Conflicted S4 E23: Yemen: From Civil War to World War?

Speakers: Thomas Small, Aimen Dean, & Baraa Shiban

Thomas: Hello and welcome back to Conflicted with, well, you know the drill; me, Thomas Small, my co-host, Aimen Dean. And for the final time, our great friend, the Yemeni political activist, Baraa Shiban. Hello, Baraa. Hello, Aimen.

Aimen: I'm still alive, by the way.

Thomas: Still alive.

Baraa: Glad to see you're still alive, Aimen.

Thomas: Baraa, you're barely alive after all of the talking we've forced you to do. Baraa, this is your last episode with us. We're so sad to see you go.

Baraa: Well, hopefully we're going to have more opportunities in the future. 

Thomas: I hope so. Although that would require Yemen to be in a state of disarray for the …

We are together again here in our studio in London to bring you the final episode of our colossal exploration of the history of Yemen. And sadly, this also brings us to the close of the current series of Conflicted. It's been quite the ride.

We've taken you through all the historical antecedents to modern Salafi Jihadism from Ahmad Bin Hanbal in the eighth century to Sayyid Qutb in the 1960s. We've looked at the Muslim Brotherhood, President Erdogan of Turkey, Iran, and their proxies across the region like Hezbollah.

And as we record this, the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza continues. It's something which has really shined a light on so many of the themes and ideas that we've talked about this series.

Those motivations behind Salafi jihadism and Shia jihadism that we discussed are now being played out in real time with truly tragic consequences, don't you think, Aimen?

Aimen: Indeed. What we are seeing right now in Gaza and the war between Hamas and Israel is impacting the rest of the Middle East in a way that I never thought is going to be possible. But nonetheless, it is happening and unfolding before our own eyes.

Thomas: We'll be returning to this discussion at the end of this episode, but now it is time to race to the end of our series on Yemen.

[Music Playing]

Operation Decisive Storm has seen the intervention of Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies into the civil war that was already tearing Yemen apart. Let's jump right in.

Now Aimen, you've been pretty quiet the last few episodes, allowing Baraa the space he needed to tell his amazing story. But I think in this episode we're going to hear a little bit more from you. And you have been keeping your eye on events in Yemen for a long time. I mean, really from the very beginning of the war there.

Aimen: Absolutely. I mean, for me, I still chasing a BBC journalist, Frank Gardner.

Thomas: Frank Gardner, the famous journalist who sadly was paralyzed when he was the victim of an Al-Qaeda attack in Saudi Arabia.

Aimen: Indeed. So, he and I, we were having lots of shots in the run up to the Yemen conflict, and especially just before the intervention by Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab Coalition in Yemen.

12 hours before the whole thing started, before the intervention started, I sent him my text saying, “Heads up, it's about to start just this evening.” So, he said to me, “Aimen, if you are right, I'm going to buy you a cheesecake.” I was right, but I never saw that cheesecake ever.

Thomas: Frank Gardner, if you're listening to this, you owe Aimen Dean a piece of cheesecake.

Aimen: Well, with interest now. It's a big chunk of cheesecake.

Thomas: A whole cheesecake.

Thomas: Well, dear listener we left our story of Yemen history in the last episode with the launch of Operation Decisive Storm. That was in March 2015. So, what are we talking about? That's eight and a half years ago.

It's incredible to think that eight and a half years, I remember it quite clearly, like it was just the other day. Baraa, can you believe it's been eight and a half years?

Baraa: Not at all. I mean, I still remember the details of what happened in 2015, what happened 2016 each and every year. And actually, when I talk about them, I feel like it was just yesterday.

Thomas: I would like to just immediately reassure the listener that though Baraa can remember all of those details, we will not be going into all of those details in this episode.

This episode will be a bit different from the episodes that have come before. It's going to be more conversational. It's going to involve more analysis than straightforward narrative.

But still to get an overview, Operation Decisive Storm launched in March 2015 when a Saudi led coalition of Arab states entered the civil war to counter the Houthis. And their allies who had seized control of the Yemeni government, had conquered the North and were threatening to conquer the important city of Aden.

Having already taken the geo strategically important stronghold of the Bab-el-Mandeb, they were controlling that strait of water through which so much of the world's shipping passes.

Operation Decisive Storm was initially largely an air support kind of operation. The Saudis and their allies provided air support of Yemeni forces on the ground, resisting the Houthis, and those troops loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh that had allied with the Houthis.

But eventually, that air support was joined with ground support, special forces from the Emirates, I think especially played a big role in that summer's battle for Aden, which was really an incredible proper warfare, which resulted in the coalition recapturing Aden from the Houthis and pushing them up back into the mountains in the direction of Taiz while securing and liberating the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

So, immediately in the war, there was this sense of success. The Arab Coalition was making some great steps towards liberating the country from the Houthis.

From that point on, it became a little bit more chequered, a lot of stalemating, some pretty ferocious fighting in and around the city of Taiz in the middle of the country, in and around the city of Marib in the kind of northeast, kind of bit of the middle of the country, where the country enters the desert, which is where the vital oil installations in the country are.

The Arab Coalition land forces waxed and waned. There was a quite a surprise invasion by land over on the kind of Jazan side. At one point the Saudis crossed over by land, didn't really work. They were pushed back.

So, that first phase of the war ended in a sort of stalemate. And those of us in the West kind of remember that phase of the war as a growing outcry against the Arab Coalition because of the way in which the air campaign was resulting in civilian casualties, which would be very helpful to the Houthis.

Baraa: Indeed, they were very helpful because the Houthis actually benefited from the ongoing campaign, mainly done by INGOs, left-wing activists in Western capitals to basically call out the Saudis, mainly trying to mount pressure specifically on Saudi Arabia, not on Iran, not on the Houthis, not on Saleh, just on Saudi Arabia saying basically that the U.S. and the UK are aiding and abetting Saudi Arabia and its campaign against Yemenis.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: And there were civilian casualties.

Aimen: There were civilian casualties. But let me interfere here. And I would like to state something. Anyone who asks for a clean war is naive. There is no such thing as clean war. The motto that every human should live with is never start wars, but my God, you must finish them.

