By Vanessa Beeley
Source: Dissident Voice
“ Yemeni people are not bad people, they are good people. They want to be respected, they want their sovereignty to be respected. We did not wage a war, a war was brought upon us. Our issue was an internal one and it would have been sorted out internally”

Hanan al-Harazi, her mother and her 8 year old daughter fled Yemen 10 days after the first bombs started to tear holes in her beloved country. Hanan’s daughter had begun to present the early signs of PTSD and for her sanity, the family decided to split itself down the middle, leaving Hanan’s husband behind in Yemen with his family and her two brothers. Hanan brings us a moving and powerful insight into the events leading up to the present devastation of Yemen at the hands of their Saudi oppressors and their imperialist allies.

Vanessa Beeley: When did you leave Yemen?

Hanan al-Harazi: I think we were in Yemen for almost 10 days after the bombing started and then there was a rocket attack on our immediate neighbourhood, very close to where we lived. After this, my daughter developed urinary incontinence and a sudden fear of any loud sound. Recently, I was looking for her for over an hour and I eventually found her hiding in the closet because she had heard an aircraft flying overhead. It will take decades to erase this trauma from her memory. I can’t even imagine what the other children still in Yemen have been going through after almost 103 days of continuous air raids. It is devastating.

V: How old is your daughter?

H: She is turning 9 in August. I used to work at a school so I know that children are not able to express themselves in words as well as adults. I just gave her a piece of paper and I told her to write down her feelings. It was heart-breaking for me to read the pain and suffering in those baby words. A few days later, it’s the same thing, all she can draw or paint are jets bombing her country, really sad images. I know that the sun represents something really positive in a child’s life but when you have a child depicting a crying sun with a sad face, it should really pass a powerful message to the world.

We were lucky enough to have foreign passports that meant we could leave Yemen. Nobody is issuing visas to Yemeni nationals so this means 23 million people trapped inside a country that is being mercilessly and indiscriminately bombed with complete disregard for civilian life.

V: There are reports that state over 80% of the population are now enduring a humanitarian crisis. Is this figure realistic?

H: Absolutely! There is a catastrophic humanitarian crisis unfolding in Yemen. My fear is that if the blockade is not lifted we are going to witness something horrific by all standards. You are talking about a population of which almost 60% are living below the poverty line. They don’t know how to secure the next meal and this was when their world was “ok” and not in a state of war. I would say the few people who had jobs have lost them and food prices have rocketed. The capital may have slightly better facilities than some outlying areas but even there, the water is now contaminated and the cost of bottled water has trebled in price. I have no idea how people are coping.

Food is still available in the markets but supplies are sparse. Once these supplies do run out, Yemen will starve. We produce very little food in Yemen itself, the majority of foodstuff is imported so the movement of goods is essential to our survival. The blockade will ensure that we cannot survive. There has been a tiny trickle of aid via certain aid groups and NGOs but this has only reached hardest hit areas like Aden, leaving entire swaths of the country without food, water or medical facilities. The cumulative effects will be horrendous and the Humanitarian crisis will be crippling.

V: I am assuming that KSA [as Israel did in Gaza] is targeting Yemen’s infrastructure in order to destroy the civilian ability to survive this onslaught.

H. Yes absolutely. If you look back to yesterday, the events in Amran and Lahj, they have targeted food markets and livestock markets. More evidence of the coalition determination to starve the people of Yemen. The livestock constitutes part of our minimal domestic produce, so this is a deliberate destruction of the civilian ability to survive. The footage that is coming out shows that they are targeting civilian areas, schools have been hit, stadiums, sports facilities, you name it. They have hit everything. They are saying they are only targeting military centres. Perhaps in the beginning this was true. Over the last few weeks we have seen far more random & intense bombing of civilian sites.

The Ansarullah movement is pretty much part of the Yemeni fabric, the Yemeni society. They don’t carry any markings or insignia to distinguish them from the local population so it is beyond ridiculous to say that they are hitting only Ansarullah targets in a city like Sanaa, that has a population of 3 million people .The civilian death toll is way higher than if they were only targeting Ansarullah operatives.

V: In your view is there any alternative to resisting this attack on Yemen? Is there an option for surrender and negotiation?

H: Look, I will speak for myself and for a lot of people in Yemen. The question of Yemen’s sovereignty has always been uppermost in Yemeni minds and this led to the 2011 revolution to get rid of our long- time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh because we knew he was largely a Saudi puppet. He was pushing the Saudi agenda in Yemen and giving it priority over the interests of the country. During this time many people lost their livelihoods and their lives and most of the major cities caught up in the revolt, came to a standstill for a while.

We have not come this far only to have another Saudi puppet government in place in Yemen. If this continues we no longer have an identity. Yemeni people are not bad people, they are good people. They want to be respected, they want their sovereignty to be respected. We did not wage a war, a war was brought upon us. Our issue was an internal one and it would have been sorted out internally.

