All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I'm the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
All right, you guys, introducing Annel Sheeline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and she's got this excellent piece in foreign policy, which I have a subscription to, but I'm pretty sure this one is not paywalled for some reason, so run over there and look at it.
You find it in my Twitter feed as well.
It's called Washington Has Yemen Policy Backward.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Thanks so much.
I'm doing well.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate this article.
It's so good, and just right to the real point about how to wrap this war up and get it ended.
But before that, you explain the real history of what's happened ever since Barack Obama switched sides in the Yemen war in March of 2015.
In fact, you go back to before that and the Arab Spring and the coup against Saleh and all the rest.
Could you please ...
We talk about this issue a lot on this show, but I think it's been quite a while since we had a good recap of the history of this war, how it went from the drone war against al-Qaeda to then this horrible war really for al-Qaeda and their allies against the Houthis there.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Yeah, I definitely know that Yemen can be very complicated.
And so in the piece, I was trying to just give a quick history that kind of explains why it is that we're at this, essentially a stalemate at the moment, which unfortunately the Biden administration is propping up the conditions that are maintaining this sort of stalemate and perpetuating the conflict, as I argue.
Just to get into some of the history, I draw attention to the fact that the entire international approach to Yemen is dictated by UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which was passed in 2015 right after Saudi Arabia with its coalition partners launched Operation Decisive Storm, which they did in response to a request from President Hadi, who has been in exile in Riyadh since that time, after the Houthis took over Sana'a and kicked him out, first to Aden and then to Riyadh.
And essentially everything that has happened since has been sort of caught in limbo.
And that's part of what I argue in the piece, is that because the Biden administration is claiming to be promoting a ceasefire, and we did see U.S. Special Envoy Tim Lenderking going to the region several times and trying to meet with the Houthis when they wouldn't necessarily meet with him, and saying that the U.S. is pushing a ceasefire, that the Saudis are claiming to put forward this ceasefire.
And so then, as I said in the piece, Secretary of State Blinken talks about how the Saudis are really ready to negotiate, and we need the Houthis to be ready to negotiate too.
And there it's holding everything up.
But in fact, because the conditions for negotiation are all based on this UN Security Council resolution from over six years ago, essentially the terms that are being presented to the Houthis are something that they would never accept, especially because they are in fact winning.
And so the point that I make in the piece is you cannot dictate terms to the victors.
And although the Houthis have not taken control of all of Yemen, and they haven't sort of won everything, they have essentially defeated the Saudis at this point, unless the Saudis decided that they wanted to invest significantly more.
They're also, like, the level of assistance that they are providing to the Yemeni government and the level of airstrikes that they are using is essentially just to keep the Houthis from taking the strategically important city of Marib.
But they're not actually doing enough to push the Houthis back.
Not that I think that they should do that, but it's just, again, it's just sort of this notion that the Saudis are ready for peace when they're in a very weakened position.
They really would like to get out, honestly, but they're not ready, and the U.S. is also not ready to acknowledge the fact that if you're going to bring the Houthis to the negotiating table, you have to incentivize them to come.
Otherwise, they're just going to keep fighting.
This is the point I make, that usually it's the victors that dictate the terms, and yet so far we see the Saudis and the United States continuing to insist on terms like the Houthis would have to give up all their weapons, for example, which is simply not realistic.
They'd have to just surrender and leave the capital city, right?
Exactly.
I mean, the obvious question here, I guess, is has anybody put this directly to the State Department spokesman or the Pentagon spokesman or to Lenderking that, hey, man, the Houthis have not lost, and this U.N. Security Council resolution is obviously obsolete, and you're just jerking our chain if you're pretending that this is the way to peace here.
Has anyone confronted him, Matt Lee from the AP, or anyone made them answer for this contradiction at all?
It's possible.
A lot of what he does is not necessarily in the public eye, so it's entirely possible.
But I do think, obviously, the U.N. Security Council isn't the most important actor here.
The most important actor remains the United States, given that we maintain our position of military hegemony in the region.
But as long as the Security Council Resolution 2216 remains on the books, Saudi Arabia can continue to justify their position, and even their blockade is justified by Section 15 of this Security Council resolution, because the resolution called for the establishment of a U.N. mechanism to oversee imports to Yemen to prevent shipping of weapons from Iran, and it also called for neighboring countries to assist in that process.
