Month: April 2021

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Stalemate in Israel

On Israel’s Channel 12, a few days after the latest elections, the talk-show panelists did their best to find a bottom line. The final results made it clear that Netanyahu’s party, Likud, had secured the largest number of seats: 30, with 24% of the vote. Yesh Atid, the so-called ‘centrist’ party led by Yair Lapid, won just over half that number: 17 seats at 14%.

In regular times, Netanyahu’s vote share would make it easy for him, as an acting Prime Minister, to form a coalition, roping in the ultra-Orthodox and right-wing parties to make up 61 seats (the key figure needed to guarantee a majority in the 120-seat Knesset).  Yet these are not regular times. The 2021 poll was the fourth in less than two years, and Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial has been a constant background presence. As the frequency of elections has increased, the opposition to Bibi’s right-wing leadership has been reshaped.

There is not only the ideological resistance of the shrinking left, but also a centrist ‘in the name of democracy’ opposition and a right-wing ‘in the name of Jabotinsky’ opposition. The most prominent member of the centrist camp is Lapid: a former TV anchor and journalist who founded Yesh Atid in 2012. Despite serving as Netanyahu’s finance minister in the national unity government between 2013 and 2014, Lapid won plaudits from anti-Netanyahu centrists when he refused to join the PM’s coalition following the 2020 elections. Since then, he has increased his popularity by parroting the key points of the Israeli consensus. When he speaks – with the charisma of a TV presenter – he usually waves Jewish-Israeli flags, invokes the memory of the Holocaust, praises the IDF and excoriates the BDS movement.  

Bibi’s main rivals on the right are Naftali Bennett of the New Right party, Gideon Sa’ar of New Hope, and Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu (‘Israel Our Home’). Of the three, Bennett is aligned with the religious-nationalist strand of Israeli politics – although he has recently appeared to place nationalism above religious purity, highlighting his refusal to take orders from the Orthodox rabbis. More secular in character, but as right-wing and pro-settlements as Bennett, Sa’ar’s New Hope has positioned itself as a ‘clean’ version of Likud, reviving the tradition of Menachem Begin (whose son, Zeev Benjamin Begin, left his father’s party to join Sa’ar). Its electoral pitch has revolved around Netanyahu’s personal sleaze and unfitness for high office. Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu has traditionally been a party of the extreme right, oriented toward ex-Soviet immigrants like Lieberman himself (who was born in Kishinev and emigrated to Israel in 1978). Yet in the past four elections it sought to broaden its appeal, playing to secular and anti-Haredi sentiments while abandoning its usual Arab-baiting rhetoric.

The balance of these forces has produced a deadlock. Although there is a record number of right-wing parliamentarians, Netanyahu cannot find 61 MPs who will support a coalition under his leadership. This is because a large proportion of Israelis voted tactically for right-wing anti-Netanyahu parties who vowed not to strike a deal with the incumbent. Many who identify with the centre – and even with the left – decided to support Sa’ar or Lieberman, as they believed this was the best means of ending the Netanyahu era. As a result, the anti-Netanyahu opposition now has more than 61 MPs, yet this bloc includes a mix of parties who do not share much common ground apart from their contempt for Bibi, and would have serious trouble forming an alliance. It is still possible that the insurgent right-wing groups will try to band together with other parties and oust Netanyahu by appointing Bennett or Sa’ar as PM. Yet this is far from certain given the rifts between them; and before that can happen, Netanyahu will spend weeks attempting to eke out a majority. On the Channel 12 panel discussion, one of the guests presented her conclusion: ‘This is already the fourth election campaign in a row in which Netanyahu did not win. It is obvious that he didn’t win’. Another panelist responded: ‘It is also certain that he did not lose’. That, in a nutshell, is the story.

