Shireen Al-Adeimi - Speaking Out on the Imperialist War on Yemen

Speaker 1: Our next speaker is Sherene Al-Ademi, who is a peace activist and scholar. And of great interest to me is the fact that she's an assistant professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Teacher Education. So there's much more to be said about her, but for brevity's sake, I'm going to just give the floor now to Sherene.

Speaker 2: Sherene?

Speaker 1: Thank you, Kamau. Thank you, Christine, and thank you all so much for being here and for these speakers for shedding such important light and giving incredible background about this war that has completely devastated Yemen for the past 7 years. 7 years ago today, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began bombing my country of birth, Yemen. And I want to remind people that the announcement for this campaign, which was dubbed Operation Decisive Storm, was announced by the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. at the time during a Washington, D.C. press conference Not in Arabic, but in English. Immediately, the Obama-Biden administration announced its full support for the Saudi-UAE campaign, including weapons sales, intelligence, logistical support, and what they called the establishment of a, quote, joint planning cell with Saudi Arabia. Within months, the war turned— was turned into the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and not only because of the bombing, but also because of the land, aerial, and naval blockade that has continued ever since in the name of preventing Iranian weapons from entering the country.

Becky Payne: Thank you.

Speaker 1: The bombing was described early on by a leaked UN report as targeting civilians in a widespread and systematic manner. These include targeting homes, infrastructure, food facilities, agriculture, and even school buses, weddings, and funerals. To date, at least 377,000 civilians have been killed. The blockade, on the other hand, has prevented fuel from entering the country, thereby shutting down essential needs such as hospitals, Half the country cannot access healthcare at all, while the other half are met with hospitals that are barely functioning at 10% capacity. Currently, a child dies of starvation every 75 seconds. And I encourage you to watch this painful yet incredibly powerful film called Hunger Ward if you want a snapshot— a snapshot into— a snapshot, sorry, into the horrors of child starvation and the heroic Yemeni healthcare workers trying to save their lives. And as you watch, I'd like you to remember that these kids are the ones lucky enough to find a hospital, while millions more around the country are starving and cannot access any healthcare. The other impact of the blockade involves preventing trade, which destroyed Yemen's economy, given that Yemen used to import 90% of its food needs prior to the war. Without imports and trade, 80% of Yemenis have been forced to depend on international aid. And even aid was used as a weapon of war, with Saudi and UAE continuously, continuously, repeatedly failing to fulfill their pledges to the UN World Food Program to cover the costs of starvation that they themselves have created in Yemen, and with the Trump administration going as far as cutting USAID to northern Yemen, where 70% of the population resides. President Biden, who is now the 3rd U.S. president to carry on the war against Yemen, is also threatening to place the Houthis on the list of foreign terrorists, which would entirely starve 70% of the Yemeni population. These war crimes continue to be perpetuated against the Yemeni people unchecked and with impunity. The Yemeni revolution began in 2011 and is sometimes described as a failed revolution. I would argue that the revolution has not failed, but that Yemeni civilians have certainly paid the price for demanding a democratic state free from dictatorship, free from intervention. And it's not up to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or the U.S. to determine what's best for Yemen's future. It's up to the Yemeni population. to choose their own course, and that's what we should all be demanding. So let's work to end our government's complicity in war crimes in Yemen. Like Trump, Boris Johnson has not promised to end UK support for the war in Yemen and has committed to support his Saudi and UAE allies. But here in the US, President Biden did in fact promise to end US complicity in the war, going as far as saying that he will end offensive operations in the war in Yemen. Unfortunately, this has been nothing but a rebranding of the war. While he introduced this dichotomy of defensive versus offensive weapons and intelligence and logistical support, I want to remind folks that all support for the war in Yemen is offensive. The blockade on Yemen is offensive. Choosing targets to help the Saudi and UAE coalition target sources is offensive. Training pilots is offensive.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 1: providing maintenance and spare parts to their aircraft are as offensive. Our governments are not defending U.S. and U.K. territory by bombing Yemeni children. Our governments have helped create the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and it's up to us to hold them in check. You and I have 30 million reasons to end our government's complicity in the war in Yemen. There are 30 million Yemeni men, women, and children waiting for their lives to resume. And as we speak, my relatives in the city of Hodeida are going through yet another round of bombardments, which the press is often, unfortunately, continuing to frame as retaliatory. There is nothing retaliatory about this war. It's not a war. It's not a civil war. It's not even a war. So if you're in the US, please call for Congress to pass the War Powers Act to force President Biden to end his offensive war in Yemen. Please also call attention to weapon manufacturers like Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin And others who've made hundreds of billions of dollars from this war and whose bombs we continuously see with the serial numbers posted right on them. And if you're in the UK, please also hold your elected officials accountable for war crimes against Yemenis and hold weapon manufacturers like BAE Systems accountable. And don't let people forget what these bombs do to civilians in Yemen. Thank you always for your continued solidarity, and may the people of Yemen live in peace.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 1: Free from intervention, free from invasion.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Well, thank you so much for coming and for taking the time this evening to be here and to learn about this issue that really can be very difficult to learn about. Even if you are somebody who follows the news regularly, you may hear a little bit about what's going on in Yemen. You know there's a war going on, but you may not know the ins and outs of it. I'll try not to do too deep of a dive, but to do enough to, you know, give You know, kind of ground us in where this began, what we're talking about here, what the U.S.'s role is, and then what we can do to stop it. I'll have— this is the overview. I'll start with an overview. We'll go into the roots of the conflict. We'll talk about the foreign intervention and the impact of the war on civilians, as well as the U.S.'s role, ending the U.S.'s role. And then I'll end with a question that I'd asked Yemenis online. And they'd responded, and I just have some snippets of their responses. They wanted to share with you what they were going through and what they were hoping people like you could do to help this cause. So, some quick facts. Yemen is a country in the Middle East. It borders Saudi Arabia. It's south of Saudi Arabia, west of Oman. The capital is Sana'a. There's about 28 million people who live there. The language is Arabic. And even before the war— these are the statistics from 2015— 54% lived on less than $2 a day. So we're talking already about the poorest country in the Middle East and one of the poorest countries in the world, before the war ever began. And so, when we think about why this is the world's worst humanitarian crisis, it's because, really, it was a country that was struggling to begin with. Right. All of the bombardment and the blockade has, unfortunately, had a devastating impact on this country. So the pictures I have throughout the section slides are just photos of Yemen before the war. This is how I remember my country of birth, Yemen. This particular picture is of the capital, Sana'a. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it's been continuously inhabited for thousands of years, this capital, Sana'a, and these are mudbrick homes. That unfortunately have also been targeted by Saudi-led airstrikes, but still remain. So a very quick kind of orientation as to why the U.S. is interested in Yemen, why Saudi Arabia is interested in Yemen, what would they want with a poor country that really poses a threat to nobody? Well, Yemen is at a strategic location. It controls Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Where 4.8 million barrels of oil travel every single day. That's up from 3.3 billion barrels in 2011. So this is a 2016 statistic. So it's something— it's a strategic point. And of course, we still live in a world where oil is very important, and people want to control where the oil is flowing through and coming from. This picture right here is where I was born, in Aden, the south of Yemen. So I'll take you back to the events leading up to where we are today. We will go back to historical regions. You may hear about Yemen sometimes spoken about in terms of North and South Yemen. Really, if you look at this map, it's more like west and east, but let's pretend it's south and north, because that's what Yemenis have been saying for so long, and we're going to stick to it. So what was historically called North Yemen is this region to the west. It was controlled by the Ottoman Empire until 1918. Before that, for 1,000 years, it was controlled by the Zaydis in Yemen, which is a small— well, not so small, actually. 40% of Yemenis come from the sect of Zaydi Islam. And that's the same sect of the Houthi rebels that you hear about. We'll get into that a little bit. But they had ruled northern Yemen for over 1,000 years. And then the Ottomans took over for a while until the end of World War II. And after that, the Zaydis kind of took control back over northern Yemen, until there was a revolution, and the Yemen Arab Republic was formed from 1962 to 1990, with its capital, Sana'a. During that revolution, by the way, there was Saudi intervention. So, when people talk about Saudi intervention in Yemen, Yemenis are used to Saudi intervention. In the '60s, when there was a popular revolution to try to oust the Zaydi government, from power, the Saudis, that wasn't in their interest at the time, and they had trained British soldiers to try to, you know, prevent the revolution from taking place. It eventually succeeded. South Yemen, which is where I was born, it was under British rule from 1839 to 1967. And in 1967, it became the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. It was the Middle East's only Marxist government. And the capital was Sana'a, and again, that government lasted from 1967 until 1990. You notice in 1990, these, you know, Yemen Arab Republic and People's Democratic Republic of Yemen became one country in 1990. So here we have the president of the south on the left, Ali Salem al-Beidh, and president of North Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, decided that, you know what, we've been divided for a very long time. It was always the intention of North and South Yemenis to reunite the historic Yemen.

