For months, analysts have warned of the possibility of Israel’s genocide in Gaza sparking a regional war. In Yemen, that war is already here. Beginning on Jan. 12, the US and UK have conducted a series of air strikes in Yemen in retaliation for its efforts to block Israeli shipping in the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandab Strait. Just days later, the Biden administration declared Ansarallah, better known in the West as the Houthis, a terrorist organization.
The Pentagon has attempted to frame its latest war on Yemen as an act of self-defense to protect freedom of trade and navigation from “terrorism”. Yet Ansarallah has definite political motivations for its actions—stopping Israel’s genocide by applying pressure to end the siege of Gaza. As Yemeni Armed Forces spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree made clear in a statement, “ships bound for the Zionist entity will not pass through if food and medicine do not enter the Gaza Strip.”
Thus far, there are few indications that Ansarallah will prematurely end its blockade, or that the US will cease conducting air strikes against Yemen. Jehan Hakim of the Yemeni Alliance Committee joins The Real News for a conversation on Yemen’s recent history and the deep solidarity of its people with Palestine.
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Transcript
Ju-Hyun Park: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Ju-Hyun Park, and I’ll be your host for this episode.
Today, we have Yemen in the spotlight where, for several weeks, the country’s de facto government, comprised of a ruling coalition that includes the Houthis, or Ansar Allah, has launched a blockade against Israeli shipping in protest of the siege of Gaza. The US has responded with a number of airstrikes against Yemen, pushing the region further along the road to a full-scale war that some analysts are saying is already here.
Joining me to help decipher Yemen’s recent history and this dimension of an escalating regional war in West Asia is Jehan Hakim, chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee.
But before we begin, I want to acknowledge and thank all of you listeners and readers of this program on behalf of the entire Real News team. The Real News is dedicated to bringing you ad-free, independent journalism that you can count on. We don’t take corporate cash and we don’t do paid subscriptions. We care a lot about what we do, and it’s through donations from dedicated listeners like you that we can keep on doing it.
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For more than 100 days now, the world has watched in horror as Israel continues to execute its genocide in Gaza. While too many governments have sat idly by, or worse, defended Israel’s actions, one nation has stood above the rest in its efforts to actually do something about it.
That nation is Yemen. On Oct. 19, the de facto ruling coalition government of Yemen, which primarily comprises the organization known as Ansar Allah, declared war on Israel, striking Israeli ports with its missiles and taking the unprecedented step to enforce a counter blockade on Israeli shipping.
Since October, over a dozen commercial ships have been seized or intercepted in the Red Sea, a crucial waterway for global commercial trade, connecting the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea via Egypt’s Suez Canal.
Ansar Allah, more commonly known as the Houthis, and one of the key players in a coalition government that rules the majority of Yemeni territory, has stated that its counter blockade will not cease until Israel’s siege of Gaza ends.
The counter blockade has forced international shipping giants to reroute thousands of ships around the entire continent of Africa, sending the cost of international shipping soaring, and placing pressure on multinational corporations and, by extension, governments in the Global North.
The Biden administration has responded by seeking to break Yemen’s counter blockade by force. For the past two weeks, the US and the UK have carried out a series of airstrikes against Yemen, prompting Ansar Allah to respond with strikes against US and UK Naval ships.
The Biden administration has also reclassified Ansar Allah as a terrorist organization, a designation that it previously revoked in 2020 in light of the grave humanitarian crisis in Yemen following years of war with Saudi Arabia, a conflict in which the US supplied the Saudis with bombs and helped enforce a devastating blockade of Yemen’s ports.
The Pentagon has stated that its operations in Yemen are currently open-ended, meaning there is no end in sight and no exit strategy. When asked by the British station Sky News whether the airstrikes were working, President Biden replied, “When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. [Are] they [gonna] continue? Yes.”
For its part, corporate media has largely parroted the Pentagon’s talking points on Yemen. Ansar Allah has been breathlessly described as a terrorist organization and international menace. But who really is Ansar Allah and what is motivating their counter blockade in solidarity with Palestine? How do we understand this moment in light of Yemen’s recent history of bombardment and blockade at the hands of Saudi Arabia and the United States?