It must be remembered that for Netanyahu, the number 61 is crucial – not only because this is where his political survival lies, but also because this is where his personal freedom may be found. If he succeeds in creating a sturdy coalition, Netanyahu will be able to start fighting his legal case – not from inside the courtroom, but from outside it, pitting the executive against the judiciary. There are various speculations regarding what he will do should he reach the magic number: sack the current State Attorney and appoint someone who is softer on corruption; hire a new, flexible Minister of Justice (Israel currently has no one in that position as Netanyahu refuses to enable a permanent appointment); introduce the ‘French Law’ which would prevent a sitting Prime Minister from being convicted; select an agreed candidate from Likud to be the PM in return for a coalition vote on Netanyahu becoming the next president; and other such creative ideas. Anything that would prevent the incumbent finding himself in the position of former Prime Minister Olmert – behind bars.

Ahead of the vote, there were several factors that worked in Netanyahu’s favour. First, support for Benny Gantz’s Kachol-Lavan (‘Blue and White’) alliance collapsed after it betrayed its promise not to enter government with Netanyahu. Gantz had sleepwalked into Bibi’s disingenuous offer of a rotating prime ministerial position, proving himself easily manipulated and alienating much of his base. That left no other political force whose popularity could rival Likud’s.

Second, Netanyahu made the most of the successful Israeli vaccination operation. His campaign slogan, ‘Hozrim la-Hayyim’ (‘going back to life’), was also the Ministry of Health’s vaccination slogan. (Netanyahu knew that Likud’s appropriation of this motto would be outlawed by the Supreme Court, but he ploughed ahead with it anyway, and managed to print these words on countless billboards before the court ruling arrived.)

Third, Netanyahu went into the election having secured four peace-deals with Arab countries – the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco – during Trump’s final weeks in office. These states displayed a willingness to normalize relations with Israel and pursue their shared economic interests in the region without demanding any concessions over Palestine – a coup against those who believed that Israel would have to end its occupation and improve relations with the Palestinians before it could establish warm relations with the Arab world.

Fourth, the union of Arab parties known as the Joint List had won a record 15 seats in the last election, yet its unity was severely damaged after one of its components – the Islamic Movement led by Mansour Abbas – began a flirtation with Netanyahu. Splitting with other Arab parties, Abbas declared that he was open to the possibility of joining a Netanyahu-led coalition. This created a division in the Arab community which, combined with its general apathy, led to a decline in Arab voter turnout – from 65% in 2020 to 44% in 2021. (The overall Israeli turnout of 67% was the lowest since 2009, having decreased by about 4% since the 2020 elections.) With a growing number of Arab citizens backing Zionist parties including Likud, the Joint List’s seats fell to 6 (down from the 15 it had when unified with the Islamic Movement), while Abbas and his allies picked up 4.

Throughout the election campaign, Netanyahu continued to court the Islamic Movement while pandering to Israel’s Arab citizens, nicknaming himself ‘Abu-Yair’ (literally ‘Yair’s father’, the traditional Arabic way of naming a person after his eldest son), and claiming that the Jewish nationality bill – a law enacted in 2018 which demotes non-Jews to the status of second-class citizens – was never designed to target Arabs. It was merely an attempt, he said without blinking, to stop illegal immigration from Africa.

While reaching out to this demographic, Netanyahu simultaneously cheered on the far-right Religious Zionist Party – a group that harks back to the racist legacy of Rabbi Meir Kahane, pledging to annex the West Bank, legalize settlements, roll back LGBT rights, expel ‘disloyal’ Arab MKs and scrap Israel’s commitment to gender equality. The PM knew full well that if this group did not pass the electoral threshold, then votes from the pro-Netanyahu camp would likely be wasted. His electoral strategy therefore relied on cozying up to the Arabs and the ultra-right-wing-Zionists who want to transfer them out of the country. It is hard to believe that someone can move from saying green is black to red is yellow so quickly, but for a politician who could teach Machiavelli a few lessons, this came as no surprise.

Yet the bottom line, if one looks for one, is this. Despite all the hocus-pocus, Netanyahu cannot form a coalition in the present circumstances. The evidential stage of his trial has now begun. This means three hearings every week to pore over accusations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in connection with three separate cases. The Israeli political system is more stuck than ever, and on each side the outlook is bleak. For Netanyahu, the principal aim is to evade a jail sentence. His foremost rivals, from Lapid to Bennett, want him to face justice, yet their ambition is to lead a coalition that will continue the main tenets of his rule. The Israeli ‘opposition’ may question Bibi’s morals, but they pose no threat to his politics.  

