By Lafees Shaheed
The question of what it means to protect the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia, a country engaged in the colonial domination of Yemen, is an extremely important one.
Furthermore, Achille Mbembe has examined the concept of sovereignty in theoretical terms, situating its emergence alongside the formation of nation-states.
Achille Mbembe argues that the colonial world order and nation-states emerged simultaneously. In this context, in 1492, Arabs and Jews in Spain were subjected to ethnic cleansing in the pursuit of establishing a religiously homogeneous Catholic nation-state.
Subsequently, the Spanish Empire sent Christopher Columbus westward to occupy new lands. Upon reaching the Americas, the Spanish established their imperial sovereignty over those territories through the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples.
The world order that emerged from this historical moment established a framework in which sovereignty was structured around ethnicity, territorial belonging, the distinction between native inhabitants and settlers arriving from elsewhere, gender-based discrimination, and religious discrimination. These categories determined who could live in a particular territory, who would be granted political rights, and who could be eliminated.
Another important concept that emerged from the formation of nation-states within this framework was the idea of terrorism. During the French Revolution, terrorism emerged as an essential component of politics itself. As David Bates points out, theorists of terrorism believe that it is possible to distinguish between the legitimate expressions of sovereignty and the actions of the enemy.
Consequently, terrorism became a means of identifying what were perceived as deviations from the established political order.
As Mahmood Mamdani points out, the French Revolution gave us both political terror and the citizen army.
The real secret behind Napoleon’s military victories was that his army was not composed of mercenaries but of patriots. Nationalism became the religion of the state. For people bound together by this new religion, the concepts of nationhood, sovereignty and law and order provided a supposedly rational justification for eliminating their enemies.
The same system operates within the international order. The United Nations functions on a foundation that privileges the sovereignty of five countries possessing veto power.
Consequently, the United States has used its veto to block resolutions brought before the UN against Israel.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its occupation of southern Lebanon have, in this way, been shielded from accountability, allowing its violence to continue.
Similarly, narratives that justify the colonial occupation of Yemen by Saudi Arabia, Britain, the United States and the United Arab Emirates continue to be propagated.
During the 1960s, the struggle for independence from British rule intensified. Organisations such as the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) engaged in armed resistance against British rule. In 1967, British forces withdrew from Aden. The NLF subsequently came to power and, in 1970, renamed the country the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY).
Following the expulsion of British imperialism, a civil war erupted between republican forces and those seeking to restore the Imamate, a system of rule that had operated with the backing of British imperialism. Saudi Arabia and Britain supported efforts to restore the Imamate. It is against this historical background that Saudi Arabia’s attempts to establish colonial domination over Yemen must be understood.
The Yemeni people have continued to resist this colonial occupation.
As Shireen Al-Adeimi points out, one of the major achievements of this struggle was the advance of the Ansarullah movement towards Yemen’s capital in 2014, following the Yemeni Revolution of 2011.
In response, Saudi Arabia launched sudden airstrikes against Yemen as part of a coalition involving the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco and several other countries.
The resulting assault was so devastating that it brought about conditions widely described as genocidal in Yemen.
As political analysts have pointed out, the Saudi military declared the entirety of Marran and Sa’ada to be military targets. Saudi warplanes carried out repeated airstrikes against Yemen’s heritage sites near Marib, which lies less than 100 miles from Sana’a. A 2015 UNESCO report highlighted the severe damage inflicted on several ancient monuments during these bombings, including the Sabean Dam and the Awam Temple.
The Dhamar National Museum was completely destroyed by aircraft supplied by the United States. According to UNESCO, approximately 12,500 irreplaceable archaeological artefacts in Yemen were destroyed within a single week.
The joint Saudi-American military campaign targeted and destroyed vital civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, homes, farms and places of worship. Restrictions were also imposed on food, drinking water, medical supplies and fuel, turning these essential necessities into instruments of war.
The blockade imposed by the Saudi-led coalition severely affected Yemen’s population, causing acute shortages of food and medical supplies. Children died from malnutrition, cholera spread, and water and sanitation systems were destroyed. A 2021 assessment report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimated that 377,000 people had died as a result of the Saudi-American military campaign and its consequences.
The people of Yemen continued to resist this colonial violence perpetrated by Saudi Arabia.
As a result, a truce agreement was reached in 2022.
More recently, during the war waged against Iran by American imperialism and Israeli fascism, Sayyid Ali Khamenei was assassinated. When an aircraft carrying members of Ansarullah, who had travelled to attend Khamenei’s funeral, attempted to land, Saudi Arabia attacked the airport. It is in this context, the author argues, that Ansarullah’s current military campaign against Saudi Arabia should be understood.
At a time when the people of Gaza are being subjected to genocide by Israeli fascism and treated as though they have no right to live in this world, Ansarullah has also confronted American imperialism, which has provided Israel with weapons and comprehensive political support. Ansarullah has attacked ships travelling through the Bab al-Mandab Strait and launched direct attacks against Israel.
In response, Israeli fascist forces and the United States decided that Ansarullah must be destroyed. Saudi Arabia’s attacks against Ansarullah should be viewed as part of this broader strategy.
Through its attacks on Ansarullah, Saudi Arabia is, in effect, confronting efforts to disrupt the energy supply system that sustains the US dollar and underpins American imperial power.
To legitimise the capitalist world order and Israel’s expansion of its settler-colonial domination, attempts are being made to portray Ansarullah as a movement that challenges Saudi sovereignty.
As I have already argued, sovereignty has historically functioned as a mechanism for determining who is allowed to live and who is condemned to die.
Today, the war being pursued by American imperialism in the Middle East has rendered the lives of Palestinians, Yemenis, Lebanese and Iranians increasingly precarious, treating their lands and populations as though they were unworthy of protection.
At the same time, Saudi-backed counter-revolutionary groups operating from hotels in Riyadh are being presented as the legitimate sovereign authorities of Yemen.
In this context, sovereignty is being deployed to preserve domination, ensure the uninterrupted functioning of the capitalist economy, legitimise Israel’s settler-colonial expansion, seize people’s lands and expand the war economy.
The issue that needs to be discussed here is not Saudi sovereignty. Rather, it is Saudi Arabia’s colonial occupation of Yemen, Israel’s settler-colonial expansion, and the political strategies through which the United States seeks to prop up its declining empire.
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