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The Syria Podcast: Yemen, Empire and the Gulf · UK Column Radio

0:01
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome once again to the Syria podcast. I
0:13
Speaker 1: am delighted to be joined by Vanessa Bailey once again.
0:16
Speaker 1: Welcome to the program, Vanessa.
0:19
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mike.
0:21
Speaker 1: And we're absolutely delighted to be joined also by Isa Blumi,
0:25
Speaker 1: professor at Stockholm University, professor in the Department of Asian
0:29
Speaker 1: and Middle Eastern Studies. Welcome to the Syria podcast for
0:33
Speaker 1: the first time, Isa.
0:35
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for the invitation. Looking forward to speaking
0:37
Speaker 2: with you on this, related to Yemen, of course. Well, indeed.
0:42
Speaker 1: So on a recent UK column news, you were on
0:46
Speaker 1: with us as a guest to talk about what's been
0:49
Speaker 1: going on in Yemen. People will know that this is
0:52
Speaker 1: called the Syria podcast. But of course, we are talking
0:54
Speaker 1: about what's going on in the region. Vanessa, just give
0:58
Speaker 1: us a brief introduction here, because obviously the conflict within Yemen,
1:04
Speaker 1: but certainly between Saudi Arabia and Yemen has been going
1:07
Speaker 1: on for many years. But it is a conflict that has,
1:11
Speaker 1: over the years, had very little coverage in mainstream press.
1:15
Speaker 1: And really, when there is coverage in mainstream press, the
1:20
Speaker 1: situation is presented as being one of some kind of
1:26
Speaker 1: insurgency against the recognized government in Yemen.
1:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Of course, this conflict has been ongoing since,
1:34
Speaker 3: I think, March 2015, after the incumbent, but largely illegitimate, president,
1:42
Speaker 3: who was a Saudi... proxy president, not only fled Sana'a,
1:48
Speaker 3: the capital, he went to Aden in the south, and
1:51
Speaker 3: then he fled to Riyadh, and he instructed Saudi Arabia
1:55
Speaker 3: to begin the bombing of Yemen. Now, this was after
1:59
Speaker 3: the visit by Jamal bin Omar, the UN envoy to Yemen,
2:05
Speaker 3: who basically reported back that Yemen had resolved its political
2:10
Speaker 3: issues constitutionally. There was no need for any aggression. So
2:16
Speaker 3: the Saudi aggression against Yemen was, of course, illegal from
2:20
Speaker 3: the very beginning. One of the projects that Mansour Hadi
2:24
Speaker 3: had been tasked with instigating in Yemen was the partitioning
2:28
Speaker 3: of the country into six pardon me, sectarian statelets isolating
2:37
Speaker 3: what is described by Western media as the Houthi movement
2:42
Speaker 3: in one state, given the name of Azal, which would
2:46
Speaker 3: be effectively isolated both from the maritime corridor and from
2:51
Speaker 3: Yemen's natural and oil and energy resources. And of course,
3:00
Speaker 3: What we are seeing in Western media, and I'd very
3:02
Speaker 3: much like Issa to talk about this, is we were
3:05
Speaker 3: talking before we started recording that people are very confused
3:13
Speaker 3: about Yemen for a number of reasons. There's very little
3:17
Speaker 3: historical context easily available. The media portrays it, of course,
3:24
Speaker 3: as a sectarian war, just as they did in Syria,
3:27
Speaker 3: just as they did previously in Iraq. And it is
3:34
Speaker 3: reduced down to being the Houthis themselves. against Saudi Arabia,
3:39
Speaker 3: which of course is kind of ridiculous. The Anshulullah movement
3:45
Speaker 3: is a coalition resistance movement. It's a Yemeni popular movement.
3:50
Speaker 3: The government itself, Issa can maybe correct me if I'm wrong,
3:54
Speaker 3: but I heard previously it's made up of a coalition
3:57
Speaker 3: of 38 political and tribal parties or factions. And so
4:05
Speaker 3: I guess really I'd like Issa to step in here
4:08
Speaker 3: and talk about why is, I mean, obviously we know
4:11
Speaker 3: why the narrative is skewed towards Saudi Arabia and towards
4:15
Speaker 3: the US, UK, Israeli project in Yemen, for sure. But
4:21
Speaker 3: why in the academic world, particularly, Is there so little
4:28
Speaker 3: balance on the portrayal of the Yemeni struggle, basically?
4:34
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, again, thank you for allowing me to participate
4:37
Speaker 2: in this conversation. It certainly does have a lot to
4:40
Speaker 2: do with the larger region, what has been transpiring in Yemen,
4:46
Speaker 2: I argue, extends further back than a 2015 moment of,
4:50
Speaker 2: let's say, realization of a long-term solution. campaign to undermine
4:56
Speaker 2: Yemeni's ability to negotiate on their own terms a relationship
5:01
Speaker 2: with the larger world. I share this sentiment of Vanessa's
5:08
Speaker 2: dog growling at how the world functions and growling at my,
5:14
Speaker 2: I guess, still colleagues in larger academia because unfortunately there's
5:20
Speaker 2: very little rewards for those who actually take up a
5:25
Speaker 2: position that is counter-narrative. In the case of Yemen, in
5:32
Speaker 2: some other settings, there is some cachet to mobilize your
5:38
Speaker 2: capacities to take an anti-imperialist position. But with regards to Yemen,
5:43
Speaker 2: it is so much off the radar screen of even
5:45
Speaker 2: those who are in other contexts quite sympathetic to the
5:49
Speaker 2: critique we have about imperialism, that it leads... myself and
5:56
Speaker 2: a couple of others, not necessarily in Yemeni studies, but
5:59
Speaker 2: on the fringes, if you will, of mainstream Middle East
6:03
Speaker 2: studies generally, to question the framework, the discourse, the epistemologies
6:15
Speaker 2: that we use to confront empire and imperialism in academia.
6:22
Speaker 2: And I highlight this because the way academia has been
6:27
Speaker 2: structured since the Cold War, we know that the social
6:32
Speaker 2: sciences is largely a set of disciplines that emerged first
6:41
Speaker 2: in Rockefeller-funded universities in North America. Robert Vitalis has written
6:47
Speaker 2: quite extensively about this, as did Richard Price regarding anthropology
6:51
Speaker 2: in particular. Other anthropologists have regularly critiqued these disciplines for
7:00
Speaker 2: constantly reducing the larger world to neatly framed categories that
7:07
Speaker 2: are reductive, overtly racist, what we call orientalist in some
7:15
Speaker 2: maybe more familiar to your audience. But Yemen has long
7:19
Speaker 2: been treated as a zone of medieval underdeveloped backward peoples
7:28
Speaker 2: who are resistant to development, to modernization, to transition into
7:37
Speaker 2: the 20th century. That's long been the discourse about Yemenis.
7:41
Speaker 2: And this has been actually, a useful framework for those
7:47
Speaker 2: who would claim ownership over the discussions about Yemen. So
7:53
Speaker 2: scholars who have a certain expertise that is distinctive from
8:00
Speaker 2: scholars working on other parts of the Middle East or
8:03
Speaker 2: other parts of the Global South or therefore have a
8:07
Speaker 2: monopoly on how we talk about Yemen. And they regularly
8:12
Speaker 2: and habitually and very problematically resort to framing Yemen in
8:16
Speaker 2: terms of tribalism, in terms of sectarianism, in terms of
8:22
Speaker 2: this developmental backwardness. And that is more or less mirrored
8:26
Speaker 2: and echoed the larger campaigns to try to subordinate Yemeni
8:32
Speaker 2: independence and force it into this process that we have
8:37
Speaker 2: called since the Cold War, modernization, globalization, and kind of
8:45
Speaker 2: a neo, now it's now called neoliberal trajectory, where Yemen's
8:51
Speaker 2: natural resources, its human resources, are serviceable to a larger
8:58
Speaker 2: economic project. And this has been long resisted. And one
9:04
Speaker 2: of the few places in the Middle East that has
9:06
Speaker 2: not completely capitulated to this process of in the 1950s
9:12
Speaker 2: and 60s called modernization, which I have to highlight to
9:15
Speaker 2: your audiences, both the Soviet Union and the United States.