Read on: Yitzhak Laor, ‘Israel’s Peace Camp’, NLR 10.

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Scientists or Experts?

Never have we seen as many white gowns as in the past year: epidemiologists, virologists, infectiologists, doctors and clinicians of all specializations, from resuscitation to pneumonology, springing like mushrooms out of every news broadcast. Thanks to Covid, it seems that scientists have broken into society at large. But is this invasion a transitory phenomenon, or is it destined to become a permanent occupation? Perhaps the time has come to ask ourselves how science has fared in this recent period, and how the relationship between science and society has altered – an ambiguous relationship at best, demonstrated by the resistance which vaccination efforts have met thus far, even among some healthcare professionals.

As the philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers noted in a recent interview, this relationship has lately become suffused with panic. It’s an uncomfortable word to use, for most are reluctant to admit they’re gripped by this feeling. Yet the term is appropriate: ‘confinement should be understood from the standpoint of a panicked reaction. And when we panic we forget many things. We react under the pressure of an emergency, which prevents us from thinking. We have been guided by panic, and it has accentuated all social inequalities and relations of power… Deep down, I think what we saw was indifference towards anything that fell outside the preservation of public order’.

Stengers also observes that, in these conditions, science must be discussed in the plural rather than the singular:

Regarding the sciences, what really hurt me was hearing talk – from doctors, in particular – of ‘science’, and seeing politicians parroting the term (‘we listen to the science’) out of convenience. All of a sudden, in another panicked impulse, they forgot about politics, making way for a ‘science’ which began guiding us. Now, it is always a terrible idea to ask ‘science’ what to do, because that’s not its job. Its role is to try to ask pertinent questions. As soon as we say ‘science’ we forget the pertinence of its questions. It’s as if there were a universal scientific method, capable of responding to everything objectively. It’s also a way of silencing people, as it’s well-known that ordinary people are unable to understand ‘science’. It’s striking to me that the pluralisation of the sciences proceeded through this unifying, singular denomination of ‘science’. This plurality depends precisely on the different objects of each of the sciences, and on the questions they raise, faced with which each science will respond as it sees fit.

When politicians claim they listen to the science, in reality they resort to experts. And there’s nothing further from a scientist than an expert. As a group of researchers wrote for Scienza in rete,

the scientist selects the object of and questions for an investigation; the expert – who enjoys a certain experience of recognised value – is called on to apply knowledge and judgement to a query posed by others. This raises a series of problems: 1) It’s often not possible to trace the answer to a problem back to a single field. The Covid-19 pandemic posed problems at once virological, epidemiological, economic, social: problems of healthcare, relating to public order, and so on; 2) It is necessary for the expert to respond to the issue at hand in a restricted amount of time – or in any case by a certain precise deadline – scarcely compatible with the time needed for research, which, moreover, often ends up raising more questions, calling for a further round of studies; 3) the multidimensionality of problems requires the expert to give an answer that transcends the limits of what they possess any authority to say (given their disciplinary field), setting off political conflicts and controversies which bear only a distant relation to more focused scientific debates.

The advice of scientists (or ‘researchers’, as they are often called) and experts tends to diverge depending on several factors. Among them: the economic, social and political stakes of ‘expert opinion’; the uncertainty of the information on which they base their advice; and the urgency of the political decisions that flow from their intervention. When the stakes are high, facts uncertain, values in dispute and decisions urgent, then we enter into the realm of ‘post-normal science’ (as defined in a seminal article by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz from 1993).

The uncertainty surrounding the basic facts of the pandemic was evident in this list, drawn up by epidemiologists on 25 March 2020, of information that was then unknown to us:

Known unknowns include the real prevalence of the virus in the population; the role of asymptomatic cases in the rapid spread of the virus; the degree to which humans develop immunity; the dominant exposure pathways; the disease’s seasonal behaviour; the time to deliver global availability of an effective vaccine or cure; and the nonlinear response of individuals and collectives to the social distancing interventions in the complex system of communities interconnected across multiple scales, with many tipping points, and hysteresis loops (implying that society may not be able to rebound to the state it was in before the coronavirus interventions took place).

