Yemen has resisted Saudi colonialism since the inception of the Kingdom
By Brecht Jonkers
Bani Saud’s role in the destruction of Yemen is by now well known. Since the start of the Saudi-led invasion in March 2015, at least 60,000 Yemenis have been killed, according to the Associated Press. Over half a million people are estimated to be suffering from cholera as a direct result of the destruction caused by the invasion, and over 10 million Yemeni civilians are either suffering from, or facing the prospect of, imminent starvation.
Yet for all the information that finally has started to seep through the mainstream media and the world’s collective consciousness, the bloody history of Saudi imperialism in Yemen remains largely unexplored.
Far from being a sad one-time event, the Saudi invasion of Yemen in March 2015 was but the latest in a long history of interventionism and aggression by Riyadh against the Yemeni people, a dark history that has been taking place ever since the Saudi kingdom’s inception in 1932.
By that time, the ancient realm of Yemen, ruled by elected Zaydi Imams since 897ce, had already suffered from a long series of invasions by both the Ottomans from the north and British colonialists from overseas. By 1874, most of southern Yemen had been colonized by the British, under the Aden Protectorate.
However, the Yemeni heartland in the north and west, incidentally the areas where the Saudis have consistently failed to make any military headway, were gradually reunited in the early-20th century under the rule of Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamid al-Din. He set out to modernize and stabilize the Yemeni state, and established close relations with other Arab and Muslim states.
However the concept of a united Yemen, refusing to accept foreign influence, was a thorn in the side of the British colonialists, especially since it was seen as a threat to their control over Aden. Efforts to exercise control over the Imamate — for example by British intelligence officer Gilbert Clayton, who was instrumental in the British orchestration of the “Arab Revolt” during World War I and worked as an attaché to ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, repeatedly failed.
Moreover, Bani Saud also had their eyes on Yemen. The country had both a large population and large amounts of fertile soil. The promise of direct access to the Gulf of Aden and thus to the Arabian Sea, together with the extremely strategically located chokepoint of the Bab al-Mandab strait, made Yemen a very precious prize. Bab al-Mandab measures only 19 km in width, and connects the Gulf of Aden (gateway to the Arabian Sea and thus to the Indian Ocean) with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
Secondly, the ancient Yemeni Imamate, with its rich history of coexistence of religious communities and various Islamic schools of thought, was in direct contradiction to the myopic Wahhabi exclusivism that the new Saudi monarchy espoused. The Zaydi madhhab, to which Imam Hamid al-Din belonged and which held that any descendant of the Prophet (pbuh) could be elected to the position of imam, was a grave threat to the absolutist rule of Bani Saud that had erupted from the dark crevices of the Najdi desert. Having already driven the Hashimi clan out of power in the Hijaz, the British-backed self-declared monarchy saw Yemen as an existential threat to its power in the Arabian Peninsula.
A clear example of the reputation of Bani Saud can be found in Imam Hamid al-Din’s reply to ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud’s demands for control over Greater Yemen, “Who is this Bedouin, coming to challenge my family’s 900-year rule?”
In March 1934, the Najdi Bedouins now in control of much of the Arabian Peninsula declared war on Yemen, and advanced on the northern Yemeni border provinces of al-‘Asir, Jizan, Najran, and Baha. With British military support, and backed by Ikhwani (not associated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) militias, the Saudi forces advanced all the way to the port city of Hodeydah, forcing Imam Hamid al-Din to cede the four northern territories of Yemen to the Saudi occupiers.
A portrait of Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamid al-Din, who was assassinated along with his grandson on 8-17-1948, in what came to be known as the Waziri coup. During the coup attempt, some 5,000 Yemenis were killed and the Wazirs took control of the territory for only a limited number of weeks. Suspicion surrounding the assassination suggest Saudi and British involvement.
When mainstream media reports on the ongoing conflicts in Najran and Jizan, two areas in which the Yemeni Armed Forces have made significant gains fighting the Saudi invading forces, they often forget to mention that these territories are historical Yemeni lands that have been subjected to forced relocation of entire population groups since the 1930s.
Imam Hamid al-Din was assassinated under highly suspicious circumstances in 1948, after which his son Ahmad ibn Yahya took power. Not bothering with the traditional imam elections, Ahmad turned the country into a de facto monarchy. When he was succeeded by his similarly unelected son Muhammad al-Badr in 1962, a republican revolution broke out.
Saudi Arabia, along with the British and the United States, started sending large amounts of military support to the Royalists, hoping to curry favour with al-Badr and prevent republican sentiment from gaining a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula. In 1967, South Yemen became independent under a Communist-led government, putting even more fear in the hearts of the already terrified Bani-Saud rulers.
