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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Killer Prince<br>
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<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Tariq Ali -
April 2, 2021<br>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>Washington
Post</em> and evergreen apologist Thomas Friedman at
the <em>New York Times</em>. 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.’</p>
<p>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 <em>Financial Times</em>
editors in a leader of March 2018. The<em> Economist</em>
published glossy ads for Saudi privatisation tenders.</p>
<p>As pointed out by the Saudi historian Madawi
al-Rasheed (one of the few genuinely critical voices
in exile) in the <em>London Review of Books</em>,
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.’</p>
<p>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 <em>Washington Post</em>. 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.</p>
<p>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.)</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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 <em>The Economist</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>Read on: Tariq Ali, <a
href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii111/articles/tariq-ali-yemen-s-turn"
moz-do-not-send="true">‘Yemen’s Turn’</a>, NLR
111.</em></p>
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