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.
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All right, you guys, introducing Nasser Araby.
He's our friend, the reporter out of Sana'a, Yemen, and his website is yemenalan.
That's yemen-now.com.
Welcome back to the show, Nasser.
How are you doing?
Thank you very much for having me.
I'm okay.
Great, great.
Happy to have you here.
So I was just hoping we could get an update on the war there.
I've been following the recent stories by Dave and Jason at news.antiwar.com.
Apparently there's been a lot of really stiff fighting in Marib, this major city east of Sana'a there.
Can you give us an update on that, for starters here?
Well, for the battles in Marib, they are intensifying, and the advancement is continuing from a healthy side.
But what is new is that the neighboring southern province of Shabwa is also now having some of that battle, which means Houthi also advanced this week to Shabwa.
That is also an oil-rich province, but it is one of the southern provinces, and this means a lot because Shabwa is one of the strongholds of the Islamist party, Islah, which also means that Marib receives reinforcement from Shabwa.
Now with this new development and this advancement to strategic positions, this would mean that Houthi could or would cut the reinforcement and also the supply coming to Marib from Shabwa.
And also this means that Houthi is now closing in on Marib more and more, despite the war warnings from the US State Department and the White House, the latest of which was yesterday or the day before, when they warned Houthi of advancing and warned Houthi of escalation.
And also they warned Houthi of carrying out attacks on Saudi Arabia by missiles and drones.
But this would mean nothing if there is no serious thing, because Houthi is advancing and they are also, Houthis here are serious about their demands, about their conditions on the ceasefire that the United States and Saudi Arabia want to reach.
The new envoy, the US envoy, Tim Lenderking, is saying a lot about this and expressing his concerns about these escalations and these advancements, but Houthi was very clear to Saudis and Americans that the blockade should be lifted and the airstrikes should be stopped as a main condition for starting peace talks.
And even more, as a main condition for talks on ceasefire.
So no ceasefire, as Houthi says, no ceasefire talks before lifting the blockade and stopping the airstrikes, the Saudi airstrikes.
This is the most important thing that I could tell you now.
Of course, the battles are continuing and intensifying in Marib and in Shabwa and Beida.
That is three provinces in the Middle East, in Yemen, and both of them are very important to each other and to both sides of the war.
And the wonder of the American position is that the Houthis better stop winning the war because it makes the Americans and the Saudis that much less willing to negotiate if they have to lose all this face.
So I guess it makes sense from a certain point of view, from the Houthis' point of view, to just keep winning the war.
But at the same time, they are making it more difficult for the Americans to climb down and admit that they lost the war this badly.
So maybe they should cease the advancement and try to give the Saudis and the Americans a chance to back down on their side a little bit.
One thing I would say is that the Omani mediation is continuing.
And of course, the Sultan of Oman was in Saudi Arabia in a two-day visit last week on Yemen, among other things, of course.
But Yemen was the main point, the main issue.
So I think if there is some kind of concessions and reasonable demands from Saudi and Americans, the ceasefire could be achieved, but not before the lifting of the blockade and also stopping the airstrikes from Saudi Arabia.
And this is, I think, is not new.
This is the demand of Houthis over the last few years, not only now.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
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Well, and so now, speaking of their demands that the blockade stop, can you tell us about the current state of the blockade?
Because I know it's fluctuated from time to time, the degree of siege at the Hodeidah port, for example, or at the Sana'a airport.
Well, the blockade is a very bad thing to Yemenis, of course, in terms of humanitarian things, as anyone can imagine, wherever they are.
You can imagine Sana'a is the only airport, and the Sana'a airport is the only window for the outside world, and the Hodeidah harbor is the only lifeline for, say, 25 million Yemenis, for food and medicine and all kinds of basic things.
So Saudis are using these two boats in a way to help them in winning the battles.
They are using them as a weapon, they are using them to bring Yemenis to their knees without considering any humanitarian things or anything that can help the Ba'athis, Houthis and others to come to negotiations or to the table of negotiations, because Saudis want to impose their conditions by force, and in an arrogant way that they tried many times, and this approach proved, of course, false and wrong and can't be implemented in any way.