Apart from the vaccine, these ‘unknowns’ remain more or less obscure despite thousands of scientific studies. The result is a profound uncertainty which renders any epidemiological forecast hypothetical and unreliable. Yet to make policy decisions, governments now use mathematical models which produce crisp numbers via a drastic simplification of such ambiguities. (This tension between scientific uncertainty and political decision-making sometimes breaks out into the open: Dr Anthony Fauci, grilled by a Republican Congressman on exactly how many coronavirus deaths could be expected back in March 2020, responded, ‘There is no number-answer to your question!’)

All the ‘unknowns’ cited above depend on data-collection processes which often prove fallible. After a year of Covid, even the simplest figures still elude us, and it’s probable we’ll never pin them down. This is in part due to the inveterate habit of governments to lie to themselves; the more autocratic they are, the more they can cherry-pick the most convenient facts. Studies using various indicators of despotism show a strong inverse correlation between authoritarianism in a given country and its tally of Covid victims. The firmer the regime, the fewer deaths it declares. Last November, the prominent Italian physicist Giorgio Parisi wrote that even in a relatively transparent country like Italy the official rate of transmission (Rt) is untrustworthy. Imagine, then, how trustworthy the political decisions based on it have been.

Do you remember when, in 1986, Chernobyl’s radioactive cloud ground to a halt at the Rhine and dared not cross the Franco-German border (at least according to French health statistics at the time)? As the rest of Europe monitored the levels of radioactivity in their food, the French joyfully consumed vegetables which the douanes had cleansed of any radiation by pure administrative fiat. Well, a similar phenomenon occurred with Covid-19 at the frontiers that separate Europe and Asia. It’s mysterious how advanced healthcare systems could record such high mortality rates: hundreds of times higher than in states with fewer resources. While social (and state) control in China and other Asian countries has played a part, it’s difficult to imagine that deep in rural Laos restrictions can be so thorough as to prevent contagion completely. In other cases – in Russia, for instance – the numbers are totally fictitious; they have displayed an unnatural regularity, day after day, for almost a year now. Elsewhere, in the Amazon rainforest or the High Nile, the task of collecting data would require superhuman abilities.

Thus, in recent times, numbers have come to serve a purely rhetorical function, appearing to confer certainty on the uncertain. The claim that ‘thousands of people have died’ leaves some room for debate, whereas the statement ‘there have been 12,327 victims’ sounds indisputable. The ‘number-answer’ is vital to establish trust – justified or not – in the opinion of the expert. But the means by which we arrive at these numbers are not always interrogated.

Here, Stengers’s distinction between singular and plural ‘science’ becomes decisive. On the one hand, there are sciences that rely entirely on data collected by central governments and public health agencies. Epidemiologists are at the mercy of statistics. To give just one example: after a year of Covid, we still don’t know the proper measurement of social distancing. A metre, one and a half, two, three? It varies, according to ‘expert opinion’. On the other hand the hard sciences, based on laboratory experiments, are often shielded from the game of experts. In the lab, the expert and the scientist are allies, for the demands of the outside world accord with the aims of the latter: discovering how to produce the vaccine, for instance. It’s not a coincidence that the most successful sciences are those which generate the most profit: in them, the tension between exogenous pressures and endogenous logic is less pronounced.

Yet when we enter into the ‘post-normal’ domain, the sciences lend themselves more readily to manipulation. Researchers that produce vaccines respond to socially pertinent questions, but those tasked with establishing the safety of the vaccine become ‘experts’, and are drawn into the realm of conflicting interests, as we saw with the flurry of judgements surrounding the AstraZeneca jab. Put bluntly, in post-normal conditions (Chernobyl, Covid-19, global warming), the sciences begin to practice politics.

