An Imperialist Murder and An Imperialist Genocide
Amit
An American journalist of Saudi Origin, Jamal Khashoggi, was killed by Saudi intelligence agents in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, and his corpse was cut into tiny parts and thrown into the river. The mainstream media of the western world has been raising a lot of noise about this. Something that must be understood is that Khashoggi was not a progressive or a people’s journalist. Not long ago, he had been a supporter of the extremely reactionary ideas of the Saudi regime. While living in America, he started propagating and publicizing the ‘progressive’ American ideals and started suggesting the transplantation of western style democracy in Saudi Arabia. He had been advising the Saudi monarchy through his columns in the ‘Washington Post’ to renunciate their medieval customs. Consequently, he was assassinated for he knew too much and instead of staying a loyal lackey of the Saudi regime had started mildly criticizing the monarchy. Even though he was an outsider as far as the internal machinations of the royal government is considered, he still knew too much about the way it worked and operated. It is also worth paying attention here that the same Jamal Khashoggi had also been advising the murderous Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman of getting a makeover and turning somewhat into T’challa, the protagonist of the movie, “Black Panther”. It seems the young prince took his advice far too seriously and ironically got Khashoggi himself assassinated, just like the T’challa who after becoming the superhero ‘Black Panther’ assassinates enemies in the movie! The Saudi Secret Services struck it lucky when Khashoggi came to the Saudi Consulate in Turkey for some matter. There has been a lot of uproar in the entire world about this incident and almost everyone has been presenting it as an example of how authoritarian and blood thirsty the Saudi Monarchy is; that Khashoggi should not really have been killed in such a gruesome manner, so on and so forth. The US, Britain and the likes are doling out admonitions that Khashoggi should not have been assassinated like this (that is to say, it should have been more ‘civil’!). After a lot of bad press coverage, the Saudi government admitted that it was an assassination and that they are ready to undertake a thorough judicial inquiry into the matter.
The Imperialists are making a lot of hue and cry over the death of their stooge within the walls of a government building, however, these war-mongers are awfully silent on the mass genocide and destruction being carried out right next to Saudi Arabia’s borders on a country-wide scale in Yemen by Saudi Arabia! The reason being that the weapons deployed by the Saudi regime in mass killings of innocents across Yemen, have actually been provided to them by none other than these same imperialist powers, namely US, Britain, France and Canada and these powers do not want a hostile regime in Yemen, that is friendly to Iran. This would understandably the Anglo-Saxon imperialist position in the Middle-East, which has long been deteriorating. These imperialist powers are busy teaching civility and etiquettes, which ought to have been taken care of in the aforesaid assassination, to Saudi Arabia, all the while standing on the banks of rivers of blood in Yemen. They also presented quite an example of the same etiquettes when they got Gaddafi killed in Libya! Saudi Arabia has been blood bathing in Yemen for the last 3-4 years. Before this, Yemeni masses, with their struggles, had been playing out dress rehearsals for the revolutionary movement following the ideals of the Arab Spring; however, Saudi Arabia forcibly stalled those efforts by violently imposing a war them. This was done to ensure that whichever government assumes power in Yemen does not stray away from the US-Israel-Saudi Arabia axis. However, despite possessing the third largest armed force in the world, equipped with modern weapons of warfare, Saudi Arabia has not been able to defeat Yemeni struggle. The cowardly and pusillanimous prince Salman has been dwarfed in front of the might of the Yemeni people, just as all the imperialist dogs previously had been in front of the bravery of the Arab masses. The Yemenis are dying in large numbers; the country itself has been thrown back into the middle ages; however, Yemen would not lose. Rather all of this will prove to be a preparatory round for the coming struggles. The Saudi rulers will have to pay for the deaths which their imposed war caused.
A long history of contestation for state-control in Yemen
This is not the first conflict in Yemen; rather an outcome of its chaotic history. Yemen, too, went through the national struggles which were going on elsewhere in the Arab world. After the 1967 Civil War, Yemen got partitioned into two. Whereas in Southern Yemen a parliamentary form of democracy came into existence, in the North, dictatorship got established. The Social Democrats got control over the government in Southern Yemen and established close ties with Soviet Union; the North was totally (and openly) dependent on Saudi Arabia. By 1990, both governments had fused and both countries merged to form one. Ali Abdullah Saleh, came to rule this United Yemen and stayed in power till 2011. Prior to this, Saleh had been ruling Northern Yemen since 1978. Yemen had never seen any centralized authority or power and the state apparatus which controlled this country was quite dispersed. There are three armed forces in the country out of which two operate not much different than a private army. One of these comes under state authority while the other two are run by Saleh’s sons and the opposition leader respectively. All three forces are the three main armed powers of the country. Since 2007, demand for a separate country, South Yemen, has been rising owing to it possessing most of the fertile lands and natural resources of the country. Al-Qaeda, too, has quite an influence in the country and had control over some areas even before 2011. In the current conflict, the Arab powers (U.A.E.) have also invested in Al-Qaeda and helped it gain further ground. On the other side, Houthi movement, which had been advancing massively since 2004, too, got armed and started moving towards the Yemeni capital, Sana’a from Northern Yemen and capitalizing on the political crisis that arose after 2011, gained state control (with the help of Saleh himself, who left with no alternative in wake of growing mass protests, was compelled to resign in 2011) in 2015. This coup, brought forth a regime (Houthi government), which instead of protecting Saudi and American interests was rather openly in opposition to Saudi Arabia and consequently had a lot of potential to disrupt the mutually beneficial economic and geo-strategic alliance between US and Saudi Arabia. And precisely this led to Saudi Arabia’s attack on Yemen. Soon other Western imperialist powers too joined in this bloodbath by deploying their drones and carpet-bombing Yemen.
