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Yemen's Long War, with Helen Lackner · Global Insights

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_05: Somebody I'm very close to saw the first piece I wrote in April 2015 on open democracy, which said this is the beginning of a long and very nasty war, and let nobody be fooled, or words to that effect.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_05: And six months later he said to me, You know, when you wrote that, I thought you were crazy.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yemen is at war again.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: This month, Houthie rebels fired missiles at the airport in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and killed 12 people.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Days later, they hit a presidential palace in Aden, where Yemen's government sits.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_05: We've been trained by all these experts.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we must have the best army in the world, or at least in the Middle East.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_05: And here are this bunch of Houthis up in the hills with those AK-47s and not much else, and they will obviously be uh surrendering within a matter of weeks.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: That was the starting plan 11 years ago.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great leader.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: The Hoofies.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: In May 2020, we step down.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_05: In a way, the Hoofis need the Saudi Wall or far more than the Saudis need the Hoofis.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_05: Because it gives them many things that they need, particularly it helps them control their population and retain much more support.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_05: They have very limited support, but at least it gives them some of the support as long as they're the common enemy.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is Global Insights by Network 2020.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Today, a special rewind edition.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: So with that, Helen, I realize that this is a very difficult task, but could you um kindly bring us up to speed, because most of us are not experts in Yemen, on how the situation in Yemen got to where it is today?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you very much for inviting me first, and also mainly for having people who are interested in Yemen, which is not a very general phenomenon.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um the reason Yemen has reached its current state of extreme disaster, I think, is there's a whole series of reasons behind this.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: And the war in twenty started in 2015 after basically 33 years of rule by Ali Abdallah Saleh, who ran a very autocratic system, and who also ran a system that did not help and did not help the population survive.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_05: The population rose very continued to rise at increase at about 3% per annum, which means that the population of Yemen doubles every 20 years in a situation where the natural resources to support this are very, very weak.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_05: And this is something that hopefully will come up again in the questions.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_05: So what we had is by the early early beginning of the century, you had a series of wars going on between the Houthi movement and the Saleh regime.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_05: And the Houthi movement are a small, initially were a small group of Zayd revivalists.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_05: Now, not that many people know about Zaydism.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_05: Zaydism is the form of Shi'ism.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_05: It is not the same thing as the Twelver Shi'ism that you find in Iran and in most other countries.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_05: And theologically it has very few differences with the kind of Sunni movement, Sunni religion that exists in the rest of Yemen or the Sunni form of Islam.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_05: But you had this movement that rose in the north far north of the country, and um it had there was a series of wars between the government, then run by Saleh and the Houthi movement.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_05: By the time they ended in 2010, you it was just around the time the Arab Spring started.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_05: And the Arab Spring in Yemen had was very strong and very significant, and was something that took place throughout the whole country.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_05: But it also was limited in the sense that it ended up being much more of a struggle between different elite groups that were connected with Saleh or against Saleh.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_05: And because of an international intervention from the Gulf Corporation Council states and other states, including the US, Britain, and other EU states, there was an agreement made at the end of 2011 which led to a transition.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_05: And the transition was due to last for two years and was supposed to help turn the country into something that a regime that would respond a bit better to the needs of the population, which had been throughout this period increasingly impoverished and whereas living conditions were getting much worse, in addition to also the political system reaching a level of paralysis.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_05: Now that two-year transition effectively failed for a number of reasons, which I think we probably don't have time to go into unless somebody asks later, and led to the collapse of the transition by late 14, early 15, and the internationalization of the war, which meant at that point that we had on the one side you had the Houthis, who by that time had allied with a former enemy Saleh.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_05: You have to always remember in Yemen that alliances are very temporary and they can turn around very quickly.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_05: And they were fighting the internationally recognized government, i.e.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_05: the government that came in through the transition and which was expelled from Sana'a, at which point it asked for assistance from the what became the Saudi-led coalition.