However, by 1970 it had become clear to the Saudis that the position of the Yemeni monarchy had become untenable. In a shock decision, Saudi Arabia recognized the Yemeni republic, in exchange for the reintegration of royalist officials into the new government. This made Yemen into the Arabian Peninsula’s first, and so far only, republic.
For the next several decades, Saudi influence increased gradually but significantly. In 1977, Saudi Arabia actively participated in the overthrow and assassination of Yemeni president Ibrahim al-Hamdi, a Pan-Arab Socialist who was negotiating with South Yemen about unification.
Ultimately, in 1978 the increased Saudi influence on Yemeni politics led to the rule of ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih, a military strongman of the country until 2012. As WikiLeaks documents have shown, Wahhabi infiltration of Yemen reached alarming proportions under Salih’s rule, with Riyadh bribing government officials and tribal leaders alike to facilitate this goal.
The most influential of these Wahhabi preachers was Muqbil ibn Hadi al-Wadi‘i, a Yemeni who studied in Saudi Arabia under the infamous Saudi cleric ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Baz. In the 1980s, al-Wadi‘i established one of the world’s major Wahhabi training centers, right in the middle of the Yemeni heartland. Al-Wadi‘i enjoyed extensive protection from both Riyadh and Salih, especially due to his fanatical belief that Muslims should always obey their worldly rulers, regardless of how corrupt or removed from Islamic principles they may be. This tenet, which was also central in the philosophy of Ibn Taymiyah, is a direct antithesis of the Islamic command to “command the common good and forbid the evil” (3:104), and a complete denial of the Zaydi school’s command that unjust rulers should always be opposed, even if they are self-professed Muslims.
It was in resistance to all this that Sayyid Husayn al-Huthi founded Ansarullah in 1994. He was martyred in 2004 for making this bold move. From 2004 to 2010, the Salih regime waged six different wars against Ansarullah and by extension the Zaydi population of northern Yemen. Estimates of the number of people massacred run up to 25,000 in these bloody attacks, with direct support from the United States and Saudi Arabia. The bloodiest of these attacks was Operation Scorched Earth in 2010, when the Saudi army directly invaded Yemeni territory, resulting in around 8,000 deaths in just six months’ time.
American diplomats at the time described the Saudi position on Ansarullah as “dangerous and delusional” and expressed the fear that Saudi Arabia “will act irrationally.” This warning has turned out to be true but it has not prevented Washington from consistently supporting the Saudi regime.
The March 2015 Saudi-led invasion of Yemen is nothing new, at least not from the Yemeni perspective. It is a new, more open and extremely bloody chapter in the long and shameful history of the Saudi monarchy’s imperialist ambitions toward the land that was once called Arabia Felix: Blessed Arabia.
Brecht Jonkers specialises in the history of the Muslim East.
Photo: WhatsuPic, “Expanded War, Hunger, Disease, Death i n Yemen, No Big DEal to US”
“Only God can save our children”, say Yemeni fathers and mothers as they can do nothing but watch their children die, try to comfort them in their final agonizing hours, and pray for God to spare them from death. The fathers and mothers watch and pray, as one by another their children die from cholera, dehydration and starvation.
Biqdad, nine, and Mariah, two, are receiving treatment for cholera in the state-run Al-Sabeen hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. (MEE/Mohammed Hamoud)
Where is God? He cannot get through the total US blockade of Yemen to save the children. A cholera epidemic is a man-made disaster. Since 2015 the cholera epidemic has been spread by biological warfare against Yemen. US bombs dropped by Saudi pilots destroyed Yemen’s public water and sewage systems. The parts, chemicals and fuel to operate Yemen’s water purification and sewage plants are blockaded. Potable water, cholera vaccine, and even individual water purification tablets cannot get in.
The sewage from non-working treatment plants overflows into streams that run onto agricultural land, thus contaminating vegetables before they go to market. Sewage flows into the cities, residential areas and the refugee camps. Flies swarm over the sewage and spread cholera everywhere. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and Doctors Without Borders; hospitals, clinics and disaster relief organizations, and human rights workers have been deliberately bombed.
[Sanitation problems, as well as a shortage of medicine and supplies have pushed the number of cholera cases in Yemen. Photo by Yahya Arhab/EPA]The US dominated United Nations adds a fig leaf of legality to the blockade, and a one-sided weapons embargo against Yemen. To ask why there is no UN arms embargo against Saudi Arabia is, of course, a rhetorical question.