Thomas: Well, that is the story of this episode to some extent, because the war in Yemen was never able to end. And it still hasn't ended.

But staying on the initial air campaign, I mean, strategically, I think Baraa, you think that to some extent the Arab Coalition didn't focus their energies correctly. They could have supported the Yemeni troops, the loyal pro-President Hadi troops better.

Baraa: So, I think two things to focus here. The first thing is, I agree with Aimen. There is nothing as a clean war.

But however, and I know the details of the battles in Yemen. In all of the ground operation, that actually the coalition focused their efforts on the ground operations, the level and the number of civilian casualties was to the minimum compared to that broad air campaign that was just waging, especially in the 2015, intensifying in 2016, and did witness a lot of civilian casualties.

In that sense, I felt what was supposed to happen was to basically prop up the military institution. And even if that means building it from scratch, but that's far less expensive and on the long run, even more productive than waging just a merely air campaign.

Aimen: Exactly. But you see, even, I agree with you that air campaigns never actually succeeded in dislodging any militant group from power. I mean, look at Taliban, look at the Houthis themselves, even Hamas, everyone agrees that a militant organisation cannot be just dislodged from a territory they control just by air campaign.

Another thing about civilian casualties, I want to draw the listeners' attention to is faulty intelligence. And this is something I know a lot about. Baraa, do you remember the bus massacre in September 2018?

Baraa: Yes, I do. I remember it very well.

Aimen: Yeah. The Saudi Air Force came and bombed a school bus. 40 children were killed in one go and many wounded. So, this is now where for the first time ever I can reveal what really happened.

So, on the authority of a source within some Saudi decision-making process, it was the result of faulty intelligence. So, they had a source who helped them before, from within the Houthi circles, target senior Houthi members.

So, the first information, perfect, second information, perfect, third information, perfect. And then it was quiet for a while. And then he sent the fourth information. The fourth piece of information here is that this bus will be carrying senior Houthi leaders to a meeting.

And so, they did, however, it was full of children, and they never heard from that source again, only to find him dead later. The reality is that he was compromised, and the Houthis told him to send the wrong information.

Thomas: Such a great story, Aimen. I mean, again, there's a voice in me that's always like, how do we know that the Saudi dude just didn't tell you that, I don't know, because now we're saying the Houthis killed those children.

Aimen: There is something important you have to understand about the Iranian nexus. It's called mashrue shahid-

Thomas: The project of martyrdom.

Aimen: Yeah, yeah. It's called the project of martyrdom. Martyrdom project is something that it is famous, it is well used, the equivalent of false flag, where they would deliberately let the enemy target their own civilians in order to create the outrage that could maybe stop the war or stop the ammunitions going to the other side.

That would put so much pressure on the other side, that could bring the war to an end. So, they see it as a good return on investment. It's called mashrue shahid and it’s very well-known tactic by Iran.

Thomas: Yeah, tactically, of course that makes a lot of sense. I mean, Baraa, what do you think?

Baraa: Well, I mean, I think this resonates with some of the journalists that actually I knew who were captured by the Houthis in 2015. Some of them, even 2016, the Houthis placed them in weapon depots. They know that the Saudis would bomb those weapon depots.

But actually, for the public in Yemen, who killed them? It's the coalition. It's the Saudis. It's those evil Saudis who don't care about the lives of Yemenis. And I know about the story of two journalists who I knew from 2011 during the revolution, who were placed in a weapon depot. And the Saudi Air Force came and bombed them. Ma

Thomas: Mashrue shahid.

Aimen: Mashrue shahid. And one of the biggest mashrue shahid to be the beginning of the whole process was the cinema that was banned during the uprising against the Shah.

Thomas: Yeah, we talked about it last season in our episodes on the Iranian Revolution. I also meant to remind the listener that in the first season of Conflicted, Aimen and I did an episode on the Yemen war from the geostrategic and geopolitical perspective, mainly the Saudi security perspective.

So, we're not going to talk about that now, really, honestly. You just got to go listen to it if you haven't, then you'll understand Saudi's concerns about its water security and desalination plants, and how threatening it was for the Houthis to get a hold of ab Ali Abdullah Saleh's arsenal of scud missiles and other long-distance missiles.

Now, to go back to the question of how the Arab Coalition campaign was organised, you say there should have been more support of the Yemeni factions on the ground, but it must also be admitted Baraa, that just as had been the case before, and which in the previous episode we called that culture of mistrust, the Yemeni forces opposed to the Houthi Saleh takeover of Yemen were not unified.

Baraa: That's true. Because it was composed of people like Ali Mohsen coming back to the scene.

Thomas: Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the great military strong man. Yeah.

Baraa: So, they have those military officers who can actually reestablish military units and military camps in the north of Yemen. It's also composed of secessionists.

Thomas: Southern movement secessionists, so people who don't even want to be a part of North Yemen.

Baraa: Exactly. But they are kind of mixed now in the midst of conflict. It's also composed of members of Islah party who are feeling very much threatened by the Houthis, but now they're aligning themselves strongly with Saudi Arabia. And a new player is the Salafis. You remember that Dammaj school?

Thomas: Yeah. The Dammaj school that the Houthis destroyed, that alerted everyone to the ongoing onslaught.

Baraa: So, many of the students from the Dammaj school start to become military men working alongside the coalition. So, you have the emerge of Salafis-

Thomas: Salafi jihadists in a way, I guess.

Baraa: In a way you could say.

Aimen: Yeah. But they are royalists’ jihadists.

Thomas: Oh, so there's jihadists after your own heart, Aimen.

Aimen: Exactly. They are not al-Qaeda basically. They are jihadists on behalf of the nation state, which basically fills my heart with joy.

Thomas: So, there's a culture of mistrust on the ground amongst the anti-Houthi forces. But there is a growing culture of mistrust in the GCC as well. So, the Emiratis are allying themselves more and more with the southern movement fighters.

The Saudis, as you've pointed out, are allying themselves more and more with Islah party sort of members and their fighting groups and Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and things like that. So, the GCC Arab Coalition wasn't unified either.