In one of the best articles written on the subject, ‘New Pathogen, Old Politics’, Alex De Waal recounts the history of the cholera outbreak in Hamburg in 1892; an instructive episode, for microbes and their transmission rates may differ, but they always seem to trigger similar social responses. Today, we’ve forgotten that the first immunity passports were established by Italian cities in the Late Middle Ages to facilitate the free circulation of diplomats and merchants. We also forget that local elites, wherever they might be, have always opposed quarantines and confinement measures imposed by central authorities, fearful of potential damage to their economic interests. As De Waal reminds us, it was in the 19th century, with the advent of colonialism, that the allusion to warfare became widespread, with the development of an ‘anti-infection arsenal in the service of expanding the writ of the colonial state’. In France,

the government portrayed the disease as an ‘invasion’ from the Levant and India, which justified martial medical measures and the establishment of the outer ramparts of Europe’s sanitary frontier in the Middle East. The metaphor of ‘fighting’ a disease, apt for the body’s immune response to a pathogen, is incongruous for the social response to an epidemic. Nonetheless, the language of warfare has become so familiar today that it is adopted unreflectingly – a mark of true hegemony. The traffic in metaphors runs both ways. When mobilizing for war or authoritarian measures, political leaders inveigh against ‘infestation’ by invaders or infiltrators that are akin to pathogens. In times of health crisis, they like to ‘declare war’ on a microbial ‘invisible enemy’.

The metaphor of war recalls the ‘state of exception’ – a return to the ‘state of siege’ of past epochs – which this year’s curfews evoke only vaguely, contrary to what The Economist has called the ‘coronopticon’, evoking Bentham’s infamous gaol.

Gauging the relationship between science and society in light of Covid-19 is therefore a complex matter. Health policies are hurling us into a new political order, a new configuration of power, yet we remain largely unable to see the direction in which we are headed. Of course, the parade of new variants gives us a terrifying glimpse of confinement without end, for as soon as society is relaxed and ready to stretch its legs, the shadow of an invincible mutation (Brazilian, British) rears its head. One can only hope that we emerge from both the state of panic identified by Stengers and the constant fear of new viruses, aped by governments to infantilize and surveil their citizens.

Best to conclude with De Waal’s wise words:

The motives for – and consequences of – public health measures have always gone far beyond controlling disease. Political interest trumps science – or, to be more precise, political interest legitimizes some scientific readings and not others. Pandemics are the occasion for political contests, and history suggests that facts and logic are tools for combat, not arbiters of the outcome. While public health officials urge the public to suspend normal activities to flatten the curve of viral transmission, political leaders also urge us to suspend our critique so that they can be one step ahead of the outcry when it comes. Rarely in recent history has the bureaucratic, obedience-inducing mode of governance of the ‘deep state’ become so widely esteemed across the political spectrum. It is precisely at such a moment, when scientific rationality is honored, that we need to be most astutely aware of the political uses to which such expertise is put.

Translated by Francesco Anselmetti

Read on: Susan Watkins, ‘Politics and Pandemics’, NLR 125.

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Killer Prince

The Saudi offer of a ceasefire in Yemen on 22 March was an acknowledgement by Riyadh and its backers in Washington that they had lost the war. Biden signalled the grudging surrender in February, when he announced the US would end its support for ‘offensive operations’ there. After six years of bombardment and blockade, Houthi forces are poised to take the strategic central city of Marib. They demanded that the aggressors – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the US, UK and France – lift the stranglehold on the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, cause of a humanitarian catastrophe of famine and epidemics in the country, before sitting down to talk.

The Houthi alliance would most likely have taken the country in 2015, sweeping away the weak government headed by Saudi stooge Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, if Obama had not greenlighted the Saudi assault against them. The war on Yemen began as part and parcel of the celebrations that ushered in the young, ‘dynamic’, ‘modernising’ Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) as the de facto heir of the Kingdom. In January 2015, MBS’s doddering, octogenarian father ascended the throne as King Salman, and MBS was appointed Saudi Defence Minister. Obama indulged MBS’s itch for war as a sop to keep the Saudis onside while he pressured Iran to accept the US nuclear deal. On the eve of the 25 March 2015 Saudi invasion, the White House issued a statement supporting military action ‘to protect Yemen’s legitimate government’ – i.e. Hadi, who was hiding out in Riyadh, having been ousted by mass protests a few months before.