Jamal Benomar, the former UN peace envoy to Yemen stated very openly that the warring factions were actually reaching an agreement before the first bomb hit. “When this campaign started, one thing that was significant but went unnoticed is that the Yemenis were close to a deal that would institute power-sharing with all sides, including the Houthis,” said Mr. Benomar, a Moroccan diplomat. Thus it becomes obvious that our aspirations are being sacrificed at the altar of Imperialist greed and ambition.

V: We are seeing this across the region, these internal attempts at reconciliation and agreement that are being derailed by the Imperialist agenda and their sectarian propaganda. From what you are saying, this is also happening in Yemen?

H: I can categorically state, there is no sectarian conflict in Yemen. They have been trying to ignite a sectarian war in Yemen but Yemen is one country where we have had Shafi Sunnis and Zaydi Shias praying in the same mosques for hundreds of years. We are a society that is known to intermarry between these two sects. In reality they instigated this territorial war when they wanted to split Yemen into a 6 federal state system. We are tired of having their agenda imposed upon us and being forced to implement it.

I have lived in Yemen for the last 21 years and I never knew that my next door neighbour was a Shafi Sunni or a Zaydi Shia. It was not part of our culture, we never asked. We peacefully coexisted. This balkanisation agenda was the start of the entire problem. Their division was all wrong. They left some areas totally isolated.

The Ansarullah movement and the Southern Separatist movement were both in favour of a confederal state system where Yemen would be divided into north and south existing within a federal state. Most of us were ok with that.

President Hadi [although I hate to call him our President] was pushing the Saudi agenda of the 6 state system. Another thing that a lot of people don’t realise, is that when they divided the 6 state system they purposefully isolated one state called Azal. Azal incorporated many of the Zaydi strongholds, Sadaa, Amran, Sanaa and Dhamar. Azal was left without any resources or any access to the sea. It was blatant imprisonment and suppression of what we would term the “traditional powers” in that area. It was a deliberate attempt to weaken their influence in Yemen.

So Hadi’s plan would have divided Yemen into smaller sectarian states while the Ansarullah plan was more like going back to the boundaries before unity where the south would have greater autonomy over its own internal affairs.

V: How great is the “extremist” threat in Yemen?

H: Let me give you an example. The al-Jauf area has both Sunni and Shia populations and so does Marib and elsewhere. The Zaydi Shias and Shafi Sunnis are both very moderate sects. Yemeni people have no affiliation to the Wahabi sect of Saudi Arabia. Wahabism is alien to Yemen.

We do see certain areas in the South, like Hadramaut which has been in the media lately, parts of which are totally under control of Al Qaeda. The funny thing is, the bombs are falling on the very people that are fighting these extremists. Not a single bomb has been dropped on the extremist strongholds. Even though they know that AQ is in total control of al-Mukalla in Hadramaut and the seaport in that area. That has to be a huge question mark over their true agenda in the region.

The bombing has only achieved one thing and that is to further strengthen these extremist groups in Yemen. I know that in Ansarullah controlled-areas we have the local popular committees that are in charge of security and they have been working round the clock to ensure that the extremist elements are kept at bay. On the battleground their progress has been immensely impeded thanks to the airstrikes that serve as cover for the advancing extremists.

I am not sure if there are any foreign fighters at the moment. I know there are some Saudis, but I am not aware of foreigners from Afghanistan, Chechnya for example. If things escalate I believe we will see many more of these extremists entering Yemen via our borders, yes. Right now the northern borders are secure, apart from Marib where there is heavy fighting going on.

V: How much support are you receiving from Iran?

H: I do not believe that Iran is playing any active role. They support Yemen from a media perspective only. I believe Iran’s “support” is a propaganda ploy to justify hitting Yemen. This war was planned a long time ago, even before Ansarullah moved towards the capital. It becomes very suspicious when you have a president in power and a minority group leaves its stronghold in the northernmost tip of Yemen and moves down towards the capital, Sanaa, in the centre of the country. One city after another in the north falls to them and the president says nothing. Then just as they reach agreement which was the Peace and Partnership Initiative, Hadi suddenly decides that he does not want Ansarullah to have even marginal representation in Government. That was obviously never going to be acceptable, Ansarullah is a force on the ground that must be considered part of the coalition. That is where the conflict originated and that is why they placed Hadi under house arrest because he was following Saudi instructions. Saudi was against the Ansarullah inclusion in Yemen’s government. Then Hadi fled to the south.

My personal take was that the plan was always for Hadi to flee to the south and ask the Saudis for help which justified their bombing of the north of Yemen which has traditionally been the Zaydi stronghold and a thorn in their side. Ansarullah and the army discovered this plan and moved very quickly down to the south and hence you see this widespread bombing in all areas, not just in the north.