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_05: The Saudi-led coalition was bas is basically a military coalition which is led by the Saudis, as its name implies, and which is very active and has one other important member, which is the United Arab Emirates.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_05: Other members of the coalition are basically troops on the ground, are all providing moral support, and I think we probably don't need to go into that.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_05: So basically, by now, the main elements or the main players you have are the Houthis, you have the Saudis, you have the internationally recognized government, which is mostly in exile, but theoretically based in Aden, the capital the Aden, which was on the southern coast and which was the capital of the earth, one of the two earliest states prior to the formation of the United of the Republic of Yemen.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_05: And in a third, a fourth element you have, which comes up now, because in Aden you have a new conflict which is within the coalition movement between the southern separatists and the rest of the government, which is another complicated question which we may or may not go into at this point.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um, do you want to move on?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_05: So uh have I confused everybody totally by now?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I think we're all getting a sense of how complex this is.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: So in short, we have we have for different players, we have the Saudi-led coalition, which apparently has a rift within it that's developing among the Saudis and the Emiratis.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we have the Iranian-backed Houthis, and then we have the international community.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_05: And you have the international the official legitimate internationally recognized government.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_05: Which is which is theoretically based in Aden, but in practice based in Riyadh, which is the capital of Saudi Arabia.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, all right.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: So complex indeed.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: Which leads to my next question, which is about Saudi Arabia and its coalition announcing in early April a unilateral two ceasefire.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: And could you speak a little bit about the reasoning behind this move and its implications for the future?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think the important thing to remember is that Saudi Arabia has been involved in Yemen for almost a hundred years now, and the Saudi state has only existed since 1932.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_05: So it's been involved in Yemen since 1934.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_05: So there's nothing new about the Saudis being involved in Yemen.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: What was new and surprising in 2015 is that the war and all these things started immediately after King Salman had Salman had become king and was beginning to promote Mohammed bin Salman at that time as Minister of Defense and as most people know by now as Crown Prince.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: Now Mohammed bin Salman, as probably most of you know, is somebody who's been up to some pretty erratic and unpredictable acts.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_05: And uh war in Yemen was really his first operation, which was basically two months after he became uh crown after, sorry, he became Minister of Defense.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_05: Now it's very clear to me that what he thought at the time, and I think it's widely accepted, that what he thought at the time is that, you know, here we are with our millions of or billions of dollars of Western US, French, German UK weapons, etc., etc.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_05: We've been trained by all these experts.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we must have the best army in the world, or at least in the Middle East, and here are this bunch of Houthis up in the hills with AK-47s and not much else, and they will obviously be surrendering within a matter of weeks.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_05: I think that was the original plan.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_05: Um very obviously, uh five years later, this plan has not actually worked.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_05: Not only have they not been defeated, but the Houthis have been actually crossing the border into Saudi Arabia, there've been missile attacks on Saudi cities, and they're basically nowhere near being defeated, on the contrary.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_05: So I think eventually uh the Saudis have come to the conclusion that they really want to get out.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_05: I believe that they've wanted to do that for at least two years now.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_05: There's been two problems that have prevented them from getting out.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_05: The first is that um they were they want to get out without losing faith.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_05: So they want to get out in a way that makes it look as if they are, if not winning, at least not losing.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_05: And the second one is the Houthis element.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_05: The Houthis, you know, in a way the Houthis need the Saudi war more far more than the Saudis need the Houthis.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_05: Because it gives them many things that they need, particularly it helps them control their population and retain much more support.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_05: They have very limited support, but at least it gives them some of support as long as there is a foreign enemy.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's very helpful.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: So it sounds, if I hear you correctly, it sounds as though the the Saudis are eager to find a good way to exit, but it's the Houthis that feel as though they need this war for um for generally their own political purposes.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that's I mean most people don't emphasize the Houthie element, but I I think it it is something, and if you look at what happened as a response to the proposal for the ceasefire, I think that also suggests that the you know the Houthis have the upper hand at the moment, and so they really feel they can dictate terms.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_05: I think one of the problems is that most of us aren't quite sure what exactly the terms are that they want to dictate.