But who knows, you know, the Americans sometimes hinting to Saudis or the way that the Americans deal with the Saudi war in Yemen is unfortunately helping fuel this war and never, never helps end this war, because as you know, they said and Biden said that they would withdraw, they would stop the support and they would stop the refueling and they would stop a lot of things, they would stop the selling of weapons to Saudis.
But they say that the Americans say they would continue to defend Saudis from Iran, which means they would defend Saudis from Houthis, which means they would continue their involvement in this war.
And this is the case now.
And this is the only thing I think that compounds this problem and makes the Ba'athis and the envoys in the middle of nowhere in terms of finding a solution for this problem.
Right.
Well, I think you're right about that.
And, you know, Admiral Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, admitted back, I'm going to say at the beginning of June, maybe the end of May, that, yes, the maintenance support for the Saudi Air Force continues, which is everything right without the Americans to take care of their F-15s, they don't fly.
And so, I mean, that that's that.
And in other words, I don't really know whether they called off intelligence and logistics support and and if they truly called off resupply of new bombs either.
But if they didn't truly call off maintenance support, then why should we believe they called off any of the rest of it?
Because it was all that was one on the list of things that they were supposedly canceling was, you know, the maintenance went along with all the rest of it.
So and then we see the proofs in the pudding that F-15s are flying and bombing the hell out of Sana'a and everywhere else in the country daily.
You know, we're seeing that news there.
So, yeah, I mean, you know, when they said defensive only, that sounded like it meant, OK, Patriot missiles and anti-drone tech and Aegis radars and Iron Dome type technology like they helped the Israelis develop against Hamas rockets, this kind of thing.
But now it looks like the war is just continuing on.
And as we're talking about, the Houthis are winning it.
And so the Americans are, you know, just like in Afghanistan, they're too embarrassed to admit that they lost the war and just leave and watch the guy that the guys that they've opposed all this time take over the country, which is what's going to happen.
Exactly.
This is the same.
It is the same.
And unfortunately, Saudi Arabia also repeating the same and the previous mistakes like they now they last week, they they brought additional forces to Aden and some armored vehicles to Aden Airport, which, of course, which means they are paving the way for the the the the government, the Saudi backed government, which is now in Riyadh.
They wanted to come back to Aden for nothing, of course, for the same things, without any real pavement, without any real things that that are different from their past times.
But they just want to repeat the same mistakes.
And also they want to bring some of the parliament or the members of parliament who are outside about they have about 50 members of parliament from 300, of course.
So they want them they want them to come to say on this is a far east in the in the south.
And they want it.
They want to pressure Houthi with the same things, with the same things that are very useless and that are that are proved nothing, that are proved very weak and very ineffective steps.
But they when Saudis, of course, want to do something, they do, unfortunately, they repeat things that are useless.
And this is what we are seeing now them doing in the south and south east.
One more thing is that they there is some kind of more friction and more problems between Saudi Arabia and the UAE here in the in the in the south and in all Yemen, of course, because as I told you many times that they they are different in everything, in strategies, in tactics, in proxies, in everything.
So this kind of of conflict between the two nominal allies, Saudi Arabia and UAE, could complicate and compound the issue here.
And and it could also at the same time, it could accelerate, it could speed up the finding of a solution and bringing the parties to the table of negotiations and ending this kind of war, especially if Oman does something and if the United States change their way and do something serious and more genuine for for for helping the Yemenis ending this kind of war.
Well, look, I mean, the path is so obvious here and I'm not in support of the war on terrorism.
I'm against all of it.
But as you know very well, because I know you used to write for The New York Times about it, there used to be a war against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula there.
And this is the move that they did in Iraq and now in Afghanistan is go ahead and ally with the local insurgents they've been fighting against as long as you'll help us keep al-Qaeda down.
And that work, they called it the awakening in Iraq, which, of course, the local Iraqi Sunnis were doing this, turning on the Syrians and the Saudis and the Egyptians and all the al-Qaeda in Iraq types before Petraeus got at the head of that parade.
But anyway, and then just in the last year, we saw it's in The New York Times and The Washington Post that JSOC, the top tier special operations forces, were flying, as they put it, as the Taliban's air force in Afghanistan.
As long as the Taliban's killing ISIS guys, our JSOC is flying as air cover for them.
And they even had a plaque at their headquarters said Taliban Air Force on it.
And so same thing here.
And I know you know the story, but most people probably don't.
And maybe most listeners of this show do.