9:20
Speaker 2: So both sides of the Cold War were actually promoting
9:24
Speaker 2: this idea that in order to develop the third world,
9:30
Speaker 2: to avoid the kind of revolutionary dynamics that are very
9:33
Speaker 2: destructive as the French, the Dutch and the British in
9:37
Speaker 2: this old school imperialism, refused to surrender their 19th century
9:45
Speaker 2: role as kind of these plunderers of the global south
9:51
Speaker 2: and to find a more meaningful, peaceable way of moving
9:54
Speaker 2: forward to collectively develop the world. Because again, the Soviet Union,
9:58
Speaker 2: the United States were in the United Nations promoting development
10:04
Speaker 2: framed in a very ideologically Eurocentric prism. Now, Yemen again
10:15
Speaker 2: did not wish to subscribe to this model of It
10:20
Speaker 2: was highly materialistic. It demanded, again, the availing of Yemeni
10:27
Speaker 2: resources for very cheap prices to subsidize the continued industrialization
10:33
Speaker 2: or re-industrialization of Europe and Japan and Korea after World
10:37
Speaker 2: War II. And they had a very articulate critique against this. Finally,
10:43
Speaker 2: they were, by 1962, subordinated by Miraculously, some people forget Nasr,
10:51
Speaker 2: who brought in these modern institutions, a central bank, a
10:57
Speaker 2: technocratic class that are largely over the course of the
11:00
Speaker 2: 60s and 70s come from a city called Daesh. which
11:04
Speaker 2: is served now as the platform for a kind of
11:08
Speaker 2: bourgeois elite, urban elite in Yemen, who have tried to
11:12
Speaker 2: hold on to power ever since. And the origins of
11:16
Speaker 2: our war right now, drawing mostly on this reticence to
11:22
Speaker 2: allow for larger Yemeni society, a largely rule-based society that
11:26
Speaker 2: has been increasingly forced to live in the cities, in
11:29
Speaker 2: the slums of the cities of Yemen, and service as
11:33
Speaker 2: cheap labor the global economy, their resistance to this process
11:39
Speaker 2: has implicated significant portion of this bourgeois urban substrata in
11:47
Speaker 2: Yemeni society who have been making partnerships with either the
11:51
Speaker 2: Soviet Union during the Cold War or almost exclusively now
11:55
Speaker 2: the United States and its partners in this post-Cold War
12:02
Speaker 2: And scholars who work on Yemen know where their bread
12:07
Speaker 2: is buttered, and they know the money comes from institutions
12:11
Speaker 2: that since the 1960s have tried to promote this idea,
12:15
Speaker 2: whether on ideological grounds. side of, let's say, favoring a
12:19
Speaker 2: Soviet model of development, of modernization, or the United States.
12:25
Speaker 2: Either or, that meant for indigenous peoples throughout the world,
12:28
Speaker 2: they would have to succumb to modern technology, to the
12:33
Speaker 2: social and economic and material conditions that come with it,
12:37
Speaker 2: which is poverty, which is kind of a dehumanizing relationship
12:42
Speaker 2: related to their labor capacities. And ultimately, the lion's share
12:48
Speaker 2: of any surplus value that comes from their societies, it
12:52
Speaker 2: gets exported elsewhere. And so Yemenis have understood this, and
12:57
Speaker 2: they have resisted this, and they continue to do so.
13:00
Speaker 2: But the Yemeni studies cohort cannot allow for this narrative
13:06
Speaker 2: to take shape these forms because it contradicts the interest
13:12
Speaker 2: of those who actually fund their research. Most scholars who
13:17
Speaker 2: work on Yemen, as in the Middle East, get their
13:19
Speaker 2: money from now government resources and increasingly the United States
13:24
Speaker 2: has made a certain demands on the money that they
13:26
Speaker 2: provide to our researchers. In my book on Yemen, I demonstrated,
13:30
Speaker 2: I found documents that already in the 1960s, some of
13:33
Speaker 2: the more prominent voices in contemporary studies on Yemen were
13:38
Speaker 2: providing reports to USAID and the CIA. You have people
13:42
Speaker 2: who are habitually testifying before the British and the American
13:47
Speaker 2: policymaking bodies. I'm not going to name names, but they
13:54
Speaker 2: are clear because they're publishing regularly books, book-length studies on Yemen.
14:00
Speaker 2: They regularly promote the idea that Yemen is habitually at
14:05
Speaker 2: war with itself because it's a tribal society that's segmented
14:09
Speaker 2: along tribal lines, along sectarian lines, that they desperately need
14:16
Speaker 2: outside interventions to help push it into the direction of modernity.
14:21
Speaker 2: Those who are reticent are backward-looking fundamentalist Muslims who are anti-Semitic,
14:29
Speaker 2: who are anti-modern, anti-technology, you know, a whole list of
14:35
Speaker 2: things that regularly get circulated, which are generally being now
14:38
Speaker 2: projected towards the so-called Houthis by this group of so-called
14:44
Speaker 2: experts working on Yemen. Now, I've just edited a special
14:49
Speaker 2: issue in the Middle East Critique where not only in
14:51
Speaker 2: my introduction do I lay this out in more detail
14:54
Speaker 2: and the consequences of this, but some colleagues, Sharin as well,
14:59
Speaker 2: I think Vanessa has recently interviewed, has also demonstrated through
15:04
Speaker 2: an article entitled The Stenographers of Yemeni Studies or something
15:11
Speaker 2: along those lines. I can't remember the exact title, but
15:14
Speaker 2: think tanks... is a major revenue source for scholars working
15:19
Speaker 2: on the Middle East, on Yemen in particular these days.
15:23
Speaker 2: You have a lot of people who actually do not
15:25
Speaker 2: have academic credentials, but who are able to get hired
15:29
Speaker 2: working for Rand Corporation, working for Middle East Institute, Carnegie,
15:36
Speaker 2: the European Brussels equivalent, the crisis group, And they produce
15:43
Speaker 2: the content that gets then regurgitated by media and then
15:47
Speaker 2: also is platformed as scholarship about events in Yemen. And
15:51
Speaker 2: we see similar dynamics at play with North African studies,
15:55
Speaker 2: with Iranian studies, Syrian studies. Same kind of profile of
16:04
Speaker 2: academics slash promoters of certain policies based in Washington, London
16:10
Speaker 2: or in Brussels. have been instrumental in shaping how we
16:15
Speaker 2: talk about Syria for all these years. And so I
16:19
Speaker 2: think the same enterprise comes to play in regards to Yemen.
16:23
Speaker 2: And one last comment about this, because it's very frustrating
16:27
Speaker 2: that every time I end up on a social media
16:30
Speaker 2: platform giving an interview or even submit something for academic
16:35
Speaker 2: publications— I'm habitually asked to start from the beginning, to
16:42
Speaker 2: correct the misnomers that are regularly mobilized. And I think
16:46
Speaker 2: strategically so. The media is not going to correct itself
16:51
Speaker 2: and move beyond simply just constantly making the same mistake.
16:56
Speaker 2: And in social media, that's certainly the case as well.
16:59
Speaker 2: We are spending all of our time saying the same
17:02
Speaker 2: thing over and over again to correct the misappropriations, the
17:06
Speaker 2: mischaracterizations of the people who are involved. For those of
17:10
Speaker 2: us who are on the right side of these discussions generally,
17:15
Speaker 2: it behooves us to actually move this conversations beyond just
17:19
Speaker 2: repeatedly saying it's not the Houthis, this is not a
17:22
Speaker 2: sectarian war. This is because we lose the opportunity to
17:26
Speaker 2: actually talk about in more detail what is actually going
17:29
Speaker 2: on and why the world, why the Middle East, why
17:32
Speaker 2: Yemen needs to be destroyed at this particular point in time.
17:36
Speaker 2: How do these things interconnect? And so that's why I'm
17:39
Speaker 2: very grateful for UK Column and for these platforms that
17:43
Speaker 2: allow for me to babble on like I just did.
17:46
Speaker 2: But nevertheless, I'm hopeful that we can promote this idea
17:51
Speaker 2: that we can start actually from a place moving forward
17:56
Speaker 2: that does not have to spend 20 minutes correcting things.
18:00
Speaker 2: They regularly spewed out repeatedly and very, very clearly propagandistic
18:08
Speaker 2: starting points that are laid out in media and by
18:11
Speaker 2: academics who are, again, funded by empire. They know who's
18:17
Speaker 2: funding them. They know that the moment they start to
18:19
Speaker 2: challenge this narrative, they're not going to get the book contracts.
18:23
Speaker 2: They're not going to get promoted at university. We saw
18:26
Speaker 2: this somewhat play out in the case of Gaza, but
18:30
Speaker 2: Even with the case of Palestinians, there is still some
18:34
Speaker 2: legitimacy to take a position that supports Palestinian statehood. Certain
18:41
Speaker 2: things you can't say about the dynamics in Palestine, but
18:46
Speaker 2: you are completely shunned if you say things that contradict
18:49
Speaker 2: the kind of mainstream narrative about Yemen. And I have
18:53
Speaker 2: plenty of examples in my own work, which were not— my
18:56
Speaker 2: books were not reviewed in some of the top journals
18:59
Speaker 2: in Middle East studies. They're never reviewed in Times Literary.