Speaker 1: Right.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: But perhaps it was a bit premature to go from Marxism and a long history of occupation to a quick unity. And in 1990, both South and North united, with Ali Abdullah Saleh as the president and Ali Saleh as his vice president. Unfortunately, that unity lasted exactly 4 years. And in 1994, South Yemen, with the capital Aden— this is something I personally lived through— declared independence from the North. We felt, at the time, that we weren't represented, our interests weren't represented. Now, it's important to remember that South Yemen, even though it's a larger part of Yemen, it's a large landmass, most of it is desert, and only about 20% of the population lives in South Yemen. 80% of the population lives in Northern Yemen. And so the Southerners were feeling like we were being exploited, this deal wasn't really best for Southern Yemenis, that Northern Yemenis were getting more out of it than the Southern Yemenis. Those were the sentiments at the time. Those sentiments still exist. And a civil war broke out with the north trying to assert control over the south. And within 3 months, Ali Abdullah Saleh managed to gain control. His vice president was ousted, and he has been based in Oman since then. And there was kind of a forced unity. So since 1994, southern Yemenis have felt like, well, we were forced to unite with the north. We never really asked for it.

Speaker 1: OK.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Another important key event is the Houthi-Saleh Wars. So I will show you a quick video next about— just a quick explainer about who the Houthis are. But between 2004 and 2010, this group from northern Yemen— again, they're from the Zaydi sect of Islam— they were, under their leader, calling out against the corruption of Ali Abdullah Saleh. They were calling out against foreign intervention. Saleh wanted to deal with them the same way he dealt with South Yemen, which was through war. And he enlisted the Saudis to help him through these wars. There were 6 different wars. Unfortunately, he wasn't— fortunately, unfortunately, he wasn't able to control that group. And in that time, there was a lot more sympathy from the rest of Yemen toward their cause, and their movement grew. And so they became one of the more viable groups in Yemen. a group that, you know, you had to contend with. But really, they were just in northern Yemen before that. They weren't involved in any of the political makeup of the country. But they became known because of these 6 wars between Saleh and themselves. So I'm going to show you a 2-minute video explaining who the Houthis are. This is a video that was published last year by Chatham House. And this is Peter Salisbury talking about who the Houthi rebels are.

Peter Salisbury: So, again, when you hear about the Houthis, they're often described as Shia rebels or Iran-backed Shia rebels, which gives you the impression that they're a proxy for Iran. The truth is that they're very much a local group. In fact, the form of Shia Islam that they follow, Zaydism, is very local to Yemen, very local to the northwest up here, and very different to the Twelver Shia that you find in Iran. They launched an insurgency in the northern province of Saada, which is just up here. In about 2004, and that lasted from 2004 to 2010. And the issue at stake there was really the marginalization of the province and of the leadership of the province, who historically had run Yemen for about 1,000 years. And they were really pushed to one side after the '60s and '70s. When they came into Sana'a in September of 2014, took over as part of this coup, the issues that they were playing up were economic grievances, grievances around—

Amy: Human rights.

Peter Salisbury: corruption. So while we hear a lot about how they're part of the Saudi-Iranian Cold War, how they're part of this bigger geopolitical piece, the issues really at the heart of their rise, and the issues that made them into an armed group, are very, very local and very, very Yemeni.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: So the next time you hear this is a proxy war, maybe that's something to think about. And we will talk about the role of Iran a little bit more. So going back to the roots of the conflict, the 2011 revolution, we saw The Arab Spring, basically. There were, you know, countries all over the region that were trying to assert independence and democracy. And Yemen, in January of 2011, also joined the Arab movement, the Arab Spring movement. And in January, there was the start of a peaceful revolution. The Houthis joined the protesters, as did other groups. And people were really calling for the ouster of Saleh at the time. He had been president by then for about 33 years. And, you know, he called it a democracy. We had elections every few years. He won by 99% of the vote. So people really weren't convinced that this was really the democracy that we were hoping for. You know, Yemen is not a monarchy. It's not a sultanate. It's not an emirate, unlike all of its neighbors. And so there was a real democratic spirit, and we were hoping, you know, hoping against hope that maybe this was our turn, just like things had turned out in Tunisia. And at the time, we didn't know where Egypt was going to go, but people were revolting all over the place.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: And we thought maybe this was Yemen's time, as well. They were peaceful protests. That's something to emphasize, because Yemenis are a heavily armed group. After the United States, per capita, they're the most armed group in the world.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: But the protests were peaceful. And unfortunately, in May of that year, enter the Islah Party. This is the Muslim Brotherhood of Yemen. Now, they were longtime Saleh allies. They were part of the political system that people were revolting against. Yet they, too, joined the protesters, and they now demanded the ouster of Saleh. And that's when the peaceful revolution turned into armed clashes, because the Islah now saw a power vacuum, and they saw this real opportunity to take power away from Saleh to themselves. Saleh and the Islah were, again, the reason people were protesting, but they just made Saleh the figurehead now, that it just became about ousting Saleh and not about the entire system. Thank you. the Yemenis were revolting against. Saleh refused to step down until there was an assassination attempt on his life carried out by Islah. They bombed his palace, and this is a picture of him with severe burns. He survived the attempt. He was flown to Saudi Arabia and treated in Saudi Arabia. He was a longtime ally of the Saudis and of the Americans. And after he recovered, he finally, later that year, decided to transfer power over to his vice president, Hadi.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Hadi was his vice president for 20 years, almost. And the deal was that Hadi would assume power in a one-man election for 2 years until he was able to work out the conflict in Yemen, bring various groups together, the Houthis, the Islah, members of Saleh's party. They were going to redraft a constitution, and they had 2 years to do that under his leadership. That didn't happen, unfortunately. Saleh, by the way, unlike every other Arab Spring president, got to stay in Yemen. He resigned, but he remained in control, largely, of the Yemeni military. He was still popular among many people. He could come in and out as he pleased. There was no real attempt on his life after he stepped down. And so he got to stay in Yemen and to kind of watch things happen, and people still saw him as the leader. They stopped even calling him president. They started calling him the leader. And so I felt like— many of us felt like he was gaining popularity after the Arab Spring. So 3 years later— remember, he had a 2-year term, Hadi did? In those 2 years, his term was expired. Nothing was moving forward. The parliament extended his term by 1 more year. That expired as well. And still nothing was moving forward. There was no new constitution. No new constitution. There was national dialogue, but things really weren't moving forward. And so the Houthis staged a coup in September 2014, and they took over the capital, Sana'a. They came all the way from the northern province of Sa'dah, took over Sana'a. And many say that they were really only able to do that because the Yemeni army, which was still largely loyal to Saleh, refused to attack them. So Saleh and the Houthis were longtime enemies. They fought 6 wars. But Saleh maybe saw an opportunity. And thought, hmm, let's see where this is going, right? And so he ordered the Yemeni military not to provide any kind of armed resistance to the Houthis, and very quickly, they were able to take over the capital, Sana'a. And this is when the Houthis tried to pressure Hadi to move forward with governing. They proclaimed to have no interest in governing, and there was a deal that was signed to form a unity government in September of 2014. By January and February 2015, Things were still stalling, and Hadi resigned. He was placed under house arrest by the Houthis, because they're like, we're going to make sure that you get this done, and we're going to wait outside while you do it. So he felt threatened, and he resigned. And he fled to Aden. They chased him back to Aden, and armed conflict ensued between the Houthis and the part of the Yemeni army that was loyal to Hadi. And that's when, in the middle of all of this chaos, which was Basically, it had just turned into a civil war. The Saudi-led coalition began bombing Yemen. And Hadi escaped from Aden to Saudi Arabia, and he has been based in Saudi Arabia since then. And the Houthis and the Saleh found themselves in this very strange place where they were forced to work together against the Saudi-led intervention. Saleh still maintained vast control over the Yemeni army. They had a lot of fighters, the Houthis, and so they started working together toward— against the Saudi-led intervention. Let's take a breather here. This is a beautiful photo of an island in South Yemen called Socotra. And it's actually one of the most biodiverse places in the world. There are plants and animals that live in that island that really don't live anywhere else, don't exist anywhere else. And Socotra is so isolated from mainland Yemen that they actually still speak their one of the original South Semitic languages that was spoken in South Yemen, which is called Socotri. So they don't speak Arabic as their main language. They speak another language called Socotri. So this is our President Hadi. This is the UN-recognized president of Yemen. And here he is with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Now, in March of 2015, Mohammed bin Salman had been in power for exactly 2 months. His father, bin—

