03/28/16 – Martha Mundy – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, this is Scott Horton Show.
And introducing Martha Mundy.
She is a professor of anthropology, professor emeritus of anthropology, at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
You might remember we talked with her a few months back about this great piece at Counterpunch, Yemen as Laboratory.
Why is the West so silent about this savage war?
And it's in the news.
For the anniversary, tens of thousands of Yemenis went outside to protest the one-year anniversary of the launch of the American-backed Saudi war, or the American-slash-Saudi war there, yesterday.
And there's also news of at least some kind of push toward some peace talks, although I'm not so sure how far they're getting.
But, anyway, welcome back to the show.
Professor, how are you?
Thank you very much.
I'm delighted to be back talking about this terrible topic, or the terribly sad topic.
But delighted to be back on the show.
Thank you.
Well, very happy to have you here.
And, yeah, it is terrible, and almost as terrible as the actual slaughter is the blackout.
As you put it in your article from last September, the West is silent, and that goes certainly for the American political campaign, presidential campaign season.
I don't think anybody's been asked any questions about Yemen whatsoever.
It's just not on the radar screen at all right now.
There was an article in the New York Times about, getting on 10, 14 days ago for the first time, a major article, but it was full of stories that the problem was that the Saudis flew too high, and that's why they hit targets, or were hitting all over the place and hitting civilians.
In short, it was a sort of preparation for a line to protect the Saudis once again, because there have been very precise strikes in the Saudi bombing, and one shouldn't credit that kind of thing.
But at least there was something in the New York Times, where as far as I know there has been hardly anything for months on end.
Whereas, because I do read the better Arabic press, it allows one to be better informed, and I was also just two weeks ago, colleagues managed to come from Sana'a, just to give you an idea of what happens if you try to fly out of Sana'a.
The plane lands in northern, actually southern Saudi Arabia, in a place called Bisha.
Everyone gets out, all the baggage gets out, and the Saudis take anyone they want out of the plane, hang on to them of course, and then the plane can take off and go to the next stop, and there's no regular schedule.
I mean, these are highly educated people, they were coming to an important meeting here in Beirut, but people don't even know the level of control that's being exercised on the ground.
Even I didn't know that any plane flying in or out has to land in Saudi Arabia before it can even get into Yemen.
And of course they've already vetted the list of people who are on the planes, and this is just a very small thing.
But the friends from Sana'a were also telling me that all the trees on the street have been cut down, because there are so many displaced people even in Sana'a, and they're desperate for firewood, that there's not a tree standing anymore in Sana'a.
And all things like that, that one doesn't pick up even from all the many reports that we have access to, also from the Yemeni ministries that are posted on www.yemenspring2015.wordpress.com, and also on our other website, which is www.8themar.org, where we put the stuff about the agricultural sector, in particular in the rural sector.
I'm sorry, could you please repeat both of those web addresses for us, please?
Maybe I should type them.
The first one is www.yemenspring2015.wordpress.com, and the other is a more specialized website, which deals with the crisis of the agricultural sector and rural sector right across the Arab world, and that's www.8themar.org.www.8themar.org, okay, very good.
Sorry to interrupt there.www.8themar.org.
Because one has been getting now very good reports out of some of the Yemeni ministries who have been compiling reports on the damage to historical buildings.
I mean, the numbers that are cited in the West, i.e. that are documented, are in the tens, but I saw a report in an Arabic paper where they were claiming 4,000, and I can almost believe that, because many of the very ancient old houses, whether it's in Sana'a or in Kawkaban, which is a very beautiful place a couple of hours from Sana'a, let alone the pictures out of Sada and the mosques, they've even hit cemeteries, so the dead need to be punished.
There is massive destruction to the historical wealth of Yemen, including pre-Islamic dams, things that clearly have absolutely no military or even really economic value beyond tourist value and beyond value to Yemenis as part of their historical legacy.
Anyway, I'm rattling on, but these are things that really don't get through.
Sometimes, as I said, for example, the planes cutting down trees, things like that, that really don't get through at all to the outside and are very moving.
When I've spoken with Eric Margulies about this, he's been to Yemen, although I guess it's been a little while, and he talks about, and he's a guy who's a very experienced war reporter who's been all over the old world, and he said this is one of the very few cities, or in Yemen, there are a few cities that are some of the very few left on earth that literally have walls left over from ancient times and this kind of thing.
Am I right that Sana'a is the longest continually occupied city, or I don't mean occupied, but you know what I mean, the oldest city, you know, continuous civilization on the planet right now?