19:04
Speaker 2: What was it? TLC, Times Literary. What's the supplement? Times
19:10
Speaker 2: Literary Supplement or New York Times. I'll never get a
19:14
Speaker 2: chance to speak at Al Jazeera, which is one of
19:17
Speaker 2: those gatekeepers and did whole discussions about the Middle East,
19:22
Speaker 2: especially about Yemen, because the state sponsor of Al Jazeera, Qatar,
19:28
Speaker 2: is one of the three major instigators of violence, from
19:33
Speaker 2: the region at least. And while we introduced, Venice introduced
19:38
Speaker 2: the situation in 2015, the United States needs to be
19:42
Speaker 2: platformed and put prominently at the front. Saudi Arabia, Mansur
19:47
Speaker 2: Hadi do not do anything in Yemen without the imposition
19:52
Speaker 2: and dictate from the United States. So we want to
19:56
Speaker 2: bring Yemen story, the story of Syria, the story of
20:00
Speaker 2: the larger Middle East, and remind ourselves regularly that we
20:03
Speaker 2: have to start with what the United States is up to,
20:07
Speaker 2: as opposed to Again, putting the responsibility, the onus on
20:12
Speaker 2: Syrians and Yemenis, Iranians or Saudis exclusively. These are wars
20:21
Speaker 2: that are germinated and organized and sustained from Washington, from London,
20:29
Speaker 2: from Brussels, Tel Aviv by extension. They are not originally
20:34
Speaker 2: Yemeni or Syrian warrants.
20:36
Speaker 1: Let's try and move this conversation forward then, Vanessa. So
20:39
Speaker 1: how do we place Yemen in the overall context of
20:43
Speaker 1: what's going on in the region?
20:45
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, it's very difficult to.
20:48
Speaker 3: Separates any part of the resistance axis from an overall
20:54
Speaker 3: movement to free the region from decades of colonization, occupation,
21:00
Speaker 3: resource grab, control of economic corridors, maritime corridors. not necessarily directly,
21:08
Speaker 3: but by proxy, the importance of the Zionist Arab Persian
21:15
Speaker 3: Gulf states in maintaining American economy, Western economies. And I think, Isa,
21:24
Speaker 3: I'd kind of like to move on to that because
21:28
Speaker 3: We know that really the US is heavily reliant on
21:34
Speaker 3: the alliance with the Zionist Arab Gulf states, Persian Gulf states, right,
21:42
Speaker 3: to support their economy, to support the military-industrial complex, and
21:48
Speaker 3: also in a similar way to Israel, although to a
21:51
Speaker 3: large degree it is considered less critical, let's say. I mean,
21:57
Speaker 3: Israel is given support far beyond that which the Zionist
22:03
Speaker 3: Arab states have received. Now, I'd like to actually dig
22:07
Speaker 3: into history. You've mentioned President Gamal Abdel Nasser's role, pushed,
22:14
Speaker 3: I think, as you said, by the U.S., by the
22:17
Speaker 3: Anglo-American sphere and by the Soviet Union to effectively modernize Yemen.
22:24
Speaker 3: But there's also the role of these Gulf states. How
22:33
Speaker 3: were they brought into the fold as, if you like,
22:36
Speaker 3: a protectorate for the Zionist entity largely within a region
22:42
Speaker 3: that was ultimately hostile towards the occupation of Palestine? but
22:49
Speaker 3: also how they are now being used to bring the
22:53
Speaker 3: region under the control of the Zionist bloc or of
22:57
Speaker 3: the imperialist bloc. And to what extent is the war
23:02
Speaker 3: with Yemen so important for that, their success in the
23:07
Speaker 3: war against Yemen so important for that? And conversely, why
23:12
Speaker 3: is Yemen's resistance worse? so important in the sense that
23:16
Speaker 3: it has actually prevented that ultimate supremacy for what I
23:23
Speaker 3: call the Zionist bloc, but whether you call it the
23:25
Speaker 3: colonialist bloc, the imperialist bloc, of having full control over
23:30
Speaker 3: the economic corridors, the resources, the trade corridors, and so
23:36
Speaker 3: on in the region.
23:38
Speaker 2: Wow, there's a lot there.
23:40
Speaker 1: Sorry.
23:41
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure I... I will skip the reference
23:46
Speaker 2: to Nasser's own role in the Cold War to move
23:53
Speaker 2: us to the point where oil and gas actually becomes
23:57
Speaker 2: a factor to the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf. Because
24:01
Speaker 2: if we do look at the period just prior to
24:07
Speaker 2: the independence of the the British zones of influence that
24:18
Speaker 2: were initially established by the British East India Company and
24:21
Speaker 2: then the cost of maintaining that economic exploitive relationship was
24:30
Speaker 2: transferred to the British state and therefore British society in
24:35
Speaker 2: general in the 1850s, 1860s. The Gulf was a net
24:42
Speaker 2: burden on the British Empire until it started to discover oil,
24:47
Speaker 2: largely on the back of American engineers. The British Empire
24:52
Speaker 2: after World War I was largely hamstrung by the fact
24:56
Speaker 2: that it didn't have money. It had limited capacities to
25:03
Speaker 2: actually become and sustain its position as a global power.
25:10
Speaker 2: As we know, this whole narrative of eventually after World
25:13
Speaker 2: War II, starting with India and by the 1960s, Arabian Peninsula,
25:19
Speaker 2: East Africa, these are all kind of former colonies that
25:22
Speaker 2: are now going to be managed into a reliable post-imperial
25:31
Speaker 2: sovereign states with political leadership who are going to remain
25:35
Speaker 2: independent habitually tied to and servicing the North Atlantic's imperialist interest.
25:44
Speaker 2: With oil, in these zones that were still not yet
25:49
Speaker 2: neatly formulated, what we would call later on the UAE,
25:52
Speaker 2: this federation that had originally intended to include Qatar and
25:57
Speaker 2: Bahrain in this enterprise, this would be largely contested and
26:04
Speaker 2: confronted by the United States and its partner, Saudi Arabia. Ramco,
26:11
Speaker 2: its origins, the discovery of oil in East Arabia in
26:15
Speaker 2: the late 1940s, the financing of its development and the
26:20
Speaker 2: initial platforming and then deliverance of this oil to the
26:24
Speaker 2: global markets was an entirely an American project. that oversaw
26:29
Speaker 2: the transition from British imperialism to a new articulation of
26:35
Speaker 2: capitalist finance imperialism over the 60s and 70s. And this
26:41
Speaker 2: was serviceable until the big crisis with Vietnam War and
26:49
Speaker 2: obviously with the French making this last grasp at empire
26:55
Speaker 2: in its own right and declaring that it's not going
26:57
Speaker 2: to be servicing American debt anymore and demanding that gold
27:02
Speaker 2: be repatriated to France for all its trade surpluses with
27:10
Speaker 2: the United States. The gold crisis that Nixon basically resolves
27:14
Speaker 2: with declaring that the dollar has now been delinked from
27:17
Speaker 2: the gold in 1971 is very much where we need
27:22
Speaker 2: to start with talking about Yemen in its relationship to imperialism,
27:27
Speaker 2: The transformations, the structural changes are going to take place
27:29
Speaker 2: in the world because of this reality, this limitation to
27:36
Speaker 2: imperialism and the restructuring of imperialism moving forward, which necessitated
27:45
Speaker 2: reallocating infrastructure. We started to see this with the rehabilitation
27:52
Speaker 2: of China with the United States, with Deng Xiaoping moving forward.
27:56
Speaker 2: China takes on the industrial burden of the global economy,
28:03
Speaker 2: the manufacturing burden. Financing is going to come increasingly from
28:07
Speaker 2: the global south as the commodities that are being plundered
28:13
Speaker 2: from the global south, now almost exclusively independent states with
28:19
Speaker 2: political and economic ruling classes that are very much intertwined
28:24
Speaker 2: with the interest of the city of London with Wall
28:30
Speaker 2: Street and their kind of subsidiary assets around the world,
28:35
Speaker 2: including Israel. And that role would survive the sustenance of
28:44
Speaker 2: the petrol dollar, as Michael Hudson framed it in the
28:48
Speaker 2: terms of a super imperialism. where the United States was
28:52
Speaker 2: able to create a system in which the larger world
28:54
Speaker 2: depended on the availability of the U.S. dollar in order
28:58
Speaker 2: to pay for its commodities. And you had corrupt families that, again,
29:03
Speaker 2: is a gift or is the byproduct of both British
29:06
Speaker 2: and American imperialism. Pre-oil, these families would, by and large, survive.
29:13
Speaker 2: There would be some reallocation of power within these internal
29:16
Speaker 2: family disputes over power and over who has the resources.