The former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley threw a temper tantrum when the UN dared to even voice mild criticism against the US, when it moved its embassy to Jerusalem. She spoke of the UN “disrespecting” the US, and she threatened financial retaliation against the UN and countries that voted contrary to US wishes.
President Donald Trump cut funding to humanitarian UN agencies, did not try to stop Israel from gunning down thousands of unarmed Palestinians, withdrew the US from the UN Human Rights Council, and thumbed his nose at the UN International Court of Justice. Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton said that the US plans on withdrawing from more treaties that are the foundation of international law.
The US dominated United Nations adds a fig leaf of legality to the blockade, and a one-sided weapons embargo against Yemen. To ask why there is no UN arms embargo against Saudi Arabia is, of course, a rhetorical question.
In other words, Bolton is confirming that the US is a rouge state; it makes a mockery of the United Nations. From the beginning of the Bush-era War on Terror, the US showed contempt for the Geneva Conventions. Obama too violated customary international law with impunity. Obama assassinated US citizens, droned Afghan wedding parties and funerals, and destroyed Libya. He invaded Syria in an illegal war of aggression. Obama was really good at killing. He allegedly said so himself.
Purposely causing a cholera epidemic is biological warfare. Yemen is not an unprecedented case of US use of biological-chemical warfare. During the 1950’s Korean War the US was accused convincingly of biological warfare. In the Vietnam-American War the US sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange, which poisoned the soil, rivers and people. Agent Orange, 40 years later is still “causing miscarriages, skin diseases, cancers, birth defects, and congenital malformations”.
The US contaminated Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the Middle East with so-called depleted uranium. Depleted uranium can cause cancer, birth defects, and as yet other unknown health effects. The US knows it. It has put out a health warning to US Iraq war veterans.
In 1995, Madeleine Albright was interview by Lesley Stahl on the TV show “60 Minutes”. That interview should live in infamy in a hall of shame for eternity. Stahl asked Albright if the death of over 500,000 Iraqi children caused by US sanctions was “worth it”. Albright’s answer was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” (Whoever the “we” is, Albright did not elaborate.) It is now known that “we” purposely used biological warfare to kill those 500,000 Iraqi children.
[Madeleine Albright – The deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was worth it for Iraq’s non-existent WMD’s?]
How many more children did Albright, the Bill Clinton administration and “we” continue to kill because “we” thought it was “worth it”? Hundreds of thousands, according to a study of the partially declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities”. The partially declassified document was discovered in 1998 on an official website of the Military Health System. In 2001 the Association of Genocide Scholars released the study referred to above: The Role of “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities” in Halting One Genocide and Preventing Others.
During the 1991 First Gulf War the US purposely targeted all of the water purification plants and sanitation works in Iraq, which is itself a war crime. The “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities” document produced by the US Department of Defense and implemented in1991, was continued under President Bill Clinton. Even after Albright’s admission on “60 Minutes” that the US sanctions regime had killed 500,000 Iraqi children, “we” continued the draconian embargo of water purification equipment.
The Department of Defense and Madeleine Albright’s “we” knew that without potable water that the rate of waterborne diseases, such as cholera, would sicken and kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Depriving an entire population of the essentials of life is genocide, and it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Degrading of the water supply to knowinglu cause epidemics, such as cholera, is biological warfare. Economic sanctions and trade embargos are barbaric siege warfare against civilian populations. There is no way to pretty them up as surgically targeting a regime or being humanitarian. Now think about Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Burma and, Côte d’Ivoire that are suffering under a US embargo today.
The “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities” document reveals the diabolical intention of a sanctions regime, even when authorized by the UN. It is for these and other reasons that The International Committee of the Red Cross has often raised concerns, including concerns about UN authorized sanctions regimes. Not even the UN has the authority to violate the Geneva Conventions, and the UN oversteps its authority when it does so.
The US has also overstepped the UN’s authority against Yemen, by imposing a total blockade. Hundreds of children are dying every day in Yemen. Tens of thousands of civilians have died from starvation, disease and the lack of medicine. Twenty million human beings are starving to death in a famine caused by the US, and its proxy, the so-called Saudi coalition.
For three years, starting with the Obama administration the US has been passing Saudi Arabia the bombs, ammunition, fuel, and most importantly it is the US military at the command and control center of the war. Other war-profiteering countries, such as the UK, EU countries, and Canada have their hands dripping with the blood and cholera infected feces of Yemeni children, too.
[Photo: Nora Al-Alwaki, an American citizen killed by Navy SEALs when they raided her Yemeni village on January 29, 2017.]