Joining The Real News today to help us address these questions and more is Jehan Hakim, chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee, an advocacy group focused on ending the role of the United States in the war in Yemen.
Jehan, thanks for joining us.
Jehan Hakim: Thank you for having me.
Ju-Hyun Park: So we’re going to go ahead and dive right into it. Our audience may have a range of familiarity with Yemen’s recent history. It’s crucial to understand that US support for the invasion of Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, a war which still has not completely resolved, is really central to understanding the political situation in Yemen today. Can you walk us through this war, its origins, the consequences borne by the people of Yemen, and the roles that have been played by the United States and Ansar Allah?
Jehan Hakim: Yeah, sure. So not to go back too far into history, but if everyone remembers 2011, it was the Arab Spring. Arab countries across the MENA, Middle East and North Africa, were going through a lot of transitions and a lot of violence. And Yemen was one of the very first countries to also step up and want to topple their 30-plus-year dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
So tensions continued until 2014, where an internal civil war broke out. So we hear a lot about the war in Yemen, and we hear the word “civil war”, even after the year of 2015. And what Yemen has been experiencing has not been a civil war since 2014, because on March 25, 2015, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and a coalition of war partners launched airstrikes on Yemen, destroying its air force and controlling its airspace within 24 hours.
And in the same year, the Saudi-led coalition imposed a naval and land blockade, which severely, like you said, restricted the flow of food, fuel and medicine to Yemeni civilians. And in a country that relies heavily on imported food, medicine, and fuel to over 70 to 80% of the population, that is a large number of people that are relying on food and water and fuel to keep hospitals and cars moving.
The Saudi-led coalition is backed by Western allies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and other war partners. I think a lot of folks don’t realize that this coalition and their warplanes were equipped with bombs made in the US. So by companies such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamic, Boeing. This war has been an American problem, our taxpayer dollars at work.
And a lot of people praise the Obama administration, but this happened during the Obama administration. Obama green lit the coalition, and gave them the green light and told them it’s time. Because without us, without our war support, our intelligence assistance, targeting assistance, our bombs, like I mentioned, we also train soldiers and we repair warplanes.
And up until 2018, we used to refuel warplanes midair. So that means when warplanes are hovering, about to drop a US-made bomb onto the land of Yemen, and potentially — And this has happened — Destroying hospitals, water towers, weddings, funerals, school buses, that they did not have to ground and then get refueled. We were doing that for them.
And thankfully, I will say that in 2022, this has been paused. But what has the impact looked like? And this is an underestimate. Since 2015, over 400,000 Yemenis have been killed. Two thirds of these civilian casualties are a result of airstrikes. Yemen is considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis of the century. The Global Hunger Index ranks Yemen the worst in the world for level of hunger. It’s a man-made catastrophe. It’s not like Yemen is dealing with poverty and they’re hungry. They’re being starved.
So like I mentioned, in 2022, there was a brokered truce that put a halt on Saudi-led airstrikes, thankfully. But the blockade continues. So does the occupation of parts of southern Yemen by the United Arab Emirates, land grabbing resource theft continues. But for over a year, thankfully, Saudi Arabia and Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, have been negotiating a peace deal. So Yemen has been relatively safe for the first time in eight years.
This is the first time I can tell you, in over a year, that I’m not looking at my WhatsApp messages, and if I don’t get a response immediately or within a couple of hours that I don’t have a panic attack, or I don’t have anxiety because I don’t hear from my family.
But that’s changed. Because in November of last year, Ansar Allah decided to step up and support Palestine, leveraging the only thing that they have: blocking Israeli-owned ships from entering the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
And how did the US reply? Just to quickly answer your question, instead of the US realizing their mistake by taking a stand with Israel and taking a stand with humanity, they doubled down to back Netanyahu. And on the same day that the ICJ takes Israel to court, Biden, Sunak and their other war comrades began bombing Yemen without congressional approval. So this is an illegal bombing campaign on Yemen.
