Vol. 81/No. 35 September 25, 2017
Riyadh-Tehran proxy war in Yemen part of broader Mideast conflicts
The murderous proxy war in Yemen is part of a broader battle between contending imperialist and capitalist powers — Washington, Tehran, Ankara and Moscow — seeking to defend their economic and strategic interests in Syria, Iraq, the Gulf and throughout the Middle East.
The unfolding human catastrophe in Yemen is compounded by the presence of the reactionary terrorist organization al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which controls territory in central and southern Yemen. As part of its so-called war on terror, Washington has been battling al-Qaeda there since 2009, employing drone strikes, special operations forces, and more recently, U.S. troops.
At the same time, Washington — still the pre-eminent imperialist power in the world — is weaker today. Since Washington lost the Cold War, it finds itself unable to score a decisive military victory anywhere, bogged down in seemingly endless wars from Afghanistan to Iraq. This has opened the door for the rulers in countries like Iran and Pakistan to play larger roles in capitalist world politics.
Two-thirds of Yemen’s 28 million people lack access to food and water. The U.N. reports that 7 million face famine and 462,000 children under five are “acutely malnourished.” The cholera epidemic has infected well over half a million, killing more than 2,000 people since April.
Bullets and bombs have killed more than 5,000 civilians. U.S. and Saudi bombers have targeted weddings and other public gatherings, claiming they are cover for Houthi forces. More than 3 million people have been forced from their homes.
“I have a bachelors degree in mathematics and a diploma in English, but certificates cannot provide me with food,” former teacher Mohammed Hasan, 26, an ice cream street vendor, told the Financial Times.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. At the same time, it’s strategically located for the imperialist powers and Mideast capitalist regimes because it sits on the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow waterway linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Much of the world’s oil shipments go through this strait.
Since March 2015 Washington has authorized more than $22 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. The U.K. government approved the sale of billions of dollars worth of jets, bombs and missiles to the Saudis over the past several years.
Imperialism, sectarian conflicts
The horrendous situation Yemen’s working people are living through is the product of decades of imperialist intervention and heightened sectarian conflicts in the region.
North Yemen won independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1918 at the end of the first imperialist World War, coming under control of a Shia Muslim-related imamate. Southern Yemen, which had been under the boot of British colonial rule since 1839, won independence in 1967 through armed struggle led by the National Liberation Front, part of broader anti-imperialist struggles in the colonial world.
The forces that came to power in the south oriented to the Stalinist rulers in Moscow, establishing what they called the Yemeni Socialist Party. The ousting of British colonial rule led to certain social, economic and political gains by working people, but counterrevolutionary Stalinist misleadership and factional struggles tore the Yemeni Socialist Party apart, spurring armed conflict. Then the Soviet Union came apart in 1990.
Under pressure from Riyadh and Washington, the ruling political currents in both north and south unified the country. But conflicting interests ate away at the agreement, breaking out repeatedly in divisions and fighting. As Middle East politics shifted over the next 20 years, Tehran gained influence over Houthi forces in the north, who took up arms in 2004 against the increasingly autocratic and corrupt regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was backed by Riyadh.
“Arab Spring” protests for democratic rights and against the Saleh regime broke out in 2011. He stepped down and Hadi became president.
Saleh re-emerged as an ally of the Tehran-backed Houthi rebellion. After Houthi forces captured Sanaa, Hadi’s government fled to Saudi Arabia. With Washington’s approval and practical support, the Saudi’s formed a military coalition with other Gulf regimes that has carried out a bloody campaign against the Houthi rebels since 2015, with no resolution in sight.
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‘The Kurdish people are one nation’
Baghdad’s 1988 Anfal extermination campaign and the 1991 Kurdistan uprising
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