Well, it's one of, I mean, all Sana'a and also Shabam in southern Yemen are both UNESCO world sites, okay?
They have a special status in UNESCO protection of great patrimony.
I think it's that what is so, I mean, I think Damascus is also a front runner for being one of the longest urban settlements and continuous settlements in the world.
But the point about Sana'a is the originality of the Yemeni, I mean, I know, you know, northern, I know Iraq and Syria, I know Syria particularly well, and these are really great ancient cities too, let alone the damage to Aleppo.
But Yemen is its own history.
It is quite distinct, you know, it looks and is linked to Abyssinia, i.e. to Ethiopia, to the Indian Ocean, particularly down on the coast, the great city of Zabid that was also hit, is very Indian in its architecture.
Yemen has its own history, so in that sense, yes, for South Arabia, Sana'a is absolutely goes way, way, way, way back.
And what among the cultural crimes of this war were also to hit museums that have been developed for Yemeni archaeology.
Yemeni archaeology, the sites are very ancient, but as a field, it is relatively recent.
And one of the major scholars, Damia Khalidi, who works in France, helped to build the Mar Museum that she's then seen hit by the bombardment with clearly no military purpose.
I mean, what is impressive with this war is the systematic destruction of the productive infrastructure of Yemen.
The reports on the agricultural sector are, you know, hair-raising, I mean, from irrigation structures to flocks of sheep, you name it, okay, that have simply been bombed and systematically every technical school.
This is a very poor country.
Technical education is terrifically important for development.
Systematically, this stuff and agricultural, you know, the few agricultural research units, this kind of thing has also been bombed.
It's not just the dead, you know.
The dead, in a sense, are happier than those who survive in the midst of this.
And so there is massive displacement of population inside Yemen, estimated to be 2.2, 2.5 million people at the moment, but we really don't know.
And now, not to be too technical about it, but these are war crimes, correct?
I mean, I don't just mean morally, but legally.
Isn't targeting civilian infrastructure, economic infrastructure, as you describe, illegal?
Indeed it should be, and that was one of the things it is under the Geneva Conventions, okay, as should be and presumably is also under the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian laws, the law of war is called, to blockade the import of basic food and fuel, which has been done systematically through this period.
Finally, it took the UN more than eight months to get its, what is it called, something UN MOPIC it was called, i.e. even a system whereby they were supposed to be, you know, okaying what was going in.
But even so, recently, about a month ago, a UN loaded aid boat was going in.
It landed in Hodeidah and the Saudis called it back because they didn't like that there was some communication technology for the UN that was on there with the food and to date I don't know if that boat ever reached Yemen.
So these kinds of things, yes, according to the Geneva Conventions, international humanitarian law are war crimes and to go back to that legal side of the story, the legal side of the story was that the US, the UK was very active.
They got in the UN Council on Human Rights.
They got the Saudis to be the head of the advisors at the period of the beginning of the war, the advisory committee of that.
So that and they squashed a Dutch motion to set up an investigative committee under the UN Council on Human Rights in Switzerland.
So it is only recently that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who is based in New York and not, you know, it's a different office of the UN, issued a very damning statement saying that there is no question but that some of these reported instances and of course they slowly come to have better documentation, these reported instances would qualify in principle as war crimes.
He's more guarded, right, than he has to be guarded.
And the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is a member of the Hashemite family of Jordan, i.e. it's Prince Zayd bin Rab, so, you know, he's not exactly hailing, but he's being a professional, a professional man in his job.
So I think that the silence, I mean, the US, the UK and France have been selling arms like crazy to the Saudis and they know perfectly well, they know very well that these have been used.
Also Human Rights Watch has produced reports, Amnesty has produced reports, let alone the Yemeni human rights organizations that you can find on the Yemen Springs 2015 site.
Now a couple of questions about the casualties there.
First of all, I wonder if there's any kind of consensus on even anything like a ballpark estimate of how many people have been killed in the war in the last year.
I've heard UN numbers of somewhere around 5 or 6,000, which just seems impossibly low.
Yes, I agree.
I actually spoke with a Yemeni journalist named Nasser Arabi who almost laughed and was just 6,000.
I know 6,000 dead in this war and there's a lot more than that, he said.
Yes, I don't think that even the humanitarian agencies, Oxfam had a new report two days ago, which is worth looking at, by the way, on their website.
I don't think that these people, because the largest part of the dead will be because of lack of medical treatment, because of hunger and weakness, and because of displacement, bad water, all of this.
