At the outset, I would like to thank the Brookings-Doha Center for this invitation, and hope I could cover the Yemeni issue in all its dimensions, especially the causes of war and its consequences, as well as how to stop it and achieve true peace.

I find it necessary to start talking about the regime targeted by the peaceful Yemeni revolution in 2011. Briefly, it was a failed and corrupt regime that over three decades pushed into a terrible state of poverty and disrepair. For a further consideration of this matter, a reference may be made to the Fragile States Index to realize that Yemen had ranked in the top ten on the index since 2005, and that it was booby-trapped with different factors for conflicts, social disintegration, institutionalized corruption and internal strife.

Therefore, the peaceful revolution cannot be viewed as a luxury, a passing whim, unnecessary thoughtless act or an external conspiracy but it was, like all the Arab Spring revolution, an inevitably pressing need for change that came in response to Yemeni youth fed up with a nepotism, exclusion, and marginalization and corruption-centered regime. 

 

Dear friends, 

The revolution resulted in a transitional process and an UN-brokered national dialogue with outcomes that identified the form and details of the prospective democratic Yemeni state. However, all this turned into a regional conspiracy and the international community failed us, followed by a counter-revolution, war, internal strife and external interference. Over four years, almost everything in Yemen has been destroyed as as a step to shatter dreams for which the youth triggered their Arab spring revolution.    

It can be argued that the key reason behind all disasters Yemen has experienced and is still experiencing lies in the desire of external powers to punish Yemenis for their revolution. Plots had been hatched to create havoc and disorders to shatter Yemenis’ dreams of change in such a way as to be an example of those who dare to dream of change. Some want to give their people a harsh lesson so as not to seek change or even dream of it.

Here I am referring to the central players orchestrating the counter-revolutions in the region, namely Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which have mobilized their potentials and done their utmost to undermine the Arab spring revolutions so as not to be infected with the change spring and demands for states of rights, freedoms, justice and citizenship.

Let us go back to 2011! In the midst of Yemen's peaceful revolution, the capitals of the counterrevolutionary revolutions bowed before the storm by offering the so-called Gulf initiative that represented a compromise between the ambitions of the revolutionaries and the old regime’s interests. Accordingly, the ousted president, Ali Saleh, was granted immunity, with being allowed to retain half the ministerial portfolios and seats in Parliament, as well as the same percent of local council seats. 

Instead of sponsoring the Gulf initiative proposed by the two counterrevolutionary states within the group of Gulf states and ensuring that it does not obstruct it and take all measures to ensure that it is not hindered, as well as providing material and logistical support to the transitional authority as pledged and stated in the initiative, the two monarchies continued in silence to support and nurture efforts to undermine the transitional process.   

The main tool used by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to create havoc in Yemen and topple the transitional process was the ousted president Ali Saleh who carried put a bloody coup on September 21, 2014. The Houthis in turn were among the tools used by Saleh to undermine the state.

I am not trying here to underestimate the role of the Houthis in the coup, nor their presence and control over parts of the country before the coup. Yes, they were there as a rebel and armed group that seized control over some areas that fall within Saada province but not beyond. Even months before the coup, some districts of Saada was still out of their control.

Ali Saleh backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates empowered the Houthi militia to go beyond the borders of Saada and continue their march towards the capital Sana’a until they later headed south, east and west. All that happened mainly with support of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, as well as of Iran but in a lesser extent. Yes, I can argue that Iran's role was limited compared to neighboring countries. When the Houthis reached the outskirts of Sana’a, and were stationed near Sanaa Airport, their calculations did not include a full coup and the overthrow the entire transition process. But the one who had such calculations was Ali Saleh. 

I want to emphasize that Iran has a secondary role not only in the coup against the transitional authority, but also in providing the Houthis with money and weapons. 

It is true to say that most of the weapons, money and wealth pumped into the pocket of the Houthi militia and their wide influence came from Ali Saleh, the man of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, who handed over to the Houthis all the state camps and arms accumulated over four decades. 

The Houthis and Ali Saleh, however, went far beyond what Riyadh and Abu Dhabi wanted. They were only required to liquidate the Islah Party and the forces of the peaceful revolution, and stay in Sanaa and not going to Aden, but they crossed the red lines and their hordes went to Hodeidah and Taiz and arrived in Aden.