Speaker 4: King Salman.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: King Salman had taken power in January of 2015. And within 2 months, his son was made deputy crown prince at the time. Now he's actually crown prince. And he was also made defense minister, a role which he still has. And many saw the attack on Yemen as him kind of, you know, like a resume attack, like he wanted to show who he was. People really didn't know where this crown prince came from. He wasn't one of the popular ones.

Speaker 4: Thank you.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: And so, in that kind of position of power, he began bombing Yemen and called the military intervention Decisive Storm. Decisive Storm implies, you know, a couple weeks' mission, maybe 3 weeks, 4 weeks at best, and they would be out of Yemen. Here we are nearly 4 years later. So he formed a coalition, and this coalition consisted of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, until they were expelled during their spat with Saudi Arabia last summer. Bahrain, Kuwait.

Speaker 2: Jordan.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Jordan, there's a question mark there. They may have just been added to the list, just as Pakistan was once added to the list, but they really weren't part of the coalition. Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, and Senegal. These are the countries officially part of the Saudi-led coalition. There are also partners of the Saudi-led coalition. The United States, United Kingdom, France provide intelligence. Mid-air refueling, targeting assistance, training of soldiers, and many other logistical support. Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia provide their air bases and their bases to the Saudi-led coalition, which make the refueling possible. And then there are the weapons suppliers, of course— the U.S., the U.K., France, Canada. Germany and the Netherlands no longer supply weapons to the Saudi-led coalition. But China, Brazil, Spain, Italy, and possibly other countries still do.

Speaker 1: Can you leave that up there for just one second?

Speaker 2: Sure.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: So under foreign intervention, we, of course, also must talk about Iran, the role of Iran in this conflict in Yemen. I'm going to refer to an article here called Iran's Small Hand in Yemen. You hear about the conflict being phrased as Iran-backed Houthis, You know, a Saudi Arabia-Iran proxy war. The reality is that, as this article says, while the Houthis do receive some support from Iran, it's mostly political, with minimal financial and military assistance. The most effective support the Houthis have received is in the field of media. Al-Masirah, the Houthis' television channel, is broadcast from Beirut with Hezbollah assistance. And I also want to note— that Yemen, since 2015, has been under land, air, and sea blockade that's imposed by the Saudi-led military and the U.S. Navy. So this idea that Iran is somehow sneaking in these missiles to Iran is questionable. There's very little evidence to really support any of these claims that Nikki Haley or the U.S. administration or the Saudis have been claiming for the last 3 and a half years. So what's the impact on the U.S.-backed war in Yemen? It's been 1,346 days since March 26th, 2015, when Saudi and UAE and U.S. began bombing and blockading Yemen. Since then, over 80% of the population is now in need of humanitarian aid. At least 57,000 people have been killed in this war, and this does not include the numbers from 2015. This is according to a group that has been tracking these deaths. Called ACLED, A-C-L-E-D. And they estimate that this number is likely 70,000 or 80,000. 16.4 million Yemenis lack access to healthcare. The world's worst cholera outbreak in modern history is currently manifesting in Yemen. At the height of its cholera outbreak in Haiti, there were over 700,000 cases of cholera. In Yemen, we have 1.3 million cases so far. And the way people contract cholera is through drinking contaminated water. And the way you're treated from cholera is by drinking and rehydrating with clean water. But Saudi Arabia, you see, attacks water plants. They attack food resources. Yemen doesn't have natural resources. We used to import 90% of our food before the war even began. And so people are stuck drinking dirty water, and they're not able to recover. And so children die. Children whose immune systems are already compromised by hunger end up dying of a disease that really should not exist in the modern world.

Speaker 4: Thank you.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: There are over 3 million people displaced internally. You probably don't hear about a massive refugee crisis from Yemen, and that's because we're trapped. People are trapped in the country. Land, air, and sea blockade means that if you need to get out of the country, you need to, you know, have a lot of money and put yourself at risk to be able to reach one of the airports, one of the very few— one of 2 airports that's now functioning in the country. None of the airports in northern Yemen, the capital Sana'a's airport is not functioning. The Saudis won't let any planes come in or out of there. And the airport in the south? That airport. And again, most Yemenis live in northern Yemen, so they're not able to leave the country to receive treatment, to seek refuge. And so people end up being displaced internally. 90% lack access to electricity. Some places in Yemen, like Hodeidah, my family tell me— I've lived in Hodeidah, as well, when I was growing up. It's one of the hottest places. It's right by the Red Sea, and it's a coastal city, and so people have no electricity.

Speaker 4: Right.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: And again, very little water. And so you can imagine the conditions there. The severe water crisis, like I mentioned, it's affecting 15.7 million people. In just 2016 and 2017 alone, at least 113,000 children died of malnutrition and preventable diseases like cholera and diphtheria, according to Save the Children. At least 113,000 children. And millions lack access to fuel.

Speaker 2: Right.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Now the U.N. tells us that 14 million people— that's over half the population of Yemen— is facing famine. Half the population could die. And so, when the U.N. says it's the world's worst humanitarian crisis, that really is not an exaggeration at all. This is the city of Hodeidah before war. Spent every summer here of my childhood. The city is home to 600,000 people. And it's considered Yemen's lifeline because the port city, the city controls a port, and that port is where over 70% of Yemenis rely on the food and the aid coming in through the country. And so the UN was warning that any kind of attack on the port of Hodeidah would result in mass starvation and death. The rest of Yemen would starve to death if there's an attack on the port city of Hodeidah. Well, currently the city is under attack by the Saudi and UAE coalition with help from the United States and France, and the UAE, and the UK. And in case this wasn't apparent, this is a clear violation of international humanitarian law, because starvation, which is a war crime, is being used as a weapon in this war. So what is the role of the U.S. in all of this? The United States is involved in two— on two fronts. So oftentimes, when we talk about the U.S. in Yemen, people bring up, well, we're fighting terrorism in Yemen. Okay, fine. That is technically authorized by Congress under the Authorization to Use Military Force. And prior to this war, there were attacks on suspected militants. There were U.S. citizens who were executed by President Obama, and children who have been killed. And Trump has continued that war, as well. That technically, as horrific as it is to just, you know, decide that a group of people are terrorists and we should execute them in their own country, With drones. Technically, that is authorized under Congress. What is not authorized by Congress is what we're talking about here in the second point, which is assisting the Saudi-led coalition. And this began with the Obama administration, has continued under Trump's administration. And Obama's administration released a statement that very first day, and they said, we will support the Saudis with intelligence, with logistical support, with refueling, and with weapons sales.