Baraa: Not at all. And actually, it culminated when the United Arab Emirates in 2017 funded the creation of the Southern Transitional Council. This is solely a paramilitary group. Their sole mission is to secede from the south, although officially, the Emirati is part of this coalition that is supposed to be backing the internationally recognized government.

And I think this is where I find sometimes challenging and tough arguments with Western diplomats and officials and policy makers, is they say like, “The Yemenis are not unified, in every conflict there's always trade-offs.” You don't have this clean, perfect politician who's going to do everything.

You have to trade off. And if the prize is we're going to reinstate the government of Yemen, then you are going to trade off working with some of the people until you bring things into order, a little bit into order.

Even if that means ditching aside now the secessionist group or some of those militant groups who are actually posing a threat on the main prize, which is reinstating the state of Yemen.

Thomas: So, Aimen, give us a top line explanation of why the GCC is disunited over Yemen in this way.

Aimen: Well, it's not so much as being disunited. It is the difference of opinions between mainly the UAE and Saudi Arabia over the future of Yemen. From the UAE's point of view, the Muslim Brotherhood cannot be trusted.

Yet the Saudis also understand that without the Muslim Brotherhood or Islah generally in Yemen, you can't win against the Houthis. I mean, and this is like-

Thomas: Which is being proved in Marib where the Islahis have fought extremely valiantly.

Aimen: Exactly. But also, it proves the other thing that without al-Amaliqa, the brigade of the STC, the Southern Transitional Council.

Baraa: Mainly Salafis, your friends.

Aimen: And they're mainly Salafis, but they are the Emirati Salafis.

Thomas: Lord have mercy.

Aimen: Yeah. They are Emirati funded Salafis. They also proved to be crucial in the defence of Marib. So, these two actually joined hands together for the defence of Marib. And Marib, in my opinion, is one of the biggest success stories of the coalition.

It grew from a city of 300,000 before the war into a city of 2 million people after the war. Is very well lit, very well supplied. Nice hospitals, nice schools, nice roads, good infrastructure, good administration.

Thomas: I think I might move there actually. It sounds great, compared to England. So, dear listener, you're getting a sense already of how the situation of the war in Yemen is more complicated than you might have gathered.

Now, when we're talking about mistrust between different actors, I think it's important to point out that quite early on, especially in 2017, mistrust grew between the Houthis and Ali Abdullah Saleh, who by backing them in the beginning, had empowered them to take over the country.

So, there was a split there culminating with Ali Abdullah Saleh’s assassination by the Houthis in December of 2017. Two questions Baraa, first, why did the Houthis and Ali Abdullah Saleh fall apart?

Baraa: The thing is because the Houthis eventually started to take on GPC members and trying to occupy the government positions that were basically before that governed by GPC members.

The reality is the state structure in North Yemen was kind of held with the remnants of the GPC. Now, the Houthis were introducing a kind of a new weird system.

Thomas: Which we'll describe a bit later.

Baraa: A bit later. But that kind of meant sometimes killing or assassinating some loyalists of Saleh. And Ali Abdullah Saleh was feeling threatened and saying like, “Okay, I'm losing my aids, I'm losing those officers and military officers who are close to me because of the Houthis.” And the division started to grow until December 2017.

Thomas: I think we need to spare a moment really to think about poor Ali Abdullah Saleh. Because if you remember dear listener, his great plan, I'll back the Houthis, they'll take over half of the country, then the Saudis will have no choice but to back me, to throw them off and put me back in power.

And the Minister of Defence then, eventually Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent his son packing and decided instead to join his rival President Hadi to defeat the Houthis.

And then Saleh watches as the Houthis whom he'd empowered, had rather ingeniously taken over the state themselves, dislodging his loyalists from their positions of power. And he met a grizzly end at the wrong side of a missile. Is that right? A rocket?

Aimen: No, no, no, no. It's a bullet to the head.

Baraa: It’s a bullet.

Thomas: A bullet to the head. I thought his house had been bombed.

Baraa: No.

Aimen: No. A bullet to the head. It was a execution style. It was a mafia like, and you know what, this is the moment the Houthis celebrated because finally they got the revenge for Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi.

Thomas: Yes. What a story. Because Saleh had fought them in war after war after war and had assassinated their great martyr.

But Baraa, when you heard that Ali Abdullah Saleh had been killed execution style by the Houthis, what did you feel? I mean, he was the president of Yemen for so long, your enemy, but also your kind of great father figure at the top of Yemeni society.

Baraa: To surprise, despite the protest and despite going out in a revolution and mobilising against him, we mourned him. I was devastated. And I remember I called my fellow revolutionists and activists and politicians, and everyone was in this mourning grieving phase.

And literally we cried. We couldn't believe that actually he was killed. I still, until today, unable to define why were we in this grieving phase.

Aimen: Don't forget that the relationship between Europeans and their leaders is very different from the relations between people in the Middle East and their leaders. Is far more emotional and far more attached.

Thomas: Yeah, clearly.

Aimen: And if, for example, many people who hate Saddam, yet when he died, they mourned him even though he was an evil tyrant by every possible measure. And yet many people mourned him.

Thomas: It's true.

Aimen: And still do.

Thomas: Well, I wonder if anyone will mourn Abdul Malik al-Houthi when he eventually meets his end, grizzly or not. Because now that the Houthis had finally saw the end of Ali Abdullah Saleh, they were firmly in control of most of North Yemen, obviously resisting an Arab coalition attempt to dislodge them.

But more and more they were, as you said, erecting a new form of state to govern and dominate North Yemen. Describe the way in which the Houthis run that part of Yemen that they control.

Baraa: The Houthis run something similar to either a cartel system or a mafia style state. It's called the supervisors system. And what basically it does, they bring their own members to be supervisors on either neighbourhoods or blocks, or even government institutions.

So, even if you would have, let's say a police chief or a police officer in charge of a police station, he doesn't matter. Who's actually in charge is the supervisor. Now the supervisor, this is a chaotic complex web of networks between supervisors and their main sole duty towards the Houthis movement is to A, recruit. They have to be actively engaged in recruitment.

Thomas: And how do they carry out recruitment? What do they target?

