The death toll in Yemen continues to rise amid a Saudi-led military campaign and clashes between Houthi rebels and forces loyal to ousted President Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The most intense violence is in the southern city of Aden, with more than 140 people reportedly killed in a 24-hour period. The United Nations says hundreds have been killed and more than 100,000 have been displaced since Saudi Arabia launched a military campaign two weeks ago. The Saudi regime has asked Pakistan to provide soldiers, heightening the possibility of a ground invasion. The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned of a dire humanitarian situation and demanded access to besieged areas.
Safa Al Ahmad talking:
I have been very curious about the Houthis for years now, especially — I’ve been going to Yemen for a few years and I’ve always wanted to get that access to the Houthis. So finally, when I heard last September that they surrounded the capital Sanaa, I thought that things would escalate if they actually took over the city. They’re very interesting because they are a very young group. And they keep morphing their understanding of who they are and what they want as they progress. And so it’s very hard to pin it down to one thing. But if I must describe the Houthis in one line, it would be the revivalist Zaydis with strong anti-imperialist agenda. And so they have these really big words to describe who they are and what they want, but in reality, they want control in Yemen, and this is what they’ve done. They didn’t have enough by just controlling Sanaa, but they’ve come across most of North Yemen and reached they’ve reached Aden
There is very little good journalism that has been done to prove the extent of the relationship between the Houthis in Iran. I don’t doubt that there is a relationship between the Houthis and Iran, but how extensive is that? For people to blatantly call them Iranian-backed Shia militia, I think that is very, very problematic. The Houthis have local agenda, they have local grievances, and local power. The rise of the Houthis themselves had nothing to do with the Iranians. Whether they — I think there is a relationship with the Iranians and the Houthis at the moment, but not to the extent that the world claims there is for Iran. Saudi Arabia has deeper connections with Yemen. They have a large border with Yemen, and the Saudis have funded — sent money directly and arms to different groups inside Yemen. So I would argue between the two, Saudi Arabia has the much bigger influence and the upper hand in Yemen.
Obama administration pouring more money into making more weapon sales than any administration since World War II. The largest recipient of those — of that military aid and weaponry is, of course, to Saudi Arabia.
record-breaking number of contracts, I think, have been sold to the Saudis in the past few years. I don’t know who they’re using them against. Yemen is a very — Yemen is the poorest Arab country. And so to have this huge alliance against Yemen for allegedly trying to break the back of the Houthis, I think it belies it, because now that the Houthis have come to Aden, which is what the airstrikes were allegedly trying to stop from happening. So the Houthis have large alliances on the ground. They didn’t — they’re not an occupying power coming from nowhere. They have been working on spreading that alliance throughout the areas that they controlled. And so the Saudi war on Yemen — Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen — will have very limited impact on the power of the Houthis on the ground, unless there are ground troops. And even then, what is the solution? I don’t know what’s the endgame with this. I mean, the Saudis claim that it is to bring back the legitimate President Abdel Rabbo Mansour Hadi back to Yemen. But I think for a lot of Yemenis, he has lost his credibility. He has lost his legitimacy. He’s called for a war on his own people. And now he’s sitting at Riyadh. I think for a lot of people, that’s extremely problematic. The humanitarian crisis is astounding to begin with, even before this, and now with the whole air and sea embargo on Yemen, there is very little fuel, there is a food shortages. It is frightening what is happening now in Yemen and heartbreaking. The numbers that the U.N. is saying are most likely much lower than what is actually on the ground.