Ju-Hyun Park: Right. What we’re currently seeing is absolutely unjustifiable, either from the standpoint of constitutional procedure and US law, or even just looking at the ethics of the situation, given what this counter blockade that Ansar Allah is mounting is really all about.
I do want to dive more into the present situation, but I also want to make sure that we’re spending enough time on this recent history and understanding the motivations of the different actors at play.
I think for some of our listeners, it might be a surprise to learn that a democratic uprising that took place during the Arab Spring was then put down with the support of the US government. I think as the Arab Spring was popping off back in 2011, for the rest of you dinosaurs out there who remember that ancient history, there was a lot of words coming from the Obama administration, coming from some very influential figures, talking about support for the Arab [Spring], talking about support for the movements that were standing up to the wide variety of different authoritarian governments that had been backed by the US previously in this region.
So I’m wondering if you can address a little bit about what you see as the motivation of the US to back this coalition. And also from the standpoint of the Saudis, why go to a war with Yemen at all? What was it about this movement to unseat the previous leader there that presented such a threat to US and Saudi interests?
Jehan Hakim: Well, there’s a lot that Saudi Arabia can lose, and then as a byproduct of Saudi Arabia losing it, then the US would lose as well, because we continue to rely on oil as a means to generate our economy and how we operate from our day-to-day lives.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait has over four millions of barrels of oil that flow through it every day. So that point is strategic. It’s a geopolitical point that the Houthis or Ansar Allah have held. And the Saudis have been, for the longest, worried.
So when Ansar Allah or the Houthis overthrew, not only Ali Abdullah Saleh, but also Mansur Hadi, he fled to Saudi Arabia after he was put on house arrest in 2014. Then they were like, okay, we no longer have our Yemeni puppet in place, so we need to wage war in order to maintain our political arm in the country, and also make sure to have a hold on Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Because their economy… Obviously Saudi Arabia was a desert some decades ago. But when oil was discovered, they became the mecca, or the wealthiest country in the Arab world, because of that oil.
So it all goes back to capitalism. So there’s a lot of money to be lost. And the Houthis are in saddle, or even Yemenis as a whole have not been kind to occupation or interventions. And this goes back to our history, whether it was the Ottoman Empire or the Brits, we do not like anybody coming onto our land. And then Yemen is a sovereign country. There’s a violation of sovereignty there. So essentially that’s what the intervention of 2015 was about.
Ju-Hyun Park: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for taking that backtrack with us.
I am wondering if we can talk a little bit more about Ansar Allah as a political movement. There’s a lot of claims that have been made, particularly in the last couple of months as the enforcement of this counter blockade is being stepped up in the Bab el-Mandeb, a lot of attempts to paint the movement of Ansar Allah as uniquely regressive, very reactionary, conservative, something that good minded, progressive folks should not really be supporting or finding any common cause with.
I’m wondering if you can help us understand how you would politically characterize Ansar Allah as a movement, and maybe connected to that, what you see as their motivation in taking the stand that they have on Palestine, given that they are taking on a certain level of risk to their movement, to their country, and placing themselves back in the crosshairs, in a sense.
Jehan Hakim: Yeah, according to Yemenis, the Houthis or Ansar Allah are the government of Sanaa, so they control over 70% to 80% of Yemen. And folks that live in those areas have felt safe, they have felt fed, they have felt taken care of. I currently have family right now in Sanaa. They have traffic lights. There is infrastructure being rebuilt after an eight-year long brutal war.
And that war was not on the Houthis. I want to be clear, and just like the war on Gaza is not a war on Hamas, it is a war on the people that inhabit that land. And it was a war on Yemen. And politically, they are the group or the force that are taking care of Yemen from all facets, even if there’s so much breakage, so much has been ruined.
This is really the reconstruction period because it’s only been since 2022 that the airstrikes halted. There’s so much damage that has taken place on the ground, so much loss. So the Ansar Allah movement is supported by a lot of Yemenis. When you see millions of people on the street that are protesting in solidarity with Gaza, those are not millions of Houthis or Ansar Allah. Those are millions of Yemenis who are standing up as Yemenis and in support of Palestine.