US Special Forces, Seal Team 6, and the CIA carry out night raids and assignations, such as the one that killed 8 year old Nora, pictured above. She was an American citizen who lived with her grandparents in a Yemeni village.
Nora was the daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was the first known American citizen to be executed by the US without due process. A week later his 16 year old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was assassinated by a US drone. Barack Obama carried out those killings in 2011. It was also Obama that planned the raid in which Nora was killed by Trump on February 1, 2017.
I don’t believe it was a coincidence. When Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibb was asked why 16 year old Abdurahman was killed, his answer was that his crime was that he “should have had a more responsible father”. Was that Nora’s “crime” too?
The war against Yemen is another dirty war like Iraq was. It is an ‘all but in name only’ a US genocide-scale slaughter of civilians and the destruction of a country. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its so-called coalition are the US proxy that pays for the bombs and drops them. It is the US that picks out the targets, from back at the command and control center.
The complicit mainstream media tries hard to sell the people the idea that the US imperial military is actually engaged in worthwhile missions. Here’s what the moral imbeciles at CBS came up with, the glorification of SEAL teams.
Most of the ground fighting inside Yemen is caused by an invasion of US, Saudi and UAE sponsored Salafists terrorists, mujahideen, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, and Blackwater (rebranded Academi) US, Somalia and South American mercenaries. Saudi-backed terrorists are attacking in the north, while UAE-backed terrorist attack in the south. Saudi-backed terrorists are fighting UAE terrorists. Saudi Arabia has put a blockade on Qatar, in a squabble over Yemen.
The de facto government of Yemen is the leadership of the Houthi Movement, named after its charismatic founder Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi. The Houthi Movement is backed by Yemen’s military units, security forces and a broad base of the Yemeni people, including many Sunnis. That is not to say that Yemenis do not have many differences. They do, but when their common self-interests are at stake, they do come together, despite their differences.
There are some internal groups opposed to the Houthi Movement and they are collaborating with the Saudi and UAE terrorist groups, but this is not a Sunni vs. Shia war. Nor is the war a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as the corporate mainstream media monopoly would have the US public believe.
The Zaydi Shia that makes up about 42% of Yemen’s population is closer to Sunni Islam than they are to the Shia branch of Islam in Iran. The Zaidi-led Houthi Movement “have not called for restoring the imamate in Yemen, and religious grievances have not been a major factor in the war”, according to Al Jazeera. Rather, the Houthi Movement has been primarily economic, political and regional in nature.
There is a separatist movement in what was once South Yemen, which until 1990 was a separate communist country: The Democratic Republic of Yemen. Before unification North Yemen was the Yemen Arab Republic. In the power struggle that followed unification the south lost power and patronage. The UAE is backing a southern separatist group, the Southern Transitional Council, which also opposes Hadi and Saudi Arabia. As mentioned, Saudi backed terrorists are fighting UAE-backed terrorists.
The US, KSA and the UN try to pass off the “internationally recognized legitimate government of Yemen” as if it were Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Hadi was the president of an interim government of Yemen from 2012 to 2014. Hadi fraudulently overstayed his term when it expired in 2014.
Hadi was forcefully removed from office by the Houthi Movement, and a broad base uprising of the Yemeni people. Hadi resigned his office and fled to Saudi Arabia. The US, KSA and the UN use Hadi as a figurehead to add a fig leaf of legality to the illegal US-led war of aggression against Yemen.
There is little if any evidence that Iran is providing the Houthi Movement with weapons, materials or fighters. Look at the map. How would Iran be able to get past the total US blockade, even if it wanted to. Iran has its hands full with its (legal) support of its ally Syria. Iran is struggling with its own economic crisis caused by the illegal US economic sanctions regime, re-imposed by the Trump administration.
When the US was pressed for hard evidence to back up its allegations that Iran was involved in Yemen, the best that the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley could do was come up with a few missile parts. The UN dismissed Haley’s show as having “no evidence as to the identity of the broker or supplier.” Iran has denied involvement in Yemen, and rejected the US’s claims as unfounded, and Iran further added: “These accusations seek also to cover up for the Saudi war crimes in Yemen, with the US complicity, and divert attention from the stalemate war of aggression against the Yemenis.”
Yemenis, regardless of religion, region or tribe are fiercely nationalistic, and they are nobody’s puppet. They resent attempts by foreign invaders to dominate them. Yemen, like Afghanistan, is a graveyard where empires come to die. The Saudis and the UAE are leaning it the hard way.
