(singing in Arabic) The decade began with a surge of optimism. Millions of Yemenis took to the streets in 2011 to oust an unpopular president. But Yemen was not to be a success story of the Arab Spring. (dramatic music) (people shouting)
(guns firing) Instead, the country was consumed by a bloody civil war, exacerbated and sustained by foreign intervention, that has brought some 20 million Yemenis to the brink of starvation. Great Decisions investigates the origins of the conflict and asks what can be done to repair a fractured nation. Yemen: A History of Conflict, next on Great Decisions. (dramatic music) Great Decisions is produced by the Foreign Policy Association, in association with Thomson Reuters. Funding for Great Decisions is provided by PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP and the Nelson B. Delavan Foundation. (soft music) For a brief moment in April 2019, the war in Yemen was thrust to the forefront of American political consciousness when a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers voted to end U.S. participation in the conflict. The House and the Senate passed a resolution telling the President that he has to pull U.S. support from the Saudi-led coalition. Our immediate job must be to end the terrible war in Yemen and provide humanitarian relief there rather than bombs. The United States has, in fact, been aiding and abetting these horrors of this war. There is a U.S. imprint on every single civilian death inside Yemen today. Regardless of whether it is American pilots that are dropping the bombs, those are American jets, those are American bombs. This is an American war, whether we want to believe it or not. But when President Trump vetoed the legislation, the Senate fell 14 votes short of overriding it. The joint resolution on reconsideration fails to pass over the President's veto. Since then, the war in Yemen has once again drifted away from the front page. The tragedy is that, although the conflict has been magnified, the political attention to it has not. And in fact, the striking feature is that, in most parts of the world, the world's largest humanitarian crisis is getting very little attention at all. (soft music) Away from public view, the situation in Yemen has become a humanitarian catastrophe. It's a population about 28 million people. About two thirds of the country is starving. We have one third who are at this point on the brink of famine. It's just catastrophic in every way possible. (speaking Arabic) There was an air strike on our house, and my left leg was amputated. I had completed grades one and two. But since then, there has not been a school nearby, and right now I do not go to school. Over 50% of the medical infrastructure has been destroyed during the current war. The estimates are that over 90,000 have been killed since the war began. And the cumulative impact on civilians from all sides is so visible. The disruptions to Yemen's infrastructure have created what the World Health Organization calls the worst outbreak of cholera ever recorded. Cholera is endemic to Yemen, but this is over a million people with cholera, and that comes from poor water, poor sanitation, contaminated water supplies in agriculture. (speaking Arabic) In Aslem District we rely on wells, and the wells are uncovered and very dirty, and they have caused a lot of diseases. We drink from these wells. We and livestock drink from these wells, as do children. If you cannot have clean water, children cannot live. Children are the first ones affected. (soft music) The only way to alleviate the suffering of Yemen's civilians is to bring the war to an end. (group applauding) But that prospect seems increasingly distant. It's vital that the global powers recognize that Yemen's civil war and its consequences are not contained within Yemen. In the end, this is about political will, but it's also about political clarity. The current course is simply never going to be resolved in anyone's favor, and that's why we need a change of course. These are lifelong scars. The thousands and thousands of people that have lost a leg, or lost an arm, that have died because of the blockade, that's what's happening in Yemen, sort of this collective punishment of an entire country. (soft music) The modern Republic of Yemen was cobbled together in 1990, when the independent countries of North Yemen and South Yemen agreed to merge. From the outset, their union was marred by resentment and misunderstanding. To see the merger of the north and the south, that was the dream of many people. But the devil is in the detail. And once that merger happened, the integration was not fully complete. Both parties went into the unification with the expectation that they would be able to be the dominant force within a unified Yemen. Just a few years later, the south, having rethought the whole thing, tried to leave again, and that led to the civil war in 1994. (missile whistling) Only four days old, Yemen's civil war is ripping apart the impoverished country. Northern army units knocked out this southern artillery brigade in a fierce battle during the night. They took a large number of southern prisoners. (artillery booming) While