Two weeks into the invasion, Anthony Blinken, then Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State, announced: ‘Saudi Arabia is sending a strong message to the Houthis and their allies.’ He added that the US was expediting weapons deliveries. Billions flowed to Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, DynCorp and Textron (who provided the notorious, UN-banned cluster bombs which the Saudis dropped on residential neighbourhoods of Sana’a). The Obama White House signalled it would also provide logistical and intelligence support, including target selection. British intelligence operatives had already been despatched to assist Obama’s drone strikes in Yemen, identifying targets for the US bombing operations that killed an estimated 1,775 people on the thin pretext of ‘counterterrorism’ during the first decade of the War on Terror. Since 2015, the UK has supplied the Saudis with aircraft, weaponry, training and aerial equipment, as well as SAS fighters. The US has lavished high-tech weaponry and military aid on MBS, with Obama offering to provide over $115 billion worth of arms to the Saudis in 42 separate deals, and Trump signing a $110 billion agreement with the Kingdom in 2017.

The result? The worst humanitarian catastrophe since Iraq. Cholera and hunger on a scale that has not been seen since the last century, with some 20 million experiencing food insecurity and 10 million at risk of famine. An estimated 110,000 have been killed in the fighting, with a death toll of 233,000 overall, mostly due to indirect causes such as lack of food and health services. Few of the country’s medical facilities are functional.

The UK’s arms sales, approved by the High Court in 2017, are on the scale of £5 billion – while its humanitarian aid to Yemen has just been cut by nearly 60 per cent, to £87 million. In this context, it’s worth recalling John Major’s private remark to the late Sir Martin Gilbert that, after giving a footling ‘lecture’ to a tiny group of people in Saudi Arabia, he was surprised to find his hosts handing him a very handsome cheque. Most servants of the British security state understand that this is part of their retirement package. Compared to Saudi largesse, the consulting fees doled out to David Miliband by his Pakistani and Emirati patrons must be peanuts. Lucrative connections of this kind help explain the role of British politicians in the conflict.

As for MBS, Western media outlets swallowed the Saudi publicity, promising great things and new beginnings. The Kingdom was at last taking steps towards becoming a ‘liberal’ state with a ‘diversified’ economy. Notable cheerleaders were David Ignatius in the Washington Post and evergreen apologist Thomas Friedman at the New York Times. As the Saudi war in Yemen escalated in 2016, Ignatius gushed: ‘MBS proposes a series of sweeping reforms. Saudi Aramco and other big, state-owned enterprises would be privatised; cinemas, museums and a “media city” would be created for a young population starving for entertainment; the power of the religious police would be curtailed; and, at some point, women would be allowed to drive.’

When potential MBS opponents in the Royal Family were removed from key positions and placed under house arrest (albeit in a five-star hotel), the Western media treated it as a local peccadillo. ‘This is a man to do business with’, cooed the Financial Times editors in a leader of March 2018. The Economist published glossy ads for Saudi privatisation tenders.

As pointed out by the Saudi historian Madawi al-Rasheed (one of the few genuinely critical voices in exile) in the London Review of Books, this reception was backed by a multi-million-pound propaganda campaign, handled in Britain by Freud Communications and the strategic consultancy Consulum. Before MBS’s visit to Downing Street in 2018, billboards in London were plastered with his portrait, headlined ‘He is bringing change to Saudi Arabia.’ An ex-employee of one of the firms told a reporter that representing a client like Saudi Arabia was like being a defence lawyer: ‘You have to work to get the client out of trouble.’ MBS was duly given a red-carpet welcome and lunch with the Queen. As al-Rasheed noted: ‘No one thought to bring up his destruction of Yemen or his detention of political enemies.’