Baraa: So, let's say if you are in a neighbourhood and there is a school, you try as much as possible to recruit children from schools or from mosques or from universities. Try and bring as much recruits as you can.

Thomas: Why are the young people always lambs to the slaughter, Baraa?

Baraa: Because they're easy to radicalise from a young age. And that's the second thing, which is the Houthis engage in something called cultural courses. This is indoctrination campaigns to recruit basically new fighters for the movement.

All of it is in the aim of this great cause, fighting for the movement. And indoctrination campaigns happen at a massive scale. Today in Houthi run territory, every Wednesday, all governments institutions are shut down to listen to Abdul Malik al-Houthi speaking, trying to indoctrinate the masses, the public to join the movement.

Thomas: Sounds very entertaining.

Aimen: Actually, I remember that when I was having a conversation with a left-wing activist here in London, and they keep telling, “The war must end, there's so much suffering.”

And then I show them videos of young people who couldn't be older than 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, fighting and dying for the Houthis. And I remember I saw one of them, 14-year-old, and they gave him the rank of a colonel. They give them the rank of a colonel. You are a colonel.

Baraa: And you say that, Aimen. I mean, I know two children from my street in Sana’a, who actually, the Houthis kind of blackmailed the family in order to give them humanitarian aid, which is supposed to be coming to Yemen by the UN.

But because the heavy and restrictive control they have on every aspect of life, if you want to get humanitarian aid, you need to send your children with us. At the beginning, they promised them, he's just going to sit at the checkpoint in Sana’a. We're not going to send them to the battlefronts. But in thousands they come back in coffins back to their families.

Thomas: That’s terrible.

Aimen: Yeah. It's estimated that more than 4,000 people under the age of 16 died in the battlefields of Yemen under the Houthis supervision.

Baraa: And I would urge even the listener to go and search an Associated Press piece that actually a Houthi leader, actually it's Abdul Malik al-Houthi's brother, admitting that they have recruited at least 18,000 children to their militant ranks.

Aimen: And yet those two activists I was talking to in London, and I tried to convince them that this is an evil organisation, their reply because of their left-wing blind bias, they said, “But this is because of what the Saudis did. If the Saudis did intervene in this war, then they wouldn't have recruited children.”

And I said to them, “You idiots. Hezbollah recruit children. Iran recruited children, everywhere recruit. It doesn't matter.”

Thomas: The Houthis recruited children from the very beginning because even in the wars against Saleh, there were accusations at least that there were child soldiers involved on the Houthi side.

Baraa: Exactly. And that comes to the third task that the Houthi supervisor does.

Thomas: Yeah, so the supervisor, it's indoctrination, it's recruitment in the third task.

Baraa: Revenues. The Houthis blackmail and literally it’s shakedown. So basically, if you compare the taxation that is happening in North Yemen, it's five to six times double what they used to pay back in the days when the Yemeni government was in charge.

And it's literally blackmail and shakedown. If you don't, you'll be imprisoned. If you are owner of a small business, even a grocery shop, you have to daily find ways that you can keep funding those supervisors.

Thomas: Why don't the Yemenis rise up and get rid of these supervisors, or at least like kill them if they see them walking down the street.

Baraa: Because the other thing is the strict control that the Houthis have on the possibility of a revolt or even the public starting to mass or gather against them. What they also have is something called the watchers.

Thomas: The watchers. So, they have the supervisors and the watchers.

Baraa: Exactly. The watchers are people who actually, they deploy in large numbers in neighbourhoods, in streets, in mosques, in schools. And their role is to listen and record everything that is said about the Houthis.

Any people who are feeling dissatisfaction, complaining, and they start recording. So basically, it created this environment of everyone is afraid, really afraid.

Aimen: This entire structure of the taxes, of the supervision, and of the intelligence gathering is a textbook Iranian regime style of governing Iran.

Thomas: So, are you saying that the Iranian regime itself is as oppressive as the Houthis or Hezbollah? I mean, it does seem that the Houthis are running an even more totalitarian show there.

Aimen: I mean, because they are at war, but nonetheless, they are running exactly the same textbook. Because even Hezbollah in the southern suburbs and the other areas where they control Baalbek and Al-Biqa Valley, they deploy the same level of policing the thoughts and actions and statements of the people under their control.

Thomas: But Baraa, what about this? Some people would say, yeah, but it is still Yemen. So, Yemen has always been run by oppressive state structures. It's never been like a liberal society. So, what's so different?

Baraa: So, I think this is quite a naive way of putting it, because I do hear these discussions a lot with my liberal friends here in London is, but this is how Yemen is. There is no appreciation of, actually Yemen had a possibility of actually becoming a proper functioning state. There was a level of state institutions.

I used to be going to police stations when there is, let's say a journalist who are being apprehended or arrested, and I can give him a lawyer. We go to court, we actually challenge, there is avenues to challenge this status apparatus.

Aimen: There was a due process basically.

Baraa: Exactly.

Aimen: And now there is no due process.

Baraa: What I'm saying is people think about Yemenis like Bashar al-Assad. They think about those oppressive style of governing. This is not the situation in Yemen.

So, what we were thinking, people were not satisfied because they wanted to be more a plural system, a more opening, a more liberal political environment that governs. So, the simplistic narrative about Yemen has always been there. It's nonsense.

Thomas: Yeah, I mean, that of course is often the case when you hear usually Western descriptions of Middle East political economies. I think there's a sort of sweeping assumption that all those countries are just corrupt, authoritarian dictatorships, basically.

So, they paint them all with one brush and then you don't really understand what's going on. We're going to take a quick break here and keep helping the dear listener to understand what's going on in Yemen, indeed up to the present day, and to see how what's going on in Yemen is linked to what's going on in the Gaza Strip. Stay tuned.

[Music Playing]

We're back. We are rushing to the end of our five-part series on the modern history of Yemen. We're talking about the civil war itself. In 2018, the port city, the vital port city of Hudaydah.

This is on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. And it was very much understood that it was via the Port of Hudaydah that the Houthis were receiving reinforcements in terms of weapons, in terms of cash, in terms of other material from Iran and other allies.