29:20
Speaker 2: In Sharjah, in Abu Dhabi, in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia even, right?
29:26
Speaker 2: You had internal disputes in the families about which half-brother
29:31
Speaker 2: would succeed Abdulaziz ibn Saud. For a moment, it was Saud,
29:37
Speaker 2: and then he was replaced by Faisal, who... was very
29:40
Speaker 2: much more amendable to this transition to the petrol dollar,
29:47
Speaker 2: which would sustain and subsidize the United States moving forward.
29:51
Speaker 2: But another component that is often forgotten is that these
29:54
Speaker 2: now so-called independent countries states. I want to find a term.
30:03
Speaker 2: I don't want to call them monarchies because these are
30:05
Speaker 2: not actually monarchies either. There is autocratic states, these dictatorships,
30:10
Speaker 2: these family fiefdoms, if you will, that are going to
30:13
Speaker 2: be sustained by a security apparatus that is now paid for.
30:19
Speaker 2: And British and American, and now we have Eric Prince
30:22
Speaker 2: back in the news with his private army and DRC.
30:26
Speaker 2: So you have a mercenary class that's going to emerge
30:30
Speaker 2: from these colonial wars, anti-colonial wars. They're going to become
30:34
Speaker 2: now privatized. The United States Army is in many ways
30:38
Speaker 2: going to evolve to become a private enterprise in its
30:41
Speaker 2: own right under Dick Cheney and the first Iraq war.
30:47
Speaker 2: And Yemenis are all part of this by being simply auxiliaries.
30:52
Speaker 2: They are the suppliers of hard labor. They're the initial
30:56
Speaker 2: wave of regional labor that's going to go and work
31:00
Speaker 2: in these emerging oil economies in the Eastern Arabian space.
31:07
Speaker 2: They're going to be the ones who will make the highways.
31:09
Speaker 2: They're the ones who are going to build the high rises.
31:12
Speaker 2: They're going to be the ones who are providing the
31:14
Speaker 2: security forces, the lion's share of the oppressive elements that
31:20
Speaker 2: is required in this emerging global economy. mechanism, this machinery
31:27
Speaker 2: to reallocate global south money circulated back to Wall Street,
31:32
Speaker 2: back to the city of London in the form of
31:34
Speaker 2: payments for petroleum, for oil, eventually also natural gas. Yemenis
31:42
Speaker 2: were providing that service. It was a backward corner of
31:47
Speaker 2: the world, increasingly by way of Policies that were accepted
31:53
Speaker 2: now by a political class who were inserted and made
31:58
Speaker 2: the elites, if you will, of Yemen, first North Yemen
32:03
Speaker 2: and then South Yemen combined by 1990, they were facilitating
32:08
Speaker 2: this system. Ali Abdullah Saleh was one who was overseeing
32:11
Speaker 2: the implementation of economic policies that were written and provided
32:16
Speaker 2: for by IMF and World Bank and the usual suspects.
32:21
Speaker 2: But when oil, which habitually goes up and down and
32:27
Speaker 2: for the vast majority of the time since 1973, was
32:31
Speaker 2: too expensive to produce, it did not make economic sense
32:35
Speaker 2: for sovereign states to produce oil under market value. They
32:40
Speaker 2: were not selling oil enough at high enough prices to
32:45
Speaker 2: actually profit from the production, even with the correction that
32:50
Speaker 2: took place. in 72, 73, 74, when dollar was for
32:55
Speaker 2: 30 years sold for $ 1. 50 a barrel and then jumped
33:00
Speaker 2: to $ 14 as Qaddafi was demanding already saying, we're gonna
33:04
Speaker 2: tax the hell out of Occidental oil because you're suppressing
33:10
Speaker 2: oil prices and you're paying us in this currencies that
33:13
Speaker 2: are increasingly devaluing. So, but the Gulf countries, through the
33:20
Speaker 2: GCC eventually by 1981, but through OPEC, they collectively worked
33:26
Speaker 2: as a cartel to keep oil prices at a price
33:30
Speaker 2: that was still subsidizing the development needs now of China,
33:34
Speaker 2: which was increasingly now integrated into the global economy by
33:38
Speaker 2: way of these agreements between Kissinger and Deng Xiaoping and
33:41
Speaker 2: then subsequent generations. Also, the United States and Europe, our
33:47
Speaker 2: living standards is still highly dependent on cheap fuel, as
33:52
Speaker 2: we are beginning to realize yet again with these massinations
33:56
Speaker 2: that are taking place with the war in Eurasia, and
34:00
Speaker 2: as well as with these Straits of Hormuz and Bab
34:02
Speaker 2: al-Mandab right now. The narratives constantly put us in the
34:06
Speaker 2: situation of vulnerability, which brings inherent value and strategic importance
34:12
Speaker 2: to this region. which the ruling families were more than
34:18
Speaker 2: happy to support. They constantly reallocated whatever resources they were
34:25
Speaker 2: able to accumulate by way of selling these raw material
34:29
Speaker 2: at a loss, by the way. So what they're doing
34:32
Speaker 2: since the 1970s, they're borrowing money. They have relatively cheap credit,
34:37
Speaker 2: available credit. They have high credit ratings, you know, These
34:41
Speaker 2: credit rating agencies are also very corrupt, and they regularly
34:45
Speaker 2: avail cheap credit to oil producing countries on the basis
34:50
Speaker 2: that there'll be future, there'll be revenues that go, you know,
34:54
Speaker 2: 100 years from now, they will still be producing this
34:57
Speaker 2: strategically value. In the meantime, during the height of the
35:00
Speaker 2: Iran-Iraq war, where there's tankers being blown up in the
35:04
Speaker 2: Persian Gulf, oil is at $ 14 a barrel. How did
35:08
Speaker 2: that make sense? The oil crisis of the 1970s, Rotterdam
35:12
Speaker 2: never saw more oil in terms of storage capacities than
35:16
Speaker 2: during the height of the so-called embargo. So there's a
35:19
Speaker 2: lot of media manipulation. There's a lot of marketing of
35:23
Speaker 2: this idea that the Gulf is too important to allow
35:27
Speaker 2: for revolutionaries to take over, for nationalists to take over.
35:31
Speaker 2: We need these corrupt autocratic families who are willing to
35:36
Speaker 2: chainsaw the death of a member of the opposition in
35:40
Speaker 2: their embassy in Istanbul, for instance, or when necessary to
35:43
Speaker 2: mobilize Takfiri forces to work with the CIA and undermine
35:49
Speaker 2: Soviet investment in internal Afghan politics in the 1970s, where
35:55
Speaker 2: Yemenis played an important role, where one of the big
35:59
Speaker 2: beneficiaries of this relationship of development of investment in infrastructure.
36:07
Speaker 2: The bin Laden family, one of the sons of the
36:10
Speaker 2: extended bin Laden family, of course, recruited Yemenis as they
36:14
Speaker 2: are originally from Yemen themselves to go and fight on
36:17
Speaker 2: behalf of CIA, to fight Soviet backed forces in Afghanistan.
36:22
Speaker 2: And Lo and behold, Yemenis become then these auxiliary forces
36:27
Speaker 2: elsewhere as well, even internally, to maintain and sustain this
36:33
Speaker 2: necessary relationship that Yemen has to have in relation to
36:38
Speaker 2: the Gulf, not to export revolution, not to support in
36:42
Speaker 2: terms of an axis of resistance against colonialism in Palestine,
36:47
Speaker 2: or to support the government, the Ba'athist government in Syria
36:51
Speaker 2: against the... cumulative attempts at undermining Syrian independence for all
36:58
Speaker 2: these years, or Libya, for that matter. And more importantly,
37:05
Speaker 2: not to destabilize these Gulf countries that are, again, now
37:09
Speaker 2: increasingly finding themselves in a position of precarity, because it's
37:13
Speaker 2: getting more and more expensive to borrow money. Their role
37:19
Speaker 2: to subsidize the global economy, to recycle Global South money
37:25
Speaker 2: back into the global economy is now itself changing because
37:30
Speaker 2: the global economy itself is changing. We can get into
37:33
Speaker 2: details or maybe you can consult someone else who can
37:36
Speaker 2: give you a better idea about what has actually happened
37:38
Speaker 2: since 2008, probably already since the 1989, 1980s, Reagan and
37:47
Speaker 2: Thatcher already represented a very aggressive effort by powerful interests
37:55
Speaker 2: to shift the global economy. The end of the Cold
37:59
Speaker 2: War already alerted us to a transformation of the global economy.
38:06
Speaker 2: It was not just simply going after now available state-owned
38:11
Speaker 2: assets in the Soviet Union. or in the socialist world.