Speaker 4: Thank you.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: So the U.S.-backed war, we train Saudi soldiers. We advise Saudi military personnel. The U.S. maintains, repairs, and upgrades vehicles and aircraft. This is a bit strange. They provide courses on communication, navigation, and, quote, how to lead by example. This was posted by the military, army.com. There are 123 contracts with the Saudis, totaling over $120 million per month. Refueling jets midair is one of the most significant ways the U.S. has been helping the Saudis, and this apparently just stopped a couple of weeks ago. And there are also US Special Forces, the Green Berets, on the ground at the Yemen-Saudi border, which constitutes direct combat. The Obama administration is just as guilty as the Trump administration when we think about this war in Yemen. There are billions— $115 billion weapon sales sold under the Obama administration.

Speaker 2: $110 billion.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: And I put $110 billion in quotes here, because Trump is inflating this number. He keeps mentioning that this is— Why he is going to overlook the Khashoggi murder. He is really interested in maintaining these contracts. That number is probably much smaller than that, and most of these contracts have been negotiated under the Obama administration, but any number is too big, right? There are US-based corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon that have been bombarding Yemen, and Yemenis know where these missiles and where these bombs are coming from. This is a picture of a group of Yemeni kids standing around fragments that they found, and the fragments have Made in America on them. They know where these weapons are coming from. Here's another picture of kids around bombs that have fallen around their neighborhood. And one other really important thing to think about is the relationship between the Saudis, the Saudi-led coalition, and groups like al-Qaeda in Yemen. So the BBC reported— recorded— On video, troops from Saudi-led coalition forces and al-Qaeda militants working together against Houthis in Yemen. This was in 2016. The Hadi government is pretty open about this. They have appointed Nayef al-Qaisi, a U.S.-designated AQAP terrorist, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the governor of one of the provinces under the Hadi government. And recent reports by AP show that there were secret deals made by the Saudi-led coalition and al-Qaeda in Yemen, where they say the coalition cut secret deals with al-Qaeda fighters, paying some to leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment, and wads of looted cash, an investigation by AP has found. Hundreds were recruited to join the coalition itself. This article, by the way, is from August of this year. Another set of investigations, also by AP, found at least 18 clandestine lockups across southern Yemen run by the UAE or by Yemeni forces that were created and trained by the Gulf nation. And an investigation found sexual violence is a primary tool aimed at brutalizing the detainees and extracting confessions, the artist and 6 other detainees told AP. They found the artist who was imprisoned in one of these prisons, and they interviewed others who had reported these horrific violations of human rights. That are conducted by the UAE, who are partners of the US. These are the people we're working with. As sad as this is, I want to leave with a hopeful note. I think all of this is winnable. It is winnable for us in the House. The War Powers Resolution, which is a federal law which says that only Congress gets to declare war, this has been invoked twice in the House. In November of last year, it was invoked by Ro Khanna, Representatives Pocan, Massie and Jones. They ended up stripping that resolution of its privileged status, so it didn't go to a vote, but they did pass H. Resolution 599, with 50 co-sponsors, and they acknowledged U.S. involvement and the lack of congressional authorization. November 15th of this year, Ro Khanna again introduced H. Con. Resolution 138, but it was stripped of its privileged status. However, it currently has over 93 co-sponsors, thanks to the work of so many amazing people here, and it will soon be reintroduced under a different number. So this can pass. There's hope that if we pass this resolution, we could end US involvement in the war in Yemen. It's also winnable in the Senate. The War Powers Resolution was invoked in the Senate Under S.J. Resolution 54. In February, it was introduced by Senators Sanders, Lee, and Murphy. Unfortunately, it was tabled in a procedural vote. However, it was reintroduced this month, and it just advanced in the Senate by a vote of 63 to 37.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: This is historic. War powers have never gone this far in the Senate. It's uncharted territory, like Hassan tells me. We don't really know what's going to happen next, but we know that we can now move forward with a debate. And senators will finally hear what the U.S. has been doing in Yemen, what our weapons, what our intelligence, what our training and refueling has been doing to the people of Yemen. And they'll get a chance to decide. if this is something that Congress should authorize or not. Finally, I'd like to leave you with Yemenis in their own words. This is a— not a very clear picture of Yemenis demonstrating. This is just one of many demonstrations. Tens of thousands of people come out to the streets, and they reject occupation, and they reject humiliation. So what I did the other day, as I was on the train from Michigan to here, I tweeted in Arabic, which I normally don't, but I tweeted in Arabic. I have a translation here. I said, my dear ones in Yemen, I want to convey your voices and your suffering to the American citizens. Can you describe your situation or the case of Yemen in a word or a phrase? I thought maybe I'll get a few responses. I'll read them out to you so you really understand what's happening, just from a perspective that maybe you don't get to hear. I'm living here in the U.S. I'm not— you know, my family is affected by this war, but personally, my safety and my livelihood and my life is not affected by this. But, you know, you don't get to hear the voices of people who really are affected by this, so I thought maybe this would be useful. Well, I didn't realize that I would get 700 responses. And 14 responses. This is when I just checked, you know, a few minutes ago before this talk. So I wasn't able to translate all 714 responses, but I will, and we will get those words out there. What I do have here is a few— I have 3 slides and a few statements that I translated into Arabic— into English. One person said, we're experiencing a slow death In a large prison. America and the Saudi regime are committing genocide, while money purchases everyone's silence. Osama al-Sanibani said, our lives have been ruined, but we are still alive. We live without hope, and we see human values like democracy, human rights, equality, and justice have lost their meanings. All these words and others have become, in our view, no more than absurd propaganda. They're as absurd as the description of Mohammed bin Salman as a reformer. Our blood for the Trump administration is just as arms deals. They do not value the human being. They talk about animal rights while they commit the most horrific terrorism against us. That message was written in English. Urgent message: Stop the war in Yemen. America is the cause of our destruction. Leave us alone. Americans must change their anti-Yemen politics. The American administration intervenes in the affairs of Yemen and leads an unjust war. war under the pretense of Iran. Iran is not here. The American people must know that their administration supports the greatest criminal in humanity.

Becky Payne: No!

Shireen Al-Adeimi: This person is Ibrahim Abdelkarim. He lost his infant daughter in 2016 in a Saudi airstrike on his home. He continues to look for a lawyer who will represent his case and bring Mohammed bin Salman to justice for killing his child. In Yemen, some schools were closed because of the war. Some were destroyed, and some students were taught in schools without textbooks because there was no budget for printing textbooks. I met an educator in Yemen. He used to train teachers, and English teachers, and because it was a government job, he lost his job. He hasn't been paid in over 2 years, just as all government workers haven't been paid in over 2 years in Yemen. And this educator has, you know, his oldest son was then forced to leave school so that he can help his dad find odd jobs. So I think what's really important to realize, you know, it's not just the poor who are suffering. It's every single person in Yemen is suffering. The future of youth is lost in the midst of their suffering. The Yemeni people live in very difficult economic and humanitarian conditions, all due to the American support for the Saudi aggression against the Republic of Yemen. Our children in Yemen are killed by Saudi-backed aircraft. Those who survive the rockets die of starvation because of the blockade. Yemen is subject to genocide. Yemen needs a lasting and genuine peace. And the rebuilding of a nation on a national basis that includes all Yemenis, and this will only be by the pressure of the major powers on the countries that have used Yemen as a field to settle their scores, and not for Yemen and Yemenis. Why must the beautiful American dream turn our lives in Yemen into an ugly nightmare? asked Dr. Ashraf Al-Kibsi. Some responded with poetry. Some responded with video. Some responded with pictures. This is a schoolteacher who continues to teach despite the school being bombed. That's a picture that Jim Carrey drew when an American missile bombed a school bus full of children. And these are other pictures. This is a brother carrying his sister through the rubble of what remains of their home. This is a woman looking through her belongings of what was once her home. And now I want you to hear Yemeni children speak to you.