civil war erupted in the southern part of Yemen, a religious revival swept through the Shi'ite communities in the rugged countryside of northern Yemen. Led by the Houthi family, the movement attracted those who resented the authoritarian power of the country's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Houthi movement is a northern-based movement. It's part of the Zaidi, which is a branch of the Shi'ite group. Some people in the north, some members of the Houthi community feel marginalized, feel like their parts of the country have been underserved by the central government. And so, there's a sectarian layer, there's a local layer, and a political layer. One of their favorite sons, Hussein al-Houthi, went to Sanaa, the capital, to become a parliamentarian in the '90s. He didn't feel as though he was able to be effective in the capital, and he went back to his province and created a group called the Believing Youth. He was killed by the Yemeni army in a battle in 2004, and that's really what sparked the name of that family. It sparked a lot of tribes to get behind the family against the government which killed their beloved son, and there was that spark that created the Houthis as they are today. (shouting in Arabic) The Houthis are tenacious fighters. They come from the north. They're mountain people. They very much want to find a place in the Yemeni political scheme. (sirens) (soft music) Yemen has been destroyed by war in the north, separatists in the south, poverty, hunger. We demand that Ali Abdullah Saleh leave, because there is no other option but the departure of Ali Abdullah Saleh. The protests that ousted Saleh at the beginning of the Arab Spring seemed to promise positive change for a country in dire need of new leadership. (clapping) I arrived as the U.S. ambassador to Yemen in the fall of 2010. There was this kind of political ferment in the country at the time that I arrived. Ali Abdullah Saleh himself once said that ruling Yemen was like dancing on the heads of snakes; the snakes were always trying to rise up to bite you, and you had to be this very crafty, clever politician, and he was. I was involved in Yemeni politics for a long time. I got really, really involved during the beginning of the Arab Spring. We were so optimistic. We were so full of hope. It was the most beautiful thing. I was like ... I can still remember the excitement that this organic movement was just happening, finally, in the Middle East. Of course, the Arab Spring turned into an Arab nightmare. (upbeat music) By 2014, the Houthis were emboldened. In September of that year, their forces captured Sanaa, the national capital. The person who brought us here is our leader, Abdul-Malik. We are awaiting his instructions to go to Sanaa. We will go there to get rid of the oppressors and to end corruption and the corrupt government. We're in a really sad position now, because we're in a worse position than in 2011. The Houthis took over the capital, Sanaa. They expanded militarily after the National Dialogue. And then they said, "We don't accept this injustice. "Therefore, we're going to be your just rulers." (speaking in Arabic) We did not come here for fun or for the sake of an outing. We came here to take down the government. The Houthis put President Hadi under house arrest. He escaped to Aden, and then from Aden, the Houthis were going to come after him, and he escaped Aden and went to Saudi Arabia and solicited their support. The rapid spread of Houthi power set off alarm bells in neighboring Saudi Arabia, whose leaders feared a Shi'ite challenge on their southern border. Yemen is critical to Saudi Arabia because it is on its border. It's like Mexico to the United States. It's one of those countries that's always been a bit unstable, and that's always made the Saudis a bit uncomfortable. Iran's influence on the Houthis, of course, is very clear. They have supplied the Houthis with technology, missiles, training, and they have done so with an aim for the Houthis not only to take a superior position in Yemen, but also to send rockets and missiles over the border into Saudi Arabia. (soft music) I wanted to meet with you to inform you that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia launched military operations in Yemen. The objective is to defend the legitimate government of President Hadi from the takeover attempts by the Houthi militias in Yemen. (jet fighter) (explosions) The Saudi-led bombing campaign began in March 2015 with little warning. There were 15 people inside the building. Now we have recovered six bodies. The rest are still under the rubble. It's really 24/7 of just mere survival. I cannot explain to you. I mean, my and my sister were really just switching roles, and one person sleeps at night, one person stays up during the night, just watching over the home. It was a risk every single day. A lot of Yemenis think that Saudi Arabia intervened to help them. I think it just intervened to really solely protect its interests from the Houthi-Iranian threat. It felt that Yemen as it is, with no president, was a fragile state if not a failed state. Mohammad bin Salman, when he took on this adventure into