So, retaking the Port of Hudaydah, the city of Hudaydah, was a big Arab coalition goal. And to achieve that goal, they actually used some of those Saleh backed troops who had allied with the Houthis at the beginning of the war. But who after Saleh's assassination at the hands of the Houthis at the end of 2017, decided to defect to the Arab coalition side.

So, the great Hudaydah offensive of 2018 involved land forces commanded by family members of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Naval forces belonging to the Arab Coalition being provided air support by the Air Coalition. And they were really making great progress. They were on the verge of conquering Hudaydah.

Baraa: So, it's called the Joint Forces. It's basically composed of Saleh’s nephew forces who you just explained, and al-Amaliqa, those Salafi brigades funded by the UAE and a local force from Hudaydah called the Tihamah Brigades.

And they kind of combined together and launched a very successful operation. Very quick, very smooth. They actually entered the city of Hudaydah until the international community, mainly led by UN agencies, the UN envoy Yemen at that time, Martin Griffiths and several humanitarian missions put immense, huge, huge pressure on the Arab Coalition, on the Yemeni government to stop the operation.

And broker that they said they're going to broker a deal, and they frame it as because they need to salvage their humanitarian mission in Yemen.

Thomas: This had happened 18 months or so before, after the city of Marib had been successfully liberated or defended from the Houthis and the land forces of the coalition and the local allies were about to push their way up into the mountains, towards Sana’a, possibly to liberate it.

The same sort of thing happened. At that point, the international community came together, said, let's have a ceasefire. Let's have a moratorium on the bombing campaign. Let's protect the civilians. Let's get humanitarian aid.

But in a way, I mean, Aimen, Baraa, this sort of humanitarian global kind of intervention in a war like Yemen makes things worse.

Aimen: Oh, yes.

Thomas: It actually stopped the vital port city of Hudaydah from being conquered for the coalition, which would have prevented the Houthis from getting all of its arms and money from Iran. So, Aimen, why would the international community do this?

Aimen: So, in a sense, the situation here is that the UN gave the nonsensical reason that, “Oh, we don't want Hudaydah to fall, because if it falls, it'll disrupt our aid to the areas under the control of the Houthis.”

Well, excuse me, it doesn't matter changing hands, it wouldn't disrupt anything. In fact, if it is controlled by the coalition, then that will make your operations even more smooth.

Thomas: Especially since the Houthis, it is known they confiscate UN aid and other aid in order to use it to control the Yemenis under their power.

Aimen: And that is where I come to the big C word.

Thomas: Oh my God, don't say it-

Aimen: Corruption.

Thomas: This is a family podcast. Oh, corruption.

Aimen: Corruption. Corruption on two sides here. Corruption on the side of UN managers and staff in Hudaydah, who were making lots of money from selling a lot of that aid to the Houthis.

Thomas: This reminds me of the corruption that you described in the American military fraternity over Afghanistan. It's very similar, if you make money from selling guns to people prosecuting a war, why would you want that war to end?

Aimen: Exactly. So, that's the first part of the corruption. The second part of the corruption is that there are people who were lobbying the UN so hard, pretending to be humanitarians, and pretending to be trying to get the war to stop when in fact they are paid by who? By weapon manufacturers in the West.

Thomas: They're like lobbyists, basically.

Aimen: They're lobbyists who wanted the war to continue, not to end. Because if Hudaydah is taken, then what's going to happen? The Houthis will be starved of their supplies, and it's only a matter of time before they surrender.

Thomas: What's worse about that corruption is that there has been a genuine peace process, an ongoing attempt by all of the parties to come to some political solution to the problem.

I mean, it has resulted in many ceasefires, I think altogether like 18 months since the war broke out, there have been ceasefires and there have been some like formally written agreements. In Stockholm, there was one.

There has been a peace process. That peace process is not aided by this kind of international skullduggery.

Baraa: Well, if you see into all of the UN humanitarian missions that came into Yemen, so compare it starting 2000 and let's say 15 and ‘16, they did the pledging, they wanted 1 billion, and then it increased to 2 billion. In 2018, it was 3 billion. And in 2019, they were requesting 4 billion.

So, you can imagine, it's basically shows that actually your humanitarian mission is not lifting the suffering because the demand and the suffering of the Yemeni people is increasing by every year. This is one important thing.

Thomas: That's very interesting. Yeah.

Baraa: Another important thing, which I come back to what I said, it's always trade-offs. You don't need to fall in love with all of those political factions in Yemen, but actually, if you want to work towards salvaging the Yemeni state, then you work with those actors just to push it a little bit into the right direction.

And the problem I think with a lot of INGOs is how they view Yemen. Yemen, in the entire region actually is not viewed as a place where a prosperous future or prosperous state can actually exist.

It's actually when we feel bad, we have liberal guilt. We need to send humanitarian aid, let's send them more humanitarian aid, let's send them-

Thomas: Treat them like beggars, treat them like-

Baraa: Yeah. Food packages. And actually, what those people actually want is state institutions.

Thomas: Good governance.

Baraa: And good governance.

Thomas: Give us some good governance.

Baraa: Exactly. And we have, especially in Western countries, we are in the process of ditching states in order to salvage humanitarian missions. A very crazy notion of an approach.

Aimen: Exactly. That's exactly the problem. It is encouraging the proliferation of non-state actors.

Baraa: Exactly. And for me, I haven't been a fan of any militants, even when people talk about the Kurds in Syria, the idea is that you're ditching states and the ultimate prize should always been the reinstating and helping the Yemenis to govern, to reinstate the institutions that can deliver to the people, not to give them handouts.

Aimen: And that's why you will see that there is a lot of institutions in the West dedicated towards humanitarian efforts, but far less dedicated to nation building.

Baraa: And not only that, if you see all of the humanitarian mission into Yemen, it's basically giving more and more handouts. They know some of it'll be controlled by the Houthis, it'll be manipulated, it would be stolen, but that doesn't matter as long as this cycle, this vicious cycle is going.

And if you compare into the areas that, as you mentioned, Marib as one of them, let me put a quick example about how the current status in Yemen. You have Marib, you have Hadhramaut — Shabwa and you have Mahrah. The situation there is stable, there is a level of governance.