a lot of people blame Ali Saleh for all of this. He’s the one who has waged six wars against the Houthis because of his fear of their advancement. And now they’re allied together. But in the ned, I think the problem is you can’t just look at what is happening now as in today or this week in Yemen. This problem has been going on for a long time. The Americans — if we’re going to specify, the Americans and their involvement in Yemen — have supported a dictator, which is Ali Saleh and even when the revolution happened to oust him in 2011, they continued to support corrupt political parties that have only their own the personal interest. And the U.N. has played a detrimental part in what is happening in Yemen as well. And so all the peaceful — the civil society that had helped bring this revolution on were put to the side and only the political parties and the Americans and the U.N. and the GCC, including Saudi Arabia we’re dealing with. And so they can’t just look at the situation now in Yemen and say, oh, look what’s happening. You had a role to play in where Yemen is right now. I mean, the Americans — there was an article the other day when the special forces left an Al-Anad military base, they left $500 million worth of arms in the base. Who do they think has control of that now? They don’t know, probably. Yes? This is part of the really problematic American foreign policy when it comes to Yemen; this tunnel vision about antiterrorism. So whoever is the dictator in control, he is our only ally against Al Qaeda. Like that is the only problem. And the drone strikes have completely and utterly failed instead of crushing Al Qaeda. And now we hear alliances to Isis. So, I mean, the situation keeps getting from bad to worse.
I have been following the protests that have been happening in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia for a while and I finally got commissioned by the BBC to do a documentary about it. And so this is unprecedented, historic event in Saudi Arabia where there are protests consistently for over three years now. And nobody has been covering it and nobody has been talking about it, although, it’s happening within the context of all the other revolutions that were happening in the Arab world. Of course, it was in a revolution, it was an uprising and protest. Yet it goes into the whole idea of the stereotypical image of Saudi Arabia. Nobody wants to talk about the issues that are domestically happening inside the country. The protests started with, with — like a lot of the others, for example, in Libya, for freeing prisoners, political prisoners. And Instead of freeing the political prisoners, the government had increased its own detentions of the people who went out in the streets to protest. And so the escalation of demands from the protesters kept getting higher as the government continued to oppress the protests. And we can put it within the context of what is happening in the whole Middle East where the people are trying to renegotiate their relationship with their governments, and unfortunately, in the Arab world, most of them are dictatorships and they do not tolerate another voice. And then they treat them with violence. And then they are surprised with the protesters turn violent as well. And so it’s — they have created the enemy they need. They don’t want peaceful protests. They don’t want civil society. They don’t want a peaceful form of reform in the country. They just want to continue the status quo.
There is an internal issue, where the people themselves have decided, like with Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, that there’s no longer any possibility for this rule to continue, then that will happen despite American intervention. But that does not relieve the American foreign-policy from the responsibilities they have. They’re going to pay lip service to human rights violations and them respecting democracy and them wanting these kinds of things in the Middle East, then they need to stop arming dictatorships to the teeth and then surprised when their used against their own people. It is a really hypocritical line that the Americans are using towards the Middle East. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim you want democracy and then you are the number one seller of arms to those dictatorships. It’s quite problematic. And think, like the news in the past couple of weeks about Sweden stopping selling weapons to Saudi Arabia because of a woman’s rights. I’m like, come on, did you just know, did you just find out that that woman didn’t have rights, that people don’t have human rights in Saudi Arabia, that they are in an oppressive regime? So I think this quite opportunistic as well in that perspective. We need to have more complex, more in-depth stories and coverage of countries like Saudi Arabia, because they play a huge role in the region. So continuing to talk about it in this really simplistic way is really detrimental to be understanding of what is actually happening on the ground.
I knew a lot of those people from before they came into power. So I have been coming to Yemen for years, and they knew me. They knew that I’ve tried to go Sadaa several times. And so I didn’t have a sudden interest in what was going on now. But even then, they were very worried about media to begin with. And it took a lot of talking, a lot of convincing. Every step of the way I needed to talk more and try to get more access. It was never at some point, like I never had carte blanche access to them. It never worked out that way. They are very, very secretive about their decision-making process, the filming of people who are involved as members. So it was a constant negotiation. I was never just given access just like that. That’s why it took so long to get that access that I did in the end.
— source democracynow.org
Safa Al Ahmad, journalist and documentary film maker. She was recently granted extremely rare reporting access to the Houthis as they advanced in Yemen. Her latest documentary, “The Fight for Yemen,” premieres on Frontline on PBS stations nationwide April 7.