In March 2015, Yemenis woke up to the aerial bombardment of what later became known as the Saudi-led Arab coalition. It should be noted here that this intervention came after Saleh and Houthis crossed the red lines and failed to get rid of the Islah Party and the forces of the peaceful revolution. Saleh-Houthi ambitions along with the intervention of Iran that celebrated the fall of the capital Sana'a were a free achievement added to what Teheran’s camp has achieved before in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The coalition, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, announced the war in Yemen under the pretext of restoring Yemeni legitimacy and under the guise of the three references: the Gulf initiative, the outcomes of the national dialogue and Security Council resolutions on Yemen.

But the truth is something else. The coalition has taken these references only as a political cover to carry out its destructive and expansionist agenda in Yemen. This is what the situation looks like four years after the war. Over four years, our country has been increasingly subjected to systematic destruction of its infrastructure and basic services.  Premeditation and surveillance within a comprehensive strategic map and plan that leads to the destruction of the people and the acquisition of geography within a comprehensive strategic map and plan aimed at killing people and taking over land.

What is happening in Yemen is a fierce war in order to undermine legitimacy but not to bring it back, as all the measures and policies taken on the ground undermine the chances for restoring the legitimacy.

The restoration of legitimacy requires the extension of control over every inch liberated from the Houthi control, until the completion of the process of liberation and control over the entire national territory.

Restoring the legitimacy also requires enabling it to complete entitlements that were disrupted by the coup, namely the referendum on the draft constitution, which was drafted based on the outcomes of the dialogue agreed by the Yemenis, holding parliamentary, presidential and local elections. 

But the coalition’s war on Yemen justified by restoring legitimacy in accordance with the references, keeps undermining all opportunities for the restoration of legitimacy as an authority that should extend its control over the entire national territory and monopolize sovereignty and arms and as a project that will be empowered by holding  the referendum on the draft constitution and the various elections.  

 

Dear friends, 

The Saudi-Emirati coalition’s intervention in Yemen has led to the elimination of the chances for a unified and sovereign Yemeni state. 

The two countries continued to undermine Yemen as a people and geography through the siege, starvation, shelling and militialization and fragmentation of the country. 

They have occupied islands, ports, coasts and airports, preventing the legitimacy from exporting oil and gas and managing revenues. In addition, they have established new militias and empowered them so that they reject the legitimacy and its federal project, owing allegiance only to the new occupiers Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Each area liberated from Houthi's control is handed over to one or several militias combined with one objective: acting against the legitimate authority and its federal project, while keeping civil institutions paralyzed and unable to perform their functions and provide various services to citizens. State employees have been without salaries and lacked security services to keep their security. Moreover, there are no unified and structured military brigades owing allegiance to the legitimate authority. 

After four years of war, the outcome is that eighty per cent of the areas liberated from Houthi control has become vulnerable to looting of militias and to chaos, hegemony and external guardianship. These areas are suffering an absolute absence of legitimacy, including the president and security and military apparatus. The presence in these areas is limited to the UAE and Saudi militias and their forces and agents.

President Hadi cannot walk around any province of this space. For four years, he has been under house arrest in Riyadh except for few times he was allowed to turn to Aden where he spent his entire time between the four walls and could not leave his residence, as the pro-UAE militias outside kept a sharp lookout for him.

You may have heard of President Hadi's plane the UAE forces repeatedly prevented from landing at Aden airport. In fact, Yemeni planes were then banned from staying at Aden airport, not just the president. Our planes are not allowed to stay at our airports.

Even the political forces supporting the legitimate authority are banned from returning to any region of the liberated areas; otherwise, they would be subjected to assassinations, detentions or enforced disappearance by the UAE, through its tools. 

The scandals of rape and all kinds of torture inflicted on political activists in the UAE-run prisons in Aden and Mukalla are part of the UAE's policies in managing the liberated areas, according to the report of the UN Commission of Experts presented to the Human Rights Council last August. Killings and assassinations through foreign security companies hired by the UAE are another means used by Abu Dhabi to prevent the Yemeni government from exercising its authority on the ground. 

This is to say nothing of the massacres committed by the coaltion’s warplanes, which have targeted markets, wedding halls, funeral halls, displaced persons' compounds, children's buses or fishing boats, leaving tens of thousands of victims dead or wounded.

Should I inform you also about the wounded whose wounds have rotted because they have not received any treatment, or about the dead whose families are not cared for? All this is only a drop in the sea of crimes, massacres and disasters caused by the Saudi-Emirati coalition.

But what about the Houthis and their massacres, crimes and disasters?

The Houthis accepted to be a tool of the coalition states to overthrow the Yemeni state, and this is enough for them to be an arch-criminal against our people. Then later, they were used as an excuse to intervene militarily in Yemen, under the pretext of ending the coup, restoring the legitimacy and confronting the Iranian project.