Nobody that I know, I think the best estimates are starting to come out of the Yemeni ministries of health.
But counting the dead in those kinds of circumstances is not easy in the middle of a war.
And, of course, the bombing has systematically taken every bridge out, getting around the country and the shortages of fuel.
I don't think we have a clear number.
But the greatest part won't have died directly from the bombs, however horrific the deaths of the bombing itself is.
They will be dying from the spill out of the destruction of basic livelihoods.
Right.
This is what they call excess deaths, the pollsters and the surveyors, when they compare the previous death rate versus the death rate in the state of war, just as we saw in the Lancet studies in Iraq, for example.
And the problem is that by bombing such agricultural research, technical training places, you're also displacing and bombing those who might be best placed and by hitting, you know, three Medecins Sans Frontieres hospitals, by hitting other, I forget the exact number, but there's a large number of health units that have also been hit, clinics, over 100.
You're thereby displacing those people who could do that counting, if you see what I mean.
You're putting them also at great risk.
So I think there are going to be particular problems in getting clear numbers in Yemen.
More than 100 clinics, you say?
Yeah.
Amazing.
The numbers are up in the reports that are being posted on Yemen Spring 2015.
All right.
Now, especially as you've kind of referred to here, attacking the infrastructure or anything like this would be, you know, a war crime in any country that we're attacking.
But in Yemen, as we spoke about before in our previous interview, is really a special case because they previously, before the war broke out a year ago, they already imported such a large super majority of their food supply.
Yes.
And in fact, I believe you were explaining, I tried to find the link.
I never did find the right story, I guess.
But you began to explain on the show last time that, and this is a bit of a tangent, but it's very interesting to me, about how it was international intervention and I guess the kind of typical IMF, World Bank, economic hitman type scam that put Yemen in that situation in the first place.
We're already talking about the poorest country in the Middle East.
Now, far more dependent on international imports of food than ever before.
And now under a year of bombing and an almost complete halt to that importation.
Yes.
You've got the major elements there in the disaster.
Yes, indeed.
You just listed them.
I think that the elites too, I mean, let us be honest, under Ali Abdullah Saleh, 33 years, with a very good working relation with the Saudis, they developed very corrupt elites also.
And those elites, and Ali Abdullah Saleh himself, for example, and his family came to control the major, it was called YECO, Yemen Economic Corporation, which was the major importer of food and the major miller, particularly grains, and a major miller of grains.
And so you had an interest developed with very corrupt elites, as you usually do, under kind of IMF guidance, that Yemen didn't need to think of feeding itself.
It didn't need to support its basic production of grains, which were sorghum and millet, not wheat.
You encouraged a dependence on wheat.
I mean, the elites of the area, and there was a fair amount of oil revenue at one point, it's a kind of culture of the Gulf, you know, where there will be no tomorrow of the problem of population growth.
There is no relation between what you are producing in the way of food and your own political autonomy.
So if this war has one lesson for the Yemenis, it is to think of it in this region, the only country that has actually done that at one point in time is the Islamic Republic of Iran, which developed an Islamic Iranian policy of relatively small families, backed by universal health coverage, and defended from the mosques, so to speak.
Yemen, which was in desperate need, I mean, because I, you know, I'm on the left, but I think one needs to talk about this side of things too, in desperate need of, and Iran also has today a policy of trying to be food self-sufficient.
How is it that they stood up under the pressure of the sanctions so very long?
Now there are issues within their policies, but those are policies that were never discussed in Yemen, however, you know, however delicate the situation was, because you got under the former regime, linked to the Saudis, this kind of model among the elites that they could just sell, they could just trade, you know, and so as Yemen went into the war, I mean, here I'm not focusing on neoliberal policy and the World Bank, but of course, it's all a package, right?
I mean, the diktats come down, and then the elites play the game, but Yemen is, I mean, a real rethink about how to rebuild from the base of production in Yemen is going to be vital for the future, and it's not easy.
Yeah, especially not with all the international intervention, as you say, distorting every choice in their markets.
And now, so here's something that this has kind of been a running joke over the past few weeks about the Syria war, is that literally, and even in the Chicago Tribune, and in the Daily Beast, and some of these places, we've had fun headlines about CIA-backed jihadists fighting against Pentagon-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, and, you know, just left-hand and right-hand can't get their act together whatsoever, and it seems like we have the same kind of dynamic going on in Yemen right now, where there are headlines, well, over the past couple of weeks anyway, we've had a few different airstrikes against al-Qaeda targets by CIA drones, which I guess I understand are flown by Air Force, but just on CIA orders, but meanwhile, the rest of the entire U.S. Air Force is fighting for Saudi, at least in effect, for al-Qaeda, and for the Islamic State, against their, even though they're enemies with each other, against their common enemy, the Houthis.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Just amazing.
