Today, Yemen is the site of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian disaster. And the U.S. has played a major role in making it so. Yet Yemen receives only sporadic coverage, if any, on many major U.S. media outlets.
So today we’re going to take an in-depth look at a history that all of us really should know. It’s complex. It has lots of twists and turns, but it’s vital that we understand the role that our governments have played in manufacturing this unforgivable reality faced now by the entire nation of Yemen.
Immediately after 9/11, the then-president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, presented himself to the Bush administration as a key ally in the so-called War on Terror.
The Bush administration and Congress began to beef up U.S. military and funding to Yemen for counterterrorism. But Ali Abdullah Saleh took this military and intelligence aid and used it to further consolidate power around his family. In 2002, the U.S. carried out its first known air strike in Yemen. They used a CIA-operated Predator drone that killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, an alleged al Qaeda member tied to the USS Cole attack. That drone strike also killed a U.S. citizen, by the way.
Ali Abdullah Saleh talked a good game about working with the U.S., but in reality, he did very little to help the U.S. with its stated goals. Saleh’s government began using U.S. military aid to wage a series of wars against a growing insurgency from the Shiite-Houthi movement in Yemen, and his political foes in the south of Yemen who wanted to secede from his government.
Saleh would justify getting the aid, saying he needed it to fight al Qaeda, and he’d then turn around and use it to wage domestic political power wars — rinse, repeat.
As President Barack Obama came into office, al Qaeda members in Yemen and Saudi Arabia had joined forces to create al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or AQAP. That group attempted a number of terror attacks against U.S. and international targets, including the 2009 attempted underwear bombing on an international flight to the United States. The Obama administration soon characterized AQAP as representing the greatest external threat to the United States.
In December of 2009, president Obama authorized his first strike in Yemen. It was a cruise missile attack with cluster bombs. The strike was supposedly aimed at an al Qaeda camp, but that claim now seems dubious at best.
The strike resulted in the killing of more than 50 people, including 21 children and a dozen women. That strike kicked off a sustained bombing campaign that lasted for the entire duration of Obama’s presidency, mostly using armed drones.
In 2011, the Arab Spring inspired a youth-led uprising that ultimately resulted in President Saleh resigning, though he remained the most powerful figure in the country. In the midst of this uprising and Saleh’s resignation, AQAP began to seize territory in Yemen. Saleh formally transferred political power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in 2012. The U.S. then began to expand its drone strikes and the so-called Yemen model was born: Aid Yemeni forces on the ground and pummel al Qaeda with drone strikes from above. Sounds good on paper. But these strikes killed a lot of civilians. They also killed American citizens, including a 16-year-old boy.
In 2015, the Houthi militias from the north of Yemen took control of the capital Sana’a and many Yemenis believe that they were aided in doing so by Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The message from the former dictator was, “If I can’t be president, I’m going to wreak havoc from behind the scenes.” Ironically, Saleh would end up being killed by the Houthis just a few months ago
President Hadi has struggled to assert control over Yemen, and his unwavering support for the U.S. and its increasing drone strikes was also widely unpopular. Eventually, Hadi had to flee the country and has been a president in exile ever since. Led by Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states, an air campaign officially aimed at restoring Hadi back to power began. It included logistical and military support from the United States, Britain, and France. And this Saudi-led scorched earth campaign has now become the leading cause of civilian deaths and casualties in Yemen.
Within one year in office, Donald Trump has amped up U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and its war in Yemen. The Pentagon’s own numbers show that U.S. drone strikes increased six-fold in 2017, refueling support doubled for Saudi planes, and the U.S. now has boots on the ground in Yemen. And U.S. personnel have died in raids there.
Nadwa Al-Dawsari
Nadwa Al-Dawsari: Thank you for having me.
JS: Yemen is very seldom discussed in the broader large media in the United States. I want to sort of walk through some of the history that gives context to what’s happening in Yemen right now. What was going on in the early 2000s in Yemen, in the period between Bush becoming president and then Obama taking over?
ND: You’re right. I mean Yemen has not been covered much in the media and whenever Yemen is covered, it is usually about terrorism or Yemen conflict has been pretty much explained in regional terms. So, Saudi versus Iran, which has some truth to it, but [the] Yemen conflict is much deeper than just a proxy war between Saudi and Iran. And the year 2000 is critical because that’s the year when Saleh started consolidating power into the hands of his family and marginalizing his allies, his key allies.
JS: That’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president of Yemen.
ND: After September 11, U.S. government support, military support to Saleh increased and he used that support to increase his family’s power and control over the government. He became more of a dictator and the fact that the support for Saleh was almost unconditional helped him get away with corruption, lack of accountability which fueled the grievances that basically led to the 2011 uprising —
Newscaster: This was the moment tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of Sana’a calling for political reforms. It was February 11, 2011. The protest movement spread, galvanizing the nation against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
ND: — which was not dealt with effectively by the international community, which led us to the current war.