In addition to “crime of crimes”, namely overthrowing the state, the Houthi militia has committed other crimes against humanity, including repression of peaceful demonstrations, indiscriminate bombardments of cities and densely populated neighborhoods, torture of activists and political opponents, enforced disappearance of hundreds and the use of prisoners as human shields. Not only that, this Iranian-backed militia targeted journalists, shut down media outlets and looted their contents, took over state institutions, based on hate speech and racism against Yemenis and others, planted hundreds of thousands of landmines, recruited tens of thousands of children and imposed a suffocating siege on Taiz, the largest city in Yemen. According to reliable international and local reports, children make up forty percent of Houthi militia. 

 

Dear friends,

Yemen is witnessing what is known globally as a man-made catastrophe, but it would be more precise to describe it as a catastrophe made by tyrants and enemies of freedom. Yemen with a glorious history, ancient people, important strategic and geographical location on the Red Sea and Arabian Sea embracing one of the most important straits of the world, Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, is today subject to all that much anarchy caused by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the Houthis amid shameful and painful global silence.

Yemen faces the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in decades. Its infrastructure of service sectors, especially health, education, water and electricity, has been severely damaged.  More than 22 million Yemenis need some form of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations. More than 8 million people are suffering from acute food insecurity, including nearly two million children and more than 2 million pregnant, and breastfeeding women, with warnings that the number of undernourished people is likely to increase to 14 million people, nearly half of the country's population.

Recently, Amal Hussein, a Yemeni child whose picture was widely shared by international mass media, died of acute and chronic malnutrition. Amal is one of the millions of Yemeni children who are falling like leaves in autumn as a result of airstrikes, missiles, militia mines, starvation and epidemics.

Over the past four years, most areas of the country have seen an alarming outbreak of epidemics, ranging from dengue fever to cholera, diphtheria and others. These epidemics, coupled with the war’s tools, have claimed the lives of thousands. 

From the very first moment, the coup’s militia seized basic services budgets, and the humanitarian cost rose significantly due to the unjust siege and to the Saudi-UAE coalition airstrikes on civilians and infrastructure sectors. Yemenis have been burdened with the war, hunger and rampant epidemics.

Even in areas liberated from the coup, people still do not have access to electricity, water, education and health services. All the services the government is supposed to provide - to be seen as a legitimate authority- are almost unavailable and inaccessible. Apparently, the coalition is doing so for a systematic purpose, but not due to lacking in being aware of the urgent need for them or in capacity and capability. The Saudi-UAE coalition, whose states sit on lakes of oil and the world’s banks abound with their wealth, appears to be unable to provide relief, assistance and food for 20 million Yemenis who are living today below the poverty line according to the latest UN report.

Wages and salaries have not been paid, and payments paid to some are not enough to cover the necessary basic expenses even for several days as a result of the severe collapse of the Yemeni currency. The coalition’s states have done nothing to stop that sharp decline, giving the impression that it is planned and deliberate especially when we see the coalition following the policy of blockade and starvation as a tool of war. 

This assumption is reinforced by the fact that hundreds of thousands of Yemeni expatriates in Saudi Arabia have been forcibly returned to Yemen, and by controlling the oil and gas resources, depriving the government of oil and gas revenues, taking over islands, airports and ports linking Yemen to the world. By controlling over land, sea and air ports, the Yemeni government has been denied access to international assistance and support, and to any potential opportunities that would have generated enough revenues for Yemen that all try to win over because of its geopolitical importance. 

 

Dear friends, 

Anyone who follows the efforts of the international community and the major powers during the war years will have no difficulty in realizing that the essence of these efforts has gone in the direction of leaving Yemen alone in the face of war crimes and blackmail of the Saudi-UAE coalition. 

It is very important to note here that there are about eight UN-Security Council resolutions related to Yemen and and to the transitional process, and that the international community pledged to Yemenis to sponsor and fully support the transition process. Therefore, the international community must fulfill its commitments and play its role towards Yemen.

Yemen needs a decisive decision to be taken by the international community to end this war. Yemen is moving towards fragmentation and this affects not only Yemen, but also poses a serious threat to regional and global security and peace.

The success of international efforts to end the war and bring peace in the country depends on stopping the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and taking all necessary measures to prevent the arrival of weapons from Iran to the Houthi militia.

The success of international efforts to end the ongoing war rests upon the return of the State, the State of the Republic of Yemen, to extend its sovereignty over the entire national territory as a unified, independent, secure and stable country.