And so, although on the one hand you have actions like this recent letter from Senator Warren, which got 15 co-sponsors signing onto the letter to say, look, you have to lift this blockade, but from the Saudis' perspective, they're still operating under sort of the justification of U.N. auspices.
And so as long as we have the Security Council resolution on the books, I don't think we're going to see a different approach from the Saudis.
I don't think we'll see a different approach from Lenderking, because they are just sort of following along with the framework that is at this point quite outdated, but until we update it, they don't really have a reason to do anything else.
Yeah.
Well, it sounds like he's just acting as Saudi Arabia's lawyer here, and that the job is really to prolong the war.
They just decided that they better change the public relations story a little bit and say that they're trying to end it, because people are getting tired of the thing.
That's about it, huh?
Well, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And, you know, we heard candidate Biden on the campaign trail coming out very strongly against this, which I think was mostly strategic, because Trump was seen as being, as offering a blank check to the Saudis, and Biden knew, you know, not many Americans have a very high opinion of Saudi Arabia, so it was easy to say things like he was going to make Saudi Arabia pariah while he was still just a candidate.
But now that he's in office, we see, for example, when the report on the Khashoggi murder was released, he decided not to sanction Mohammed bin Salman, despite the fact that that is what is stipulated in American law.
And just in general, that his statement about, for example, on February 4th, he said he, he said, you know, this war must end about the war in Yemen, and he announced Tim Lenderking's appointment, et cetera.
And so, you know, myself and others were very excited that it seemed that perhaps finally the U.S. was going to actually pressure Saudi Arabia to withdraw from Yemen and to stop its blockade, its campaign of airstrikes, and to return.
What is a civil war?
I'm not saying that the situation in Yemen would be fully resolved, but as long as Yemen continues to be essentially a proxy war, it is just going to continue, as long as we have, you know, the Iranians are there because it's a great way to piss off the Saudis.
The Saudis are there because at this, you know, this point they feel they can't leave.
And they're there because the United States hasn't in fact pressured them to leave, whereas the UAE mostly pulled out.
They are in fact still there and holding key infrastructure, which is important to keep in mind.
But for them, it became too much of a PR, bad PR debacle.
So at the end of 2019, they decided they were going to withdraw from sort of active military engagement.
So again, this is why I was emphasizing the importance of kind of this fig leaf of international justification for Saudi involvement, which is why it's so important for the UN Security Council to pass an updated resolution that actually tries to bring the Houthis to the negotiating table.
Yeah.
Well, and see, that's the real trick too, right, is that nobody can make the UN do anything.
It's the very biggest and most powerful actors can move those levers and make them do any thing at all.
And I just learned this phrase from, you mentioned it in your piece, I only learned this within the last year, maybe within the last half a year, the concept of a pen holder on the UN Security Council, where by some tradition, China, for example, or Russia could not introduce a resolution to change this.
It has to be Britain, because Britain used to own Yemen.
Right.
Yeah, no, it's.
And as I mentioned in the piece, Britain recently drastically cut the aid that they provide to Yemen.
So again, it's sort of like, why is Britain still the pen holder, the one who has to initiate any sort of UN action in the Security Council?
I mean, I do think that if Biden continued to be pressured on this, because he came out so publicly and committed to this as president, not just on the campaign trail, that there are levers here that he doesn't have a good answer.
He said he was going to end support for offensive Saudi actions and end, quote, relevant arms sales.
And yet we've seen resumption of arms sales.
We saw, for example, the sale of Apache helicopters, which are attack helicopters.
They're not like defensive helicopters.
And so there's, I do think that he could be caught with sort of his pants down because he came out so publicly and said this.
And so, you know, I think drawing attention to the fact that he is not maintaining this promise and that Biden does in fact have leverage at the UN because he restarted funding that Trump had suspended, and he has leverage with the UK because he sort of recommitted to the notion of a US-UK special relationship.
And Johnson, based on my analysis, would be willing to introduce a new resolution on Yemen if Biden said that that's what he wants.
It's just Biden has said that.
Right.
Well, and this goes for all of the UK and therefore BAE systems and all their support for the Saudis typhoon fleet, which I gather is about a quarter or a third of their air force.
And same thing with Mohammed bin Salman, right?
This is the president of the United States we're talking about.