As a final point in the analysis of Iran’s role in Yemen. Yemen is a sovereign state and we are free to have bilateral ties with whomsoever we choose. Saudi had a problem with Yemen opening up about 12 flights per week to Iran mainly for bilateral reasons because the rest of the world shut down against Yemen. We have been under Saudi influence for, at least, the last 30 years. Many will say it’s much longer due to Saudi having been implicated in the assassination of President Ibrahim Al Hamdi who was probably the best President that Yemen has ever had.

Yemen’s greatest problems are economic in nature. Saudi never did anything to resolve our economic issues other than putting our leaders on their payroll in order to effectively destroy the country. It’s nearly impossible for a Yemeni to get a visa to travel, even to the UAE. How can a country flourish when there are so many restrictions upon its people? When Ansarullah came to power our options were reviewed and bilateral ties with Iran were naturally investigated.

V: There is a very strong sense of Yemen’s isolation. Even last night 180 Yemeni civilians were massacred in Amran and Lahj yet the media barely mentions it. Is this how you perceive it?

H: Yes. This goes back to decades and decades of isolation. Let me ask this question to the world. The government collapsed in Yemen in September 2014. Can you imagine a country that has gone months and months without a government in place, without a police force, without an army, with a population that does carry arms and with crushing poverty, yet the crime rate is less than “first world” countries like America. Why are these people isolated when they have this inestimable respect for human life? They are an example to the world.

News trickles out via internet, Yemen Today channel and Ansarullah’s channel, al-Masirah. It pains me that people seem to be largely ignoring our suffering, particularly when it is relatively easy to inform themselves these days. For instance, Yemen has had no coverage regarding the internationally banned weaponry that is being used against us. I know that where I work, the area has been decimated. It is an area called Faj Attan a densely populated civilian area where there are shopping areas, thousands of residential homes, schools. How can you use such weapons of mass destruction in an area like this and be exempt from investigation?

V: Are you receiving any help through Oman?

H: Oman appears to have taken a neutral stance, for which I am grateful. The interesting thing is, about a month before the bombing started, I read a report from inside Oman stating that they were preparing for a refugee crisis. They were talking about the possibility of setting up refugee camps on the Yemen/Oman borders. So when the first bombs hit at 1.30 am when we were all asleep, I knew immediately that this had all been pre-planned. Maybe because Oman are part of the Gulf Cooperative [GCC] they had information that something was being prepared against Yemen. I do know that a lot of people have been flown into Oman for treatment, particularly during the suicide bomb attacks on the mosques in Yemen.

V: How is the internet in Yemen? How much electricity or alternative power source is available?

H: People are struggling, there is no power. Can you imagine a country in the 21st century without any power at all? Many people don’t realise that much of the water used in Yemen is pumped from underground reservoirs and so we need diesel or electricity to enable this pumping process, neither of which are available.

From what I hear, electricity is available maybe 40 minutes per week in the capital, Sanaa. There are other areas in the country that have no power at all. We did have this black out problem even before the war but never to this extent. Yes some have generators but black market fuel prices are crippling.

V: You mention WMD. I know there were reports on the use of nuclear bombs. The information coming out of Yemen is sketchy. Do you have any further information or evidence of this claim?

H: I know that 2 of the bombs that were used did produce a nuclear “type” mushroom cloud. Obviously the effects of any radiation will only be seen after time.

But even if they did not use nuclear missiles..the weapons they are using are still illegal and devastating. Their use of cluster bombs is well documented, some have failed to detonate and have been photographed on the ground. They have used neutron bombs which generate so much pressure. When my neighbourhood came under attack in first 10 days, the pressure I felt from a relatively distant explosion was terrifying. I had pain in my ears from the pressure draft for weeks afterwards.

The Yemenis were leading normal lives before being suddenly flung into a war zone, its bewildering for everyone. My husband is part of a food distribution network for the poor during Ramadan. He had just gone to deliver some goods to someone in the neighbourhood. Two minutes after he left there were direct rocket hits on this area and this poor man who didn’t even know where his next meal was coming from, was killed. How many more people must die senselessly to serve an Imperialist agenda?

V: Do you have a personal concept of what that Imperialist agenda is?

H: I do not think it is related to Iran despite the propaganda to the contrary. I think we are paying dearly for trying to free ourselves from Saudi slavery. We are paying for our freedom with our lives.

I have been told there are oil and more importantly, gas reserves in al-Jawf which is bordering Saudi Arabia and has been protected by them for years. In 2011 when the people took to the streets demanding a better life, President Saleh was forced to admit its existence publicly for the first time. So we are cursed, we are cursed because we have oil & gas. Every country that has natural resources is cursed and a target of Imperialist intervention.