When the sparks of Arab Spring reached Yemen, they transformed into a wildfire, as a consequence of which Saleh had been forced to resign and let go of state power. This struggle was being waged by the unemployed youth, students and workers of Yemen. During this period of turmoil in the Arab world, the Yemeni struggle was undoubtedly one of the most offensive struggles (second only to Tunisia itself) and it continued till 2015, as a consequence of which a fluid situation in the political realm prevailed; it was by taking advantage of this flux that the Houthi rebels successfully carried out a coup in 2015 and captured state power and formed their own government. The Houthis had the support of the majority of Yemeni people. Yet, Saudi Arabia forcibly imposed this war on them since the economic crisis looming large over capitalist world necessitates that any threat to an economic deal be dealt with an iron hand (read armed military intervention) and with Houthis at the helm of affairs in Yemen, this Saudi fear was not unfounded. However, in the last 4 years, Yemen has proven to be Saudi Arabia’s ‘Vietnam’. The Yemeni Civil War took such a turn that the incumbent Saleh government was overthrown in a coup d’état by the Houthi rebels who then announced the formation of their own government. During this time, all the entities in Yemen that held a claim to power emerged and then later disappeared many a times from the political scene. In 2011, following Arab spring, Saleh had to resign and his place was taken by Vice-President Mansur Hadi, who actually represented Saudi interests. The armed forces of Saleh’s sons as well as the opposition leader’s forces and the state armed force–all these were actually the tools of state control in Yemen; however, in absence of a central leadership and authority, these remained in disarray and provided grounds for further instability. When the Houthi rebels neared Sana’a in 2015, Saleh’s army (on his orders) provided military support to them and helped them overthrow and later dissolve the government under Mansur Hadi.
The Imperialist powers approached the Houthi government too, for negotiations, but the latter were openly expressing their opposition to US and Saudi Arabia, and taking a sympathetic stance towards Iran. When the Houthis rejected all proposals for negotiations, Saudi Government declared war on them; but three years down the road it still has not been able to defeat the Houthis. The Yemeni economy had been for a long time dependent on imports of food grains. Of all the Arab nations, which came to be dependent on American grain ever since the beginning of American ‘Food Aid Policy’, Yemen is the poorest. Right after the war commenced, Yemen has been cut off from all grain imports by the US. This is the primary reason behind starvation-related deaths that are occurring in Yemen. The war economics that evolved ever since this war began is most benefitted by the perpetuation of this war. In this time and moment, Khashoggi’s ‘Black Panther’, the cowardly prince, in order to hide his monstrosities and failures, has been dropping bombs and missiles on homes, schools, hospitals, marriage ceremonies, funeral processions and is ensuring that the macabre dance of death never stops in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has dropped bombs on schools, homes, mosques, factories, school buses and various other public places inhabited by civilians resulting in a total death count of over 10,000 people (however, according to Yemeni Government estimates, the actual figures could be in fact more than 50,000). A fifth of all these killings constitutes of children. Meanwhile, cholera spread twice through the population infecting a total of more than a million people, about half of which are kids.
Yemen – A country impaled with Imperialist daggers
As a matter of fact, the whole of Arab world has turned into a war theatre for playing out of the conflicts between the US-Israel axis and Russia-Iran axis. From Syria to Yemen, people are being torn asunder by bombs and missiles. The larger picture of Arab world emerges as one starts piecing together all these snippets — chemical bombs are melting off human flesh somewhere; kids are choking to death in toxic gases; unarmed protestors somewhere else are being mercilessly killed off by snipers. Yemen is currently undergoing the worst famine in the last 100 years of world history. The country is in the grips of horrific levels of unemployment. But, oblivious to all of this, both imperialist blocs are ruthlessly engaged in gaining geo-strategic and economic advantages over each other. Russia and Iran are not directly engaged in this war. Though Iran has been indirectly providing all sorts of assistance to the Houthi rebels, it has not taken any direct part in the entire conflict. Yemen’s fighters have proved too much for the Saudi forces. These rebels took on Saudi Arabia’s billion dollar tanks with their simple rocket launchers and prevailed. After losing face in direct military conflict, Saudi Arabia has now resorted to bombing of the public places out of sheer frustration. The US-Israel-Saudi axis has been following the same malicious and devious pattern which it has followed elsewhere. Wherever they have desired to establish their kind of ‘democracy’, they have followed the same tactic of breaking the said country into multiple parts and then ensuring that the governments agree to their point of view regarding policies by either resorting to implicit as well as explicit coercion, aid or the threat of war. The US, Britain, France and Canada have invested quite large sums of capital in the present Yemen conflict. Besides Saudi Arabia, America’s primary ally, Israel, too, has been dropping bombs and missiles on innocent people since long. The American and British weapon-manufacturing companies, too, have provided Saudi Arabia with huge arsenals of weaponry. And yet (or precisely because of this) these imperialist robbers are shamelessly silent over the carnage being carried out in Yemen, while at the same time these thugs are crying themselves hoarse over the murder of a Khashoggi! The truth is that these imperialist parasites live off the blood of Yemeni people. In this scenario, the first real step forward in the Yemeni conflict would an initiative to build the revolutionary leadership of the working class and the broad working masses; a revolutionary party which can provide ideological as well as programmatic orientation to the future struggles and prevent regressive/reactionary forces from taking advantage of any popular upsurge and immediately can fight against the imperialist aggression effectively, by forming anti-imperialist alliances. Only after learning the lessons of the movement, both positive and negative, which arose spontaneously out of the Arab Spring, can the Yemeni people move forward under the leadership of a revolutionary party. Otherwise, the religious fundamentalist forces, which are themselves supported by one or the other imperialist bloc, will keep leading their struggles into blind alleys.