Speaker 2: إيش إلى العذاب إيش؟ سيدي يا الصغار، يا الكبار والصغار. ما حد ما حد يهيله، ما حد يهلي حد يلعب. أنا ما أحب الهب أنهم يقتلون الناس. دخلت الدبابة قصرت بطنها في الصواريخ. من دي بأي شخص قال بيها غلط ببببببسرعة عزاي وأقوام ليزشيخ وقف الحرب 20 العرض 20 سنة. بعد ما نحسش ماء ولا ديزل ولا بترول والماء والكهرباء كل حاجة خلينا كده نفرح كل ساعة لما رحنا بحضر شي ضاع صواريخ ضاع حتى الزواجات القادرة ما فيش إحنا عندنا أمان. إن شاء الله إدي أكون دكتورة وبغضاش حقق حلمين إني أكون دكتورة لأن بسبب الحرب. يا رئيس أمريكا أوقف الحرب عشان نقدا نتعلم ونقدا نعيش ونبقى بسلام وأمان يا مجلس الشيخ الأمريكي عشان يوقف القتل السواريخ والقنبلات واللي قتل الناس عشان نعيش من نزل الأول عشان كان في بنا فرحة كان ما في شو صار واكه والبحر والحديقة أنا أكلها وشوفها.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: I'd like to close by saying that without substantial U.S. support, Saudi Arabia cannot wage this war in Yemen much longer. They can try. They can't wage this war much longer, because they don't manufacture their own weapons, they don't train their own soldiers, they don't provide their own logistical support and training. They rely on the United States for this. Yemenis have a right to decide their own future without foreign intervention. The civil war is not going to end anytime soon. Yemen has gone through so much destruction, so much animosity and fracture. But we have the right to determine our own future. And that can't be done with foreign intervention. And you, the American public, could help end this war by pressuring your elected officials in Congress and in the Senate to stop the U.S.'s war in Yemen. Here in Chicago, we spoke to Senator Duckworth's office just yesterday, and we would like you to call her office in D.C. and locally and urge her to not just vote for S.J. Resolution 54, but to co-sponsor S.J. Resolution 54. We want to send a message to other senators that this is winnable. This is something that can pass. It's really important to not just support it at the end, but to show that this is— show some faith in this bill by cosponsoring it. So please urge your senators. And if you live in other states, or if you have friends in other states or family members, get them to call their senators and their members in the House, representatives in the House, and urge them to cosponsor these bills that will one day end the war on Yemen.

Nelson Brown: Hello folks, my name is Nelson Brown, and as a board member of the Peace Education Center of Greater Lansing, I want to welcome you to this presentation by Dr. Sherene Aladimi entitled The Six-Year War in Yemen: Background, Humanitarian Crisis, and Possibilities. The Peace Education Center is working to educate people about the plight of the Yemeni people and to mobilize support from our senators and representatives, not just to end American military support for Saudi Arabia's devastating war there, but also to urge the United States to broker some type of resolution to the conflict and to provide humanitarian aid for the long-suffering Yemeni people. Just a little background on the Peace Education Center. We were founded in the late '60s to oppose the Vietnam War by mobilizing resistance to it in the Lansing area. During our over 50-year history, the Peace Center has worked on issues of war and peace, on opposing religious prejudice, on supporting economic and social justice at home and abroad, and on opposing American military interventions as a focus of American foreign policy. In particular, the Peace Center has consistently worked to reduce unnecessary military spending and to limit the military's overwhelming influence in the economic social, and political cultural life of our country. These resources should better be spent on America's domestic needs, including on reducing income inequality, on creating racial justice, on building infrastructure, and on preventing climate change. Among the Peace Center's accomplishments was the successful campaign to have Michigan State University divest any holdings it had with apartheid South Africa. After 9/11, the Peace Center opposed American military intervention in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. We have supported an American return to the Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA. We've also opposed President Trump's motion to ban Muslims and have supported justice for the Palestinian people. We work with other groups in the Lansing area that share our overlapping concerns. We wish to offer special thanks to the co-sponsors of Dr. Aldini's presentation. Edgewood United Church Justice and Peace Team, Friends Committee on National Legislation Lansing Area Advocacy Team, Greater Lansing Network Against War and Injustice, the Greater Lansing United Nations Association, the Islamic Center of East Lansing, and MSU Students United for Palestinian Rights. I now want to turn the program over to my fellow board member Becky Payne, who will introduce Dr. Aladimi.

Becky Payne: Good evening, everyone. It is so wonderful to see so many people here. Thank you all for showing up. A quarter million deaths, 3 million people displaced, just a few statistics on the crisis in Yemen. Also, on the United States, the United States is responsible for 37% of arms sales around the globe. It's hard to understand and to care about places so far away, but we must. We at the We at the Peace Education Center are happy when we can bring someone to speak to— for us, who can bring us up to speed on what our country is doing and how we need to lobby for justice. Dr. Sherene Al-Adeimi is an expert on the war and humanitarian crisis in her country of birth, Yemen, and has been advocating for an end to U.S. involvement there since 2015. She writes for several publications in these times and has been featured on NBC, NPR, PRI, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Nation, Current Affairs, and among others. She is an assistant professor of language and literacy at Michigan State University, where her research focuses on dialogic talk and student outcomes. So it is my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Sherene Aladimi.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Becky and Nelson and Tahseen, for inviting me. It's a pleasure to speak with you all today, and thank you so much to all the attendees who are making time on this— is it Tuesday afternoon, evening?

Amy: All right.

Speaker 4: I'm going to share my screen with you and go through this presentation, and I just want to note that I'm going to be talking about Kind of the background, the country overview. I'll discuss the nature and the extent of the Saudi and the U.S. intervention. I'll go over the humanitarian crisis. And then as well as talking about ending U.S. complicity. And I just want to note that all of the photos, or most of the photos that I have here of Yemen, are from this account on Twitter called Beautiful Yemen, in case people want to check it out. Thank you.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: So some demographic background.