Is there much commentary about that out of Yemen?
It is as though, really, it is as though, you know, the American economy, making it, and the British too, to a certain extent, okay, making its money between the dollar-oil nexus and military, and the military, military sales, and Britain has, those two are also overdeveloped in Britain compared to any other European state, that all that matters is arms sales.
I mean, you know, all that matters is carry on war.
And Yemen was a laboratory for the drones, even as much as Pakistan, as you know, from before this war, so now they're back at it.
And yet, in the early, early parts of this war, there were reports that the Saudis were bringing in by ship Al-Qaeda characters into Makalla, and we know that they're basically in power in the south.
So, this is not hidden to the Americans, or the rest of them.
And the south, where they were, you know, one had some sympathy for the southern separatists after what was done also by Ali Abdullah Saleh, and with Saudi paying for that 1994 war against the south when it tried to secede.
But they have been really left out to hang by bringing in all these guys.
And a friend was telling me the other day that in the east, in the Marib area, there's of course a very important project of Wahhabization, i.e. bringing people into the Saudi fold, and those are the areas where Yemen has its oil.
I mean, these things are not unthought through completely.
It's not just a religious thing.
There was a game plan there, and presumably the Americans were going, either the Americans just like wars, because capital flows out to western banks, and they sell arms, and what the hell do they care?
They're far away.
And they've managed to keep, people can't get out of Yemen, seriously, like Syria.
So, it's not creating the same problems as it does for the Europeans in Syria.
And the elites, some of the European elites are also a bit in the same game.
I mean, it's incredible.
It's certainly not a long-term policy.
Well, I'm going to definitely try to remember to get back with you about the links to the stories of the Saudis actually bringing al-Qaeda guys to Yemen at the start of the war.
Definitely want to read up on that and get those footnotes nailed down.
I wanted to ask you one more thing here before I let you go, and that would be about something else that Nasser Arabi told me.
He said he's not a Zaydi Shia.
He never was a Houthi.
But boy, is he a Houthi now, and so is the whole country.
Everybody's a Houthi now, and they love it.
It's sort of like the Republicans came and replaced the Whigs or something.
Sorry, that's American political history.
But the point being that they have expanded their support and membership, you know, far beyond what their support started out as, and not just because they've conquered Sana'a, but because they're the only ones fighting against the Saudis.
Yes, I've seen an article by him and Richie.
I think the demonstrations in Sana'a were huge, and they were in fact two demonstrations.
One was of the General Congress Party, i.e. the party of which Ali Abdullah Saleh, and it was huge.
And the other was organized by the Houthis.
But, by the way, there were figures from different Yemeni parties who spoke, including the Southern Separatist Movement, including the Socialist Party, the Houthis talk to others, unlike the Al-Qaeda types.
These are political people who negotiate.
Well, and the Houthis are somewhat allied with Saleh now, right?
Yes, yes, but they are distinct, and they will tell you that.
They themselves argue very clearly that they're not in his pocket.
If you speak with people from the Houthis, they say that Ali Abdullah Saleh needed them more than they needed him, which in a sense goes in the direction of what Nasser al-Arabi, his name is, is saying about the increase in their popularity.
But the General Congress Party and the army, they have been folded into the Yemeni army.
But it is noteworthy that two things, one, in these massive demonstrations, I mean hundreds of thousands, I mean how you even get around in Sana'a is a small miracle, so it shows there was a great motivation.
But were separate, one organized by the General Congress Party, which is Ali Abdullah Saleh's party, but it obviously as a party goes beyond him, and the Houthis, but what was interesting looking at the videos was that in the Houthis, there were representatives of very different Yemeni parties also speaking from the podium.
The southern separatists had a representative.
The Socialist Party had a representative, and I'm sure there were some other groups that were speaking also from the podium.
So it is true that the Houthis are very strongly in control at the moment, and there's a war situation of staggering proportions.
But they are still speaking and working with other political groups, unlike Al-Qaeda types who assassinate essentially.
They are those who are different to them.
All right, now Martha, I'm sorry, one last thing.
That was supposed to be the last thing.
This is the last thing before I let you go.