If he picked up the phone and said, this war is over.
You heard me.
I mean, it then Boris Johnson or Mohammed bin Salman or Mohammed bin Zayed down there in the UAE would click their heels and obey.
He's just not doing that.
Exactly.
OK, hang on just one second.
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And now so let me ask you about this, because when they came in and I actually believe them like more than half anyway.
You know, the future is always the future and stuff.
But they came in and they were pretty specific.
They said, listen, we're stopping all resupply.
We're stopping all maintenance and we're stopping all logistical and intelligence support for this war.
Well, that was what they'd been doing for them leading from behind.
That was the definition this whole time.
And they said, well, we're still going to sell them Patriot missiles.
We're going to still sell them Aegis radars and machine guns and whatever anti anti drone or anti missile tech to protect Saudi territory from Houthi attack.
But we are suspending all offensive, all support for the offensive war against the Houthi regime and the Yemeni people.
But then at the beginning of April, I believe it was the first week of April, Admiral Kirby at the Pentagon said, well, we're still providing maintenance support for the Air Force.
Well, that's everything maybe.
And so I wonder if you know more about that.
And do you know if really they didn't mean any of that?
And really, are they continuing selling them bombs?
And are they continuing with the logistics and the intelligence and picking the targets and all the rest, just like all along?
I mean, this was, we had members of the House, DeFazio, Ro Khanna sent a letter with a lot of very specific questions asking the Biden administration to clarify on all this.
And the response eventually from the administration was fairly nonspecific and didn't really provide anything satisfactory.
I know that then some key individual, key legislators were brought to the White House for briefing on this, which was not then made public.
And so I don't know if essentially the White House was like, look, we need you to back off here because there hasn't been a whole lot of activism coming from the Hill since then, other than Warren's letter, which I think is very important.
But Warren traditionally had not been the main person.
I mean, this had been people like Senator Murphy, Ro Khanna, Ted Lieu, who had been really trying to draw attention to what was happening in Yemen.
So while I think it's great that we're seeing Senator Warren take this up, I am wondering what happened to some of those other people and what it was that the administration may have said as far as, you know, we at the moment, we're just going to keep supporting the Saudis on this, and we'd really like you to get right off our backs about it.
And I just think that that's really not acceptable, given the, as you were saying, the very public statement of what they were going to stop doing for the Saudis.
And then the fact that they're walking it back, they just need to be called to account for this.
Yeah.
And it is really too bad, right, that we can organize a massive day of protest about this, but then we can't do it a week later and a week later and a week later.
Just can't be sustained unless, you know, Raytheon is paying the bills for your think tank to keep churning out papers, where it's just too difficult to get masses of people to stay focused on one thing for any extended period of time.
So even while I was talking with my friend Hassan El-Tayyab from the Friends Committee, who's been so instrumental in organizing these kinds of things, he's saying, I guess the next one, we're going to put it together for August.
And I'm going, August?
But, you know, it takes that long to put it together.
And then we only get one good day of pressure out of it.
And then, you know, here we are, it's months later, and we can go ahead and change the subject to this.
And I guess people are dying, civilians, men, women and children, and especially children are laying down, dying of what is a deliberately inflicted famine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's, it's, I mean, you're absolutely right.
The difficulty of maintaining momentum on something like this and, you know, and working with, with other piece for other people who've been, who've been working on Yemen for longer than I have, honestly.
I mean, I came out of an academic background and so have been at the Quincy Institute now for about a year and a half.
But Hassan, for example, has been working on Yemen for, for years.
So just to acknowledge the important work that he and others have been doing, but I, I do think that this is an area where, because the Biden administration came out so publicly and committed on this, that, that this is something that we can push them on.
And while, you know, not, not to question Hassan's point that, you know, that for him, his timeline is August or, you know, part of it has to do with the NDAA and just the pace at which Congress moves.
But it's really encouraging given the amount of support that we have seen on the Hill.
And much of this did come, I think, again, as I was saying, because Trump was seen as just unquestioningly supporting the Saudis.
And so it was something that, that people could point to and say, this is really unconscionable what, what the Saudis are doing to Yemen.
And so we've had a lot of folks on the Hill support this.
And up to this point, it has been largely more of a democratic thing, which again, I think reflects opposition to Trump.