Speaker 4: Yemen is the country where most Arabs originate from, and so it's the ethnic origin of Arabs. And the predominant language is Arabic, but also some languages that are South Semitic languages like Mehri and Soqatri. The population as of 2020 is 30 million people, and most are Muslim. And I highlight the sectarian breakdown here, 60% Sunnis, Shafi'i, and about 40% Zaydi Shia. And I highlight this distinction because you can see that this is not a country where it's only a very tiny majority Shia population. It's a unique kind of form of Shia Islam. And Yemenis have coexisted along religious lines for millennia. So it's not, you know, this is not a sectarian war as it's sometimes presented as such. The history of Yemen spans at least 3,000 years, where it was the home of the Kingdom of Saba, or Sheba in the Bible. And it's the home of the ancient Dam of Ma'rib, which was built in the 8th century BC. And this picture here at the bottom is a version of what remains of the dam. And this photo up here is the so-called— The Ma'rib Dam. you know, Temple of the Queen of Sheba. And Yemen was really important in the frankincense trail, which lasted from about 1000 BC to 700 AD, which supplied basically the frankincense and myrrh to the Parthian and Roman Empires. And at the time, the Greeks called it Arabia Felix because it was such a prosperous country. Now, talking about some modern divisions You'll notice that sometimes Yemen is spoken about in terms of North and South Yemen. And so I want to highlight a map over here. North Yemen is this area in orange, and South Yemen, or the former South and the former North, this area in green is South Yemen. And basically North Yemen, with the capital in Sana'a, was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire until 1918. And then it was ruled by the Mutwaqilite Kingdom of Yemen. This was a Zaydi kingdom, which lasted until 1962, when a military coup ousted the monarchy. This led to several years of war. And at the time, Saudi Arabia, which is another monarchy, and Jordan, and even the United Kingdom supported the monarchists against the military coup. But ultimately, the coup created the Yemen Arab Republic, which lasted from 1962 Meanwhile, in South Yemen, with its capital over here, Aden, where I was born, it was under British rule from 1839 until 1967. And resistance to British rule eventually led to the withdrawal of UK forces and the creation of the Middle East's to date only Marxist country, which was called the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. And this lasted from 1975 to 1990. 1967 until 1990. So what happened in 1990 was, you know, the Soviet Union was about to collapse, which was the predominant supporter of the South. And the unity talks, which were long held between North and South, basically were prioritized during this time. And the Republic of Yemen was formed in 1990 as a presidential constitutional republic. And I highlight this again because it's unlike the neighboring countries, which are, you know, the Sultanate of Oman or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates or Kuwait or Qatar. These are all kingdoms or monarchies, whereas Yemen is a constitutional republic. And Saleh, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, presided over northern Yemen from 1978 until 1990, and then a unified Yemen in 1990 until 2012. This is a picture of Saleh uniting with the southern president. Unfortunately, unity didn't last very long. And in 1994, just 4 years after the unity between north and south, the south declared secession and Saleh waged war. My family and I lived through that war. It was a summer war. It was very brutal. But he essentially tried to force the South back into unity with the North. And there are various reasons why the South wanted to declare secession. We can talk about that if people are interested later. The other turmoil, the other kind of challenge to Saleh's rule happened between 2004 and 2010, when the Houthis, which are, you know, a group from northern Yemen, began to challenge Saleh's corruption and his rule. And he responded again with war. And there were 6 wars waged between the Yemeni government and the Houthis between 2004 and 2010. Now, he enlisted the Saudi military cooperation during those wars. And so there's a history of Houthis and Saudis fighting one another. In 2007, southern leaders from Al-Hirak al-Janubi, it's a secessionist movement, they kind of formed themselves into this group and renewed calls for secession of the south. And then by 2011, as you may know, the Yemeni revolution occurred in the context of the wider Arab Spring. And so here we have a country that was only united in 1990. And by 2010, 2011, there were already all of these kind of challenges, as well as Yemen being the poor Middle Eastern country at the time. Saleh was— it was no secret that he was highly corrupt. And so people were frustrated by this and began to go out in the streets peacefully to demonstrate. So the peaceful protests were joined, you know, people from the Hirak, the southern secessionist movement, as well as the Houthis had joined these protests because, you know, factions— basically anybody who was anti-Saleh was joining these protests. Protests that began as peaceful protests. By March, violent clashes began to occur between Saleh and his former allies, and peaceful protesters were killed during this time. And between June and February of the next year, Saleh survived an assassination attempt, and he flew to Saudi Arabia. He was a strong Saudi ally. You know, was treated over there. And then when he came back, he agreed to transfer power to his vice president, Hadi, who is the current UN-recognized president of Yemen. He had been Saleh's VP since 1994, and power was officially transferred to him in February of 2012. Hadi was appointed to a 2-year term. So he was never elected. They call it a one-man election, but really he was just appointed to a 2-year term. In this time, He was tasked with revamping the constitution, bringing all of the groups together, like the Houthis, like the Hirak, and so on. But this Gulf country negotiated deal kind of left out groups like Hirak and the Houthis and gave Saleh the power to just resign but remain the most powerful man in Yemen. So large factions of the Yemeni army remained loyal to him. He was not going to be tried for any corruption or killing protesters or anything like that. He remained the most powerful man in Yemen, unlike other Arab Spring presidents. So, this was kind of a unique deal that suited him very well. So, what happened in 2014 was the Houthis began to call for mass protests in August of 2014 after the Hadi government, which now, by now, had been in power for a couple of years, they removed fuel subsidies. And so this began— this, of course, affected Yemenis everywhere, not just the Houthis. And by September, after a series of armed clashes between jihadists that were aligned with the Islah Party of Yemen, the Houthis essentially took over the capital, Sana'a. And the Yemeni army, which was largely allied to Saleh, interestingly did not intervene, despite the long history of war between Saleh and the Houthis. Despite the turmoil, they were able to sign a UN-sponsored unity deal with Hadi's government. So, there was still, you know, things were looking pretty bad, but there was still some hope that Yemenis were going to sort things out on their own, as they had done in previous decades. In January of 2015, the Houthis continued to apply pressure to Hadi. And this time they took over the presidential palace and they put him under house arrest. And as a result, he resigned. And in the context of all of this, the Saudis began bombing. And I want to highlight a quote from Jamal bin Omar. He was the former UN special envoy to Yemen, and he published this piece in Newsweek just last month where he said, after 10 painful weeks, a compromise was found covering the shape of the executive and legislature, security arrangements, and a timetable for transition. A deal was on the table. 2 days later, with no warning, the airstrikes began. And here he is talking about the Saudi-led coalition and the airstrikes that began in March of 2015, almost 6 years ago. So Saudi Arabia began this intervention with the support of the Hadi government. Interestingly, Saleh and the Houthis ended up joining forces to defend Yemen against the Saudi-led So, in January 2015, this is a picture of Mohammed bin Salman, or he's often called MBS, as well as President Hadi. In 2015, Mohammed bin Salman became the defense minister of Saudi Arabia, as well as the deputy crown prince. He's since promoted himself to crown prince. And by March, he led this intervention in Yemen. And it was very brutal. It was brutal. Like Jamal bin Omar said, it kind of came out of nowhere. The airstrikes came out of nowhere. And the Saudi-led coalition, they've kind of put together a coalition of countries, including themselves, the United Arab Emirates. Qatar was involved in this until June of 2017, when they had that big spat with Saudi Arabia and they were kicked out of the coalition. Bahrain, Kuwait, and then Morocco also left the coalition in February of 2019.

Becky Payne: Thank you.