I don't know.
But our current secretary of defense, when this war began, was the head of Central Command, a four star general, the head of Central Command, Lloyd Austin.
And he was the guy who was passing intelligence to the Houthis to use against AQAP.
So in other words, if they want to switch sides in this war again, our current sec def is the man to do it.
And at least then they would be targeting the guys who helped coordinate the September 11th attack and bombed the USS Cole and tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and shot up the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a couple of the other massacres in Brussels and in Paris and in Nice, France.
And then, you know, not for that, because it's all a horrible, counterproductive war and they shouldn't be doing any of it.
But right now this war is treason.
At least that war would be pointed in the general direction of the enemy.
This is this is this is something that happened here.
What you said now about Afghanistan, this is happened.
This is happened this time.
This is happened this time because they wanted they wanted they wanted to do the same here, here in Yemen, in Qaeda, in Beida last week when they sent a group of Qaeda people.
Some of them are designated as terrorists in U.S. and U.A.
And they supported them to to advance in Beida and they did not last even even hours.
I mean, they entered, yes, they they they penetrated and they advanced in the Houthi controlled places.
But they did not withstand only they did not withstand for for for for for 12 hours.
And it was only a big scandal and a shame on those who misled them and those who misinformed them about the place.
And they and they also opened a new place for Houthi to advance towards the south.
And this is why I told you they the Houthis are advancing towards the south because of that foolish thing, because of that misusing of Al-Qaeda people.
They sometimes use it to to to gain, but they instead they lose, unfortunately.
And this is what it happens.
This is what it happens with them, unfortunately.
Well, so now what is Al-Qaeda's strength now compared to what it was at the start of this war in 2015, Nasser?
Now it's now in particular now at the present time, they are third in a good situation because they need them, as I told you, they started with them in Al-Qaeda and maybe they will use them in Al-Marib when it's as the last card.
And this is what I am expecting, because they would come from Shabwa and Al-Baidah and when I'm saying Shabwa and Al-Baidah and Al-Marib, they are, of course, touching each other.
They are they are close to each other.
They are adjacent provinces and which means they would they would come to Marib to to help the Saudi forces, the Saudi-backed forces.
And they are receiving a lot of weapons now and a lot of support financially and materials.
So they are in a good situation now, better than they they were in, say, 2018 or 2017.
You know, I read a thing.
I'm sorry.
I wish I could remember what it was where essentially they were arguing that when the United Arab Emirates brought AQAP into their militia, that that in a way kind of domesticated them and tamed them and made them not terrorists, but good old patriotic, you know, government supporting freedom fighters now or something like that.
And so then I guess the implication was they're not going to go back to being a foreign jihadist bin Laden night terrorist group because now they're this instead that they've been essentially co-opted and are now no longer dangerous to the West.
What do you think about that?
No, no, this is not the case.
No, no, they are not rehabilitating them.
They are not they are not being integrated.
They are not.
Emiratis are not integrating the Kaida into the Yemeni society.
They are not rehabilitating them to to to be freedom fighters or even normal people or good people.
No, because they are they are people.
I mean, Kaida are people who are convinced with their ideas and with their ideologies and with their faith.
So they just use the money and the weapons to also to to achieve their goals.
They have their own goals.
They have their own agendas.
They have their own strategies.
And this is what what this is what what is happening because of this.
They they exploit these these moments to have more money, to have more weapons from Americans and from UAE and from Saudis.
So they never they never or they will never be rehabilitated or or or trained to be normal people or to be peaceful people at all.
They are they have their own things.
They have their own camps, their their own people, their own ways and styles.
They receive weapons and money from Americans and from Saudis and from UAE.
Let me ask you this, Nasser, is it still the case?
And this is so thoroughly documented by so many different players in here over the years.
But are the Saudis still bombing the civilian infrastructure of the country, especially in the north there, the water, the sewage, the electricity, the farms and all those things?
Let me tell you a very honest thing, Scott.
Thank you very much for this question.
There is nothing to be bombed now, there is nothing more, there is nothing left to be bombed, but.
They bomb, they keep bombing.
They keep dropping, they keep dropping the bombs on every civil thing that they see vital or that they see would help people just in a way to strangle the Yemenis, to strangle the Houthis.
So they do it, especially if there is an attack on Saudi Arabia.