Yes, there are problems. It's not perfect. But if you want to go to a school and you're a child, you go to those areas. If you want to go to university, you go to those areas. If you want electricity, if you want water, if you want food and you want a paying job, basically, you are far more likely going to get job opportunities in those places.

What do those places have that the rest, especially Aden and Sana’a doesn't have?

Aimen: Good governance.

Baraa: A level of governance, just not even like that perfect. A level of governance. While Sana’a and Aden have militants. The non-state actors, they kind of invest into having this chaos ongoing. They benefit from the presence of chaos. And I think this is what UN missions have forgot when they deal with the Houthis.

Aimen: You know what Littlefinger said in the Game of Thrones, “Chaos is a ladder.”

Thomas: Well, I'm pretty cynical. I just wonder what the pay packets are like for those people who oversee all the NGOs, frankly.

Aimen: Yeah, exactly. And the corruption.

Thomas: Because chaos is good for them as well. Now talking about peace processes, Aimen. Earlier this year, quite spectacularly, it was announced that Saudi Arabia and Iran had reached a new peace deal brokered by, of all people China, which everyone thought at that time meant that the war in Yemen, moves will finally be able to be taken to end that war because Saudi and Iran were renegotiating their relations in the region.

Tell us about how it is that China negotiated peace between Saudi and Iran and what that was intended to do for Yemen before seeing what happened to that peace deal.

Aimen: First of all, we have to understand that China doesn't do anything out of the goodness of its heart. I knew that something was afoot even as early as January and February of 2019. The Chinese had started to put their eye on a very important port in Saudi Arabia.

Thomas: This is the Port of Jazan.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: In this extreme southwest corner of Saudi Arabia.

Aimen: Yeah. Just about 24 miles from the Yemeni border. That port is deport connected by transport and highways and electricity and everything and all of that. And it has a 400,000 barrels per day in a refinery capacity. It is brilliant place.

The Chinese wanted to establish a industrial city and a port where they can cultivate the riches of the Arabian-Nubian Shield. An area struggling the west of Arabia as well as the Nile Valley from the Nile Delta, all the way down to the northeast of the DRC.

Thomas: Underneath the ground, either side of the Red Sea is unimaginable material wealth.

Aimen: Absolutely about $14 trillion worth of minerals. $14 trillion worth of minerals.

Thomas: And Baraa’s moving back, he's just enrolled in this new mineralogy course.

Aimen: So, that port would enable the Chinese to build an industrial city there where you can bring in the upstream products, and then you can then have a downstream industry there that could then produce all of these metals and minerals into finished products which can go into Europe and America and back to China and Europe.

Thomas: Just one problem though, Aimen. That port's pretty close to war torn Yemen.

Aimen: Exactly. So, despite the fact that President Xi Jinping was trying so hard to lobby MBS, especially during the late 2019 visit to Beijing, and I know a lot about the details because I designed the gift actually that the Chinese gave to MBS at that time, so-

Thomas: Wow.

Aimen: Yeah. So, basically, they were trying still to lobby him for it. But he said, “Guys, there is a teeny tiny problem there, there is a war going on there. So, maybe we can postpone the discussion until later.”

The Chinese were planning again to lobby him in the first quarter of 2020. But there was another teeny tiny problem, which was COVID.

Thomas: Then COVID. So, war, COVID. Man, it's two horsemen of the apocalypse.

Aimen: Exactly, yeah. So, it was delayed all the way until the first quarter of 2022. So, fast forward two years, the Chinese felt confident that, okay, in April 2022, there was a ceasefire between the two sides, between the Houthis and the Saudis.

Then this is when the Chinese said, “Okay, we want it,” but the Saudis saying “Well, the time is not right. I mean, the war isn't over. We are just at the truce. It's just a truce.”

But the Chinese kept insisting, and even they postponed the visit of President Xi Jinping, because for him, Jazan is going to be the crown jewel of the BRI, of-

Thomas: The Belt and Road Initiative. Absolutely. So, do you think that already at this time, Xi Jinping is realising what needs to happen for his vision to become successful.

Aimen: Exactly. So, he was asking how do we get it? So, the Saudis one thing to give the Chinese a very difficult answer, or shall we say, okay, the Chinese are not taking no for an answer, so let's give them a yes, but a very impossible yes. Yes, if you manage to convince the Houthis to end the war. The Chinese always love a challenge.

Thomas: And they do already have very close diplomatic, political, and economic links with Iran. So, they're in a good place to negotiate.

Aimen: And with the Houthis too, and with the Houthis they have leverage over them, because all the electric cables, the communication cables-

Thomas: The Houthis depend on Chinese electronics.

Aimen: Exactly. They need them. So, the Chinese went there, and they said to the Houthis, in no uncertain terms, we want this port, we need it. Don't mess this up for us. This is the future of the BRI. Yeah.

Thomas: President Biden can only drool and wish he had that kind of sway over the Houthis.

Aimen: Exactly. So, the Houthis were taken aback first because they can offend any country in the world, even America, but not China.

So, they went to their pay masters in Tehran, and they told them what's going to happen so that the Iranians contacted the Chinese and they said, “Guys, you can't do this without us being involved because the Houthis might control Yemen, but we control the Houthis. So, nothing can go past us.”

And this is when the start of a process in which the Chinese decided that since 40% of their daily energy consumption come from the Gulf area, from Iran, from Iraq, from Kuwait, from Saudi, and from the UAE, and from Qatar, all of these countries combined provide 40% of the daily use of energy for China.

Thomas: And dear listener, if you need to be reminded, there are a lot of people in China.

Aimen: Exactly. Not to mention a lot of products being exported by China. $3.6 trillion a year of goods come out of China. They're the factory of the world.

Thomas: Powered by oil.

Aimen: So, the world can't afford to have China, basically without power or energy. China knows this. So, they went, and they made a deal with Iran and with the Saudis that there should be no shooting war between you two.

The Iranians through the Chinese, extracted from the Saudis, several promises. Two of them are very important here. The first one is for Saudi Arabia not to allow any third-party whatsoever to use their airspace, their air bases, or their territories, to strike Iran, whether the Americans or the Israelis. So, Saudi granted that.