JS: Ali Abdullah Saleh, his family roots are actually — he would be from Zaidi-Shia tradition, and yet his hold on power in Yemen often depended on his alliances with many of the forces that were fighting against the Houthis and their various leaders, and you had the six wars. So, talk about that balancing act that Saleh played with the southern tribes, Sunni tribes within the country, and then the Houthis on the other hand.
ND: So, I mean the Zaidi-Shafi’i/Sunni divide in Yemen has never been significant. Zaidis and Shafi’is have intermarried, we had no significant differences.
There are two important aspects to Yemen conflict that if you want to understand Yemen conflict, you need to keep in mind.
There is the power struggle among the political elite and that Saleh and his key allies that he started undermining in the early 2000s when he appointed his son as the commander of the Republican Guard and started kind of preparing him to become the next president, which angered his allies who felt that any future president or power arrangement should be in agreement with them.
So the tension increased throughout the 2000s between Saleh and his key allies because he increasingly became more powerful and made his family more powerful at the expense of his key allies. And so by the year 2011, his key allies actually found an opportunity to pay Saleh back and they quote-unquote supported the youth uprising but in fact, they hijacked the youth uprising.
And then you have the 2011 uprising and then after that you had the GCC initiative, which is the transition deal that was brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf countries, but also backed by the UN and the international community.
Newscaster: [Protestors shouting in the background.] Anger at a deal brokered by Yemen’s rich neighbors from the Gulf Cooperation Council. A deal that could see President Ali Abdullah Saleh offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for leaving office. Originally agreeing to the deal, president Saleh backed out at the last minute. These protesters say they’ll go nowhere until he leaves.
Translation of a female protestor: Oh god, take away the slaughterer who burned our hearts, who had no mercy on us, who made us starve.
NA: And this agreement was no more than a reshuffle of the political elite. And that’s why it didn’t work.
So the Houthis fought six wars against Saleh government from 2004 to 2010. The way the Saleh government dealt with the Houthis, the use of excessive force in Sa’dah have kind of fueled the grievances that drive the Houthi rebel group.
JS: During that same period it wasn’t just Saleh waging these six wars against the Houthis in the north, but also Saudi Arabia would periodically come in and conduct airstrikes against those very forces from the Houthi parts of the country.
ND: Yes, absolutely, an agreement of Saleh that happened, but what I was going to say is that a lot of people today try to explain Yemen conflict by saying that it was because of Houthis grievances. Yes, that’s an aspect of the conflict, but Houthis are not victims. They are part of this conflict. They are part of the problem. But, also Houthis were participants of the national dialogue conference and at the same time they were pushing down from Sa’dah by force all the way through Jawf, Ma’rib, these are governorates in the north, to ‘Amr?n which is north of Sana’a, until 2014 when they took over the capital city of Sana’a, backed by Saleh who is their alleged suppressor.
So with the Houthis, it is not just a question of grievances, because they did not revolt against Saleh, but at the end of the day, they chose to ally with Saleh to take power. So I think the issue of Houthis grievances, I think it’s overblown by some analysts.
JS: I’ve read through carefully the U.S. diplomatic cables that were released by WikiLeaks that covered of course a very wide span of time in a number of countries, but specific to Yemen, what I found most fascinating was that during the Bush administration in the period that you’re talking about, particularly from 2004 forward, and let’s remember that Ali Abdullah Saleh was the first Arab leader to send word after 9/11 to the United States saying, “Hey, I’m on your side, let me know what I can do.” I mean he was a very strategically smart person when he played with the United States.
President George W. Bush: And I thank the president for his strong support in this war against extremists and terrorists.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh (English translation): I’m very pleased for the limitless support by President Bush and the United States for Yemen and the field of combating terror.
JS: But in those cables, you see Ali Abdullah Saleh and his men trying to convince the Bush administration on the one hand, that they need more counterterrorism assistance to fight against al Qaeda, and on the other hand, campaigning to use that counterterrorism assistance to fight against the Houthis. And the representatives from the U.S., including Fran Townsend and others, say in their cables, “Saleh keeps trying to convince us that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy. We reject that. We don’t think that there’s any facts for it. And we continue to instruct him that he’s not allowed to use our support to fight the Houthis.”
What do you make of that analysis that existed under the Bush administration? Because it shifted under Obama.
ND: Saleh used U.S. counterterrorism money not only to strengthen his family’s grip over power, he also nurtured and used terrorists to keep the threat of al Qaeda alive so that counterterrorism money kept flowing to his regime. He used the counterterrorism support to fight the Houthis, he used the counterterrorism support to crush the southern secessionists in the south, and he has the counterterrorism trained forces to crush the peaceful protesters in 2011. And then again, he used the counterterrorism forces that received training and support from the U.S. and the arms to end the transition process and stage a coup with the Houthis.