If the Houthis attack and they, of course, they keep attacking by missiles and drones, they come to Yemen and bomb.
They bomb the bombed out places.
They bomb the infrastructure, the infrastructure of everything, food, water, schools, hospitals, whatever that can hurt.
So they want to hit where it hurts more and they know where it hurts more in terms of humanitarian things, not in terms of military things.
No, in terms of military, they never do it.
And even if they bomb in the battles, where the battles are going on, they, of course, they bomb on mountainous areas, on desert areas.
So it's nothing.
So where it would hurt, it would hurt in the cities, in the villages, in the water wells, in the roads, in the bridges, in the schools, in these places.
So when Saudi Arabia want to help Yemenis, they bomb civil people or civil infrastructure because they want to help.
Because they can't help in the battles, in the front lines.
They can't at all.
All right.
And I know that from the beginning, you've been keeping track your own estimates of the numbers of casualties.
And it was two years ago.
I'm sorry to the audience, too.
I think I've said two and a half years ago, end of 2018.
But no, it's the spring of 2019.
I had that wrong.
Two years ago that the U.N. said that their estimate was that 233,000 Yemenis had been killed.
And I believe that included fighters and civilians, but the vast majority of them civilians.
But can you give us an update on what your estimate is of the civilian casualties in the war?
Yes.
Let me just remind you and your audience that the U.N. kept saying that those who were killed in this war were 10,000.
So they kept saying this for about three or four years.
Right.
They kept saying this.
And at the time, I would tell you how many were killed.
According to my observations or according to my sources or according to some local organizations here who do these statistics.
So I want to say here that there is a kind of deliberate covering up for these numbers from the United Nations and from the U.S. and from Saudi Arabia and from all those people involved in this war, because they don't want to say how many are killed or injured.
But I would say now that United States sorry, United Nations now is saying, as you know, and as your audience, everybody knows that it's about 250,000 Yemenis were killed in a direct way, not died, but killed in this war.
I would now say that it's even more.
It's not 250,000.
It's more than 300 now, based on the same observations I have been doing, based on the same sources I have been conducting, because we, the Yemenis or the journalists here and those people independent who want, who are concerned about this and who want this war to end, they have their own way to count, because one is many, is too many.
One man being killed, one man being killed, one man or one woman being killed is too many.
So there are more than 300,000 people.
And if you want me to tell you the civilians, they are the civilians only, including the children and women.
There are, of course, the majority of these, of this number for sure, because those who are killed in the battles, they are, if the number is fighters, they would stop.
So that the war would have ended.
But they are not in these numbers because the easy target for Saudis, the easy target for Saudis are the civilian and the civilian infrastructure, which also reflects on the human being when you bomb food, water and sanitation and all these kind of things that are related to that life of people.
Right.
And the United Nations did estimate at the beginning of this year that they thought that due to famine and the lack of hospitals and clean water and the entire combination of factors, that they thought that 400,000 children would die this year.
And we're already at the end of July.
So.
I don't know if you think that that estimate is holding up already, that we've had another quarter of a million children die of the famine just in this year so far.
Does that sound right?
I mean, you know what, you never know what the UN, they overestimate things sometimes, you know, and I don't know.
Yeah, it depends on.
Yeah, they'll underestimate, too.
They'll tell you 10,000 for years and then they'll tell you half a million in one year.
I don't know.
Exactly, they overestimate sometimes and they underestimate sometimes, depending on the money they want to get from that or this, because in terms of children, everybody knows that it's every five minutes you have one or two child die because of the war.
I mean, because of things related to the war, because of malnutrition, because of lack of food, because of lack of water or there are a lot of things because of no airports, no travel, no hospitals, no a lot of things.
So there are a lot of things.
There are a lot of things that can cause the death of children and women and men and everyone because they cut the arteries of life by this war and this war should stop.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm so sorry that we're out of time, we're over time, actually, but thank you so much for coming back on the show, Nasser, I really appreciate it so much.
You're most welcome.
Thank you very much.
And you are doing a great job and you are helping and you are contributing to the peace of Yemenis and of human beings.
Thank you very much.
Sure hope so.
OK, thank you, sir.
Appreciate that.
The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APS Radio dot com, Antiwar dot com, Scott Horton dot org and Libertarian Institute dot org.