So if we look back around what the motivation is, the plight of Palestinians and the plight of the Palestinian people has been a concern for Arabs across the board. I know it doesn’t look that way, unfortunately, because of the dynamics and the role of the West in certain parts of Arab countries. There’s, unfortunately, been a lot of mishandling, a lot of corruption, but I’m so proud of the Yemeni people for standing up.
Ever since this inception of Israel as a settler colony, Yemenis have stood up. The solidarity is rooted in centuries worth of Arab identity, Arab and Islamic history. Yemenis from all walks of life and ideologies and political affiliations have poured into the streets, marching and calling for a Palestine free from Israel, systemic annexation, their apartheid, erasure.
Or what we’re seeing right now, many have called it the second Nakba. Even if we go back to 1947, when Yemen joined the UN, they rejected the partition of Palestine then. So I think the real question is, a lot of people are like, they’re commending Yemen, and I love that. I love the appreciation, but the real question is like, where is the rest of the world? How come no other powers have intervened to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian people while Israel continues to violate human rights laws every single day?
So Yemenis stepped up because we see our cause, the Yemeni cause as the Palestinian cause, and the Palestinian cause as the Yemeni cause. We are brothers and sisters, and brothers and sisters in humanity as well. And they’re stepping up and saying, this is not okay. You’re not going to do this. At least we’re going to leverage the one thing that we do have, which, like I said, is Bab el-Mandeb Strait. And they don’t have much, like I said, they’re recovering from a brutal war, so that’s why.
Ju-Hyun Park: Thank you for that explanation. I think it’s really crucial to tie together the historic elements that you’re bringing in here, the centuries of development of Arab identity, and also to take into account the reality of life in Yemen, and understanding why it is that particular political organization such as Ansar Allah has come to play such an important role.
And it really is based on the role that this organization has played in the last several years in defending Yemen from foreign aggression, and also playing a role of political leadership, not only in reconstructing the country, but also in navigating the wider world, which is filled with all kinds of very similar struggles and horrors to those which the Yemeni people have experienced quite recently.
You mentioned earlier that a number of human rights organizations had listed the crisis in Yemen as the worst one of the century, that for many, many years, Yemen was the number one location for famine found anywhere on earth. Just a couple of weeks ago, the UN Office for Human Rights had to come out and say that, actually, Gaza has now taken that number one spot. And it’s something like 80% of all people experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide are living in Gaza today.
So there’s a very clear unity of interests, not only based on history and identity, but also based on real experience, based on what the people of Yemen have experienced under blockade, under bombardment, which is so similar to what the people of Gaza have experienced historically and are experiencing quite critically today. So thank you for walking us through those connections there.
I am thinking now is probably a good time to talk a little bit about the US response. As previously mentioned, the US has launched a series of airstrikes in coordination with other European states, primarily the UK. They have placed Ansar Allah, or re-designated, them as a terrorist organization.
And in addition to that, officials in the Biden administration are calling this an open-ended operation, which means that they don’t have a clear goal. They’re not going in with a timetable. So presumably, this could go on indefinitely.
I would note some videos of protests in Sanaa and other parts of Yemen, solidarity with Gaza, where people were chanting, “Bring on World War III. Make it a big war,” which I think is just demonstrative of the resolve that the Yemeni people have in the counter blockade that’s being enforced against Israel here.
But I’m wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about the recent response from the US. Do you think this is an effective way to stop Yemen’s counter blockade in solidarity with Gaza, since that is the stated goal of the Biden administration? Will they even succeed in what they’re trying to do? Let’s start there.
Jehan Hakim: Yeah. Thank you for bringing up that march where Yemenis were saying, “We don’t care. [foreign language].” Even if there’s a World War, a third World War, they don’t care.
If you look up a Genocide Watch, it’s an independent organization that designates different regions that are going through violence and puts this label on them. It’s a horrific one. It’s one that everyone is denying right now, of genocide. Yemen was going through a genocide for eight years, a US-backed one, a Western-backed one, and that did not stop them from fighting for sovereignty, for independence, defending themselves.
So what the US is doing now is something that Yemen, unfortunately, is used to. It’s not new. It didn’t start in 2015, either. There has been a long history of US-backed interventions on Yemen. So the people of Yemen will stand firm. They will stand firm in solidarity with the people of Gaza who are going through their own genocide right now, and they will continue to defend their country.