But now that we have a democratic president in the White House, I'm, I would hope that certain Republicans would, would also jump on board and, and, you know, perhaps enjoy the chance to hold Biden's feet to the fire and say, look, you committed publicly to this.
Why are you going back on what you stated?
This is, this is truly unacceptable.
Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
The World Food Program predicted that this year 400,000 children under the age of five would die.
That's a child about every 80 seconds all year.
And so now here we are in June.
So it's about 200,000 children have already died this year.
And, and from my perspective, we've seen momentum build on this and certainly it kind of ebbs and flows.
But I, but I do think this is an area where we can have people come together and completely reject the fact that the United States continues to support Saudi Arabia's both blockade and their air campaign that continues to devastate Yemen.
Yeah.
Where have you gone, Rand Paul?
A lonely nation turns its eyes to you.
Yeah.
You know, he, he didn't sign on to the Warren letter, unfortunately.
And so I hope as, as people are still working on this and, and more will be done on it, but, but certainly, you know, for your listeners, call your senator, tell them to, to work with Senator Warren, tell them to start their own, you know, initiate their own bill.
Whether it's a war powers resolution or it's a standalone Yemen bill, or it's an amendment, an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA that's, that's coming up that, that this is an issue where I do think, you know, Biden and a lot of, you know, a lot of Biden's people came from the Obama administration and many of them have openly admitted their shame at having supported the Saudi military action against Yemen in 2015.
And the justification for that at the time, as I'm sure you're aware, was because the JCPOA was being negotiated and they wanted, they hoped that Saudi Arabia would not be quite as critical of the Iran deal if the U.S., you know, didn't condemn and, and offered its support for what Saudi Arabia was doing in Yemen, hoping that this would be over quickly, which is what everyone thought it would be, which is what everyone always thinks will happen about wars.
And so people like Rob Malley and Jake Sullivan and, and many of these people are, are, and Ben Rhodes, they're ashamed at, at what they have done and what, what the, the effects that their, their decisions have had on the population of Yemen.
And so I think they, you know, these are not bad individuals, but it does just take pressuring the Biden administration.
Well, listen, I mean, that goes back to the importance of this article, right?
Because I can't remember if it was Hassan.
I think it must've been Hassan or, you know, I've been talking with Scott Paul and a lot of other experts on this lately.
He's from Oxfam, of course, about this.
And I think it must've been Hassan in my recent interview of him, who was also focusing on this UN resolution and saying that it essentially demands unconditional surrender of the guys who by far the momentum is with them and are in the position of strength this whole time.
And so that, you know, absolutely has to change.
So then the point I'm getting to here is the importance of having this piece in foreign policy, because you think about all those people in DC who are saying, well, like you were saying, for example, the administration must have told so many of these senators, look, just be patient.
We're working on it.
And then they bought that, right?
When really that's not what's going on here.
And until they make a major change in their demands here, then there's no real reason to believe that that's the end they're seeking.
So I'm really hopeful that this article appearing at foreign policy will seep through there and they'll begin to understand this part of the narrative that, oh, I get it.
You say you're working for peace, but you're really just Saudi's lawyer here.
If you really want peace, you have to recognize the Houthis won and they are from the north, but they're the ruling regime in Sinan now.
And that's it.
We don't have any authority to overturn that at all.
Our constitution guarantees a Republican form of government to states in the union, not states all over the world.
Yes.
Yeah, no, I think that that's really crucial.
And also we see this all over the Middle East where the United States isn't happy about an outcome, like, for example, the fact that the Taliban have de facto control of much of Afghanistan and we just weren't willing to acknowledge that or the fact that, you know, unfortunately, Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria isn't going anywhere.
And it's this, this is, you know, I'm not happy about it.
I feel awful for the people who are subjected to abuses by these regimes.
But when the United States maintains a position that perpetuates violence against the civilians and says, well, we're working towards peace or, you know, we're committed to better outcomes for the civilian population, it's, it's just Orwellian because no, actually, the result of your policy is, is the continued suffering and death of this population.
And so to claim that you're, you're supporting them is just really unconscionable.
So I just think that in general, the United States has to, and as Americans, we have to be much more humble in understanding what it is, in fact, that we can and cannot accomplish abroad.