Yemen, thought that the fight would be quicker, that they could come to a truce sooner, and that the Houthis would come to the table. It's clear that that calculation has not borne out. The Saudis were joined in their assault on Yemen by eight other Arab countries, with support from the United Kingdom and the United Sates. The thinking at the time was, we were not enthusiastic about this, and we would not have chosen to do this, but that the Saudis were going to do this, and that if we played a supporting role, we could be a constraint on them, frankly, and that we could make sure that their targeting was not focused on civilians but on military targets. In retrospect, we should not have participated at all. There was some skepticism on the part of the Obama administration that I worked for at the time because our experience, in general, with these wars, that they're not quick. Let's not forget, this was taking place at the climax of the negotiations over the Iran nuclear program, and that had caused already tremendous tension, discomfort between the United States and Saudi Arabia. I feel very strongly that it was one of the reasons that the administration felt they could not add to what already was a pre-existing tension with a country that had been a partner for decades. What I can say is that, sitting in the State Department, those two issues were never combined. We never looked at this as we have to placate the Saudis and therefore we were going to support them. We met with the Saudi Foreign Minister at the time, and he came in and briefed us on the situation. We agreed with his analysis. In response to the Saudi intervention, Iran ramped up its support for the Houthis, transforming a domestic conflict into an international proxy war. The day Saudi attacked the Houthis to remove them from power, they approached Tehran. Therefore, the Saudis pushed Houthis to Tehran. It was not Iranian decision or choice. It is, more than anything else in my estimation, a marriage of convenience in which the Houthis really, frankly, do not care that much about the Iranians, but the support of the Iranians to the Houthis is something that is welcome, mindful of the fact that the other factions in that civil war have the support of the Saudi government, the UAE government, the U.S. government, the French government, the British government, and many other governments. Recently, some observers have noticed cracks in the alliance between the Saudis and their main partner in Yemen, the United Arab Emirates. People previously assumed that, even though there might have been some differences, the Saudis and the Emirates were basically on the same side. Increasingly, it's become clear that they're not always on the same side. And one example of that is the Southern Transitional Council, the STC, which is a secessionist movement in the south of Yemen. The UAE has supported them against the wishes of the Saudis. It happened to be that Saudi Arabia was working in the north, and UAE working in the south, and the relationship between UAE and the southern people came from this experience. There are allegations oftentimes that the UAE is supporting southern secession. It is true that they're supporting southerners, who are good fighters against Al-Qaeda and who also happen to have secessionist sympathies. So, it gets a little bit complicated in south Yemen. Fighting between the central government and southern secessionists has opened a new front in an already byzantine civil war. There are a lot of tensions within Yemen between the different groups, between the north and south, and it was really visible in August 2019, when the Southern Transitional Council basically kicked the Hadi government officials out of Aden. President Hadi and its government, they have almost 100,000 troops being growing, being building in Ma'rib, and we saw these groups coming to attack south in Shabwah and Abyan. Instead of attacking Houthi, they are coming to attack us in the south. The Yemen war, it's wars within wars within wars, and one of the wars is the war in the south between the STC, the southern separatists, and the internationally-recognized government, which is backed by the Saudis. Those internal struggles are distracting from what everyone says is the main ambition, which is the fight against terrorism. (dramatic music) American lawmakers are speaking out this evening about the CIA's conclusion that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman oversaw the killing and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. I have zero question in my mind that the Crown Prince, MBS, ordered the killing, monitored the killing, knew exactly what was happening. Prince Mohammad, he was the original El "Chop"-o, literally. I mean, they butchered Mr. Khashoggi like a hog. The vote in Congress to curtail U.S. participation in the war reflected widespread frustration with the Saudis among American policymakers. I think a lot of folks in Washington said enough is enough after Khashoggi was killed. It magnified people's concerns, and it reminded people that the same person who allegedly was involved in this killing of a journalist, Mohammad bin Salman, was also