, I thought, the honesty that he brought.
I saw him on, I don't know if it was Tap or Blitzer, but one of the CNN shows.
And he said, hey, listen, you know, I don't know if this, I forgot exactly how he said it, but something along the lines of, you know, I don't know if it sounds like hyperbole or something, but there's a real risk that we could put Al Qaeda in power in the capital city.
I mean, if that's, if we keep fighting the war we're fighting, there's no reason to think that the Hadi government is going to be the beneficiary.
If anything, it's going to be Al Qaeda that displaces the Houthi government in Sana'a.
And that's the kind of thing that you have to be a brave person to even say that on TV, much less, you know, act like that's a real problem in the Senate and try to stop it.
And, you know, do you think that that's a real risk that he's right about that?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, like I said before, in a political vacuum, you just never know what's going to happen.
And, you know, we as a as a lifesaving humanitarian agency, we're not we're not in the business of making those predictions.
But we recognize the risk of political vacuum.
We see it in all of the different emergencies where we work.
And the more acute that vacuum becomes, the less safe people in country are and the greater the threat to international peace and security.
But credit to Senator Paul and Murphy and credit to Congressman Liu, Congressman Amash and the other people who've gotten behind them in identifying a real bipartisan interest in having a Yemen policy.
I think the folks that don't see this the way that you and I do, Scott, I mean, their interest is in a Saudi policy that extends to Yemen.
And some people, a minority in Congress, led by led by those folks I just mentioned, are you know, it's it's sad that it's a profiling criticism.
But it sort of is.
They're standing up to say, no, we actually need a policy for this country and the people who live there, you know, in the interest of our national security and in the interests of those who are suffering.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, thanks very much for the work that you're doing, Scott.
I really appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me on the show, Scott.
All right.
So that is Scott Paul.
He's at Oxfam.
He's senior humanitarian policy advisor at Oxfam America and check him out at Oxfam America dot org.
And that's it for the Scott Horton Show.
Check out the archives at Libertarian Institute dot org slash Scott Horton Show and Scott Horton dot org for the full archive going back.
And you follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
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