Like I said before, there’s no boots on the ground in Yemen. Because of the geography in Yemen, you will not find, even Saudi… Emiratis are in the south, but it’s very rigorous, it’s very rugged. It’s not a place where you’ll see Western-trained soldiers even trying to enter. So the people of Yemen will continue to stand in solidarity with Palestinians.
But Biden has really… He has really… Let me think about what I’m going to say. Biden has taken a stance with genocide. Everyone is calling him, Americans here are calling him Genocidal Joe, and they are committing to abandoning him in 2024. They will not vote for him.
His own party, lawmakers in his own party have expressed grave concern for his unilateral decision to launch airstrikes on Yemen. So instead of calling for a ceasefire, instead of standing down and stopping sending arms to Netanyahu, the Biden administration has just moved forward with militarization as the only answer to what’s happening in the Middle East, as opposed to just ending arms sales, and let’s call for a ceasefire.
So the American people know where he stands, and they’re not going to forget. Because I’ve been asked this before, people are going to forget in 2024 at the ballot. They’re not going to forget. And you know what? The Palestinian people, they will not let us forget.
We’re seeing every single day, starving children, amputated bodies. It’s coming to the point where it feels like an apocalypse that’s happening. And it’s the American people that are paying taxes, they don’t want this to continue in their name.
So myself and my community, in all of our network, we are abandoning Biden in 2024. So if he thinks that we’re going to forget Genocidal Joe, we all pray, and we’ll work very hard to fight for him to not win another term.
Ju-Hyun Park: Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s been so many voices coming out from across the progressive spectrum against the really monstrous role that the Biden administration is playing in this genocide. It’s been over 100 days now, and of course, Israel has bombed Gaza before. We can make a very strong case for a longstanding policy of anti-Palestinian genocide by the Israeli state.
But what we’re seeing right now is so severe. There’s so much death that’s been compacted into such a short period of time. It’s happening right in front of us, and there’s no possibility of denying it. And yet, we’re continuing to see this administration stand by the same flimsy talking points that other administrations would have used in the past to defend no less horrific but much shorter and more contained outbursts of violence from Israel. Whereas this is just several orders of magnitude much more intense.
So that contradiction is really coming to the fore here. And I appreciate you talking about the impact that it’ll have on our domestic politics since this is definitely something that Democrats, really anyone interested in the future of humanity, cannot afford to ignore, coming into this election year in particular.
Before we start to wind things down, I’m wondering if we can try to look ahead a little bit. I know that you don’t have a crystal ball and you’re not able to make exact predictions, but the Biden administration has stated that they’re engaged in an open-ended operation, a military campaign that doesn’t have a clear end goal or a clear end date.
The Ansar Allah has also said that they’re not going to back down. When they were re-designated a terrorist organization, I believe there was a motion passed in the Yemeni Parliament which named the United States and several other Western countries, and Israel as well, as the greatest terrorist force on Earth. So it’s clear that they’re not going to back down from their position either.
We seem to be looking at a situation where neither party is willing to back down. Where do you see this leading, potentially, and what could be some of the different pathways or consequences we might see?
Jehan Hakim: I forgot to mention something earlier, if I may, about designating the Houthis as terrorists. If I can answer that and then answer this one next? Okay.
When Trump left office, he designated the Houthis as FTOs, foreign terrorist organization. And when Biden took office, he revoked that. And what we’re seeing right now is the Biden administration backpedaling, so reconsidering or actually re-implementing this horrific…
We’re calling it a crime, because what calling the Houthis or Ansar Allah a terrorist organization does is it’s a war tactic, to not only continue to demonize Yemenis and violate their sovereignty, but it’s also a tool to weaponize aid against Yemenis civilians, using hunger as a weapon.
And like I said previously, over 70 to 80% of Yemenis rely on aid. So the Biden administration is effectively saying, if the Houthis or Ansar Allah will not stop being allies with the Palestinian people, then we are going to starve Yemenis to death. And obviously these are all violations of international human rights laws. So that’s that.