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: And and of course, is as we touched on a little bit earlier, there's a whole humanitarian element to this, um, the humanitarian implications of the war.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I'd like to return to that just for a few minutes.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, could you just expand a little bit on the humanitarian situation?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what is healthcare like in general?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um Yeah, the humanitarian situation is extremely grave.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, the the it's very difficult to find adequate words to deal with this.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_05: The UN claims that 24 million out of 30 million of the population are in need of something, some humanitarian or aid or other.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_05: The figures are estimates.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_05: They may not be accurate, but the basic situation is that the need is enormous, the situation is extremely serious.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_05: It's important to remember that, you know, before this started, I mean, even in say 2012, the level of poverty in Yemen was already over 55%.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_05: So Yemen has been the poorest country in the region for many decades.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_05: So it started from a very low base.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_05: It also, although it's still very largely a rural country with more than 70% living in rural areas, it is also a country that has been primarily dependent on food imports for its basic needs.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_05: So 90% of its wheat, which is the main staple of the highlands, 100% of the rice, which is a main staple on the coast, 100% of tea, sugar, and other and which are really basic elements of survival, have been imported for decades.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_05: So the fact that there is a blockade and that people have no money because they haven't most people haven't been paid as a result of a another complex situation of the transfer of the central bank, which I won't go into, but the result of that has been that well over a million people, which means about seven million if you include their dependents, have been paid approximately for one month every five months out of from salaries, which were already very low at the best of times, at a time when, of course, the food costs and everything else has increased dramatically.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_05: So you have a situation where you have a massive level of malnutrition and the population in general.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_05: The places, the most remote places, sorry, are the ones that are most in need.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so you have basically a weakened population.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_05: You have a health system which or a medical system which was fairly weak to start with, and also fairly dependent on external aid, which has basically been people use the word decimator, but literally decimate means cut down by 10%, and this one's been cut down by 50%, so I I'm trying to think what the alternative word would be.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_05: So you basically have approximately half the medical facilities functioning, and they were already inadequate.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_05: You've had a massive rise, a major cholera epidemic, which started three years ago and which was then the worst epidemic in the world.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_05: In 2018, the cholera cases dropped down to about, I think, 300,000, but check it, don't quote me on that.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_05: And the last year they rose up to a million again.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_05: This year, up to now, they're only up to about a hundred thousand.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_05: So we're talking about, you know, as that is one major issue.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you also have a very serious dengue fever, you have malaria, and you have all the normal diseases that people suffer from.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_05: So you have a very, very weakened um situation, you know, from the point of view of the medical system.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_05: You have you, I think another element which I like to talk about because it's so important, is the issue of water.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, water, the absence of clean water and a clean drainage is one of the major causes there for cholera.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_05: It's also one of the major causes of, you know, worsening and making living conditions difficult for people throughout the country.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_05: So I think it's really important to remember that.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_05: It's also important to notice that the medical staff, a lot of them, have been dependent for the last two or three years because they weren't paid by their salaries by the state because of this bank system issue.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_05: And the the various humanitarian agencies, UNICEF, WHO and others, have been paying uh not full salaries, but paying people something so that they could survive.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_05: Now, currently, as we all know, the WHO funds have been cut significantly by President Trump, and you have a load of other problems, and so a lot of these payments are more or less stopping.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_05: So at a time when there's very little option to deal with the situation.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: And and it sounds like, you know, kind of mirroring the complexity within the country is complexity externally.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, when it comes to US aid, I'd just like to dig in a little bit more on that because, you know, obviously I think it's pretty clear that the US interest in Yemen doesn't have to do with Yemen directly, but has to do with dynamics in the region, whether it's with Iran or whether it's with counter-terrorism.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: Could you just expand on how you see um the US looking at its role in Yemen and what the outlook is for that?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think we need to go back a few years on that really, because we need to look at the beginning of the war.