basically the leader of this intervention in Yemen. I don't think we should be providing any military assistance to Saudi Arabia. We just shouldn't. It's time to rethink this entire relationship. With a leader that is this brutal, erratic, who precipitates famine in Yemen, who chops up a journalist in a foreign consulate, this is not the kind of person that should be receiving any American military hardware. Nothing justifies what happened to Khashoggi, but at the same time a part of me is like, "Yes, oh my God, finally people are paying attention." And then part of me is like so upset and pissed off. Like, really? We've been talking about this for years. His death garnered so much attention to the conflict in Yemen. After the Khashoggi murder, there's been an emotional calculation rather than a rational calculation. It actually came to the detriment of Yemen, because all of a sudden you see all questions of policy around Yemen are centered around how do we punish the Saudis, not how do we help the Yemenis. Critics of the U.S. role in Yemen worry that selling weapons to Saudi Arabia could harm American interests in the longterm. The security problem for the United States, separate and aside from the moral stain on our country, is that Yemenis see the humanitarian catastrophe as being caused by the United States. So, young Yemenis are becoming radicalized. They're joining up with ISIS. They're joining up with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and they're signing up to fight the United States, because they don't understand why the United States is dropping bombs. If the U.S. told the Saudis to end the bombing campaign on one day, it would end the next day. And so, the U.S. is absolutely pivotal, not just in military alliance, but also in political terms to the war strategy that's being pursued by the Saudi-led coalition. There are a number of people who have speculated that the Saudis couldn't continue the war effort without U.S. acquiescence, without U.S. assistance. I've never accepted that theory, for the simple reason that I do accept that, for the Saudis, they saw this as an existential threat to their security, and it's never been my experience that governments or people who believe that their lives are in danger are willing to listen to outside advice. In an effort to resolve the Yemen conflict, the Trump administration has opened talks with Houthi leaders, a controversial step for an administration committed to challenging Iran. What needs to happen in Yemen is this thing needs to be settled. It's gone on way too long, and it needs to be resolved, it really does, and we've been pressing everyone to sit down and get to the table and try to get a resolution. Yemen could be solved if the United States chose to solve it. The United States has essentially stood on the diplomatic sidelines. Yemen's situation is dire, but there could be a diplomatic solution if the United States chose to lead. (soft music) Within Yemen, some experts are beginning to see a glimmer of hope that the country could someday become stable and secure. If you give the young people, and actually the women and the non-elites a chance to be part of the process to develop a solution for Yemen, there is hope, because they are brilliant, smart people. They just have been left out of the whole process and the discussion. When I was in Aden, we visited a clinic center. The children were gathered in a safe place, and they were beginning to play board games with each other. And one girl was drawing pictures of a life that she did not know and did not see but that she was hoping for. (uplifting music) Many of these children have seen so much dying, but if we can get them to these safe places, they begin to have psychosocial support and they begin to adjust to life and begin to put some of those memories into a place that they can deal with it and live with it. So that's a sign of hope. Yemen is known throughout the Middle East as "Yemen al-sa'id." "Yemen al-sa'id" means "happy Yemen," "optimistic Yemen." I believe that the majority of the Yemeni people really are thirsty for a resolution, for stability, for peace. (sighs) And that we're going to do whatever it takes to get there. For nearly a decade, Yemen's civilians have been bombed, shot at, displaced, starved, and all too often ignored. As domestic and foreign forces battle for the country's future, the fates of tens of millions of Yemenis hang in the balance. (upbeat music) Great Decisions is America's largest discussion program on global affairs. Discussion groups meet in community centers, libraries, places of worship, and homes across the country to discuss global issues with their community. Participants read the eight-topic briefing book, meet to discuss each topic, and complete a ballot, which shares their views with Congress. To start or join a discussion group in your community, visit FPA.org, or call 1-800-477-5836. Great Decisions is produced by the Foreign Policy Association, in association with Thomson Reuters. Funding for Great Decisions is provided by PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP and The Nelson B. Delavan Foundation. (dramatic music) (upbeat music)