38:16
Speaker 2: That was certainly a very lucrative enterprise. But it's also
38:20
Speaker 2: to assure that as we move forward, as some of
38:23
Speaker 2: our more notorious evil characters were phrasing it already, the
38:30
Speaker 2: global reset, right? The new world order. I mean, we
38:34
Speaker 2: often hear that from certain circuits. This gets pooh-poohed as
38:40
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory by some, but If you actually look at
38:43
Speaker 2: what's happening, we are seeing significant structural transformations. We are
38:49
Speaker 2: being pushed away from fiat currency even, for goodness sake.
38:53
Speaker 2: Fiat currency was the most perfect tool of capitalist imperialism.
38:59
Speaker 2: But we're even now gravitating away from that to digital-backed
39:04
Speaker 2: currencies that completely undermine the ability of consumers to actually
39:09
Speaker 2: have sovereign decisions about how they spend their surplus labor, right?
39:15
Speaker 2: How we will be compensated moving forward will probably be
39:18
Speaker 2: some kind of social credits where we're going to be
39:21
Speaker 2: given an allocated 2000 calories and we'll have 15 minutes
39:25
Speaker 2: of sunlight every week or something like that. I mean,
39:28
Speaker 2: this is the kind of what the seems to be
39:30
Speaker 2: increasingly on offer. And Yemenis are one of the only
39:33
Speaker 2: peoples in the world who are resisting, not from the
39:37
Speaker 2: imposition of this system, but already from the structural transformations
39:42
Speaker 2: that have been going on in their part of the
39:44
Speaker 2: world since the 1990s. And one of the big things
39:48
Speaker 2: is that these Gulf countries all know that they can't
39:51
Speaker 2: survive the transition. They've been informed by their advisors that
39:55
Speaker 2: you need to now, you know, hunker down and consolidate power,
40:01
Speaker 2: grab as many resources and assets as you possibly can.
40:05
Speaker 2: This is why we see the global, you know, elite,
40:08
Speaker 2: the less than 1% who have concentrated, you know, what
40:11
Speaker 2: is it? 70% of the world's wealth is in the
40:14
Speaker 2: hands of a very small group of people. What is
40:17
Speaker 2: this race towards asset grabbing? What is this race towards
40:22
Speaker 2: controlling everything? And this is what we're seeing in the Gulf.
40:26
Speaker 2: This is why Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia are at war
40:31
Speaker 2: with each other. They're at war with each other, not
40:34
Speaker 2: so overtly in terms of fighting it out on borders,
40:39
Speaker 2: even though Saudi Arabia is consistently infringing on the sovereign
40:45
Speaker 2: boundaries of Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia gets much of its
40:49
Speaker 2: now functional oil from Abu Dhabi territories, which it acquired
40:56
Speaker 2: in the 1960s with the American support. Kuwait is regularly
41:01
Speaker 2: having to go to courts to try to protect its
41:03
Speaker 2: own oil assets, offshore or onshore, from expansionist Saudi interests.
41:10
Speaker 2: claims on their sovereign territories. And why is this? It's
41:14
Speaker 2: because Saudi Arabia itself does not have the capacity to
41:17
Speaker 2: produce eight to 10 million barrels a day. It has
41:21
Speaker 2: to find, and it often buys oil from international markets,
41:24
Speaker 2: re-flags it as Saudi oil, and then contributes to that
41:31
Speaker 2: market maker status that's crucial for them to borrow money.
41:35
Speaker 2: If Saudi Arabia starts becoming like Kuwait, they're going to
41:38
Speaker 2: be borrowing money with a credit rating of CC. They're
41:41
Speaker 2: going to be issuing bonds that are highly risky. They're
41:45
Speaker 2: now issuing IPOs that nobody for the last four years
41:48
Speaker 2: wanted to buy in the global markets because everybody knows
41:50
Speaker 2: that Aramco is just a shell. It's a con game.
41:53
Speaker 2: It's a Ponzi scheme. This whole effort to sell Saudi
41:57
Speaker 2: Arabia as a 2030 agenda with these NAOM lines, this
42:01
Speaker 2: was all computer-generated money. Propaganda, which Financial Times itself corrupted
42:09
Speaker 2: by this mechanism. It serves as a purpose. It sells
42:13
Speaker 2: these projects to create a buzz, which sadly, people started
42:19
Speaker 2: going for parties to Saudi Arabia. You would have rave
42:23
Speaker 2: parties and Shakira performing outside the gates of Mecca. And
42:29
Speaker 2: this was how Saudi Arabia became a player in the
42:34
Speaker 2: transformation of the global economy since coronavirus. And in the meantime,
42:39
Speaker 2: Yemen was supposed to be an easy victory. But the
42:42
Speaker 2: problem is that they have rivals. The UAE, which has
42:45
Speaker 2: its own historic claims, especially to South Yemen. Qatar, which
42:49
Speaker 2: has long invested in the Muslim Brotherhood. in Yemen, actually
42:53
Speaker 2: doing quite well in relation with Ali Abdullah Saleh, and
42:57
Speaker 2: then were able to be platformed by the Obama administration
43:01
Speaker 2: as the party to oversee the transition. The street protests
43:05
Speaker 2: of 2011, we couldn't count on seeing the Houthis take over.
43:11
Speaker 2: We couldn't count on seeing this popular street, the mobilization
43:17
Speaker 2: of the streets take over and oversee the transition of
43:20
Speaker 2: Yemen away from the servicing the global economy, as for
43:27
Speaker 2: a moment we saw in Bahrain, as for a moment
43:30
Speaker 2: we saw perhaps in Tunisia, Those were all corrected by
43:34
Speaker 2: the arrival of the Muslim Brotherhood, a reliable partnership that
43:38
Speaker 2: was undermining Syrian sovereignty, that would handle the streets very
43:43
Speaker 2: well when Egypt was exploding and could have gone in
43:45
Speaker 2: many different directions. And it sedated Tunisia as well. And
43:50
Speaker 2: in the meantime, they projected themselves into Libya, tore Libya apart.
43:55
Speaker 2: They tore Yemen apart. And now the oil and gas
43:58
Speaker 2: is what Saudi Arabia, the UAE— and Qatar are fighting over.
44:05
Speaker 2: Ansarullah is largely governing areas that don't have those resources
44:12
Speaker 2: that are coveted by those regimes that are trying to
44:16
Speaker 2: survive and remain relevant to what's happening next. The world
44:20
Speaker 2: is going to change, and we should not talk in
44:24
Speaker 2: terms of Mohammed bin Salman being a patriot, a loyalist
44:29
Speaker 2: to this idea of this project called Saudi Arabia. Political
44:34
Speaker 2: Islam was an instrument of power. And now Saudi Arabia
44:38
Speaker 2: as a market maker for oil or Saudi Arabia as
44:41
Speaker 2: a zone for investment from the third world, these are
44:46
Speaker 2: all platforms to sustain a regime that internally is at
44:51
Speaker 2: war with itself. He's killing his half-brothers. There's all kinds
44:56
Speaker 2: of interesting battles that have taken place since 2017 regarding that.
45:02
Speaker 2: What I want to highlight, again, babbling on for a
45:05
Speaker 2: long time here. Thank you for the opportunity. I've predicted
45:10
Speaker 2: in my book that I wrote in 2017 that you're
45:13
Speaker 2: not going to see three GCC's main states surviving. One
45:18
Speaker 2: of them or two of them are going to go
45:20
Speaker 2: and fold away into history. I think Saudi Arabia itself
45:24
Speaker 2: as a territory that we know today as Saudi Arabia
45:28
Speaker 2: is not going to be there in 20 years. And
45:30
Speaker 2: Mohammed bin Salman and his people know that very well.
45:34
Speaker 2: What's of value at this stage is perhaps the oil
45:37
Speaker 2: on the East Coast, and more importantly, their ability to mobilize,
45:42
Speaker 2: which is running out, right? Their ability to mobilize these
45:46
Speaker 2: Uzbeks and Tajiks to come from Syria through Erdogan's airfields
45:52
Speaker 2: to land into South Yemen. that's an asset and a
45:58
Speaker 2: tool that I think is running its course. Sectarianism won't
46:02
Speaker 2: last that much longer. The ability to mobilize Muslims to
46:05
Speaker 2: kill other Muslims or to destroy their own societies may
46:10
Speaker 2: have run its course. They're going to have to adopt
46:12
Speaker 2: and find new ways to be of value to empire.
46:18
Speaker 2: And for the Muhammad bin Salman, I think it's a
46:20
Speaker 2: simple asset grab, and they're going to go and find
46:23
Speaker 2: a way to survive by condensing their role to a
46:27
Speaker 2: much more, territorially speaking, confined entity. Because right now, southwest
46:35
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia, which is historically Yemeni territory, is a burden.