Looking forward, it looks grim. Because the people of Yemen have every right to defend themselves and to withhold who passes through Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Obviously, the people of Yemen don’t own the entire Red Sea. They have this tiny strip that they have control over. So they have a right to do that.
If there is an entity or a country or a government or a group that is not paying their taxes, they will not be able to go through. So they have a right to say, Israel, you cannot come through here — Or the US and the UK as well, because now they’ve launched airstrikes on Yemen. So the people of Yemen have a right to say Israeli-owned ships, American-owned ships and UK-owned ships cannot come through Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
So the US should be at a turning point. They should demilitarize and step back from using violence as a foreign policy tactic. And what we can do as Americans, obviously we can continue to raise awareness, we can protest, but also there is a War Powers Act that was put in place in 1973 in order to check the power of the administration. So no president has the power to authorize war, only Congress does.
And actually, the Yemeni Alliance Committee and our partners have been working to press Democratic lawmakers who have expressed concern over Biden’s moves or actions on Yemen to introduce a War Powers Resolution in order to halt bombing of Yemen. And also this particular legislative vehicle is also being used for Gaza as well.
So we do have a little bit of wiggle room in order to… At the end of the day, we live in a democracy, or so they say. So we’ll try to use our different mechanisms that we have and try to push or hold Biden’s feet to the fire. This is not okay. And then I think Biden has a little bit more time before he’s out of office.
So, it’s sad. I know a lot of people will die. And I think, to answer your question, the dark side of it, there’s going to be a lot of human loss on both sides for Palestine and for Yemen. But I really call progressives and people that can feel the people of Palestine and Yemenis to join our call to action, to push the administration, or push our lawmakers to pressure the administration to end US support for the bombing on Yemen, end US support for the backing of Israel.
Ju-Hyun Park: I’m so glad that you are bringing us to this particular juncture, that this isn’t just something for us to passively observe or to learn about in a bookish way. This is an ongoing crisis that’s happening in the world. It’s a devastating crime against millions of people who have already been subjected to some of the worst violence that we’ve seen on the face of this planet in the last couple of decades. So this is a really urgent, political, moral, every other kind of issue.
And there’s no neutrality here. There’s no, this isn’t my problem sort of deal, particularly if we’re living in the United States where it’s the tax dollars that are taken from our incomes that are going to fund all of this destruction and death.
I’m wondering if you can provide a little bit more of a roadmap in terms of how someone who maybe is just getting introduced to this might get involved. Are there any resources you would recommend for further learning? Are there particular organizations that you would recommend people find ways to plug in with, or campaigns to support?
Jehan Hakim: Yeah. We actually have a toolkit, the Yemeni Alliance Community created a toolkit that has a call script, it has articles, it has talking points, it has everything you need to get up to speed on what’s been happening in Yemen.
And like you said, nobody wants their tax dollars being taken out of education, out of transportation, out of healthcare in order to fund violence abroad. Sometimes we’re so disconnected from what’s happening abroad that we don’t realize that that is sustained by our tax dollars. And I think now a lot of American people know that our tax dollars are funding genocides, not just in Yemen and Palestine. There are a lot of other countries that have been dealing and facing and grappling with violence that is US-sponsored.
So if you follow us on Instagram or Twitter, we have, in our bio, a toolkit that can help you become an advocate. And you can do it from the comfort of your own home, call your legislators, use your social media platform in order to raise awareness.
It does start there, and I think the people of Palestine have shown us their struggles in a very public way, and we can elevate and amplify their voices, as we should for the people of Yemen. And then from there, you can use everything you’ve learned to be an anti-war advocate.
Ju-Hyun Park: All right. So everyone listening, you have your homework. We will include the link to that toolkit in our show notes.
Jehan, before we close out today, how can our readers and listeners keep up with you and the Yemeni Alliance Committee?
Jehan Hakim: Sure. Please follow us on Instagram and Twitter. It’s @yemenialliancecommittee. Thank you.
Ju-Hyun Park: Awesome. Thank you so much.
This has been Ju-Hyun Park from The Real News. Thank you so much for listening and for reading.
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