The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 17th September 2021
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 17th September 2021
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
YEMEN’S Houthi militia has launched a new offensive to drive Saudi-backed forces out of their last remaining footholds in northern Yemen. The Houthis are maintaining their relentless drone and missile attacks on Saudi air-bases and oil installations whilst the Saudi air-force continues its indiscriminate bombing in the north. The Saudi defence has been undermined by the withdrawal of the USA’s Patriot missile systems, however, and the southern puppet regime has been rocked by mass protests against food shortages and galloping inflation.
The Houthis, meanwhile, have accused Britain of spying on their telecommunications networks in collusion with the puppet government. “Britain is carrying out espionage activities on some Yemeni telecommunications networks, and some submarine cables from southern governorates, which they have taken as bases for them to serve their colonial goals,” one of their leaders, Abdul Malik Al-Ajri, said. This was “a blatant violation of Yemen’s sovereignty and the privacy of Yemeni citizens”, which is taking place with the “shameful complicity” of the Saudi-backed regime in the south.
Militiamen and tribal forces loyal to the Saudi-backed puppet regime have been driven out of positions captured earlier in the year. The strategic district of Rahabah has been liberated and the Houthis are tightening their grip around the oil-town of Marib, the last southern stronghold in the north.
Flounders
In the south the administration flounders amidst a struggle for power between Saudi and Emirati (UAE)backed factions, whilst protests against the puppet regime turned to violence as demonstrators battled with security forces in Aden and other cities over the collapse of public services and soaring inflation that has sent the rial plummeting against the dollar. Demonstrators stormed the presidential palace in Aden, blocked roads, torched government buildings and burned cars in the streets demanding an end to the Emirati-backed “Southern Transitional Council” that they blame for the corruption and incompetence so rife in the southern administration.
In 2015 the Saudis intervened to prop up a corrupt regime that had been overthrown by the ‘Supporters of God’, a religious and social movement commonly called the Houthis after its founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, a former Yemeni MP who launched a revolt and was killed in a gun-fight in 2004.
prop up
Saudi Arabia and some other feudal Arab states, with the support of the USA and the rest of the imperialist pack, sent troops, arms and cash to prop up what they call the “internationally recognised” Yemeni government that is based in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. But the Houthis, who retained the support of 80 per cent of the old Yemeni army, hold the north of the country, whilst the Saudis and their tribal allies control most of the sparsely populated south. But those allies include southern tribal leaders funded by the Emiratis who have their own agenda, which is not always the same as that of the House of Saud.
With the Saudi dream of controlling Yemen through local puppets now in tatters, the Kingdom is looking for a way out – and so is the USA. The war is too costly for the Americans to sustain. The conflict is disrupting the oil industry across the Arabian peninsula and some sort of settlement with the Houthis, and their Iranian allies, is needed to restore the Iranian nuclear agreement that Donald Trump recklessly tore up.
“The war in Yemen must end,” President Joe Biden said in his first major foreign policy speech and his administration speedily made it clear to the Saudis that it would soon be ending its support for offensive operations in Yemen. Last week the Americans pulled their Patriot batteries and their THAAD missile defence system out of Saudi Arabia.