And while, yes, we, I think a crucial thing that the United States should do, especially in places like Afghanistan, is when we, when our soldiers were over there, we, we need to make sure that people who supported our troops are not left to the Taliban, for example, or, you know, similar case in Iraq, some similar case in many parts of the world where our troops are engaged.
We, we need to help the people that helped us.
But at the same time, we just have to acknowledge that there's no plan B for these people.
You know, the Taliban have nowhere else to go.
The Houthis have nowhere else to go.
Bashar al-Assad knows he would be murdered if he were kicked out of power, most likely.
And so there's, they are always going to have a stronger incentive to keep fighting because the, the alternative to them is, is death.
So whereas for the United States, you know, these are wars of choice.
You know, we may not like the outcome.
And again, not to discount the experience of people who are subjected to, to the abuses of what are, what are often horrible regimes.
But again, that's why I think it is crucial that the U.S. needs to go back to a position of, of allowing asylum for people who, who are targeted by these regimes and especially helping those who have helped us and our service members abroad.
And of course, if anybody wants to join the French Foreign Legion, they're more than welcome to.
If they want to go and volunteer for the Afghan National Security Forces, I'm sure that they would be happy to sign them up.
But that's their right to travel and, and freely associate and they can leave the rest of us out of it.
You know, people went and fought in the Spanish Civil War.
You know, that didn't mean that the United States of America was obligated in any way to participate in that.
Right.
And just one, one more thing, if I may, I, you know, I can understand why for many Americans it feels somewhat intolerable to sort of say at this point, oh, well, I guess we just have to give up on Afghanistan or we just have to let the Houthis take over in Yemen.
But, but the reason we're, we're seeing this is partly because of this, this foreign involvement that you, you wouldn't have had, for example, like the, the legitimating narrative of the Houthis has to do with their, they're protecting Yemen from the Saudis and from the Americans and, and, and not, you know, there are plenty of people who, who really are unhappy about the thought that the Houthis take over, but there are others who support that.
And they agree with, you know, they don't like the Saudis and they don't like the Houthis, but they'll fight alongside the Houthis against the Saudis because the Saudis are bombing them.
And then, you know, once the Saudis stopped bombing, then, then they'll, they'll work on, okay, so who's actually in charge here?
Maybe we don't want the Houthis to be in charge.
But in general, we have these circumstances where because the U.S. has pursued such an interventionist foreign policy and then, and then realizes, oh, wait, we can't actually get the outcome we wanted here.
You know, Afghanistan is not being transformed into democracy.
In Yemen's democratic transition is stalled.
And these are unfortunate, but, but just, we wouldn't have gotten to this position if the U.S. hadn't pursued such a militaristic foreign policy in the first place.
So to come now and say, well, the U.S. can't, you know, let these people be subjected to this tyranny.
The real question is the U.S. shouldn't have tried to get involved in the first place and produced a worse outcome than would have been sort of the, within the realm of possibility before the heightened sort of, before military intervention, then sort of made all the outcomes so much worse.
Exactly.
I think, well, many of us, I guess it is deep into the future now.
But those of us who remember 20 years ago pretty well, remember people supporting George W. Bush with a 90% approval rating because America had been attacked by foreigners.
And all the academics at Georgetown and the Kennedy School said, yeah, this is called the rally around the flag effect.
Well, why would we think that doesn't work elsewhere in the world?
Randolph Bourne said, war is the health of the state unless you lose.
Right.
So precisely.
Same thing for the Yemenis.
And in fact, I know a Yemeni reporter, Nasser Arabi, who used to write for the New York Times back when they were interested in what he had to say when it was just the war against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula there.
He has told me that essentially, you know, speaking for the general population around there, that, no, we're not the Houthis.
They're the Zaydi Shia from the Saada province up in the far north of the country.
But they're the ones defending the country from foreign attack right now.
He said this is no different than if the Texans take over the U.S. government like it was under George W.
Bush or if the Californians are ruling the U.S. government.
The people in the South don't say, oh, well, as long as the Californians are in charge in D.C., we're not Americans anymore.
Right.
We're all still part of one country together.
Now it's the Houthis turn to be in charge of the national government.
It doesn't mean it's a Houthi regime for the whole population of the country.
Just it's a Houthi led regime.
Yeah, I mean, Yemeni politics are very complicated.