The success of international efforts to build the peace process must lead to a state monopoly on arms and the exercise of sovereignty, and to the fact that the state through its institutions are exclusively mandated to issue government orders, and that elections are the only way to gain power, but not by force or violence. This must also lead to the end of all forms of hegemony, guardianship and occupation.

The international community, particularly America, must support Yemen and work to end the war immediately under a political settlement that will lead to the restoration of the legitimate state, the State of the Republic of Yemen, according to the three references represented by the resolutions of the UN Security Council, the Gulf Initiative and the outcomes of the national dialogue.

Here I applaud the call by the US Secretary of State and Defense Secretary to stop the war in Yemen. I bet heavily on the US role in stopping the war and restoring and sponsoring the political process, but the US Defense Secretary's recent call for local autonomy areas does not help bring peace to Yemen.

This call in essence would contribute to consolidating divisions driven by sectarian, tribal and regional tendencies. Indeed, it is a call for the establishment of de facto states on pre-national geography.

Any autonomous regions without a united state for all Yemenis would mean dividing Yemen into sectarian, tribal, regional and tiny states. This strange, neither directly nor indirectly, did not mentioned the unity and territorial integrity of Yemen. 

In this context, I would like to clarify two important issues. First, the outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference and the provisions of the new draft constitution stipulated that the next republic of Yemen is a multi-regional federal state. Under this federal system of government, each region will have its own autonomy, enabling Houthis and non-Houthis to express themselves in a unified state that respects their privacy and choices. Secondly, I would like to emphasize that Yemen has no indigenous and non-indigenous population, but one people that is multi-religious and political. What is important now is how to manage this diversity within a civilized, civilizational and legal manner.

Mr. Matisse pointed out that Yemen should be free of weapons, but I cannot understand how a state remains without weapons. Yemen is a country with complex topography, a geopolitical location of strategic importance, hundreds of islands and long coasts and armed people, overlooking Africa, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and controlling one of the most important sea-lanes: the Bab al-Mandab Straits. What Mr. Matisse and other US officials should understand is that Yemen is threatened by terrorism, insurgency and territorial ambitions, which calls for both strong army and security that preserves its independence and stability, and contributes to the protection of regional and international security. It is impractical to talk about a demilitarized Yemeni State because it carries the risk of Yemen falling into the hands of any terrorist or insurgent groups, or into the trap of some neighboring countries driven by greedy ambitions. It is important to build a strong and independent Yemeni army on national foundations under the supervision of the United Nations and friendly countries, including the United States.

 

Dear friends, 

Each war is always followed by peace, there is no war  that lasts forever. Therefore, let’s have peace now!

Yemenis are ready for peace and yearn for it. Throughout history, they used to fight each other, but then reconcile with each other. History has not recorded that they have neared the point of no return.

Regardless of warlords and the wars’ beneficiaries, Yemenis are now ready for peace and national reconciliation, and see that they are capable of achieving a sustainable peace that leads to a state where all Yemenis live on an equal footing.

In my view, if the foreign intervention is stopped, namely the Saudi-Emirati and Iranian intervention in Yemen, we will not only make peace, but also establish a free democratic state, a state of justice and rule of law, and be a strategic partner in maintaining the world’s security and stability.

We will do our best to build a sustainable peace in Yemen and achieve comprehensive national reconciliation, which we believe consists of the following steps:

- stopping the war, lifting the blockade and making the Saudi-Emirati coalition forces leave the country;

- resuming the political process where it left off due to the coup and the war;

- forming a UN-brokered military commission charged with withdrawing weapons from all militias so that only the state has the exclusive right to use weapons, and building the army and security on national bases to ensure the protection of the country and territorial integrity and guarantee security and stability in the country;

- forming a national Government of all components or a technocratic government under the auspices of the United Nations, charged with: organizing a referendum on the draft constitution and holding local, regional, parliamentary and presidential elections in accordance with the new constitution;

- forming a national reconciliation body entrusted to apply reparation, compensate victims and ensure non-repetition of crimes are; 

- adopting reconstruction project and guaranteeing Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s commitment to compensate Yemen for the damage caused during the war. 

Dear friends, 

Finally, whoever thinks that Yemen is easy to be swallowed or tamed makes a big mistake, as the reality is different and very complex. Yemen has a population with long-standing history of honor, dignity, resistance and rebellion, which makes it impossible to rule its people by force and oppression, or for any foreign powers to impose invasion, occupation or guardianship on them.