46:40
Speaker 2: They cannot defend it. It doesn't produce natural resources. It's
46:46
Speaker 2: a net consumer of resources that the state of Saudi Arabia,
46:51
Speaker 2: that is now personified in Mohammed bin Salman's little clan—
46:56
Speaker 2: They don't want to subsidize this anymore. The political and
46:59
Speaker 2: economic elites of Britain don't want to pay pensions anymore.
47:03
Speaker 2: The American elite don't want to pay Social Security anymore.
47:07
Speaker 2: They want to pay for education. The same calculus is
47:10
Speaker 2: at play in the Gulf. We're going to see a
47:12
Speaker 2: dramatic transformation where people are going to consolidate their hands,
47:16
Speaker 2: their control of assets, and abandon this 20th century concept
47:22
Speaker 2: of the nation state. The state moving forward is no
47:27
Speaker 2: longer necessary. As we can see in the Middle East,
47:30
Speaker 2: there is no Libya. There is no Syria. There is
47:33
Speaker 2: no Iraq that functions as a collective. Yemen has been
47:37
Speaker 2: destroyed in these terms, and Sudan has been destroyed in
47:40
Speaker 2: these terms. All you have to do is gain access
47:42
Speaker 2: to the— Somalia, Congo. All you have to do is
47:45
Speaker 2: access the mines. All you have to do is access
47:48
Speaker 2: the oil and gas, whatever is of value, and screw
47:51
Speaker 2: the rest of them. They can go and go back
47:53
Speaker 2: to living as 18th century peasants in small villages, or
47:59
Speaker 2: better yet, let's just see them all die off from starvation.
48:02
Speaker 3: Or slave labor.
48:04
Speaker 2: I mean, we need hotel workers. OK, we need some masseuses. Right.
48:12
Speaker 2: But I mean, even there, that's not you don't need
48:15
Speaker 2: six billion people. And this is literally how some of
48:18
Speaker 2: these people talk now. Useless eaters.
48:20
Speaker 1: Right.
48:20
Speaker 2: We've heard that phrase coming from from from Davos for
48:25
Speaker 2: for 10 years now. And look who our leaders are.
48:28
Speaker 2: They're all rapists. They're all, you know, they're sodomizing children,
48:33
Speaker 2: for goodness sake. They're probably eating them. I mean, according
48:37
Speaker 2: to the information that we're getting, you know, we don't
48:40
Speaker 2: do anything about this. And they don't care about us.
48:45
Speaker 2: I can assure you that people on the ground in Yemen,
48:47
Speaker 2: the reason why they survive is because they do actually
48:49
Speaker 2: care for each other. They do actually care what happens
48:52
Speaker 2: to their neighbors. And they actually still do care what
48:55
Speaker 2: happens to people in Gaza or what happens to people
48:57
Speaker 2: in Haiti or people in Papua. This is why they
49:01
Speaker 2: have signs that attend to all these crises around the world.
49:06
Speaker 2: And I find that remarkable. It's something that I remember
49:10
Speaker 2: when I was a teenager. We still cared enough to
49:13
Speaker 2: actually be upset by what's happening in the world. And
49:17
Speaker 2: now we've been very neatly, just like academia, neatly pushing
49:20
Speaker 2: us into these confined zones where we focus on one
49:24
Speaker 2: thing or two things. We forget to see how they're
49:28
Speaker 2: all interconnected. And worse, we don't have solidarity for those
49:34
Speaker 2: those multiple zones of resistance that are happening, but don't
49:38
Speaker 2: register in how we talk about what's going on in
49:43
Speaker 2: Syria or what's going on in Yemen. But I know
49:46
Speaker 2: people in Yemen are very conscious of their place in
49:49
Speaker 2: the world and what they're dealing with. And so I
49:51
Speaker 2: think that needs to be brought to the surface more
49:55
Speaker 2: and maybe inspires then a collective in the West, at least,
49:59
Speaker 2: to start thinking and talking differently about Yemen. and about Syria,
50:04
Speaker 2: and about Palestine.
50:05
Speaker 1: What's fascinating to me about Yemen is, Ansarullah, at least,
50:10
Speaker 1: is described in the West as being backward and so on,
50:14
Speaker 1: and yet they are holding the most advanced military industrialized nations.
50:22
Speaker 1: They're holding them at bay, and in fact, they're beating
50:25
Speaker 1: them in many cases domestically. And so I'm fascinated to, Vanessa,
50:29
Speaker 1: if we just talk a little bit about how are
50:32
Speaker 1: they actually managing to do this and also where do
50:36
Speaker 1: they fit in the larger resistance movement?
50:39
Speaker 3: I mean, they're very definitely a part of the resistance movements,
50:42
Speaker 3: but I've always seen Yemen, and Isa can correct me
50:46
Speaker 3: or not, but I've always seen Yemen as extremely independent
50:51
Speaker 3: in their thinking, in their movement, while of course they
50:55
Speaker 3: are allies. of the other members of the resistance movement.
50:59
Speaker 3: And as Issa said, they have a tremendous empathy. When
51:03
Speaker 3: you see the flags of any nation that is struggling,
51:07
Speaker 3: whether it's Palestine or Lebanon or Syria or Iran or
51:13
Speaker 3: any country in the world that is suffering, you will
51:17
Speaker 3: see the Yemenis come out in support of that country,
51:21
Speaker 3: which for me is quite extraordinary. And I don't think
51:25
Speaker 3: we've seen it, uh, since the aggression against Iran began,
51:30
Speaker 3: we've seen people in Iran starting to come on the
51:32
Speaker 3: streets and demonstrate enormous empathy for people in Lebanon and
51:37
Speaker 3: Palestine and so on. And that is what is very
51:39
Speaker 3: much sustained Iran's ability to defend itself and to, uh, retain, um,
51:46
Speaker 3: its dignity and its honor in the face of such, um,
51:51
Speaker 3: tremendous aggression from the U.S., Israel, the entire kind of
51:55
Speaker 3: imperialist sphere. But for Yemenis, I've always seen, like, even
52:01
Speaker 3: when they actually attacked Sana'a in 2014, 2015, Issa, correct me,
52:09
Speaker 3: because I've probably got the date wrong, but this was
52:13
Speaker 3: in direct opposition to what Iran was advising them not
52:19
Speaker 3: to do. So when people talk about or try to
52:22
Speaker 3: portray Yemen as any kind of proxy of Iran, it's nonsense.
52:27
Speaker 3: One thing, even the Zaidi, which is the Yemeni Shia,
52:33
Speaker 3: and the Shafi, which is the Yemeni Sunni, the Zaidi
52:39
Speaker 3: are quite far from the Iranian Shia ideology anyway. So
52:44
Speaker 3: trying to make this kind of overt link between Iran
52:50
Speaker 3: and Yemen is, in my opinion, destroying the agency of Yemen.
52:55
Speaker 3: And this is very important for people to understand. Yemen
53:00
Speaker 3: acts alone. Of course, it has received assistance and advice
53:04
Speaker 3: and technological input from Iran and from the other members
53:09
Speaker 3: of the resistance axis over the years, of course. But
53:14
Speaker 3: it's an exchange. Yemen is fiercely independent. And in my opinion,
53:20
Speaker 3: that's one of the reasons why they've been able to
53:22
Speaker 3: maintain this revolutionary principle.
53:26
Speaker 2: Totally.
53:27
Speaker 3: Because they've maintained their own integrity, their own belief in
53:32
Speaker 3: the freedom of all peoples, the sovereignty of all nations,
53:36
Speaker 3: of retaining their anti-imperialist stance, despite the influence of the
53:41
Speaker 3: Muslim Brotherhood, of the UAE, of Saudi Arabia, of ISIS, Al-Qaeda,
53:47
Speaker 3: all of which are elements that have been injected into
53:50
Speaker 3: society to try and break it down. But it's largely failed, right?
53:56
Speaker 3: And I actually am wondering, and I'd really like Issa
54:01
Speaker 3: to comment on this, Has the fall of Syria also
54:05
Speaker 3: had a greater impact on the people of Yemen, where
54:08
Speaker 3: they have seen what happens when you allow that overt,
54:13
Speaker 3: that absolutely overwhelming sectarian influence to come into a society
54:17
Speaker 3: that before was never perceived as being sectarian? It also
54:22
Speaker 3: happened in Iraq, but in Syria, I think being so recent,
54:27
Speaker 3: being so visible as to what happens when a society
54:30
Speaker 3: implodes from within, has that also reinforced and even brought
54:36
Speaker 3: new elements into the resistance movement in Yemen? And that
54:40
Speaker 3: is why we're seeing it so strong now. That's why
54:42
Speaker 3: we're seeing Ansarullah being able to advance so fast into
54:47
Speaker 3: areas that they had previously lost to the Saudi Anglo-American coalition.