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, as we know, the US has been closely allied and supporting Saudi Arabia for decades.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, in 2015, we were at a time when the Obama presidency was busy dealing organizing its JCPRA deal with Iran, which is something that seriously irritated the Saudis.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_05: So although I understand that the Obama and administration was not particularly enthusiastic about the starting the war in Yemen, you know, they felt that they had to support the Saudis, regardless of what they were doing and regardless of the wisdom, simply because this was a kind of quid for quo for put the Saudis putting up with the negotiations with Iran.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_05: Now under the Obama, I mean sorry, under the Trump administration, it's very clear that um, you know, there is this uh there was this close relationship between Trump and uh MBS and that it was all based on billions of dollars of further weapons being bought by the Saudis and um has also been, to my knowledge, increasing Congress um action against this and trying to stop it, which has failed, but uh hopefully at some point it will succeed.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_05: But basically, I think the US position is that they it's out to support the Saudis, it's obviously out to oppose the Iranians.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_05: Now the there is uh an idea, I think, that the Houthis are Iranian proxies.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_05: Now the Houthis are connected, have an i have Iranian connections, but they are not proxies, and they are their own, you know, people or whatever, their own ideology.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_05: Now, when it suits them, the Houthis will listen to the Iranians, and when it doesn't suit them, they won't.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, the and of course from the Iranian point of view, the the Yemen thing is a cheap win.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: It's costing them practically nothing.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_05: They have, you know, it's it's peanuts from their point of view, and it's irritating, uh or even more than irritating the Saudis, which is one of their objectives.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_05: So basically it's a really it's they're onto a really good thing with the with the Yemen war.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_05: But I think it's a mistake for the US to believe, or US administration to believe that if we solve the, you know, if we t if we sort something out with Iran, it will it will sort out the Houthi situation because the two things are not directly related.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_05: There is a slight connection, but it's not a full connection.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_05: And I think the other problem for those of us who've been involved in Yemen and in development and in activities, is that if we look at the US policy over the decades in Yemen, it has not been a policy connected with Yemen and with helping Yemen, except for maybe some decades back.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_05: Whether one agrees with the development policies or not, I think, you know, which is another issue that should be dealt with.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_05: But even from that point of view, the the US policy in Yemen has largely been focused on counter-terrorism and on Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula, and you know, on basically counter-terrorism policy.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_05: And as somebody, you know, used to say is the US doesn't have a Yemen policy, they have a counter-terrorism policy.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_05: And I think now we have to add to the counter-terrorism, we have to add the anti-Iran policy.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_05: And those are really the moving elements.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_05: And of course, the sales of weapons, which is not insignificant.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, from the US point of view, though it's probably not as significant as some like to say.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Helen.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: That that is a really um kind of eye-opening rundown of what US interests are, and then also I think a very important point about the relationship between the Houthis and Iran.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was May 2020.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Two years later, a UN truce quieted the Saudi front, and the Saudis and the Houthis began to.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Talk.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then came the war in Gaza.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Houthis attacked ships in the Red Sea, and America, Britain, and Israel bombed them.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Last winter the Emirates pulled out of Yemen.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: In July, the truce collapsed, and the Houthis turned on Saudi Arabia again.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, back to May 2020.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: Has there been any recent involvement by Russia?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: There was some past involvement when Yemen was separated into North and the South Republics, but this uh questioner with like a little bit more, you know, context on if there's any current involvement by Russia.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, the the Russians are the one state that continued having an embassy in Sama until well into the war, basically until the Houthis killed their previous ally and even earlier enemy Ali Abdallah Saleh in the end of 2017.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_05: The Russians basically, I think, are sitting on the side waiting for an opportunity to mediate or to improve their position.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_05: At the United Nations Security Council, there's been a general unanimity on the Yemen issue, except that the Russians did not vote, but they did not veto, but they didn't vote on the resolution 2216, which is the one that justifies the military involvement.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, there have been more debates and more involvement of Russia on I but they've talked to everybody.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_05: They've had uh Truthy missions visiting them, they've had government missions visiting them.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_05: You know, as most of us know, there's been more and more involvement with Saudi Arabia.