Speaker 4: And then Egypt, Sudan, and Senegal. So these are the countries that are officially part of the Saudi-led coalition. The ground troops are not Saudi or Emirati. They are Saudi-paid Yemeni troops and mercenaries. There are UAE-backed mercenaries that were— that are employed by what was then called Blackwater and is now called Academi. And this is the Erik Prince-run mercenary firm, essentially, that's currently based in the UAE. And the Yemeni government continues to support them. So, this is the Saudi-backed Hadi government, the Islah Party of Yemen. And interestingly, the UAE is supporting the Southerners, the Southern secessionists. And so, even though the goal is to restore the UN-recognized president of Yemen and to create a united Yemen, the UAE is supporting the separatists. And the Saudis are supporting the Houthis. Supporting and backing the southern secessionists. So, U.S. complicity in Yemen involves many things. But I first want to highlight, you know, you might be wondering why. Why Yemen? I said it was the Middle East's poorest country, not much oil to speak of. Why Yemen? Well, Yemen controls a strategic location. It's Bab el-Mandeb Strait right here. And this is where in 2018, 6.2 million barrels of oil and oil products travel per day north to Europe and the US through the Suez Canal and south to Asia. And so this has always been a strategic location. And interestingly, China doesn't have, you know, the US has over 800 bases around the world. China's only base is on the other side of Bab-el-Mandeb in Djibouti. And it was built basically in 2017, 2 years into the war. So, it's a strategic location. And there's a long history of Saudi intervention in Yemen that we can talk about. Saudi basically has always maintained some kind of, not some kind of, a lot of influence in Yemen's government. And with the rise of the Houthis, they were starting to feel like that control was no longer going to be viable. So we often hear about arms sales. So, you know, quote unquote, $110 billion in Saudi arms sales were sold under— sorry, that should say Trump. The top right, $110, should say Trump. And I have it in quotes because we don't actually know the exact figure. Trump likes to boast about it. But, you know, we— I'm not actually quite sure what the figure is. But at least $115 billion in arms sales were arm sold under the Saudi government.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 4: sales under the Obama administration. And this is just from 2015 onwards. So right when the war began. Arm sales are not the only way that the Saudis— that the U.S. is involved in Yemen. Since 2015, the U.S. has been training soldiers and pilots, as well as advising Saudi and UAE military personnel. The U.S. maintains and repairs vehicles and aircrafts whether they were sold to the Saudi-led coalition by the U.S. or not. They supply about 70% of Saudi weapons. The U.S. provides targeting assistance with commanders actually present in the command room choosing targets and helping them choose targets. Until November of 2018, the U.S. was providing mid-air refueling to the Saudi-led coalition. So as a plane would be flying Over Yemeni airspace, a U.S. jet would refuel them midair because there's no way to land, of course, without being in danger. So, they were providing this to Saudi and UAE jets that were bombing Yemen. They provide all sorts of logistical support and intelligence sharing, which the Biden administration announced an end to just last month. And importantly, the U.S., although they've neither confirmed nor denied a recent Saudi CNN investigation, more likely than not is involved in imposing a naval blockade on Yemen. And I'll talk more about the blockade. So in 2016, this is a year into the war, a leaked UN report said that the targeting of civilians by the Saudi-led coalition was widespread and systematic. I kind of want to break down what it means to have a systematic targeting of civilians. So, in the first couple of days of the war, in March of 2015, the Saudi-led coalition essentially destroyed the entire Yemeni air force. And that's why the other side, the Houthis, currently, they don't have an air force. Then they began to target very quickly civilian areas, including hospitals and homes and schools and mosques and factories and gatherings like funerals or weddings or markets, even moving vehicles. So all civilian targets became legitimate targets for the Saudi-led coalition. The coalition then began targeting food and water facilities like food production facilities, plants, agriculture, and also infrastructure that would provide transportation for Those foods, like roads and bridges, just began destroying them. Now, in April of 2014, just a month into the war, a UN Security Council Resolution 2216 essentially acknowledged and recognized intervention and explicitly called on the Saudi-led coalition to inspect all cargo coming to Yemen via sea and land in order to prevent arms transfers to the Houthis. There was a big concern that Iran was going to be supplying arms to the Houthis. Now, what happened essentially is that gave reason for the Saudis to impose this blockade. Currently, there are all but 2 airports in the country that are open. They're both in the southern part of the country that the Saudi-led coalition kind of controls. Commercial trade is severely limited and restricted. This led to 80% of Yemenis becoming reliant on aid, because prior to the war, 90% relied on importing food. We used to import 90% of our food into Yemen. And so, when commercial trade was severely restricted and limited, you know, most of the population became reliant on aid. That, too, is used as a weapon by the Saudi-led coalition and by the Trump administration, who cut aid to various parts of Yemen. of northern Yemen. So essentially, under the guise of an arms embargo to the Houthis, the Saudi-led coalition is still using 2216 to justify their blockade in Yemen. This is a tweet from this morning. Martin Griffiths, who's the current envoy to Yemen, he said fuel imports haven't entered Hodeidah. This is a port in the northern part of Yemen, which supplies 70% of Yemen's Haven't entered the port of Hodeida since January. It's vital that obstacles to imports and domestic distribution of fuel for civilian use are removed. I call on the parties to prioritize civilian needs above all else and not to weaponize the economy. And David Beasley, who is the director of the World Food Program, also this month said, to add to all their misery, the innocent people of Yemen have to deal with the fuel blockade. For example, most hospitals only have electricity in their intensive care units because fuel reserves are so low. I know this firsthand because I've walked in the hospital and the lights were off. The electricity was off. The people of Yemen deserve our help. That blockade must be lifted as a humanitarian act. Otherwise, millions more will spiral into crisis. This is in no uncertain terms saying that the blockade exists, that it needs to be lifted. And yet, after a CNN investigation this past week showing that famine is created in Yemen and it's fueled by this Saudi blockade that the U.S. is supporting, the Biden envoy to Yemen, Tim Lenderking, outright denied the existence of a blockade. The reporter who went to Yemen, she smuggled herself into Yemen, this Yemeni reporter, Na'ama al-Baghir. She smuggled herself into Yemen to report what was happening in Yemen. And she names names and calls out the U.S. for its complicity in starving Yemen. She described it as hell on earth for Yemeni children. And despite this, the new envoy to Yemen is denying the existence even of the blockade. There are some images ahead that are distressing, if you want to look away. The UN has been calling this the world's worst humanitarian crisis. This is mostly driven by the blockade, but of course also the bombing. 112,000 people have been killed in the violence, and these are most likely underestimates because there's not a clear way of understanding the Yes. —the full impact of this war. 50% are on the brink of starvation. This year, 400,000 children under the age of 5 are going to starve to death if the war continues and if the blockade continues. There are 6.3— 3.6 million people who are internally displaced, and not a lot of Yemeni refugees, because essentially they're stuck in the country due to the blockade. 70% don't have access to adequate healthcare and clean drinking water. So epidemics like cholera became widespread. And the cholera outbreaks in Yemen, 4 different outbreaks, are the worst in modern history. 80%, like I mentioned before, which is 24 million people, are in need of humanitarian assistance. A child between the ages of birth and 5 dies every 10 minutes. And so, if you count that up, that's at least 210,000 children in just 4 years out of the 6 years of the war. Half of all children suffer stunted growth, because when a child starves to death, when a child survives starvation, if they, if they don't die, it has significant effects on their cognitive and physical health. And even though COVID cases are very low, because again, the healthcare system is all but decimated, we know that the case fatality rate of the cases that have been confirmed is 30%, which is the highest in the world. So there have been efforts to end U.S. complicity in the war in Yemen. First, the U.S. war in Yemen is illegal. So I talked about the humanitarian crisis. But even if we don't talk about, about this on moral grounds, it's illegal given U.S. law. So the War Powers Act of 1973 was introduced after news of Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia was leaked to journalists. And it led to this federal law that authorizes Congress and not the president to declare war. And so when Obama entered this war in 2016 without congressional approval, that was an illegal act. But basically every president since Nixon has entered illegal wars, and Congress has never challenged a sitting president on a war. Using the War Powers Act until 2019, where under the leadership of Representative Ro Khanna in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, this took a couple years to go through various obstacles. Congress passed its first War Powers Act in 19— in 2019, declaring that Trump should withdraw all U.S. support for the war in Yemen. And what did Trump do? He vetoed the bill. So Biden has since made certain promises. So I have a table here. I tried to organize this, and I thought maybe a table would be helpful. So on the left, you'll see what Biden has done so far. So, so far, he's lifted the FTO designation against the Houthis. On the very last day of the Trump administration, they imposed a terror designation on the Houthis. Oh, wow. As a way to kind of appease Saudi Arabia. But this would have caused literally 70% of the population to starve, because the Houthis control an area in northern Yemen where 70% of the population lives. And if you designate the de facto government of Yemen as terrorists, then no organizations are going to be able to work in those areas or provide aid. And so thankfully, the Biden administration was very quick to lift this designation that should have never happened. And they said that this was in fact a misuse of the designation. The Trump administration also cut aid to northern Yemen in August, again, where 70% of the population lives. And they tried to influence the UN to also cut aid in those areas. Biden, in the last couple of days, has restored aid to northern Yemen. He also announced an end to to intelligence sharing with the Saudi-led coalition. And there was this, you know, talk that he gave to the Secretary of Department where he talked about ending offensive operations in Yemen and reviewing relevant arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. What I'm terming here business as usual, essentially, is the Biden administration continuing to enforce the naval blockade. Again, they've not denied that they The U.S. Navy is involved in enforcing the naval blockade. They continue to support the Saudi-led coalition in their actions against the Houthis in areas like Ma'rib in northern Yemen and other battlefronts. They continue to provide spare parts, other logistical support, and training and advising of Saudi and UAE military personnel. They were— the Saudis were just— the Saudi Air Force was just kind of tweeting about joint exercises between the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force and the Saudi Air Force just this month. So what next? Biden has promised that he will end offensive operations, but we don't know if— we don't know what that means, right? The reason Obama entered this war ostensibly was to, you know, in the stated documents, was to protect Saudi sovereignty. And so if Biden is framing this war again as defensive, then I feel like we're back in 2015. And, you know, things can just be classified as offensive or defensive arbitrarily. So I really think that what needs to happen is congressional oversight of ending the war. The War Powers Act can be invoked over and over by any member of Congress. And there are things like Congressional hearings that need to be taking place. One did take place, by the way, after the CNN investigation, the day after the investigation. But we need to have congressional oversight of this promise, essentially, to end U.S. war in Yemen. The blockade absolutely needs to be lifted unconditionally, not tied to any sort of, you know, deal with the Houthis or anything like that. And I'm going to urge people to look out for a letter that's going to be going to elected officials, a congressional letter urging our congressional officials to sign on to this blockade letter and to ensure that the U.S. works to lift the blockade on Yemen. The war hasn't ended. But when the war ends, when the U.S. stops training and arming and fueling every aspect of the war in Yemen, I think reparations are also —something that we need to be talking about. You know, aid often is discussed, but, you know, aid is charity. And what the Yemeni people deserve is reparations, at the very least, for, in fact, war crimes that have been committed and continue to be committed in the name of the U.S. population.