So I think in this case, because Yemen is not a democracy, it is a bit different than if, you know, when the Texans took over the White House or I think it would be more like if the Texans sort of violently seized the White House and didn't let anybody else hold any levers of power or the Californians, for that matter.
So, you know, I think and part of it with the Houthis is that they they were marginalized by the Saleh regime that he was in power of in North Yemen since 1978 and then in power of all of Yemen since unification in 1990.
And he he marginalized the Houthis and that the Houthis represent and they're sort of they and their followers wish to go back to a system where legitimacy is based on dissent from the prophet Mohammed.
So for centuries, northern Yemen was ruled by a Zaydi imamate and and the Zaydi imams were or claimed dissent from the prophet Mohammed, meaning that they're not, in fact, originally Yemeni, because the prophet's family was from North Arabia, Yemen, South Arabia.
And so I think part of what you tend to and by the way, I'm sorry, when you say North Yemen there, does that include Sanaa or you mean like really northern Yemen in the Sada province up there?
Sorry.
Yes.
So like the former North Yemen does include Sanaa as opposed and it's it's interesting because in Yemen, it's almost more kind of east versus west when you look at the breakdown.
But the whole thing is tilted to the left and all that.
I know.
I got you.
Right.
The former North Yemen had been controlled by a Zaydi imam.
That's where the Zaydi Shia live.
It's where the majority of the population live.
But actually, most of Yemen's territory is is the former South Yemen.
And much of that is less inhabited.
So the majority of the population live under Houthi control in the former North Yemen.
But it is also important to keep in mind that only about a third of Yemen's population is Zaydi Shia and the other two thirds are Sunni.
So the point I'm trying to make here is that I think part of why a lot of Yemenis are especially threatened by the Houthis taking over is because they see it as a return to this this previous system of rule, where if you were descended from the prophet, you were allowed to rule.
And that was it.
It didn't really matter.
But isn't it right, though, that when they did take over in 2015, that they immediately proposed like recognizing their minority status, that they proposed a new constitution and we'll have a bicameral legislature and include the southern socialists and women and all these things.
And my impression from my research here was really the Saudis launched this war to prevent that from successfully taking place.
The Houthis attempt to preempt a civil war by a severe willingness to compromise with the other factions there.
And after all, they were teamed up with their old buddy, their old nemesis, Saleh, in order to take the capital in the first place.
So talk about a compromise, right?
To a certain extent, I mean, again, I think a lot of the people in Yemen who overthrew Saleh, who again, was a genius at staying in power, but was not, in fact, a genius at sort of providing for Yemenis.
That wasn't what he was interested in.
And he was the definition of sort of a kleptocrat.
And so he didn't want to leave power.
It was only after a year of Arab Spring protests that he agreed to step down, partly, as I say in the piece, because he was granted amnesty.
And the GCC and the UN helped to facilitate this transition process that put his vice president Hadi, he was elected, but it was an uncontested election.
So, you know, not really, not really a competitive election.
And the idea was he would just be in power for two years.
And then he oversaw the National Dialogue Conference, which was recognized around the world for its inclusion of women and young people.
And the hope was that this, this process of developing a new constitution for Yemen would move away from what Saleh had done, and when would actually be democratic and would help to foster development in many parts of Yemen that had been neglected historically previously under Saleh.
But what ended up happening, another thing that was the outcome of this National Dialogue Conference was the agreement to move towards a federalized system for Yemen, because Saleh had consolidated all resources in himself and in Sana'a and his cronies, people recognize that no, we need to start providing more autonomy to these different regions of Yemen.
But to the Houthis, this was unacceptable because they're from this northern province, which is landlocked, has very few resources.
And so they, you know, they didn't want to have to just sort of go back to Sa'ada and, and, you know, rot, basically, you know, and again, because they, they historically were the rulers of Yemen.
And so they, they already had a grudge against sort of decades of Saleh's rule.
And they saw this as their opportunity to reassert their control.
And so part of what part of why people in your, you know, many of my interlocutors actually don't necessarily want a new UN resolution is because they, they want, they would love to sort of rewind the clock and go back to that moment in 2015, before the Houthis took over and try to go back to this transition process that, that was was trying to sort of implement this more representative government in Yemen.
And so they're, they're very frustrated that essentially, after, after doing it right, after doing this sort of national dialogue, pursuing democracy, that the Houthis and the southern separatists sort of boycotted the elections and decided they didn't like the outcome.