The second concession is for the Saudis not to continue financially funding any Iranian opposition groups. Whether they are violent or nonviolent, doesn't matter, no more. So, the Saudis agreed to that.

From the Iranian side, they committed to total de-escalation in the region, including the Houthis and the supporting of the Houthis peace process. And they have committed themselves not to support any terror organisations that would attack Saudi Arabia.

And they have committed two things. First, not to give the Houthis any new long range offensive weapons that could threaten Saudi Arabia. And the second is to withdraw their experts from Yemen. And this agreement would be evaluated over six months. So, they said in September, we'll come back to it.

Six months, things seem to be fine, and the Chinese are happy. The Saudis are somewhat happy. But even then, the Saudis are saying that with Iran, you have to always remember one hand for the handshake and the other hand behind holding a pistol just in case.

Thomas: Well, on the 10th of March of this year, 2023, the Saudi-Iran Peace plan brokered by China was announced and amidst all the fanfare, a lot of which focused on the ramifications of the peace plan for Yemen.

Baraa, were you encouraged? Were you optimistic? Did you think this is now finally going to pave the way to a peaceful, hopefully politically stable resolution for Yemen?

Baraa: Not really. The thing is because I know how the Houthis are thinking. And-

Thomas: Just like the Saudis, they probably knew how they …

Baraa: So, what happened in 2022 following very quickly in 2020 and 2021, the Houthis had a huge offensive on the city of Marib, but the forces in Marib were able to push them back as Aimen explained, and then with the support of al-Amaliqa forces.

But then in 2022, mainly the Saudis and the Emiratis pushed President Hadi at the time to concede his powers to a presidential council. Formed this time now of all of the faction, including the secessionist, the Southern Transitional Council.

Thomas: Wanting there to be unity amongst the Yemeni forces.

Baraa: The Islah party, the socialist, everyone is in this presidential council. And then there was a period of ceasefire from April 2022 up until today, people don't realise this. There hasn't been any fighting from throughout this whole-

Thomas: 18 months. Yeah.

Baraa: Yeah. 18 months. That's quite a long time, especially in a conflict like Yemen. But the Houthis basically, were stalling because they want an agreement that would push the coalition out of Yemen.

Because if the coalition, the Saudi led coalition is out, they will find it very hard to justify why would they intervene if the Houthis launch an offensive on Marib or in Aden or in other provinces.

The main idea is that if this is what the Saudis want, let us buy time and let us — until we can get the Saudis out of the picture, then they're going to attack. And I know it's quite a cynical way of thinking, but I know how the Houthis think.

Thomas: Well, I mean, we know from history that ceasefires, truces, negotiated peace agreements on the side of the axis of resistance are always just means of biting their time. They don't tend to change their ultimate goals.

This is the problem, and it's the problem that we're seeing in the holy land right now. So, that peace agreement announced on the 10th of March of this year is just abrogated now. I mean, it's torn to pieces.

Aimen: It's torn to pieces because-

Thomas: And here's the point though, Aimen. I mean, we now know quite certainly that Iran was involved in the long-term plotting of the 7th of October Hamas attacks. So, throughout all of that, because in our emergency episode on the attacks, we talked about the peace plan that was being built through diplomatic efforts between Saudi and Israel, which those attacks undermined.

And all along, we said Iran was indicating that they were cool with the plan. Well, they had themselves sign their own peace plan with Saudi Arabia, which had taken 18 months to negotiate through Chinese mediation, saying, we are cool with the peace with Saudi Arabia.

But the whole time, they’re planning with Hamas and Hezbollah, the 7th of October attacks, the whole time they weren't telling the truth.

Aimen: Of course, because we talked about the political taqiyya and the taqiyya siyasiyat, as I called it before.

Thomas: Yeah, of course. So, obviously Iran feels that they can hide their true ambitions in that way. So, the peace plan that was announced in March is abrogated. I mean, formally has Saudi Arabia said, okay, Iran, it's over.

Aimen: Not formally, but they have more or less informed the Chinese that they are intending to withdraw from the agreement. Because first of all, it has been violated in two particular clauses.

The first clause is the commitment to de-escalation. That's not what's happening. And the second is the fact that the Houthis must abide by the ceasefire. And the ceasefire has been broken now, by the fact that five Bahraini soldiers and five Saudi soldiers were killed in clashes in the mountain in Jazan. And so, yeah.

Thomas: And ballistic missiles emanating from Sana’a towards Israel, have been intercepted by American-

Aimen: And Saudi also. Even the Saudis have-

Baraa: Not only that Thomas, do you know where did this ballistic missile fly from?

Thomas: I do not know.

Baraa: Surprise, surprise. Hudaydah.

Thomas: Oh, from Hudaydah. If only the coalition had been able to grab it.

Baraa: That same port where basically the international community had reigned in to prevent the Yemeni forces from liberating.

Aimen: So, if the UN their job, the Houthis wouldn't have been around by now, but nonetheless, they have given the Houthi a lifeline because of why, corruption and because of why, this obsession with ceasefires.

So, now we are hearing a lot this obsession with ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire, which is happening in the context of Gaza. Dear listener, it's one of the most heartless things to say, let people fight it out. Just don't interfere.

Thomas: It does sound heartless. I mean, this season of Conflicted, we've talked about the Israeli bombing campaign in South Lebanon in 2006, which failed to achieve its ambition. And Hezbollah is stronger than ever.

We've now spent five episodes talking about the growth of the Houthi movement in Yemen. And the unto now failure of the Arab coalitions, to some extent dominated by an air campaign, failing to dislodge them.

We're seeing images of the IDF in Israel launching a ground invasion of Gaza. Determined to eradicate Hamas, and in the process killing many civilians. So, the full tragedy is playing out. And once again, we hear cries, ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire.

And the Israelis are saying, if we stop, Hamas will just have more time to build up again, and they will attack us again. So, it's right before our eyes.

Aimen: Exactly. And this is why I always say to people, like we saw in Yemen, like we saw in Israel Palestine conflict. Sometime you have to let the parties fight it out. Sometime if you see two people fighting, just let them fight it out.