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_05: So I think basically the Russians are on a sort of wait and see operational or watch and watch and wait for an opportunity, I think is probably the way I would put it.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: All right, thank you.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: Very interesting.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: How can we improve the international aid system so we can ensure the assistance reaches the right people and isn't captured by war groups?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_05: That's a really difficult one.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_05: I wish I had the answer to that.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_05: Um I think it's an extremely difficult situation because in many countries, and Yemen is one of them, you are in a situation where the operators on the ground, the you you know, the local organizations on the ground are very unproven, are very new.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_05: They didn't really exist till very recently, and their quality and performance and um transparency would be the official word, you know, varies and ranges.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_05: So you have for some wonderful outfits with fantastic people who are totally devoted, and you have some other outfits of people who are trying to see what they can get out of it personally.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_05: And without and uh, you know, and I think it also this applies to some extent also to international NGOs.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_05: You know, not all international NGOs perform brilliantly, and there have been a few scandals, and there's been also scandals around the UN operations.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_05: So there's a, you know, there it's a very, very difficult question.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_05: I think ideally one would want to, you know, in my view, ideally one would like to operate through reputable national organizations and through government institutions.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, for example, on health issues, one should be able to operate through ministries of health and their staff directly.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_05: I but I, you know, this is not uh this is not the current fashion in in humanitarian or in international government policies.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_05: And um I think part, I mean, other than that, what I would say is that in Yemen, as in other countries, the thing is to identify a few organizations that one knows to be performing adequately and not taking massive overheads and not, you know, and having a minimum of of personal personnel issues and operate through them, I think is uh probably the only thing I can suggest.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_05: But I think it's a very important fundamental question, and not just in Yemen.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for that.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: So so our next questioner um is someone who worked in Yemen.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you, Courtney.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Helen, very much.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate this excellent overview.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um in in fact, I actually led the uh work of the UN in Yemen from 2000 to mid-2004.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been following events there, and of course, you know, those were better times.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh some of us at least were cautiously optimistic that Yemen could uh cope with the many challenges it had at the time, the North-South divide, the water scarcity, et cetera.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: We never envisioned that you know Yemen of today would uh would arise.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a terribly tragic situation.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to thank you for putting in perspective the Iranian uh versus Saudi contribution to the crisis.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think many people in the United States believe that they're equivalent.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you've made it very clear that although the Iranians definitely are helping the the Houthis, the role of the Saudis and the UAE, at least until recently, far outweighs the Iranian intervention.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And to consider the Houthis as some type of pawn of the Iranians is really miscasting the situation.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: My question, I have two questions.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, looking five years down the road, what would or ten years, what would be your most optimistic scenario for Yemen with all the intractable problems that it has at this point?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And second, what would be your advice to American citizens at this time in terms of for those of us that are concerned with Yemen?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Should we be putting most of our emphasis on continuing to push Congress to limit uh and hopefully end the Saudi intervention in Yemen?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Should it be on humanitarian assistance, uh some combination of the two?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Those would be my two questions.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_05: Great.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_05: Well, thank you very much for these uh questions.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_05: I'll ask I'll answer the second one first, because that's the easy one.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_05: I think really the thing to do is basically both.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_05: As you said, I think the role of Congress has been very important.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I, you know, although it has not succeeded, it's been very interesting to see the evolution where, you know, you had a very limited number of votes in favor of stopping the weapons in the first few occasions, and the number increased until it actually got to be a majority.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's, you know, that's very important.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_05: Um I think it had an impact on stopping the in-fight refueling of the planes, which I think was also, you know, had an important well it was something that had an immediate impact.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_05: I believe I'm not an expert on these matters.