[News] Killer Prince — Yemen

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/killer-prince 
<https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/killer-prince>


  Killer Prince

Tariq Ali - April 2, 2021
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Saudi offer of a ceasefire in Yemen on 22 March was an 
acknowledgement by Riyadh and its backers in Washington that they had 
lost the war. Biden signalled the grudging surrender in February, when 
he announced the US would end its support for ‘offensive operations’ 
there. After six years of bombardment and blockade, Houthi forces are 
poised to take the strategic central city of Marib. They demanded that 
the aggressors – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the US, UK and France – lift the 
stranglehold on the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, cause of a humanitarian 
catastrophe of famine and epidemics in the country, before sitting down 
to talk.

The Houthi alliance would most likely have taken the country in 2015, 
sweeping away the weak government headed by Saudi stooge Abdrabbuh 
Mansur Hadi, if Obama had not greenlighted the Saudi assault against 
them. The war on Yemen began as part and parcel of the celebrations that 
ushered in the young, ‘dynamic’, ‘modernising’ Prince Mohammed Bin 
Salman (MBS) as the de facto heir of the Kingdom. In January 2015, MBS’s 
doddering, octogenarian father ascended the throne as King Salman, and 
MBS was appointed Saudi Defence Minister. Obama indulged MBS’s itch for 
war as a sop to keep the Saudis onside while he pressured Iran to accept 
the US nuclear deal. On the eve of the 25 March 2015 Saudi invasion, the 
White House issued a statement supporting military action ‘to protect 
Yemen’s legitimate government’ – i.e. Hadi, who was hiding out in 
Riyadh, having been ousted by mass protests a few months before.

Two weeks into the invasion, Anthony Blinken, then Obama’s Deputy 
Secretary of State, announced: ‘Saudi Arabia is sending a strong message 
to the Houthis and their allies.’ He added that the US was expediting 
weapons deliveries. Billions flowed to Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed 
Martin, DynCorp and Textron (who provided the notorious, UN-banned 
cluster bombs which the Saudis dropped on residential neighbourhoods of 
Sana’a). The Obama White House signalled it would also provide 
logistical and intelligence support, including target selection. British 
intelligence operatives had already been despatched to assist Obama’s 
drone strikes in Yemen, identifying targets for the US bombing 
operations that killed an estimated 1,775 people on the thin pretext of 
‘counterterrorism’ during the first decade of the War on Terror. Since 
2015, the UK has supplied the Saudis with aircraft, weaponry, training 
and aerial equipment, as well as SAS fighters. The US has lavished 
high-tech weaponry and military aid on MBS, with Obama offering to 
provide over $115 billion worth of arms to the Saudis in 42 separate 
deals, and Trump signing a $110 billion agreement with the Kingdom in 2017.

The result? The worst humanitarian catastrophe since Iraq. Cholera and 
hunger on a scale that has not been seen since the last century, with 
some 20 million experiencing food insecurity and 10 million at risk of 
famine. An estimated 110,000 have been killed in the fighting, with a 
death toll of 233,000 overall, mostly due to indirect causes such as 
lack of food and health services. Few of the country’s medical 
facilities are functional.

The UK’s arms sales, approved by the High Court in 2017, are on the 
scale of £5 billion – while its humanitarian aid to Yemen has just been 
cut by nearly 60 per cent, to £87 million. In this context, it’s worth 
recalling John Major’s private remark to the late Sir Martin Gilbert 
that, after giving a footling ‘lecture’ to a tiny group of people in 
Saudi Arabia, he was surprised to find his hosts handing him a very 
handsome cheque. Most servants of the British security state understand 
that this is part of their retirement package. Compared to Saudi 
largesse, the consulting fees doled out to David Miliband by his 
Pakistani and Emirati patrons must be peanuts. Lucrative connections of 
this kind help explain the role of British politicians in the conflict.

As for MBS, Western media outlets swallowed the Saudi publicity, 
promising great things and new beginnings. The Kingdom was at last 
taking steps towards becoming a ‘liberal’ state with a ‘diversified’ 
economy. Notable cheerleaders were David Ignatius in the /Washington 
Post/ and evergreen apologist Thomas Friedman at the /New York Times/. 
As the Saudi war in Yemen escalated in 2016, Ignatius gushed: 
‘MBS proposes a series of sweeping reforms. Saudi Aramco and other big, 
state-owned enterprises would be privatised; cinemas, museums and a 
“media city” would be created for a young population starving for 
entertainment; the power of the religious police would be curtailed; 
and, at some point, women would be allowed to drive.’

When potential MBS opponents in the Royal Family were removed from key 
positions and placed under house arrest (albeit in a five-star hotel), 
the Western media treated it as a local peccadillo. ‘This is a man to do 
business with’, cooed the /Financial Times/ editors in a leader of March 
2018. The/Economist/ published glossy ads for Saudi privatisation tenders.