The US is like a zombie empire that never dies in an empire graveyard. Instead when faced with humiliation and defeat, the US totally destroys its antagonist from the air, as it did Iraq, Libya and Syria. The US shows no mercy for the civilian population. The US destroys civilian infrastructure, blockades food, water and medicine. It targets the people with cluster bombs and white phosphorus; and the US poisons their water, soil and air with biological, chemical and radioactive weapons.
[Photo: Minn Post, “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Libyan soldiers upon her departure from Tripoli in Libya on October 18, 2011.]
As with Iraq, Libya, and Syria and with so many other small countries that the US declared to be its enemy, Yemen poses no threat to the US national security. So why does the US destroy small countries, and why is the US destroying Yemen?
Whatever name US world domination goes by, it is all the same. The US considers itself above international law, customary moral behavior and believes it alone has the right to pursue whatever it thinks is in its self-interest politically, militarily and financially. If the US were a person, it would be diagnosed as a psychopath, with no conscience, no empathy, and no remorse; aggressive, narcissistic and a serial mass murderer.
Yemen is often scripted by the corporate-government mainstream media as “the poorest country in the Middle East”, as if it has no wealth that anybody could possibly want. The people of Yemen are poor, but Yemen is rich in oil, pipeline routes, gold, minerals, agriculture, fishing, state owned enterprises, desirable real estate, finance, and its geography gives Yemen great potential for tourism.
Yemen’s 30 million people are both a potential source of cheap labor and a potential market for the products of US global corporations. Yemen is strategically located at the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, through which 1.4 billion barrels of oil pass every day. For millennium Yemen was a center for trade.
The US covets Yemen’s wealth and its strategic location as part of the neoliberal New World Order. The US vision of the New World Order is a world dominated by US global corporations, US financial institutions and wealthy US family dynasties.
US foreign policy is shaped by special interests, monopolies and their political action committees (PACS), such as those of weapons manufacturers, financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and agri-business. Foreign countries such as Israel and Saudi Arabia also have powerful lobbies that can manipulate US foreign policy to their advantage. US foreign policy has little to do with the interests of the average US citizen.
Yemen is the southern neighbor to the KSA, and the Saudis want a corrupt, compliant and passive government in Yemen. The KSA has expanded its border to encroach on Yemen’s northern borderlands, which is the birthplace of the Houthi Movement. The Saudi dynasty also fears an independent Yemeni people that might influence the oppressed people of the Saudi Dynasty. The KSA is a powder keg for an uprising of the people, they are ready to explode.
The KSA uses extremist Wahhabi Islam as a political subterfuge to recruit jihadist, terrorists, and to spread Saudi influence throughout West Asia, Africa and beyond. International terrorism has been a joint venture of the US, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states. All the GCC states: KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait are theocratic monarchies. That says volumes about US values for democracy and human rights.
The US has a long history of coveting the wealth of Yemen. In the mid-1980s the Bush family and their Texas oil buddies at Hunt Oil invested in Yemen’s oil-rich Marib Shabwa basin. Bush obtained for Hunt Oil the rights for future exploration. Deviously, the former director of the CIA and then Vice President Bush arranged for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to finance the Bush-Hunt investments in Yemen. A few years later Bush “repaid” Saddam’s loan with Shock and Awe.
Since 2015 the US has been protecting the Bush family’s investments in Yemen, global corporations, neoliberalism and the vision of a New World Order. The people of Yemen have been starch opponents of neoliberalism and like their old world order. They rebelled against the 33 year rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh for selling out Yemen to neoliberalism, and then the people rebelled against the interim government of Hadi for his fire-sale privatization scheming with the neoliberal empire.
The US beneficiaries of neoliberalism were not happy when their benefactor Hadi was deposed by the Houthi Movement. Nor was Saudi Arabia, which had been trying to exploit Yemen for decades. The vultures of the other GCC countries started circling Yemen in the hope of picking at its corpse too.
The US is providing the GCC with the Shock and Awe to kill the prey, and the US does not care if it kills 22 million people in the process of looting Yemen. It is the US that is providing the bombs. The Saudi-led coalition of the GCC is just the delivery boys.
To summarize, there is no civil war in Yemen. Iran is made the scapegoat for a US-led illegal war of aggression. Saudi Arabia and its coalition of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The GCC is made up of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. They are all monarchies. The US hopes to walk off with Yemen’s main prizes, and the KSA, UAE and Qatar are already fighting each other over the crumbs. The lives of 22 million Yemeni people are hanging by a thread, because of a US blockade of food, water and medicine. The US is the cause of the worst cholera epidemic in history. It is biological warfare and genocide.