Saudi Arabia has fostered corruption in Yemen for decades. Ansarullah were committed to ending this poisonous influence on our leaders and this would have countermanded Saudi power in Yemen. When the first bombs hit, the “sold” tribal sheikhs and politicians were seen fleeing to Saudi Arabia.

V: Would you be able to just elaborate on the situation in Aden and also address why Yemen is so important to Saudi Arabia.

H: Aden is being portrayed by the pro aggression media as being a battle for the legitimacy of Hadi. In 2011 Hadi was the only viable choice to fill the power vacuum. 6 million northerners voted for him while the south actually boycotted elections. This alone should counter the claims that he has legitimacy in the South of Yemen.

In Aden what is happening now is that Hadi has gone back to the South but it has to be made clear that the people of Aden and the surrounding area are not pro Hadi, they are also fighting for their independence and are not pro Saudi aggression.

If you look at a map of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is landlocked. Its only access or lifeline to the outside world is via the Bab-el-Mandeb straits in the south of Yemen and the Straits of Hormuz which are controlled by Iran. Yemen has never attempted to block or to impede movement through the Yemeni controlled Mandeb straits. To be honest I don’t even think that Yemen truly controls this area, it is covertly under the control of the Imperialist nations. Saudi Arabia has a lot of internal turmoil and is brutally crushing its own internal opposition. We would never interfere in Saudi internal affairs but I believe that they fear a strong Yemen. With our new constitution clearly stating that leaders can only have two terms in power, we would be the only republic in the GCC block. In Saudi Arabia, which is a despotic regime, our evolution could threaten the stability of their ruling families.

V: What is the message that you would like to convey to the outside world.

H: My hope right now, apart from a miracle from God, is that there are more good people than bad people in this world and I wish we could reach out to them and tell them, today it is me, tomorrow it is you.

We just want to survive, we want to live. Yemen is not the country it is being portrayed to be. We are not terrorists. We are proud of our culture. We are a peace loving people. Yemen is one of the most beautiful and diverse countries in the world. We are being portrayed as savages by a media that is supporting the savaging of our land.

I also have to say I respect Ansarullah for their wisdom and self -restraint especially when our mosques came under attack. Mosques that may have been built by Zaydi but are inclusive of all sects for worship. Ansarullah released a statement instructing people not to be drawn into the foreign conspiracy to ignite sectarian divisions. I feel they genuinely represent millions of Yemeni who are fighting for self-determination and recognition as a sovereign nation.

Surrender is not an option while our own internal peace process is being derailed by external aggression. Saudi Arabia has failed to send in ground troops and they are attempting to bomb us into submission. They see that this will not succeed so they have now imposed this brutal, horrific, cruel, vicious blockade on Yemen in the hope that the Yemeni people will turn against those who are fighting the Saudi invaders. I am proud of the solidarity that my people have shown to one another. Even in a situation like this where they have so few resources they will still take care of their neighbours. We are human beings and we have a right to a decent life.

Yemen is far from perfect but no country in this world is perfect. We did not wage this war, we did not provoke this war. For the first 40 days of the Saudi offensive, Yemen did not fire one bullet towards Saudi Arabia. It is rank hypocrisy from Saudi Arabia to label us the aggressor. It has always been the opposite, Saudi Arabia has always been sending its filthy elements into my country and attempting to spread its disgusting Wahabi ideology. Whether Zaydi or Shafi we will never adopt this distorted, twisted, ugly version of Islam.

I would go so far as to state that Yemen has potential to be a model for true democracy in the Middle East. There are 25 million people who call Yemen, home. We simply ask to be left in Peace. Is that too much to ask?

By Sayed Hasan
Translated from French by Jenny Bright
Source: Information Clearing House

The Saudi-American war against Yemen, led by a coalition of the richest Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc. along with their servants like Egypt and Morocco) against the poorest Arab country, enters its fourth month. According to the United Nations, it has killed ​​more than 3,100 and wounded 15,000, displaced 1 million and created 245,000 refugees, and created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis which the United Nations has declared to be on the level of maximum humanitarian alert. Ruthless and indiscriminate strikes target all civilian infrastructure, up to residential areas, markets, granaries, water tanks, hospitals, schools, mosques, and even archaeological remains and tombs – which recalls that the destructive ideology of the Islamic State takes its roots in Saudi Arabia – without sparing civilian convoys fleeing violence. A merciless siege has been imposed in Yemen, a country which imports 90% of its food, and Relief Organizations are prevented from delivering supplies to the country, and even see their workers targeted while providing humanitarian assistance. More than 21 million people (80% of Yemen’s population) are without adequate access to staples and essential services such as food, clean water, medical care, electricity and fuel. Already, it appears that Saudi Arabia has used unconventional weapons (cluster munitions, and perhaps even chemical weapons) and has committed war crimes and perhaps even crimes against humanity.