As pointed out by the Saudi historian Madawi al-Rasheed (one of the few 
genuinely critical voices in exile) in the /London Review of Books/, 
this reception was backed by a multi-million-pound propaganda campaign, 
handled in Britain by Freud Communications and the strategic consultancy 
Consulum. Before MBS’s visit to Downing Street in 2018, billboards in 
London were plastered with his portrait, headlined ‘He is bringing 
change to Saudi Arabia.’ An ex-employee of one of the firms told a 
reporter that representing a client like Saudi Arabia was like being a 
defence lawyer: ‘You have to work to get the client out of trouble.’ 
MBS was duly given a red-carpet welcome and lunch with the Queen. As 
al-Rasheed noted: ‘No one thought to bring up his destruction of Yemen 
or his detention of political enemies.’

The killing of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 made it more awkward for 
MBS and his state-funded gangsters to maintain this positive spin. 
Khashoggi, previously a stalwart defender of the Saudi Royal Family, was 
hostile to the interloper and wrote as much from his platform at the 
/Washington Post/. That was his real crime as far as the ‘liberaliser’ 
was concerned. The victim was lured to the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul, 
tortured at leisure and bone-sawed into segments, which were packed into 
diplomatic bags and sent back to Saudi Arabia. All this was secretly 
recorded by the Turkish state, which duly handed over the snuff-doc to 
the US after leaking the most grizzly details to the press. The 
Americans sat on it until last February, when a declassified report by 
the intelligence agencies concluded that it was undoubtedly MBS who 
ordered the hit. Biden, Johnson, Macron and Merkel – quick on the draw 
when it comes to imposing ‘human-rights’ sanctions on enemy states – 
promptly agreed to forgive the Saudi criminal, imposing no consequences 
for his actions.

How has the Houthi alliance managed to prevail against the world’s most 
powerful states? The Zaydi Shi’as from Yemen’s mountainous north had 
long played an important role in the region, fighting both Ottomans and 
Wahhabis. (Zayd, the great-grandson of the Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, 
had led a revolt against the Umayyad Caliphate in 740AD.) The Zaydi 
tribes were a dominant force under the Shi’a Imamate that ruled the 
country for centuries. After the fall of the Ottomans, a Zaydi monarchy 
ruled North Yemen until its overthrow in the republican revolution of 
1962. Sixteen years later a Zaydi republican general, Ali Abdullah 
Saleh, succeeded in imposing a new dictatorship on the north. After 
1990, his regime pushed through a take-over of Soviet-aligned South 
Yemen, later reinforced through civil war. (Yemen has long been more 
populous than Saudi Arabia, and – though officially Saudi Arabia now has 
34 million to Yemen’s 30 million – may still be, if foreign workers are 
subtracted from the Saudi total.)

In the 1990s, Zaydi resistance to Saleh was spearheaded by Hussein al 
Houthi, leader of a small clan in the north. Radicalized by the US War 
on Terror and invasion of Iraq, the group founded Ansar Allah, or 
‘Supporters of God’, and engaged in a tireless guerrilla war against 
Saleh, whom it excoriated as a puppet of Washington and Riyadh. 
Thousands joined the Ansar Allah’s ranks, taking its estimated number of 
fighters from 10,000 to 100,000 by 2010. However, clashes with Yemeni 
state forces were mostly confined to the Houthis’ mountainous home 
province until the following year, when the Arab Spring transformed the 
country’s political landscape.

In 2011, inspired by the Tunisian revolution, protesters flooded Yemen’s 
urban centres, occupying public squares and state buildings while 
chanting their demands for jobs, incomes and fair elections. This mass 
movement succeeded in forcing Saleh from office in February 2012. Yet 
the replacement ‘transitional government’ installed by the Gulf 
Cooperation Council was headed by Saleh’s Vice President Hadi, a 
Saudi-backed Sunni, and awash with figures from the old regime and the 
Islamist Islah party. Their corrupt and incompetent administration did 
nothing to quell the widespread discontent. Hadi further antagonized the 
masses by raising diesel prices at the behest of the IMF. The Houthis 
continued to agitate against it, expanding their military presence 
across the country and forming an alliance of convenience with their 
erstwhile enemy – the ousted Saleh.

Though Western powers threw their weight behind Hadi’s transitional 
government, it was no match for this new partnership. Saleh retained 
high levels of support within the security services, while the Houthis 
were able to mobilize their vast militias to march on the capital. 
Between late 2014 and early 2015, Saleh–Houthi forces stormed Sana’a, 
seized key political and military buildings, formed a ruling council and 
exiled most of the transitional regime – meeting barely an iota of 
resistance along the way. The Houthis’ decentralized command structure 
allowed them to draw in diverse actors and forge partnerships with 
Sunnis who oppose the central government. They would have gone on to 
capture the entire country if not for the Saudi-led bombing campaign, 
Operation Decisive Storm.