JS: That moment in history, I think, is a very important one because what little discussion there is about Yemen right now in larger media outlets around the world, the history of it often begins with the Houthis descending on Sana’a and effectively taking control of the capital.
When you say that Saleh helped these the Houthis to do that, or maybe it’s even a stronger term, facilitated the Houthis in doing this, how did that happen and why would that be to Saleh’s benefit?
ND: When Saleh was pushed out of power in 2011, and particularly after the attempt to assassinate him, Saleh became obsessed by revenge. He wanted to take revenge on his former allies who helped push him out of power in 2011. And so he became blinded. He joined hand with the Houthis to basically, simply, take revenge and so what he did in 2014 and before 2014, I mean there were, there was enough evidence and I heard that from the tribal leaders back in 2011 and ’12, that when Houthis were pushing down towards Sana’a, they were supported by Saleh and this was 2011 and 2012.
When Hadi came to power, most of the forces were technically under Hadi’s command but they were still loyal Saleh. A lot of these forces fought with Saleh with Houthis in plain clothes. They trained Houthis. Most of the arms that belonged to the Yemeni military were still under the control of Saleh, officers loyal to Saleh. So, these were used to stage the coup and overthrow the Hadi government and then launch attacks to take over Bayda, Taiz and the south in 2015.
Newscaster: Yemeni president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi is stepping aside. The U.S. ally resigned on Thursday throwing already unstable Yemen deeper into chaos. His departure comes just days after Shiite Muslim Houthi rebels battled their way into the presidential palace, demanding more power in the country.
JS: Do you believe that in the early 2000s, before the Houthis marched on Sana’a, that it would be fair to describe them as an Iranian proxy? Was the Iranian government supplying them with military aid? Because, I have to say that when I was on the ground in Yemen over the course of some years during this period, it seemed like that was being exaggerated. Yes, the Iranians probably wanted to be able to utilize the Houthis, but it seemed like it was more aspirational at that point before they took the capital than it was real, but maybe you disagree with that. What’s your assessment?
ND: So, I absolutely agree with you. I mean Houthis are not an Iran proxy. There is a relationship between Houthis in Iran. A lot of Houthis have been trained, hundreds have been trained by Iran and Lebanon by Hezbollah, but Houthis are not Iran proxy. They’re not dictated by Iran. Certainly, they have received a lot of support from Iran, but Houthi’s endgame is power. They want to take over power in Yemen, and the Houthi leadership in particular believe in the right of the Prophet descendants to rule Yemen, just like it was the case during the Imamate. Most Yemenis who are opposed to the Houthis describe Houthis as revivalist, people who want to revive the Imamate. So even in that context, Houthis are driven by local power dynamics that probably go back at least to the 1960s.
JS: You know, you referenced earlier that Ali Abdullah Saleh used U.S. counterterrorism assistance to keep his grip on power and to enrich and defend his family and his immediate circle. You also had, at times, Saleh feeding bad intelligence to the United States and other actors to actually kill his political opponents. And there’s at least one case that we know of the United States killing a deputy governor who was negotiating with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the U.S. claim is that they were fed bad intelligence and that, in effect, they were served as high-tech hit men for Ali Abdullah Saleh.
ND: People can read my report that came out on February 1, 2018, on tribes and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. I did mention the incident of the deputy governor, Jaber al Shabwani of Marib when he was killed in 2010, and what is really appalling is that U.S. officials knew. They knew Saleh was feeding them wrong intelligence. They knew Saleh was using al Qaeda to keep the money flowing from the West. They knew he was not serious about fighting terrorism. And yet, the unconditional to Saleh continued from the U.S. government and most Western governments.
JS: In your new report, which I hope that people read because I think it’s essential to understand the kind of complexities of the various political factions in Yemen, but also the ways in which Western countries, primarily the United States have contributed to what we’re witnessing right now in Yemen, not just in the form of aid and military support and intelligence support for this scorched-earth bombing that the Saudis are doing, but also how the United States played a role in further destabilizing Yemen.
The air war that Barack Obama initiated, both with drones and Tomahawk cruise missile, sometimes cluster munitions, yeah, they killed a bunch of figures from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but they also killed innocent people, including families and children and others. What role did Barack Obama’s policy on Yemen, which began really just months after he took office in 2009, what role did that play in creating the circumstances we see now?
ND: Yeah, so Barack Obama utilized much more military action in Yemen than Bush did, simply by using drones and air strikes. And while these drones and airstrikes killed some top al Qaeda leaders, they also killed a lot of Yemeni civilians, but more importantly, from a U.S. interest perspective, they did not undermine al Qaeda.
al Qaeda continued to be stronger, it expanded, and so that approach was not effective.