Amy: The United States and Britain launched dozens of military strikes on Yemen on Thursday night, raising fears of an escalation of conflict in the region. The strikes were carried out from land and sea and targeted areas controlled by the Houthi rebels, leaving at least 5 people dead. The U.S. says the strikes came in response to the Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea to protest Israel's assault on Gaza. President Joe Biden called the strikes, quote, a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation, unquote. Calling the strikes barbaric, the Houthis said the group will continue targeting ships heading towards Israel and that the strikes, quote, will not go unanswered and unpunished, unquote. At least 4 oil tankers have diverted course from the Red Sea following the overnight attack. Yemen has been targeted by U.S. military action and bombings over the last 4 American presidencies, of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, now Joe Biden. For more, we're joined by Shireen Al-Adeemi. She's a Yemeni-American assistant professor at Michigan State University, a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, joining us from East Lansing, Michigan. Professor Al-Adeemi, we thank you for being with us. Can you first respond to the British-U.S. attacks on Yemen last night?

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Thanks for having me, Amy. These attacks are not unexpected. The U.S. has resorted to violence and bombardments in the past. Certainly, they've been part of the coalition. That has supported the— that has bombed Yemen and enforced a blockade, a naval and air blockade, for the past several years, since 2015. So this represents, I think, a continuation of that policy of escalation, a policy of resorting to violence and bombardment rather than doing what most American people have been asking President Biden to do, which is ceasefire, calling for a ceasefire in Palestine against the people of Gaza, and making sure that, you know, The people of Gaza don't have to pay the price for the actions of Hamas on October 7th. And so, I think instead of working with the Israeli government to end the— what South Africans and others are calling genocide against the Palestinian people, we just see an escalation of hostilities in that region.

Amy: Can you talk about what the Houthis are doing in the Red Sea? What ships are they going after? And what has this meant for trade there?

Shireen Al-Adeimi: So, they are controlling Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which approximately 13% of global shipping goes through. So, anything going through Europe through the Red Sea goes through Bab el-Mandeb before it gets to Sinaa, and the other way around, as well. And they have been targeting any ships that are headed toward Israel, either Israeli ships or ships that are targeted.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Headed towards Israel. And they've been very clear about why they're doing this. They're doing this in support of Palestine, in support of the people of Gaza. And they have repeatedly said that all of these attacks toward these ships that are either Israeli or going towards Israel will stop once the Israelis stop their war in Gaza, and specifically actually preventing the food and medicine from entering Gaza. So essentially using a naval blockade in the Red Sea to prevent the blockade against civilians in Gaza. There's also— last week they announced that this was also in accordance with their obligations under genocide prevention, Article 1 of genocide prevention, which says that states should have an obligation to prevent genocide. And so that's what the Houthis have been saying. That's what Ansar Allah have been saying. And the US has mobilized troops in the region to defend shipping, global shipping essentially, and specifically the Israeli economy. So they—

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: The coalition they put together, I think it's called Operation Prosperity Guardian. And so, we have more troops, more U.S. presence in the region in the last few weeks, in order to protect the waters from these Houthi attacks.

Amy: I wanted to talk about the response in Britain and the United States. Responding to the attack, U.S. Congressmember Ro Khanna tweeted, Noël Hanrahan, who represents Silicon Valley, California, in Congress, said on social media, Biden needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another Middle East conflict. That's Article I of the Constitution. I will stand up for that regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House. Section 2 of the War Powers Act—

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Section 2?

Amy: The War Powers Act is clear. POTUS may only introduce the U.S. into hostilities after congressional authorization or in a national emergency when the U.S. is under imminent attack. Reporting is not a substitute. This is a retaliatory offensive strike. Of course, POTUS is the president of the United States. And similarly—

Becky Payne: Rishi Sunak.

Amy: Rishi Sunak, the prime minister of Britain, is facing opposition questioning, demanding he come before Professor Adeemi, your response?

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Absolutely. There are laws that prevent U.S. presidents from— I mean, the entire Constitution itself, and, of course, the War Powers Act of 1973, they prevent presidents from just going and launching airstrikes, launching war, without congressional authority. They don't have this authority. It's not an imminent threat. The Houthis were not attacking the U.S. They were preventing shipping toward Israel. They had— this is not a defensive war by any means. And so, not informing Congress of this is a violation of the Constitution. And we know Biden himself understands this, of course. There are some tweets going around from 2020, when he was— and 2021, when he was criticizing Trump for having gone to or potentially attacking Iran without going to Congress, saying that no president should do this without congressional approval. And this tweet that you read, coming from Representative Ro Khanna, is especially important because Ro Khanna, along with Senator Bernie Sanders, led the War Powers Act, War Powers Resolution, in Congress in 2019, when they directed Trump to end hostilities in Yemen. And at the time, essentially refueling Saudi ships and UAE— refueling Saudi planes was Considered an act of war that the president had no authority to go to use without congressional approval, let alone direct U.S. strikes, like we're seeing right now, without congressional approval. So, again, it's not defensive, even if President Biden chooses to frame it as a defensive war. This is an offensive act. This is a breach of Yemeni sovereignty. Multiple cities, multiple provinces were attacked last night. There are casualties. There are people who have been killed. We don't know how many yet. And why escalate to such levels of violence when the ask was clear? Work towards a ceasefire, end the suffering of the Palestinian people. And US interests here are commercial. This is a defense of capitalism in a sense as well. And yet we see President Biden resorting and Rishi Sunak resorting to such degree of violence and escalation instead of resorting to diplomacy. Right.

Amy: And as we speak, we're showing live footage from Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. Thousands of people are rallying against the strikes. Shireen Al-Adeimi, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Yemeni-American assistant professor at Michigan State University, speaking to us from East Lansing.