Intermittent clashes between Riyadh and the Houthi rebels on the Saudis’ 
southern border long pre-dated the outbreak of war. Saudi sectarians had 
always been determined to crush the Shi’a Houthis, whom they accused of 
being Iranian relays. In fact, the Houthis’ military training was the 
fruit of decades of struggle against Saleh, not from any foreign backer. 
By instigating the brutal bombing and blockade campaign against them, 
MBS hoped to assert his authority in the region, pose as Yemen’s saviour 
and impress the Israelis (who also regarded the Houthis as an Iranian 
pawn). ‘Liberated’ from Saleh–Huthi control, southern Yemen quickly 
deteriorated into a morass of competing militias under loose Emirati 
supervision. A military stalemate ensued.

Despite constant Saudi cluster-bombing – targeting civilian gatherings, 
schools, medical facilities, key infrastructure and ancient heritage 
sites – the Houthis held on in their urban strongholds. Hadi remained 
president in name only, living under effective house arrest in Riyadh. 
After two fraught years, the Houthis’ alliance with Saleh predictably 
unravelled. The former accused the latter of conspiring with the Saudis 
and Emiratis, and a series of clashes broke out in Sana’a culminating in 
Saleh’s assassination in December 2017. From this point on his loyalists 
were marginalized, leaving Ansar Allah as the only significant rival to 
the Saudi coalition.

Despite their shortcomings, the Houthis continue to enjoy more popular 
support than the Saudi-led forces of aggression for reasons that are 
both historical and immediate. Yemen is one of the oldest countries in 
the region, unlike the real-estate kingdoms and sheikdoms first set up 
by the British and later the US. The country has a distinctive cultural 
memory, visible everywhere in its astonishing early Islamic 
architecture. Much of the population views the Houthis as the sole 
defenders of this sovereign legacy. Their control of cities like Sana’a, 
Saada and Taiz – along with the country’s most densely populated 
governates – is based on this deeply rooted perception, as well as the 
more imminent necessity of resisting the Wahhabi Kingdom.

In their support for this murderous war, the US and UK have found a 
willing servant in the UN, which continues to recognize Hadi’s 
government as Yemen’s rightful rulers despite its non-existent mandate. 
The UN Security Council has imposed sanctions on the Houthis and Saleh, 
but not on Hadi’s forces or their foreign allies. It has removed the 
Saudi coalition from its blacklist of actors violating children’s 
rights, despite hundreds of children being killed each year by 
anti-Houthi airstrikes; winked at the Saudis’ obstruction of 
humanitarian aid; and steadfastly passed resolutions which call for 
absolute Houthi surrender as the precondition for any dialogue.

MBS would now like to achieve through a peace of the graveyard what he 
has failed to secure via bloody and ruthless war. His planes have been 
downed, drones have hit Riyadh, and his army – designed for show rather 
than for battle – has suffered serious setbacks. UAE ground troops were 
forced to withdraw in July 2019, whereupon the Abu Dhabi regime shifted 
to funding a political coalition based in Aden.

Though Biden has signalled the US will end ‘offensive operations’, it 
will continue to provide Saudi Arabia with ‘defensive weapons’, which 
appear to serve much the same purpose. His Administration has said 
nothing about halting technical, logistical and intelligence operations. 
By all indications, its plan is still to extract an unconditional 
surrender from the Houthis while maintaining its disastrous 
‘counterterrorism’ operations in the country. To date, Biden’s promised 
‘recalibration’ of the US–Saudi relationship is nowhere to be seen.

In recent weeks, Foreign Office apologists and linked flotsam and jetsam 
have criticised the Houthis for turning down Saudi ‘offers’ of 
negotiation. Yet as even /The Economist/ has pointed out, there is 
nothing new in these proposals. They are stale repetitions of yesteryear 
– calling on Ansar Allah to relinquish its military gains, surrender to 
the Saudi-led coalition and turn Yemen into a Western vassal state, 
while receiving nothing in return. As if to illustrate the vacuity of 
this ‘ceasefire plan’, MBS decided to rain bombs on several Houthi sites 
just hours after it was issued.

The brutal fact is that Yemeni lives – like many others – are expendable 
for US Senators and British MPs, who form part of a chain of imperialism 
that extends back for many centuries. Britain itself is a satrapy, prime 
ministers from Thatcher to Johnson little more than adjutants to the 
White House. Revelling in that status, they would like nothing more than 
to drag Yemen into their tent. So far they have failed. The costs of 
this venture have been high for the people of that beleaguered country, 
much higher than the profits accruing to the arms industries. Yet a 
permanent arms economy requires two, three, many ‘humanitarian wars’. 
Yemen will not be the last.

/Read on: Tariq Ali, ‘Yemen’s Turn’ 
<https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii111/articles/tariq-ali-yemen-s-turn>, 
NLR 111./

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