54:55
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay. So firstly, Yemenis have incredible hearts, right? They have, again,
55:02
Speaker 2: this dignity. They are still structured around family, around the
55:10
Speaker 2: proximity of neighbors. So they constitute human communities that have
55:15
Speaker 2: largely been disaggregated around the world. So sociologically, we know
55:20
Speaker 2: the consequences when you have These atomized individuals, they have
55:26
Speaker 2: increasingly difficult for them to actually mobilize collectively to share
55:30
Speaker 2: common cause. So Yemenis don't suffer from this condition. That's
55:34
Speaker 2: one thing. Two, they've been heavily armed since the 18th century.
55:40
Speaker 2: Everyone has a gun. They don't use it against each other.
55:43
Speaker 2: They have very explicit rules about engaging each other and
55:49
Speaker 2: challenging each other verbally. They're very articulate people. Even people
55:53
Speaker 2: who are not educated are incredibly articulate and are, again,
55:59
Speaker 2: used to travel throughout the early 1990s. That was my
56:01
Speaker 2: first times in these areas, tons of newspapers and constantly
56:07
Speaker 2: people engaging in conversation, the whole sitting in a mafras,
56:11
Speaker 2: chewing cotton all day long. This is, you know, these
56:14
Speaker 2: are not just getting stoned and, you know, kind of
56:16
Speaker 2: floating off into your personal universe. These are moments of socialization.
56:21
Speaker 2: So Yemenis are regularly able to communicate and recognize the
56:28
Speaker 2: shared humanity they have, even with people they've never met,
56:31
Speaker 2: just because it's a concept that lives with them. They're
56:35
Speaker 2: well armed. Secondly, we have to remember that Yemen, during
56:40
Speaker 2: this Republican period, during this alliance with the United States,
56:44
Speaker 2: and during the point where he was supposed to service
56:48
Speaker 2: the calculations that we need to bring stability, we need
56:52
Speaker 2: an auxiliary force that can be sent to certain parts
56:55
Speaker 2: of the world. Yemenis have the manpower. Saudis and Emiratis
57:00
Speaker 2: don't want to arm their own citizens. We have to
57:02
Speaker 2: bring them from somewhere else. So they trained Yemenis. They
57:05
Speaker 2: trained a Republican guard of 300, 350,000 well-trained Yemenis who
57:12
Speaker 2: were part of the Republican guard who had the engineering skills.
57:16
Speaker 2: They learned how to fly helicopters and airplanes and fixed tanks.
57:21
Speaker 2: They are mechanics in all the shops in the Gulf.
57:24
Speaker 2: So they have this technical skill. And when Ali Abdullah
57:32
Speaker 2: Saleh's regime collapses, because it was so unpopular, the regime's military,
57:39
Speaker 2: which in theory or on paper was affiliated to Ali
57:43
Speaker 2: Abdullah Saleh and the General People's Congress, was actually a
57:47
Speaker 2: national army. And majority of the officers and the military men,
57:52
Speaker 2: the ones who were trained, just joined Ansarullah in their
57:57
Speaker 2: collective struggle to keep Yemen independent from their habitual enemies
58:03
Speaker 2: to the north, the Saudis, the Emiratis. who's regularly treated
58:07
Speaker 2: them like crap. And so actually, this well-trained army stayed intact.
58:14
Speaker 2: They had the skills. They've been fighting wars for a
58:17
Speaker 2: long time, sometimes against the Houthis. But they were able
58:22
Speaker 2: to rehabilitate that relationship in 2015 because they had a
58:26
Speaker 2: common enemy. And that common enemy has remained the same.
58:29
Speaker 2: And it's a collective. It's the Americans first with their
58:33
Speaker 2: little tools that they have in the Gulf. And these
58:35
Speaker 2: things are very much in part of the narrative that
58:39
Speaker 2: Yemenis have in accounting for why they're able to stick together.
58:44
Speaker 2: Under siege for 12 years now, starvation was the tool,
58:49
Speaker 2: was the principal tool to try to break this society apart,
58:52
Speaker 2: to have them start shooting at each other out of desperation.
58:55
Speaker 2: And they refused. Now they can feed themselves. Now they're
58:59
Speaker 2: actually starting to grow food enough to actually sustain their
59:02
Speaker 2: population without dependency at all with the outside world. This
59:06
Speaker 2: is a remarkable reversal. They were importing 90% of their
59:10
Speaker 2: food in the past. So Yemenis are trained. They're strong soldiers.
59:15
Speaker 2: The weapons that they get, I have to push back
59:17
Speaker 2: with Vanessa a little bit. They're not getting it from
59:20
Speaker 2: smuggled supplies of ballistic missiles or something like that. This
59:23
Speaker 2: country was completely isolated. They've been able to capture weapons
59:29
Speaker 2: by the truckloads because their adversaries don't have the heart.
59:34
Speaker 2: They're not into it. They're just mercenaries and they're poorly
59:37
Speaker 2: paid mercenaries. These Sudanese guys, these South Yemenis, these Takfiri types,
59:42
Speaker 2: they're not in it for ideology. They're not fighting for
59:46
Speaker 2: a nation. They're fighting for some 150 rials. And again,
59:50
Speaker 2: it's shortcoming. It doesn't come all the time. So they're
59:52
Speaker 2: going to abandon their tanks. They're going to abandon their RPG.
59:56
Speaker 2: They're going to abandon ammunition and the principled army who
59:59
Speaker 2: knows how to use this stuff are going to take
1:00:02
Speaker 2: it back in the mountains and protect their society. There
1:00:05
Speaker 2: are 18 to 23 million people who live under their administration,
1:00:08
Speaker 2: and they're going to do so until the sun refuses
1:00:14
Speaker 2: to rise again. And as long as they stay in
1:00:17
Speaker 2: the mountains. Now, if they go try to capture Marib
1:00:20
Speaker 2: and try to maintain control of the coastal areas, then
1:00:23
Speaker 2: they're going to be bombed incessantly from elsewhere. So this
1:00:28
Speaker 2: whole new campaign with Mucha, with Bambo Bandab, it is
1:00:34
Speaker 2: a reflection of the turmoil within their opposition. The Saudis
1:00:41
Speaker 2: and the Emiratis have been fighting each other since late 2025,
1:00:46
Speaker 2: and those forces that were protecting and occupying the coastal
1:00:50
Speaker 2: areas were in disarray. It was a window of opportunity.
1:00:54
Speaker 2: It was almost on offer. All they had to do
1:00:57
Speaker 2: was move in some forces, fire a couple of missiles,
1:01:01
Speaker 2: and the And then their adversaries scattered off and ran
1:01:04
Speaker 2: away to Aden. And we can see that playing itself out. Unfortunately,
1:01:09
Speaker 2: it's very costly for Yemenis. People are dying. This is
1:01:12
Speaker 2: important to highlight. People are losing their legs. They're losing
1:01:16
Speaker 2: their arms. They are getting shot in the chest. They
1:01:18
Speaker 2: are dying. And when Israel and the Americans in the
1:01:22
Speaker 2: UK were bombing to try to reverse what Ansarullah was
1:01:25
Speaker 2: doing from the mountains to stop trade to Eliyat, stop
1:01:30
Speaker 2: trade to the genocidal campaign in Gaza, we don't know
1:01:35
Speaker 2: how many people died from this horrific bombing that took place.
1:01:38
Speaker 2: There was no reporting. They wiped out the entire civilian
1:01:42
Speaker 2: government in Sana'a. They've been killing people by the tens,
1:01:46
Speaker 2: by the dozens every day from the air force. from
1:01:50
Speaker 2: these air attacks. Trump even said, man, these guys are tough.
1:01:54
Speaker 2: We threw everything at them. Eventually the US Navy left,
1:01:57
Speaker 2: but we don't know how many Yemenis died. We don't
1:02:00
Speaker 2: know how many ballistic missiles, how many factories were blown up.
1:02:03
Speaker 2: Excuse me. So we have to also appreciate that there
1:02:07
Speaker 2: are limitations. These people cannot win the global battle. They
1:02:13
Speaker 2: could protect themselves perhaps for an eternity in the mountains.
1:02:19
Speaker 2: If they have to actually go and be, you know,
1:02:21
Speaker 2: the saviors of Palestinians and go and save Iran or
1:02:25
Speaker 2: save the peoples of Somalia, which they may be forced
1:02:29
Speaker 2: to because Israelis are right there. They're in Barbara. They're
1:02:32
Speaker 2: right there in Somaliland. They're on Socotra. They're on these
1:02:36
Speaker 2: Farsan Islands. There's going to be endless war on Yemen. Now,
1:02:40
Speaker 2: they may be able to, again, sustain and defend themselves,
1:02:43
Speaker 2: but we could never expect them to project and become offensive.