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, in the long run, I think it would be, you know, it is important.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_05: I think on humanitarian, I mean, what I would say is, you know, don't restrict humanitarian activities to relief and focus more on development investments.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's very it's really much more important to have, you know, there's no reason why you can't do development when there's fighting.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, people in 15, 16 were all saying, oh, we can't we can't do development until we have security, we can't do blah, blah.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_05: And I ended up saying, well, you haven't got security and you haven't got development, so why don't you try development and see if that gives you security?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_05: And I still believe that.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_05: And uh I don't think I've persuaded that many people.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that's um that would be the answer to your second question.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_05: Your first question, I think really I have to re come back to you and say, are you talking about dreamland or are you talking about reality?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_05: Well, you know, if you're talking about if if you're talking about dreamland, I suppose one would love to see the kind of democratic state that people demonstrated for in 2011 that the youth and the people well, not just the youth, the majority of Yemenis would like, you know, reasonable governance, good quality, health and education services, you know, possibilities for economic development and all these things.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_05: Um I don't know.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, all I can say is that, you know, when this war started, somebody I'm very close to saw the first piece I wrote in April 2015 on open democracy, which said this is the beginning of a long and very nasty war, and let nobody be fooled, or words to that effect.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_05: And six months later he said to me, you know, when you wrote that, I thought you were crazy.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_05: And uh he didn't think that any longer.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_05: So I think I'd say I mean I'm fairly convinced that the internationalization of this war is going to draw to a close somehow fairly soon.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_05: I.e.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_05: the Saudis are gonna, if not tot if not sign a deal, they it will basically fizzle out, as I was saying earlier.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_05: The Emirates have already largely uh moved out.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_05: The question is, you know, how much uh indirect support are they still willing to give to the their clients?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_05: In this case, I would say much more straightforwardly.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, the Southern Transitional Council, who are at the moment having a fight with the I mean, we didn't go into that because that's another whole issue, but I did write a piece on the topic in on the ECFR last Friday, if anybody wants to see it.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_05: So I think you know the internationalization of this war is going to um at best, at worst fizzle out and at best end up with some kind of deal within, I'd say, probably a couple of years.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but that leaves the Yemeni war, which is what was there to start with.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_05: And that is going to be much, much worse because now we're going to be talking about people saying, my brother, my son, my daughter, my uncle, my daughter, you know, was killed by one of your guys, etc.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_05: And this needs to be responded to.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_05: In addition, you have a very low economic base.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, even if oil prices got back to$100 a barrel, you know, the Yemeni oil production at best would be$150,000 barrels a day, which is absolute peanuts by any standard.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you don't have economic resources to rebuild the country.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_05: And you don't have the kind of um serious you don't have a a I suppose you a ruling group that is committed to the welfare of the population.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_05: I think there are lo thousands of Yemenis, millions of Yemenis who want improved living conditions and who desperately need them.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_05: But is there anywhere a c the kind of leadership that can emerge to help them get there?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_05: In the in the ig with the very, very limited natural resources that the country has.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_05: You know, most countries with very few natural resources compensate by having high levels of education.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, look at South Korea, to a less smaller extent, look at Jordan.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you you go in for the modern knowledge economy, etc., etc.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yemen has an education system which is incredibly weak and incredibly unprepared.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_05: So I don't know.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I'd say my most optimistic version on from that point of view would be of course, the one thing that will solve many problems would be the GCC allowing Yemeny workers in, because then you can have a new migration, a new set of people who are earning adequate incomes and who can finance their families and who can finance local infrastructure.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_05: If you look at what was happening in the 70s with the local development associations and similar organizations, you know, you had a whole community-based development system, which was in some places extremely impressive.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_05: And the the ability of Yemen is to send back serious remittances, again, would permit the community level to develop.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_05: And I also, I mean, what I've been arguing uh for the last few years is that, you know, do community-based development, do do community-based investments, don't just focus on peace education, blah, blah, but focus on building people's economic capacity at the community level and the self-management, and that can lead to the build-up of a new political entity with much better people.