However, this war remains largely ignored by the mainstream media, both in the West and in the Arab-Muslim world (with the exception of Iran and the media close to Hezbollah in Lebanon). The US sponsors this illegal and criminal military intervention that they provide full support for, putting all their resources at the service of the Gulf monarchies who have acquired the most modern weapons to the tune of $115 billion for the single year 2014: they can therefore destabilise the region without sending their armed forces, conforming to the Obama no-boots-on-the-ground doctrine that favours proxy wars. It is the same for the other NATO member countries – United Kingdom, France, etc., which is not surprising coming from the supporters and apologists of terrorism in Syria. Regarding Riyadh, Wikileaks has recently unveiled the procedure of Saudi censorship of the entire Arab world, between corruption and intimidation. All these actors provide direct support to Al Qaeda and to the Islamic state, which has appeared on the Yemeni scene and is now on the border of Saudi Arabia, their long-time goal. The Saudi blindness seems to know no bounds.

The Saudi assault was not to repel an alleged advance of Iran and/or Shiism, but to break the attempts towards independence of this country that historically has been a vassal of Riyadh. So far, this war has not realised any of its stated objectives. On the contrary, the Yemeni resistance has taken hold of most major Yemen cities, and it takes more and more initiative by carrying the war into the territory of Saudi Arabia, bombing its border towns and attacking its military bases and convoys, and causing dozens of casualties among the Saudi forces – of which the extent of the losses is inviolable military secret. Moreover, the attacks resulted in uniting the country – the regular armed forces of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Houthi rebels and other popular committees – behind the slogan “Death to the House of Saud”, an unprecedented development in the Middle East, and revealed both the barbarism of the Wahhabi regime and its vulnerability and powerlessness on the purely military field. Held in check despite the benefit of the steady stream of Western weaponry, Riyadh already sees its influence wane in the Middle East.

In a message to the combatants dated 1^st July 2015 – that evokes those of Hassan Nasrallah to Hezbollah fighters during the 2006 war –, Abd-al-Malik al-Houthi, head of the Yemeni resistance, denounced the collusion of the Washington-Tel Aviv-Riyad Axis, denouncing the war and the siege imposed in Yemen as even more barbaric than the Israeli crimes in Gaza. He agrees with the analysis of the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, who recalled that even the Zionists did not have a systematic policy of targeting hospitals, tombs and archaeological remains. Abd-al-Malik al-Houthi brandished nothing less than the slogan of the holy war against the cradle of Islam, equated to the “devil’s horn”, which is, according to a famous prophetic tradition, an evil heresy called to arise in the Najd region – where Wahhabism emerged. Again, this is an unprecedented development: Saudi Arabia, which, since March 2015, broke with its policy of underground action and now acts without cover, has never been so violently shaken.

Riyadh is now in an impasse: its air campaign is a bitter failure, as was predictable given the six previous offensives since 2004 by the forces of President Saleh (yesterday supported by Saudi Arabia and now allied with the Houthi rebels), which all ended up in a failure, as well as the Israeli experiences in Lebanon and Gaza, which constitutes the perfect model of the Saudi aggression. As for the option of a ground operation, all data indicates that it would be absolutely disastrous and would end with a rout of Saudi forces. But there is no question for the House of Saud, blinded beyond any possible return, of accepting a cease-fire that would be a victory for Yemen; rather it must continue this fanatic war of terror at all costs, by torpedoing all attempts of agreement or truce, at the risk of rushing towards the abyss. As for the forces of the Yemeni resistance, they are far from having exhausted all their possibilities, and multiply the incursions into enemy territory. They could even question its territorial integrity by claiming Yemeni provinces formerly annexed by Saudi Arabia. And as a last resort, they could close the strategic Strait of Bab al-Mandeb – which they are quite capable of –, one of the largest global maritime passages, especially for hydrocarbons, which would have severe global repercussions. If, like Syria, Iraq and Libya, Yemen is threatened with disintegration, Saudi Arabia itself is now on the way to becoming destabilised, and even dismantling.

Will the Saudi crusade push into the Axis of Resistance a new country, Yemen – about which Hassan Nasrallah declared that the awakening and resistant spirit of its people were such that he could without hesitation send 100,000 or 200,000 men to fight Israel? Whatever the case may be, already the Ansarallah movement has reached the extent of a new Hezbollah, and the Saudi war is doomed to failure. It announces with certainty the inevitable fall of the House of Saud, whose Wahhabi ideology and foreign policy have been the cancer of Islam and of the Arab world for decades, and ultimately, the end of the US-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. More than one of the region’s peoples will rejoice.

Source: FarsNews

300 Saudi soldiers and an artillery commander have joined the Yemeni forces, a senior Yemeni politician announced on Friday.