The killing of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 made it more awkward for MBS and his state-funded gangsters to maintain this positive spin. Khashoggi, previously a stalwart defender of the Saudi Royal Family, was hostile to the interloper and wrote as much from his platform at the Washington Post. That was his real crime as far as the ‘liberaliser’ was concerned. The victim was lured to the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul, tortured at leisure and bone-sawed into segments, which were packed into diplomatic bags and sent back to Saudi Arabia. All this was secretly recorded by the Turkish state, which duly handed over the snuff-doc to the US after leaking the most grizzly details to the press. The Americans sat on it until last February, when a declassified report by the intelligence agencies concluded that it was undoubtedly MBS who ordered the hit. Biden, Johnson, Macron and Merkel – quick on the draw when it comes to imposing ‘human-rights’ sanctions on enemy states – promptly agreed to forgive the Saudi criminal, imposing no consequences for his actions.

How has the Houthi alliance managed to prevail against the world’s most powerful states? The Zaydi Shi’as from Yemen’s mountainous north had long played an important role in the region, fighting both Ottomans and Wahhabis. (Zayd, the great-grandson of the Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, had led a revolt against the Umayyad Caliphate in 740AD.) The Zaydi tribes were a dominant force under the Shi’a Imamate that ruled the country for centuries. After the fall of the Ottomans, a Zaydi monarchy ruled North Yemen until its overthrow in the republican revolution of 1962. Sixteen years later a Zaydi republican general, Ali Abdullah Saleh, succeeded in imposing a new dictatorship on the north. After 1990, his regime pushed through a take-over of Soviet-aligned South Yemen, later reinforced through civil war. (Yemen has long been more populous than Saudi Arabia, and – though officially Saudi Arabia now has 34 million to Yemen’s 30 million – may still be, if foreign workers are subtracted from the Saudi total.)

In the 1990s, Zaydi resistance to Saleh was spearheaded by Hussein al Houthi, leader of a small clan in the north. Radicalized by the US War on Terror and invasion of Iraq, the group founded Ansar Allah, or ‘Supporters of God’, and engaged in a tireless guerrilla war against Saleh, whom it excoriated as a puppet of Washington and Riyadh. Thousands joined the Ansar Allah’s ranks, taking its estimated number of fighters from 10,000 to 100,000 by 2010. However, clashes with Yemeni state forces were mostly confined to the Houthis’ mountainous home province until the following year, when the Arab Spring transformed the country’s political landscape.

In 2011, inspired by the Tunisian revolution, protesters flooded Yemen’s urban centres, occupying public squares and state buildings while chanting their demands for jobs, incomes and fair elections. This mass movement succeeded in forcing Saleh from office in February 2012. Yet the replacement ‘transitional government’ installed by the Gulf Cooperation Council was headed by Saleh’s Vice President Hadi, a Saudi-backed Sunni, and awash with figures from the old regime and the Islamist Islah party. Their corrupt and incompetent administration did nothing to quell the widespread discontent. Hadi further antagonized the masses by raising diesel prices at the behest of the IMF. The Houthis continued to agitate against it, expanding their military presence across the country and forming an alliance of convenience with their erstwhile enemy – the ousted Saleh.

Though Western powers threw their weight behind Hadi’s transitional government, it was no match for this new partnership. Saleh retained high levels of support within the security services, while the Houthis were able to mobilize their vast militias to march on the capital. Between late 2014 and early 2015, Saleh–Houthi forces stormed Sana’a, seized key political and military buildings, formed a ruling council and exiled most of the transitional regime – meeting barely an iota of resistance along the way. The Houthis’ decentralized command structure allowed them to draw in diverse actors and forge partnerships with Sunnis who oppose the central government. They would have gone on to capture the entire country if not for the Saudi-led bombing campaign, Operation Decisive Storm.

Intermittent clashes between Riyadh and the Houthi rebels on the Saudis’ southern border long pre-dated the outbreak of war. Saudi sectarians had always been determined to crush the Shi’a Houthis, whom they accused of being Iranian relays. In fact, the Houthis’ military training was the fruit of decades of struggle against Saleh, not from any foreign backer. By instigating the brutal bombing and blockade campaign against them, MBS hoped to assert his authority in the region, pose as Yemen’s saviour and impress the Israelis (who also regarded the Houthis as an Iranian pawn). ‘Liberated’ from Saleh–Huthi control, southern Yemen quickly deteriorated into a morass of competing militias under loose Emirati supervision. A military stalemate ensued.