JS: In conversations I had a couple of years ago with people who were members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, it seemed like their main focus and obsession post-2011 started to shift from attacking the West or trying to bring down airplanes to the United States. It seems like the all-out war that they believed in was fighting against the Houthis.
I mean, I was constantly bombarded on telegram channels and other things with this AQAP propaganda about how we need to fight the Houthis. Was that your sense?
ND: Well, al Qaeda shifted in many ways. First of all, they started adopting more like local agendas that are appealing to the population. So, fighting corruption, improving governance, solving conflicts. In areas where they gained influence, they basically filled a vacuum that the government did not fill.
With the Houthis, I mean Houthis are an ideological of al Qaeda. And, you’re right: al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen, as it seems, they don’t really care much about the global jihad as they care about local issues and fighting the Houthis and fighting the Iran influence in the region.
JS: Well, which is kind of fascinating, right? Because on the one hand, the Saudis, and to an extent, the United States, have really tried to portray the Houthis as like Iran’s ground troops in Yemen. On the other hand, they say, “Oh, we have this horrible, external threat to the security of the United States emanating from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” And yet, both the United States and the Saudis and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are fighting against the Houthis.
So, the United States is simultaneously supporting the bombing of the Houthis and attacks on the Houthis, and also continuing to carry out its own unilateral attacks supposedly aimed at targeting one of the Houthis’ sworn enemies, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
ND: This speaks to why Yemen is extremely complex. Even though Houthis are the sworn enemies of al Qaeda, Houthis also, at the same time are the best thing that happened to al Qaeda.
Houthis launching war on Taiz, on the south, on Bayda, has created conditions that helped al Qaeda expand tremendously over the last three years. So, I think Houthis also hold as much responsibility. I know you’re looking at this issue from you know more kind of international regional perspective and I agree with you; but at the same time I see some analyses that Houthis are the sworn enemies of al Qaeda, which might give the impression that the Houthis can fight al Qaeda, are the answer to fighting al Qaeda. And I want to say here that they are not. They’re exactly the opposite of that.
JS: You know, prior to the Houthis taking Sana’a, I had come to the conclusion that the United States’ drone policy on AQAP actually was benefiting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula more than it was either U.S. security or Yemeni security. And I think now you have this convergence of forces, including the Houthis, that are providing al Qaeda with a life raft for itself and actually allowing it to be perceived in some areas where it’s the only form of semi-governance as a stabilizing force rather than as a terrorist organization.
ND: What we see today is also the result of the failure of the United States and the Gulf countries to address the 2000 uprising.
JS: What does the humanitarian situation look like on the ground in Yemen?
ND: As a Yemeni, it’s very heartbreaking to me to read about how the humanitarian situation is in Yemen. I’m not in Yemen, but I have family members in Yemen. I read Yemen news every day, all day, sometimes and it’s just horrific.
I have a friend in Sana’a. She said their neighbor died of a heart problem because they took him to different hospitals in Sana’a, and none of the hospitals in Sana’a had a place for him. They didn’t have a bed to put him in that bed and give him the medical attention he needed. And he died because of it. This is the capital city.
If you go to the rural areas or the areas where there is active violence, like in Taiz, the situation is even much worse.
Dr. Nevio Zagaria: We have more than 14.8 million people lacking access to basic health care in Yemen. And at least two 274 facilities have been completely destroyed during the current conflict.
ND: It’s the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
JS: It’s a horrifying reality to witness but it is entirely a manmade situation. And I, you know as I know you do very much, I struggle to even see how this ends or how Yemenis are even given the chance again to live. It seems like there is no real end in sight. I mean, is that too pessimistic?
ND: You know, I’m a Yemeni; I’d like to be optimistic. All my family are back home in Yemen, I would like to go back to Yemen and visit or live whenever I want, and I think also that we haven’t seen the worst yet. So I think the conflict will get even more intense in the next few years. I think it’ll be a long time before we see de-escalation. I think Yemen will just keep getting worse.
It’s really sad to come to this realization. As a Yemeni, I feel extremely helpless. I have tried to educate people about Yemen’s conflict. Many of Yemeni colleagues and some Western analysts tried to do that too, but it seems that Yemen is just simply not the priority and there are things that can be done to mitigate the conflict in Yemen, to improve services not at a national level but maybe at, you know, some local level. Because even though Yemen has, the central state’s government has collapsed, there is some level of order in some areas and so there is an opportunity to kind of build peace and governance, you know, in Yemen in certain areas and kind of improve conditions.
But the international community is extremely fixated on the UN peace process, and the UN peace process is basically another negotiation of power among the political elite. And that’s not going to solve Yemen’s problem.
— source theintercept.com