US, Saudi Arabia cannot dictate to Yemenis: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Eric Draitser, founder of stopimperialism.com in New York, about Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement saying Saudi Arabia and the United States are to blame for failed efforts to convene UN-backed peace talks on the ongoing crisis in the Arab country.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: With all the wars and violence that is plaguing the Middle East, we see the fingerprints of United States in one way or another there present in these wars, including the one in Yemen and somehow it is being ignored by the western mainstream media. What interest do you think the US is pursuing in Yemen?

Draitser: Well, there is a number of them. Let’s not forget that the United States has been deeply involved in Yemen since far earlier than the Saudi initiated aggression that began this year. The United States has had assets from the CIA and other agencies on the ground in Yemen ostensibly fighting al-Qaeda for a number of years now. We should recall also that the so-called government, former government of Hadi was actually installed by the United States and Saudi Arabia. This was a puppet government. Hadi ran unopposed in what cannot be regarded as a legitimate election and that is really what is at issue here in this war.

It is the illegitimacy of the former government of Hadi, it is the legitimacy of a revolutionary movement in seizing control of that country and it is the illegitimacy of an illegal war being waged by Saudi Arabia and its nominal allies in violation of the Geneva Convention, the UN Charter in blatant violation of international law. So there is a number of aspects here but we should also recall that the US has a clear and unmistakable geopolitical and strategic imperative in Yemen -- control of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s great choke points, one of the most important points anywhere in the world for commercial shipping.

It is vital for the Chinese and it is vital for the United States and the Western powers to maintain control of that and if you look at the map and you see on one side of the Mandeb you have Yemen, on the other side you have Somalia. You can see very clearly what the US policy continues to be. It is a policy of chaos; it is a policy of terrorism and counter-terrorism for the purposes of being able to manage these situations.

Now the United States is not one hundred percent keen on exactly the way in which Saudi Arabia has prosecuted this war but at the larger level in terms of agenda, United States could not be happier.

Press TV: These Geneva conventions, who are they written for if a foreign state can actually intervene in another country, in a sovereign state merely for trying to be independent of foreign dictates, in this case the Yemeni people trying to get rid their country of decades of Saudi interference?

Draitser: Well unfortunately it is sort of an accepted principle now that international law at least from the perspective of the United States only applies in select circumstances when the United States wants to apply it.

So for instance you see these double standards apparent in Ukraine, you see it in Syria, you see it in Yemen, you see it in many examples all over the world and this is really what the Chinese, what the Russians, what the Iranians and other countries who have objected to US policies have really objected to. They want a single standard applied when it comes to international law but again we do not want to get too caught up often to the weeds here.

I think we need to focus on what is really at issue. At issue is the question of what government has the right to rule in Yemen, the Saudis, their puppet government … that was the legitimate government and that any [government other than] that is illegitimate. But of course the counter argument to that [is that] it was never legitimate in the first place, it was installed by … Brennan and the Saudis and number two that there has been this ongoing conflict with the Houthis as well as with the military forces loyal to the former President Saleh.

So there is a civil conflict here that has really emerged in the notion that Saudi Arabia and the United States and the UN are going to be able to dictate to the Yemeni people just what sort of a process needs to be gone through in order to solve this crisis is of course absurd. You need to have all parties at the table to negotiate a settlement. You cannot have Saudi Arabia determining that a precondition must be the eradication of the Houthi movement. That is a nonstarter just as the United States policy in Syria …

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