I need to get your comment on this, and it's something we've touched on a little bit, but I want to make sure that it doesn't get short shrift here, and that is American support for this entire war.
The Saudis, people may or may not be familiar enough with the Saudi military to know that they don't do anything without America doing it for them.
Basically, they can't.
And in that New York Times article that you mentioned, which really casts a very dark shadow in just showing how little other coverage there's been of this over the last year.
But in this one big New York Times piece, they talk about, as it says here, the White House thought, and we won't have to get into this necessarily, but they thought they needed to placate the Saudis after doing the nuclear deal with Iran, which really helped secure Saudi's interest.
But anyway, in order to make them feel better, it says, that fact alone, or the need to make the Saudis feel better about it, eclipsed concerns among many of the president's advisers that the Saudi-led offensive would be long, bloody, and indecisive.
They're saying right here in the official administration talks to the New York Times version of the story, yeah, we knew it wouldn't work, but we did it anyway for political reasons.
So now here we are a year into the war, and not to be too utilitarian about it, but is there any chance that this war could, at any time soon, be anything other than indecisive?
All the reports I've read from the ground, I mean, the Saudis have not won this war.
They have created immense chaos in the south.
They have impoverished and torn apart the entire country in one way or another, and particularly through the bombardment of what was former North Yemen.
But they are really not taking things on the ground, and in the prisoner exchanges which happened recently, it was 109 Saudis for, it was 109 Yemenis for 9 Saudis.
We usually only hear those numbers with the Israeli-Palestinian, but the other way around, so to speak.
And I think all the accounts are, and the Houthis and the popular committees have gone quite far into Saudi Arabia, and the Yemenis will fight, and they really fight.
So if it were not for the incredible total control of airspace, and I do not accept the stuff that's repeated there by the administration, that they fly too high, that's why they hit judges' houses with great precision, and factories systematically, etc.
That's covering for the Saudis, and we don't know who's flying the planes exactly.
Well, you know, in fact, I'll mention there real quick, that I interviewed a former U.S. ambassador named Dan Simpson a couple of weeks ago, and this isn't definitive or anything, but he said that he had heard that there are Americans flying in the back seat of these F-15s, that they are literally the co-pilots on these bombing runs.
Which wouldn't surprise me, that the princes need the Americans to hold their little hands all the way to the targets.
I actually think it's too simple that the Americans just wanted to placate the Saudis, because one has to keep in mind both Syria and Yemen.
And in Syria, they weren't placating the Saudis when setting up parts of that armed resistance to Assad.
So I find that only a partial explanation of this.
Well, what do you think is the American motivation here?
Well, I think that one has, there must be different wings in American system, and some of the military, one got a feeling of that in Britain too, some of the military just thought in kind of military terms.
For example, in the Arabic press, it has been reported that Mansour Hadi, I don't know whether it's absolutely true or not, signed a 99-year lease on the island of Socotra to the Emiratis.
And certainly the recognized prime minister, Baha, stopped by there on his way to Aden and to Riyadh a couple of weeks ago.
And Socotra is a place that in Wikileaks, you find the Americans have of course long wanted a base.
Years and years ago, the Russians had a base when South Yemen was Marxist on Socotra.
And of course, it is an ecological wonder, which should be preserved as opposed to this kind of calculation.
But it is perfectly possible that in geopolitical terms, there is a wing in the American military establishment, like the British, etc., that bought into this war, that the Gulf was going to control Bab el-Mandeb, and the Emiratis were going to rebuild Aden under their economic control, Socotra could become useful, I mean, aligned with the US, even if whether or not it was to have long dreamed of base, this kind of thing.
I'm afraid that there is some of that, that we will later come to know about, and other things to do with Israel, etc.
Peace with Israel, as she said right at the beginning of the war, and this list of wonderful things that would come out of this war was of course signing a peace with Israel too.
So I think there was a dream plan, which was certainly marketed by some sectors to the Gulf, and the worst elements in the American establishment, the arms sale, and in the British establishment too, have done quite well so far in making money.
No doubt about that.
That was the ambassador's take too, that the bottom line of all of this is just emptying bomb inventories and refilling them again.
So it goes.
Alright, listen, I've kept you way over the time I asked for, but I couldn't let you know how much I appreciate your time today on the show, Martha.
It's really been great.
It's good to get the voice out.
Thank you very much.
I really appreciate it.
Alright y'all, that is Martha Mundy.
You can find this one at Counterpunch Yemen as Laboratory.
Terrible.
And find her at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
She is Professor Emeritus there.
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