And they've been using violence to pursue their own agendas.
So I can understand why they're so frustrated, because that, you know, it's, it's just not fair that, you know, those, those who have the guns have been making the rules.
But isn't it the case, though, that, is it not right that once the Houthis and Saleh and their alliance seized power at the end of 2014, and beginning of 2015, that they then opened up their own transitional process to be inclusive and not just lord it over everybody else?
Um, no, that's not, I mean, the Houthis aren't really interested in inclusion, they, they are, they would like to reinstate their own rule.
So I'm, you know, I don't, I don't want to sort of sugarcoat what they're doing.
But I do think the more important thing to keep in mind here is that the involvement of the Saudis continues to, to prop up the Houthis, and furthermore, that the ongoing blockade by the Saudis also kind of restricts resources, whether it's food, but also at the moment, especially fuel, fuel shortages are quite acute.
But this actually helps to empower the Houthis, because there isn't a functional Yemeni economy.
And because the Houthis sort of control everything and are imposing high degrees of taxation, that, you know, which it makes sense that they are trying to win their war, and they're fighting against this foreign involvement by the Saudis, and the Emiratis, and the US, etc.
But, but so when, when people argue, well, you know, if you lift the blockade, that's going to empower the Houthis, my response is, well, no, actually, it would just, it might initially seem to, but in fact, it would help to restart Yemen's economy, and to allow Yemen to, you know, other Yemenis who, again, might not actually want to be ruled by the Houthis, but to allow them to, to start to focus on not just their own daily survival, but to start to think about, well, what, what do we want for the future?
Right.
Same thing with, like, when they put sanctions on Iran, it means that the IRGC gets to monopolize the black market in oil sales, and any legitimate businesses are frozen out of it.
So it's all very counterproductive.
Right.
But so now, whenever you kind of sanctions or blockades, you know, it tends to reinforce the power of those who are already in power, and then to, to simply immiserate the population.
Right.
Okay, so now, and this is what Hassan Tayeb was talking about on the show, too, that, you know what, if we can't get Joe Biden to call off this whole thing, let's just focus on the blockade right now.
You can keep your damn war for now, but just lift the blockade.
Please let trade continue.
Because as we're discussing, this has been a famine, a deliberately inflicted famine on this poorest country in the Middle East for six years now.
And nobody really knows, and we probably won't know until they have competing surveys of the excess death rate.
But we're talking high hundreds of thousands of people.
The UN lowballed it as a quarter of a million dead people, what, two and a half years ago now, the end of 2018?
Yes, no, absolutely.
It's, I completely agree that the blockade and part of what is so disturbing about it is at this point, it is the blockade is being used as a negotiating chip.
And so this is implicitly acknowledging that, so the terms of the negotiation that the Saudis, for example, have put forward and that Lenderking has put forward are that, okay, Saudi Arabia will lift this blockade if you agree to a ceasefire, saying this to the Houthis, which is just allowing the blockade to be a bargaining chip and to say, until the Houthis agree to this, we are implicitly accepting this ongoing starvation of the Yemeni people.
And furthermore, when you have the Saudis of the US saying nasty things about the Houthis, how they don't care about the population, well, then why are you expecting that starving the population would get them to capitulate?
If you're saying they're such baddies, and we know that in general, the Houthis have access to resources and they distribute them to, as they see fit, and often are blocking aid and often, again, they're trying to win this war and they're operating the way fighters, armies do.
They're not really concerned with humanitarian questions.
So I absolutely agree with Hassan that the blockade needs to be lifted regardless.
And furthermore, that we already have the UN mechanism in place that if we're not ready to fully open Yemen's ports, fine.
I mean, I think we should.
I think Yemeni sovereignty needs to be reestablished on this.
But in the meantime, don't let Saudi Arabia continue to impose ridiculous delays and inspection mechanisms.
The UN is already doing that and we don't need the Saudis to sort of do it on top of what the UN is already doing, which is why, again, we need a new UN Security Council resolution that does not allow the Saudis to do this and to have justification for it.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Annel.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me and for helping to draw attention to this.
All right, everybody, that is Annel Shihlein, research fellow at the Quincy Institute, and this one is at foreignpolicy.com.
Washington has Yemen policy backward.
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