“The latest blow at the Al Saud came as Hashem al-Ahmar, artillery commander of the Saudi army in al-Wadia border crossing and 300 soldiers joined the Yemeni army and the revolutionary forces,” the Middle East Panorama website quoted Head of Yemen’s Free Army Nasser bin Yahya al-Orujli as saying on Friday.

He noted that the Saudi regime is still in a difficult situation and the Saudi officials know it quite well.

Last Wednesday, tribal forces and activists in Saudi Arabia’s Najran region formed a military and political opposition movement to the Saudi regime, called “Ahrar al-Najran” after the region declared earlier this month that it has separated from Saudi Arabia and joined Yemen in the war on Riyadh.

Activist and movement member, Abu Bakr Abi Ahmad al-Salami, told FNA that “all tribes of the region are members of the Ahrar al-Najran Movement”.

He said the youths and political activists in Najran have demanded the “Yemeni popular forces and revolutionary committees, brothers, and the neighboring lands to provide military training for the younger generation of this region”.

Al-Salami underlined the movement tough stance against the al-Saud regime, saying, “Saudi Arabia wrongfully imagines that it is the only defender of Islam, but they should know that we are the defenders of Islam and the two holy mosques, and we will rush to defend the two mosques (in Mecca and Medina) if necessary.”

Al-Salami said the movement is worried about developments in Yemen, and declared that “the movement’s first battle will take place in those areas controlled by the Saudi occupation army in Southern Najran soon”.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen for 93 days now to restore power to fugitive president Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

Hadi stepped down in January and refused to reconsider the decision despite calls by Ansarullah revolutionaries of the Houthi movement.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi warplanes are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

The Monarchy’s attacks have so far claimed the lives of at least 4,727 civilians, mostly women and children.

Source: Press TV

An overwhelming majority of respondents to a Press TV poll from across the globe says Saudi Arabia’s military aggression against Yemen is totally similar to the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.

Of 29,192 people participating in the online poll, which was conducted from May 11 to June 20, 2015, 22,041 believed that the ongoing Saudi military campaign in Yemen is very similar to the Israeli wars against Gaza.

The opinion poll showed 3,198 people maintained that the wars in Yemen and Gaza are relatively similar to each other while 3,953 respondents said they are barely similar.

The respondents included, among others, 7,264 people from the United States, 2,520 from the United Kingdom, 2,044 from Canada, 639 from Australia and 423 from the Netherlands.

The Saudi regime has been bombarding areas across Yemen since March 26 without the mandate of the United Nations in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore to power fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Al Saud regime.

Spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said on June 16 that at least 1,410 Yemeni civilians, including 210 women, have been killed and 3,423 have sustained injuries since Saudi Arabia started its military campaign in Yemen.

Israel has blockaded the Gaza Strip for over seven years, causing a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave. The Israeli regime has since launched three wars on Gaza.

Tel Aviv started its latest war on the Gaza Strip in early July 2014. The offensive ended on August 26, 2014, with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed in Israel’s 50-day onslaught. Over 11,100 others – including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people – were also injured.

SF/KA/SS

By Caleb Maupin
Source: New Eastern Outlook
The viscousness of the Saudi regime’s assault against the people of Yemen is largely being ignored by western media. The Saudi regime has unleashed white phosphorous, a deadly chemical weapon, into civilian areas. The Saudi regime has bombed hospitals, schools, power plants, and other civilian infrastructure. The death toll has already surpassed 4,000 people, and is constantly rising, with the number of critically wounded nearing 10,000.

Saudi Arabia’s viscous, criminal attack on the people of Yemen is illegal under all standards of international law. Yemen has not attacked or in any way threatened Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has no justifiable reason for unleashing such horrific terrorism on the people of Yemen.

The Saudi attack on Yemen has taken place in response to a democratic uprising against a phony President. Mansour Hadi ran un-opposed in the last election as the official Saudi supported candidate.

The coalition of anti-Saudi forces in Yemen, including Ansarullah, Sunnis, secularists, Marxists, and Baathists, is taking control. If they do, Yemen’s vast untapped oil resources will be theirs. Yemen could become, as US commentators openly fear, “another Iran” with publicly controlled oil resources, developing independently, free from the control of western bankers.

However, in addition to control of Yemen’s oil resources, Saudi Arabia is also driven to launch its vicious attack on Yemen because it faces internal crises of its own.

Instability Within Saudi Borders

The recent drop in oil prices has not really hurt King Salman or anyone else in his small class of wealthy aristocrats. They continue to live in absolute splendor. However, beyond the circles of power in Saudi Arabia, many people are feeling a sharp economic pinch. 35% of Saudi workers are now unemployed.

The Saudi regime professes the religion of Wahhabism, a form of Sunni Islam. Wahhabism is the official state religion of the Saudi regime. However, the sectors of the Saudi Kingdom that contain the country’s large oil deposits are largely populated by people who practice another religion, Shia Islam.

