7 years of steadfastness: It is time to put an end to the war on Yemen

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The Saudi puppet regime has been at war with the oppressed people of Yemen long before its hostile coalition of staunch allies decided to wage an aggressive warfare on the 25th of March 2015, 6 months after their September 2014 uprising against the Saudi-backed Hadi regime. It is the Yemenis who are labeled today as the ‘Houthi rebels’, while Hadi and his loyalists are designated as the beacons of legitimacy. Interesting how labels change over time!

Unequivocally, Yemen’s status quo is understood reading its history and those dynamics which were set in motion long time ago. Precisely, its crippling poverty and diseased institutions are the products of decades of latent colonialism; a plight that dates back to the very moment those legendary people rose against institutionalized servitude. Nonetheless, little could the Yemenis have suspected, in September 2014, that their aspiration for independence would prompt their tyrannical neighboring regime and its reckless de facto ruler MBS to attempt and annihilate them.

While the onset of MBS’ invasion had translated into territorial and military ‘triumphs’, neither he nor his associates would ever anticipate that roughly a decade into their aggression would land a new balance of power in Yemen, which had elevated its righteous nation, diplomacy and resistance on unprecedented strategic levels, regionally and globally.

The geo-strategic position of Yemen has always been a vital goal for the Saudi dynasty. As the Yemenis emerged a giant against the dictatorial government, a new political dawn on the back of the broken bones of imperialism, the Saudis (P.S. I mean the Saudi clan, not the oppressed people of Hijaz and Najd) recognized in Yemen both the key and the cornerstone to their ambitious hegemonic future. Notably, late ruler Abdulaziz famously recommended his sons that, “What is good for you, and what is bad for you comes from Yemen”. Hence, MBS’s ambitions remain dependent on his potential to bring the Yemenis to heel and kneel.

Obviously, MBS aspires to maintain control over natural resources as well as socio-political control, geo-military control, economic control, and in all conscience ‘religious’ supremacy. If there is an aggression being waged against Yemen’s sovereignty and its people, there is another more devious aggression against its religious ideology, which essentially stands in rejection of any and all sorts of subjugation.

Wahhabism in this equation would come to claim its pound of flesh as MBS’ genocidal dogma has proven to be no different than that of the backward Wahhabi terrorists. Bearing in mind that it was the Saudis who inspired the rise of Takfirism, I would argue that world powers need to stand with the oppressed Yemenis, if not out of appreciation for their popular will, at least out of a sense of preservation as MBS’s recklessness poses an undeniable threat to the entire humanity.

On the contrary, one can not ignore the significant role played by his eminence Sayyed AbdelMalek al-Houthi, who does not only stand as a mere tribal leader over his tribesmen, but as a national frontrunner and bridge in between Yemen’s past and future. Hailing from northern Saada’s highlands, Sayyed AbdelMalek al-Houthi is from an honorable clique, whose fidelity to the nation’s cause remains forever attached to a heritage, few have been able to comprehend, let alone encompass. Whatsoever, those, and Yemen in general, have never been a loyal vassal to any aggressor; a fact the Ottomans had learned to contend with. For this reason, they confessed, “Yemen is the cemetery of invaders.”

Since the Yemenis were not broken through bombardment, MBS has meanwhile reverted to a more devious sort of control utilizing the inhumane siege to better rise victorious over them. 

If Yemen is grossly underdeveloped, that is not to say that this has been systematically engineered by the West to keep it under their tight patronage. So, Yemen stands a victim in a contest for power, a fact some still remain unaware of. If a subjugated Yemen fitted within MBS’ ambitions for grandeur, in that it would have not offered any form of political challenge to him, a free independent Yemen was never going to be tolerated, especially one which could have replicated the Islamic Revolution of Iran, noting here that the role of Iran’s revolution is not to be comprehended from a sectarian perspective, but from its popular emancipation, pro-oppressed advocacy and its anti-imperialist resistance. While Iran has established its current institutions on the basis of genuine Mohammedan Islam, in the aftermath of 1979, its core values have been freedom, social justice, sovereignty and human rights. 

Now that I have offered some historical context to this hostile aggression, I wrap it up by stressing that the 7 years of Yemenis’ steadfastness reveal MBS’ absence of vision as well as ethics, which foresee his inevitable defeat. Sooner or later the lunatic bloodthirsty boy will eventually surrender. And as Sayed Nasrallah put it, “Just as the blood of our children emerged victorious in Lebanon, the blood of Yemen’s children will emerge victorious as well”.