1:02:47
Speaker 2: Maybe Saudi Arabia is now primed for bringing back into
1:02:53
Speaker 2: Yemeni fold, as it should have been since the 1930s.
1:02:57
Speaker 2: But as a force to liberate the world, it's never
1:03:01
Speaker 2: going to be. But they are capable of defending themselves.
1:03:04
Speaker 2: They are motivated to defend themselves, not necessarily to surrender
1:03:09
Speaker 2: their ability to defend themselves in order to pursue a
1:03:14
Speaker 2: project that will be betrayed by Moscow or be betrayed
1:03:18
Speaker 2: by the international community, betrayed by the UN, betrayed by Arabs, right,
1:03:23
Speaker 2: who have regularly failed to even utter one word of
1:03:27
Speaker 2: support for Yemenis over these last 12 years.
1:03:30
Speaker 1: I want to end with one thought, Isa, if you
1:03:32
Speaker 1: would just comment on this briefly. And that is, you know,
1:03:36
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Western countries and how many people are
1:03:41
Speaker 1: recognizing that the regimes that we have in Western countries
1:03:45
Speaker 1: are not operating to our benefit, that we are looking
1:03:50
Speaker 1: at a grim future for ourselves. And yet, not speaking
1:03:55
Speaker 1: about the people on this discussion, or maybe even all
1:03:58
Speaker 1: the people that are watching and listening to this, but
1:04:01
Speaker 1: a lot of people When they look for role models,
1:04:04
Speaker 1: they look to the likes of Donald Trump or to
1:04:06
Speaker 1: Nigel Farage and people like this. And I'm thinking, you know,
1:04:10
Speaker 1: you're looking in the wrong direction.
1:04:12
Speaker 2: Here we are.
1:04:14
Speaker 1: We call ourselves, you know, people in the West. Many
1:04:17
Speaker 1: people call themselves part of a resistance movement in the West.
1:04:21
Speaker 1: And yet they are fighting amongst each other and they
1:04:24
Speaker 1: cannot find common cause against what is a common enemy.
1:04:30
Speaker 1: And yet we have a small country in a certain
1:04:34
Speaker 1: part of the world that seems to have set aside
1:04:38
Speaker 1: any of its sort of tribal or factional concerns to
1:04:46
Speaker 1: come together and fight a common enemy and are absolutely
1:04:49
Speaker 1: punching above their weight. And maybe we should be looking
1:04:52
Speaker 1: there for inspiration.
1:04:55
Speaker 2: I fully agree. Um, I've been trying to get that
1:04:58
Speaker 2: message across for a long time. We don't have to
1:05:01
Speaker 2: adopt their lifestyle or their, their, their, um, addiction to, um,
1:05:06
Speaker 2: socialization in the, in, in surroundings where they're chewing cotton
1:05:10
Speaker 2: all day long. Although it seems that that was a
1:05:12
Speaker 2: very appealing thing for Western students who went to study
1:05:15
Speaker 2: in Yemen in the 1990s. Uh, I didn't participate in that.
1:05:20
Speaker 2: I didn't like that. But, um, Yes, the inspiration and
1:05:23
Speaker 2: the humanity and their humor. I mean, of course, they
1:05:28
Speaker 2: speak in a language in a way that is completely
1:05:32
Speaker 2: untransmittable to us. This is the problem. And we're not
1:05:36
Speaker 2: going to be able to benefit from access to them
1:05:38
Speaker 2: by way of social media. Those are clearly controlled by
1:05:42
Speaker 2: algorithms and all that. We get steered to go back
1:05:44
Speaker 2: to square one, as I regularly highlight and complain about.
1:05:49
Speaker 2: So it just behooves your audience to, you know. one
1:05:54
Speaker 2: person speaking to someone else, hey, take a look at
1:05:57
Speaker 2: this video, look at what's actually going on on the
1:05:59
Speaker 2: ground and find some content that Mike, maybe you and
1:06:03
Speaker 2: Vanessa can circulate that doesn't have to be deciphered too much,
1:06:08
Speaker 2: but it actually speaks very clearly to what Yemenis are doing.
1:06:14
Speaker 2: I mean, some of these images that came from Gaza
1:06:16
Speaker 2: did resonate and horrified people, but it also is kind
1:06:20
Speaker 2: of feeling helplessness, right? Because it is just a child
1:06:24
Speaker 2: overlooking their house that has been completely obliterated. And that
1:06:29
Speaker 2: is a fact. That is also the fact in Yemen.
1:06:32
Speaker 2: But there has to be a combination of horror and
1:06:35
Speaker 2: anger and capacity to act, to respond. And I think
1:06:40
Speaker 2: those kids in France, for instance, right now, who are
1:06:44
Speaker 2: bringing France to a standstill, is a good starting point.
1:06:49
Speaker 2: But is it really just about conditions in schools? Is
1:06:52
Speaker 2: it about the bigger project? I mean, we had the
1:06:54
Speaker 2: Gilad Jean before who were also very successfully bringing France
1:06:58
Speaker 2: for a while, at least, to a standstill. These things
1:07:02
Speaker 2: tend to get then appropriated and commandeered by others and
1:07:05
Speaker 2: they get dispersed. And Yemenis have resisted that. And that's
1:07:11
Speaker 2: my biggest fear is that too many of our interest
1:07:15
Speaker 2: in Yemen will bring elements of diversion and confusion to
1:07:20
Speaker 2: what is a very clear-cut project, survival. And until we
1:07:24
Speaker 2: in the West understand and appreciate that, within 10 years,
1:07:28
Speaker 2: we're going to be in a situation where we're going
1:07:30
Speaker 2: to have to work together to survive, not just, you know,
1:07:33
Speaker 2: eat potato chips and watch football games, right? That's what's
1:07:37
Speaker 2: on offer now, and most people go for that. Instead
1:07:41
Speaker 2: of cot, they go for chips. But... In a couple
1:07:44
Speaker 2: of years, we may be in this situation, too, where
1:07:48
Speaker 2: we could be starving to death. And if we don't
1:07:50
Speaker 2: work together, we're going to be denied our ability to
1:07:53
Speaker 2: feed ourselves and feed our children and take care of
1:07:56
Speaker 2: our neighbors. We're going to be raided by masked policemen,
1:08:01
Speaker 2: which is happening right now, right? I mean, we are
1:08:04
Speaker 2: seeing that on the streets in the United States. I
1:08:06
Speaker 2: don't know about the UK. I'm not going to talk
1:08:08
Speaker 2: about the UK, but I see it in France. You
1:08:10
Speaker 2: see it in Greece, in Spain, in the Netherlands. This
1:08:14
Speaker 2: is terrifying. And people don't have a good connection with history. Obviously,
1:08:20
Speaker 2: I think it's also an overdone kind of comparison to
1:08:23
Speaker 2: talk about the late 1930s Europe. But we should be
1:08:27
Speaker 2: talking about our present situation. We are living through that
1:08:31
Speaker 2: right now, the early stages of what comes next. The
1:08:35
Speaker 2: people of the Soviet Union have seen what happens. People
1:08:39
Speaker 2: of Yugoslavia saw what happens when these same people, These
1:08:44
Speaker 2: same interests using the same kind of tools of ethnic hatred,
1:08:48
Speaker 2: of xenophobia, of austerity, denying people access to a way
1:08:56
Speaker 2: to survive and continue a life that they're familiar with. with.
1:09:00
Speaker 2: Those are things that need to mobilize people at this stage.
1:09:04
Speaker 2: Even if they don't feel it, they just borrow a
1:09:06
Speaker 2: little bit more money on their credit card. But that's
1:09:09
Speaker 2: just a recipe for something that the Yemenis even have
1:09:13
Speaker 2: not had to deal with, as far as I'm concerned,
1:09:15
Speaker 2: because Yemenis actually work together and Yemenis will take care
1:09:18
Speaker 2: of each other. At this stage, I know I can
1:09:22
Speaker 2: scream bloody murder and none of my neighbors in Stockholm
1:09:25
Speaker 2: will come to save me. They'll just look in the
1:09:28
Speaker 2: air and hope it doesn't come to them. So that's
1:09:32
Speaker 2: my fear is that we live in a very different
1:09:34
Speaker 2: set of social conditions. Our relationship with each other is
1:09:38
Speaker 2: very different than that of Yemenis.
1:09:42
Speaker 1: Fascinating, fascinating conversation. And thank you very much, Isa. Thank you, Vanessa,
1:09:47
Speaker 1: for being on this. And well, let's see what kind
1:09:52
Speaker 1: of response we get.
1:09:53
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you all.