The Shia community in Saudi Arabia and the various regimes aligned with it face extreme discrimination. Shias attend segregated schools, and even in their own schools they are forbidden from having Shia principals. Saudi schools teach children that Shias are apostates, and that Shia Islam is a “Jewish conspiracy” against the Saudi King.
Leaders of the Shia community are frequently executed for trivial offenses like “insulting the King.” The policies of the Saudi regime have been called “religious apartheid” in testimony before the US congress.

Shias are confined by law in Saudi Arabia to only work in jobs involving manual labor. Many Shias reside in the areas with large oil deposits, and they work extracting Saudi oil from the ground. They have no union representation on the job, and they face extreme repression if they ever try to challenge the horrendous working conditions.

Saudi Arabia also has a large population of guest workers from places like Africa and Asia. These workers also face super exploitation, and conditions described as “modern day slavery” as they labor on behalf of the Saudi elite. Saudi Arabia shocked the world in recent years by executing some of these guest workers, foreign nationals, without so much as notifying their countries of origin.

The Saudi Army is mostly made up of guest workers who are either hired as mercenaries or forcibly conscripted into the military. As the thousands of Bangladeshis and Nepalis and other nationalities, wearing Saudi uniforms line up on the Yemeni border, preparing for a possible invasion, reports are surfacing of massive defections. It appears that many of the super-exploited impoverished non-Saudi guest workers have no desire to fight on behalf of their Saudi masters.

The recent economic crunch has sparked a rise of dissent among the Shia workers in the oil fields. These already low paid workers are also seeing their wages and hours decrease due to the oil price drop. They have rebelled in the past, and the situation between them and the Saudi government has become even more tense since the attacks on Yemen began.

A New Middle East?

The Saudi military, though it has the fourth largest budget in the entire world, may not have the capacity to wage an effective ground war in Yemen. The growing dissent within the ranks of its infantry and growing instability among the population of the oil rich Shia regions, could soon boil over into a full blown domestic crisis for the Saudi regime.

The Saudi regime’s primary target in Yemen is the Ansarullah organization. This is a group of Zaidi Shia revolutionaries who admire the Bolivarians in Latin America and are inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1979. They have armed themselves, and now they are at the center of a broad united front in Yemeni society.

Already, reports are surfacing that the Shia workers within Saudi Arabia are expressing sympathy with their Zaidi brothers in Ansarullah.

As the ruthless attacks on Yemen continue, the leaders of Saudi Arabia must be in a panic. On their minds is the question: “What is coming next?”

The Shia community, who have faced years of discrimination and humiliation, could soon explode with anger.

If the Saudi military orders a ground invasion of Yemen, it could see its military fall to pieces. The reports of mass defections and desertion among Saudi troops are already alarmingly high, before any ground invasion has taken place.

Yemeni society is locked, loaded, and united. Armed groups in almost every neighborhood are ready to wage a full blown fight against Saudi ground troops. 342,000 people have enlisted in the People’s militias. “People’s Committees” have been established across the country to coordinate the revolutionary forces.

The Saudi monarchy, the autocratic repressive agent of Wall Street oil corporations in the Middle East, is seeing its attack on Yemen go very differently than was planned. Yemen is not becoming further fragmented and divided. Rather than the Ansarullah organization and their allies being crushed, many are realizing that it could soon be Saudi Arabia that falls into complete chaos.

The fact that King Salman cancelled his trip to the White House may be indicative of a higher level of confusion and disagreement behind closed doors. The US government may soon begin trying to distance itself from their Saudi puppets, as they did after the fall of Hosni Mubbarack in Egypt.

I’m forced to think of insensitive words of former US Secretary of State Rice, as I ponder the huge potential of the present moment. The situation in Yemen could really mean the birth of “a new middle east.”

Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College.

Source: Press TV
Press TV has conducted an interview with activist Caleb Maupin to discuss the ongoing Saudi airstrikes on Yemen.

The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Over fifty days of bombardments by Saudi Arabia except for that five day humanitarian pause; how do you view and assess the way that Saudi Arabia is going after? What are they after?

Maupin: Well the only way you can describe what the Saudis are doing to the people of Yemen is as a crime against humanity. When you have people bombing schools, bombing medical centers, hospitals, civilian infrastructure, leading to the death of thousands of people, the majority of which are not combatants of any kind but only civilians, I mean this is simply unacceptable and the fact that the world is sitting back and allowing this to happen and that my own government, as someone from the United States, is complicit and supporting the Saudis and committing this horrendous crime against the people of Yemen, this is something that really disturbs me.

The people of Yemen are being killed basically. They are being attacked simply because they want to write a democratic constitution. The Ansarullah movement is at the center of a broad coalition of forces in the country that simply do not want their country to be under the control of the Saudis any longer. They want to control their own country. They want self-determination and this relentless, horrendous bombing campaign by the Saudis, these attacks on innocent people and civilians, this has to stop. The world needs to step in and stop the Saudis from committing these vicious crimes.