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_05: But of course, to get the new political entity, we're talking about there, we are talking about 10 or 15 or 20 years.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm sorry, I don't I don't know if that's very important.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you very much.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Helen, and thank you, James, for for that question.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I'd like to turn to Nadeen, who would like to ask his question.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, Helen.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Nadim Shahadi.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: I accidentally became your the publisher of your first book when I inherited Ithaca Press from Devade Olton.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_04: Oh wow.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_04: That was a long time ago.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: That was a very long time ago.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: My the well, the the shortest way I can explain my question is that I'm from Lebanon, where we have a similar group, Hezbollah, that is very similar to the Houthis, in the sense that there is always plausible deniability that they with their connection to Iran.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: They they also hold the country hostage when it comes to aid.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: The aid has to go through them, otherwise it doesn't come.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: Such groups exist in Palestine, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Yemen, and could be in other germinating in other places, maybe Afghanistan or whatever, maybe Pakistan, I don't know.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I I understand the specificity of Yemen, but we are facing a regional issue in a sense because all these groups lie under one banner, which is the IRGC, and it could be that a solution has to be done for all of them at the same time rather than try and do it piecemeal.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's my question.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I I I of I follow events in the other countries to a much lesser extent than I follow them in Yemen.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_05: I think you know, I I think it's going back really to what I was saying earlier, which is, you know, on the one hand, there is an international relations issue with Iran.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_05: I wouldn't like to think that it's an issue about Shia's versus Sunnis.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's the you know it's fundamentally a political issue which arose, if you remember in the 70s, Iran was the greatest trend of the US and the police of the policemen of the Gulf under the Shah.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it I don't think it's an issue of sectarianism.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's very much a real political issue of power and power relations, and one shouldn't forget that the you know the Wahhabism and the extreme Sunni uh versions have been circulating around the Middle East and way beyond also for a considerable extent.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_05: So I would say that there is in there is an issue of the relationship between Iran and the rest of the world.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um to what extent, you know, I wouldn't like to say to what extent, you know, the Hezbollah or the groups in Syria and others are are closer or more, say, subservient to Iranian desires than others.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_05: But what I would say in the case of Yemen is that although the relationship with Iran has increased and worsened in the well, sorry, from a Putin point of view, improved, in the or from the Iranian point of view, improved in the last two or three years, it is not the fundamental issue that is faced by Yemen.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_05: The fundamental issues that are faced by Yemen is our issues of political power and not of sectarianism.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_05: And I think at the moment now, if you still look at the situation, I would say that in terms of personal bitterness and resentment and call it, you know, ethnicism is the word I use, but I haven't found the right word.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_05: The tension between southerners and northerners is much stronger than the sectarian tension.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_05: The differences between the Zaydis and the Shafi'i in Yemen are minimal at the theological level and in other levels.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_05: So I think certainly with respect to Yemen, I wouldn't say that dealing with Iran is the solution to the problem.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Helen Lagner spoke with us in May 2020.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here is where Yemen stands in mid-October 2026.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: More than 200,000 people have fled their homes since August.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Saudi Arabia says the Houthis refuse to meet in Oman.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Iran denies any role in the war and has offered to mediate.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_05: And I think, you know, even if you're looking at the in the wider sense, it's uh also very important to, you know, look at the political issues and uh, you know, the level of influence that is attempted, not just by Iran, but also by the other side.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, look at you know, look at who who are who were the people who were sent out, who were supported by, you know, by the Saudis and the Emiratis in Syria.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_05: They aren't exactly angels either.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that's that's my lot on this one.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: Helen, thank you so much for your time.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: Have a wonderful evening, and thank you for joining us, and thank you, everyone.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and thank you for the interesting discussion and uh interesting contributions.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_04: Goodbye.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: Take care.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: Bye-bye.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_04: Bye.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us.