Don't interfere. Let them finish each other off, because this could be merciful than if you try to prolong it. Because that's what's going to happen, is that then each party will try to go and grab a knife and come back. And this time it'll be far more worse.

Thomas: If this was season three of Conflicted still, Aimen, this would be where I raise the question about the relative virtues of the Christian and Islamic moral perspectives. Because I think, and we can't go into it in detail, but I do think that's what underlies this difference.

I think that that global international voice which says ceasefire, peace first, don't kill anyone. Bloodshed is always terrible. Death is terrible. Murder is terrible. War is only evil, is a secularised Christian voice.

And the voice that you just articulated, which actually, and most Western liberals don't know this, most Middle Easterners believe this. They actually understand that sometimes you just got to duke it out. It's a kind of Muslim perspective. Do you think that's fair, guys?

Aimen: It is because-

Thomas: Kind of. Yeah, I would say.

Aimen: Because war is ordained in the Qur’an as a instrument of change. It is evil, but it is necessary, just like forest fires for the revival of-

Thomas: An instrument of divine providence. That God's providence includes war as one of its manifestations. And Christians find this incredibly hard to accept. We think of war as the province of the devil alone.

And right now, that clash of civilizations is playing out. Anyway, that's season three of Conflicted. Season four has been about the radical mind, the fundamentalist mind.

You and I, Aimen, in the first couple of episodes of the season, tried as best we could to be honest with our dear listeners about the extent to which the fundamentalist mentality, OCD tendencies, are striving for purity.

All of that sort of thing has influenced our own lives, especially when we were young men. Baraa, I will not ask you to expose yourself now, but here we reach the end of season four of Conflicted.

And sadly, the Middle East, the miserable east, as you call it, Aimen, is dying, once again, is being ripped apart once again. Torn between those committed to radical transnational solutions. And those committed to the modern nation state, not the liberal modern nation state. That is true. But to the modern nation state.

It's happening, dear listener, you're seeing it happen, it's going to get worse. Right. Aimen?

Aimen: Yeah.

Thomas: The Houthis are going to intervene in this war in Gaza. Hezbollah is going to feel required to intervene. Iranian militias in Iraq are going to feel required to intervene. We are on the verge of regional war.

Aimen: Yeah. We are on the verge of regional war. But you know what, how else we will get out of this stalemate? There has to be a victor and a vanquished. And in the end of it, yes, there will be so much suffering.

It could touch myself and my family personally. It could touch Baraa and his family personally, God forbid. But nonetheless, at some point, we need to have that stalemate between the forces of darkness and the forces of modernity. We need to have that show done.

Thomas: If this were season three of Conflicted, I might now point out that at the end of the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire fell, the mandates were given to France and Britain by the League of Nations to prevent an almighty ethno-religious war in the Middle East.

And instead, enlightened western gentlemen were supposed to create modern nation states for those formerly Ottoman regions. So, maybe this let them fight it out. Idea that you've just articulated Aimen is a hundred years overdue.

Aimen: Yes.

Baraa: Well, what I would say is for all of the Western policymakers who think that they can have influence over the region, or have actually shaped, the process of enabling non-state actors like the Houthis, like Hezbollah, like all of those militant groups have weakened the state and actually made us much closer to a regional conflict than if they actually were able to contain them quite very early at the beginning.

And I'm not an advocate of an actual conflict to happen in the region, but actually the problem is this was enabled, this could have been prevented in the war in Syria if they would've con contained Hezbollah, if they would've contained Hamas and pressured them to actually get into an agreement with Fatah and the Palestinian authority. And prevented the collapse of Yemen in the way it did.

And people in Yemen always talk about this of like, what's going to happen next? When are we going to get out of this? And I think there's multiple things. The first thing is the Yemeni leadership need to subscribe to the, what I've been following Conflicted for several seasons now.

And it's the modern nation state, to prescribe to the ideas that we need simple modern nation state to deliver to its people. And then-

Thomas: The revolution of the 1960s, Baraa.

Baraa: Exactly. And the worst thing that the Houthis did is that they didn't put in mind the main duty as a defacto authority, which is kind of the way that I do regret why Hamas did that was the safety and prosperity of your own people, the people you govern is the utmost priority.

That should put me in your mind first thing and foremost, even if that means making unpleasant compromises.

And then the second thing is that Yemen will need the help of its neighbours and allies and the international community ultimately. But if you think, and I've listened to Aimen mention about the initiative that is happening between India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Where's Yemen in that?

You could think Yemen is literally at the Horn of Africa and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. The main problem that I think us as Yemenis and the region need to think, we need to either subscribe to the future or we can be stuck in those militant mindset and say, actually we're going to continue this holy war forever.

Thomas: Well, I think Amen, you would agree with Baraa that a modern nation state is what Yemeni should be focusing their minds on. I think you would say that at the top of that modern nation state should be a Sunni monarch. Let's not go into it. Let's not go into it.

But that dear listener, brings season four of Conflicted to an end. Baraa Shiban, thank you. My heart is so beating with appreciation for everything you've brought to these five episodes.

Dear listener, they've been long, they've been complex, but this is what Conflicted is here to do, to really explain what's really going on.

My dear friend, Aimen, seeing you in the flesh. It's so great. Thank you so much for everything you bring to Conflicted, your extraordinary knowledge and your analytical powers, which is great. Don't say anything positive about me.

Aimen: No, no, no.

Thomas: I'm Christian.

Aimen: I wanted to say thank you so much, Thomas, for your stewardship and for your ability to host a very complex podcast like this. Your place should be in one of the biggest radios in the world.

Thomas: I'm here learning alongside the dear listener, learning, learning, learning from your expertise. Thank you, Aimen. Thank you, dear listener. Stick with us. We will inshallah be back because the Middle East ain't going away.

Baraa: Unfortunately, yeah.

Aimen: Unfortunately, yeah.

[Music Playing]

Thomas: A reminder that you can follow the show over on Facebook and Twitter at MH Conflicted. And for a deeper dive into all the subjects we talk about here on Conflicted, head over to Facebook and search Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group.

There you will find other fans of the show engaging in heated debates, enlightening conversations, and just generally geeking out over Conflicted related topics.

Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.