Press TV: Let us expand a little bit about the US role in this case. Obviously they are known through the media, the description placed on the US a “backseat role” but we know they are providing logistics, we know they provided these fighter jets to the tune of 70 billion dollars. Could they do more to actually go after a political solution and why aren’t they?

Maupin: Well the entire conflict is basically caused by the fact that the people of Yemen just want to compose a democratic constitution. You know the former president [Abd Rabbuh] Mansur Hadi, he was not a democratically elected leader. He ran in an election where there were no other options. The only person on the ballot was him and he was the Saudi-selected candidate, Saudi money backed up his campaign and the people of Yemen who want democracy, they want the right to control their own country, they rejected him and they have largely been coming together, a whole coalition is being built up, tribal forces, Sunnis, the Ansarullah organization, people from all across Yemeni society who want control over their country, control of their natural resources and independence.

And the fact that the United States is lined up with Saudi Arabia providing air surveillance support, refueling the air jets that are carrying out these horrific bombings, this is outrageous. The US likes to talk about human rights and democracy and whenever it is looking to attack a country, it starts using rhetoric about human rights and democracy but yet now the people of Yemen are trying to establish their independence and compose a democratic constitution and the US is supporting the Saudi monarchy in attacking them.

And the Saudi regime does not even pretend to practice human rights to be democratic in any way. There are no elections of any kind in Saudi Arabia, whether they be rigged elections or otherwise, there are none. The Saudi king is not elected. This is one of the only societies in the world that does not even pretend to have any basic notion of human rights so why is the United States lined up with them? And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the Wall Street oil corporations are very much making lots of money from the Saudi regime and that level of corruption, that level of dishonesty from the part of the leaders of United States is something that very much disturbs me.

Press TV: Do you think that in some ways maybe the Saudis are using Iran as a scapegoat saying that this is Iran, they are supporting these movements and Iran is trying to portray their power but it is really that they do not want democracy to creep into the kingdom?

Maupin: Well the rhetoric from US leaders regarding the situation in Yemen and the way the US media is portraying the conflict is really almost ridiculous. You know there was a time in the United States when Martin Luther King was leading a very broad movement for civil rights and the response of the Republican Party and a lot of the media in the US was to say, Martin Luther King, he is a paid Russian agent, people do not want civil rights, they are just being paid by the Russians.

And now in Yemen the people are rising up, this is a mass uprising, seizing the government buildings but the US press, the way they portray it is they say, this is just Iranian proxies, Iranian agents. Who in their right mind would believe the only reason the people of Yemen would want to control their own country, control their own resources is because they got orders from Tehran? This is outdated, Cold War style rhetoric is really ridiculous.

The people of Yemen are fighting for their independence, they are fighting for their lives and the Saudis are bombing and destroying them and waging a really horrific war of aggression, slaughtering civilians and the whole world knows what is going on and the hypocrisy of the United States is really being exposed in Yemen.

Press TV: And finally and quickly giving your view of Yemen and we know that you were involved in this ship that was headed there for humanitarian supplies to be delivered to these poor people. Do you think that a political solution is anywhere close on the horizon? We know about that UN meeting that is supposed to take place … something that obviously Saudi Arabia at this point has shown no interest in but a political solution in sight or not?

Maupin: Well as far as a political solution, if a political solution to the conflict were a political solution that involved only Yemenis and the Yemeni people alone had the right to determine the fate of their country, this war would be immediately over. The people of Yemen would begin the process of writing a democratic national constitution, they would begin resume the national dialogue that went on in Yemen following the Islamic Awakening or the Arab Spring in 2011. The war in Yemen is very much the result of foreign meddling by Saudi Arabia and if the Yemeni people are allowed to determine the fate of their country and begin the process of negotiations, this war would immediately end. However, it is the result of foreign power, foreign intervention that is keeping this fighting going. Look, I was on a ship, on the Iran Shahed. All we were trying to do was with the Red Crescent Society of the Islamic Republic of Iran bring water, medical supplies and flour, food to the people of Yemen who are desperately suffering under this blockade. And the reason we could not complete our mission was because of one thing and that was Saudi terrorism.

They bombed the port of Hudaydah not once, not twice but eight times in a single day. There was a conspiracy of Sudanese mercenaries who were hired to attack our ship if it ever reached the port of Hudaydah. So this level of viciousness is very extreme. The Saudis very much want to keep Yemen under their control and under the control of the Wall Street bankers and corporations. They do not want the Yemeni people to assert their rights, to control their own country and they are willing to use very vicious and criminal methods to assert that and the whole world should be standing against what the Saudis are doing right now.

AHK/HSN