Despite constant Saudi cluster-bombing – targeting civilian gatherings, schools, medical facilities, key infrastructure and ancient heritage sites – the Houthis held on in their urban strongholds. Hadi remained president in name only, living under effective house arrest in Riyadh. After two fraught years, the Houthis’ alliance with Saleh predictably unravelled. The former accused the latter of conspiring with the Saudis and Emiratis, and a series of clashes broke out in Sana’a culminating in Saleh’s assassination in December 2017. From this point on his loyalists were marginalized, leaving Ansar Allah as the only significant rival to the Saudi coalition.

Despite their shortcomings, the Houthis continue to enjoy more popular support than the Saudi-led forces of aggression for reasons that are both historical and immediate. Yemen is one of the oldest countries in the region, unlike the real-estate kingdoms and sheikdoms first set up by the British and later the US. The country has a distinctive cultural memory, visible everywhere in its astonishing early Islamic architecture. Much of the population views the Houthis as the sole defenders of this sovereign legacy. Their control of cities like Sana’a, Saada and Taiz – along with the country’s most densely populated governates – is based on this deeply rooted perception, as well as the more imminent necessity of resisting the Wahhabi Kingdom.

In their support for this murderous war, the US and UK have found a willing servant in the UN, which continues to recognize Hadi’s government as Yemen’s rightful rulers despite its non-existent mandate. The UN Security Council has imposed sanctions on the Houthis and Saleh, but not on Hadi’s forces or their foreign allies. It has removed the Saudi coalition from its blacklist of actors violating children’s rights, despite hundreds of children being killed each year by anti-Houthi airstrikes; winked at the Saudis’ obstruction of humanitarian aid; and steadfastly passed resolutions which call for absolute Houthi surrender as the precondition for any dialogue.

MBS would now like to achieve through a peace of the graveyard what he has failed to secure via bloody and ruthless war. His planes have been downed, drones have hit Riyadh, and his army – designed for show rather than for battle – has suffered serious setbacks. UAE ground troops were forced to withdraw in July 2019, whereupon the Abu Dhabi regime shifted to funding a political coalition based in Aden.

Though Biden has signalled the US will end ‘offensive operations’, it will continue to provide Saudi Arabia with ‘defensive weapons’, which appear to serve much the same purpose. His Administration has said nothing about halting technical, logistical and intelligence operations. By all indications, its plan is still to extract an unconditional surrender from the Houthis while maintaining its disastrous ‘counterterrorism’ operations in the country. To date, Biden’s promised ‘recalibration’ of the US–Saudi relationship is nowhere to be seen. 

In recent weeks, Foreign Office apologists and linked flotsam and jetsam have criticised the Houthis for turning down Saudi ‘offers’ of negotiation. Yet as even The Economist has pointed out, there is nothing new in these proposals. They are stale repetitions of yesteryear – calling on Ansar Allah to relinquish its military gains, surrender to the Saudi-led coalition and turn Yemen into a Western vassal state, while receiving nothing in return. As if to illustrate the vacuity of this ‘ceasefire plan’, MBS decided to rain bombs on several Houthi sites just hours after it was issued.

The brutal fact is that Yemeni lives – like many others – are expendable for US Senators and British MPs, who form part of a chain of imperialism that extends back for many centuries. Britain itself is a satrapy, prime ministers from Thatcher to Johnson little more than adjutants to the White House. Revelling in that status, they would like nothing more than to drag Yemen into their tent. So far they have failed. The costs of this venture have been high for the people of that beleaguered country, much higher than the profits accruing to the arms industries. Yet a permanent arms economy requires two, three, many ‘humanitarian wars’. Yemen will not be the last.

Read on: Tariq Ali, ‘Yemen’s Turn’, NLR 111.