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International News Title: Leave the Houthis Alone! Why are we on the same side as the Saudis and al Qaeda in Yemen? Saudi Arabias US-backed aggression against the sovereignty of Yemen is a textbook example of how local conflicts are internationalized and become tripwires for regional wars and even global conflagrations. Like Libya, Yemen is yet another Middle Eastern country that doesnt really exist: it is actually at least two separate countries, perhaps three the southern provinces, which are primarily Sunni, the northern tribes, who adhere mostly to the Zaydi form of Shiite Islam, and the area around Sana, the capital, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, where all Yemens clashing cultural, political, and religious factions meet. The north/south division dates back to the nineteenth century British colonization, when, in 1839, the British seized the port city of Aden and administered it as a subset of the Indian Viceroyalty. It became a major trading center after the opening of the Suez canal, and the Brits pushed outward, extending their influence throughout what had been a land perpetually divided between the Ottoman Empire and local imams, including the distinctive Zaydis in the north. In 1911, the Zaydis rose up against the British and their local collaborators, abolished the north/south division negotiated by the British Foreign Office, and established the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen under Imam Yahya. Yahyas dream was to recreate the ancient Qasamid dynasty, founded in the seventeenth century: a "Greater Yemen" extending into what is today Saudi Arabia as well as the whole of modern Yemen. In the 1960s, the de-colonization movement in the Arab world took on a Nasserist, socialist form, and this was manifested in Yemen in the form of a coup against the king by Nasserist officers, who then established after a three-way civil war pitting royalists against republicans against ultra- leftists the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), in the south, which became a de facto member of the Soviet bloc, and the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) in the north. The two Yemens warred with each other constantly as well enduring violent internal conflicts reflecting the religious, ideological, and historical differences that have plagued the country for centuries, but agreed to merge in 1990, after the Soviet bloc collapsed and the PDRY was left without Russian subsidies. Yet the "merger" was weak from the very beginning, and old divisions soon reemerged. The southerners formed a secessionist movement, as did the Zaydis in the north (although they said they only wanted autonomy), and to complicate matters al Qaeda moved into the ensuing chaos providing the central government in Sana with the perfect excuse to ask for outside intervention on its behalf. As US aid and "advisors" poured into Yemen, the central government used this in order to cement what amounted to a de facto dictatorship. Government troops largely ignored Al Qaeda, which has very little popular support and poses no real threat to the central governments authority, and concentrated their fire on the southern independence movement and especially the Houthi insurgency in the north. The latter who are now in control of large swathes of the country, and have sent the "president" into hiding have their origins in the "Believing Youth," which sought to revive the Shiite Zaydi religious tradition in order to counter Sunni fundamentalist preachers precursors of al Qaeda proselytizing with some success in the north. The Houthi counterinsurgency movement has defied the efforts of both the central government and the Saudis to suppress them, albeit not without considerable losses on their part: thousands of civilians were killed in the conflict, with hundreds of thousands displaced. In spite of US-based news accounts reporting the current conflict to be between the Saudis and "Iran-backed rebels," the evidence for the Tehran- Houthi connection is tenuous to nonexistent. There is no evidence of Iranian involvement beyond political (i.e. rhetorical) support. Indeed, as Christopher Boucek and Marina Ottoway report in their book, Yemen on the Brink, "some Yemeni officials have confided that such assertions are unfounded." Doctrinal differences between the Zaydi sect of Shiism and the Iranians over important theological issues within Islam preclude Tehran from providing any substantial support for the Houthi insurgency beyond mere words. Neoconservative pundits who point to the Houthis success with alarm mirror the propaganda of al Qaeda, which denounces the Zaydi "takfiris" (apostates) in similarly hysterical terms. The Houthis, for their part, have never attacked Americans or American interests in Yemen, as acknowledged in a series of classified cables sent by the no-longer-present US embassy. All of which underscores the present conundrum faced by US policymakers in the region. The neocons are screaming that US air strikes in Tikrit are helping the Iranian-commanded Shiite militias defeat ISIS, while in Yemen we are backing the Saudis against the supposedly-but-not-actually Iranian- backed Houthis. They are right to point out the obvious contradiction, but wrong in their proposed resolution which seems to be to play the Sunni card and oppose the Iranians (or, more accurately, the Shiites) at every opportunity. Apparently the neocons calls to smash ISIS have been conveniently forgotten. As with most of the current problems in the region, it all goes back to the Iraq war. That war handed the Iranians de facto control of Iraq: although the initial plan was for the neocons to anoint their favorites, Ahmed Chalabi and his gang, as the "democratic" rulers of the country, things didnt work out that way (and Chalabi, it turns out, was canoodling with Tehran all along). Instead, the Ayatollah Sistani, chief of the majority Shiite sect, threatened an all-out rebellion if direct elections werent held. The Shiite parties won that election, and subsequent elections, and today Iraq is an Iranian ally. Thats why thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had to die in a war to make Iraq a Shiite theocracy. Now that Iraq is in the Iranian camp, it was only natural they would turn to their Shiite allies when ISIS arose to threaten Baghdad. This enraged the neocons, who forgetting their own role in handing Iraq to the Iranians are now targeting Tehran. The Iranians are taking care of ISIS for us, precluding US "boots on the ground," much to disappointment of John McCain and Lindsey Graham. It doesnt count as a war in their book unless American blood is being spilled. The same irony abounds in Yemen, where the Shiite Houthis are viscerally hostile to Al Qaeda, and are, indeed, the only indigenous force capable of defeating them and rooting them out. Yet that would preclude a Saudi-US intervention and we cant have that! Whats happening in Yemen is a local problem, with causes that are strictly confined to the long and tumultuous history of that dirt-poor country. Foreign intervention, whether from the British, the Saudis, al Qaeda, or whomever, has only led to endless war and not improved the lot of the people by one iota. Now the Americans are using the "war on terrorism" to impose their will and re-order the Yemeni polity when they can have no real understanding of what is or ought to be going on there. Washington and Riyadh are internationalizing a conflict that is Yemeni in origin, and will only be resolved by the Yemenis themselves. As I have written on many occasions, the "Sunni turn" the US playing the "Sunni card" in Iraq and Syria has been a disaster on so many levels that its hard to keep count. In Iraq, it led directly to ISIS the mutant offspring of the so-called "Arab Awakening." In Syria, where US-backed "moderate" jihadists defected en masse to the ranks of our enemies, it led to the empowerment of ISIS and Al Nusra. And now in Yemen it is leading to the destruction of the Houthis a long-suffering and valiant people at the hands of our Saudi allies and their 10-nation alliance of despots. To add stupidity to deadly folly: our anti-Houthi pro-Saudi orientation is acting directly against our interests, which are supposedly focused on eliminating al Qaeda from the scene. In this instance, as in Syria, we are on the same side as al Qaeda. How does this make sense to anyone but Bibi Netanyahu? Each time we intervene where we have no business intervening the "blowback" hits us right in the face and provides yet another excuse for yet more intervention. Its an endless cycle, one that wont come to an end until and unless we rid ourselves of this succubus this Empire that is costing us so much.
Poster Comment: Yemen could be one front in dream of a Sunni-Shia Thirty Years War. Let them kill each other, the only one I'm rooting for is the body count!
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#1. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
You're gonna make Justin cry.
Shias - who carry out terror attacks all the time - seem to be more sane and disciplined than the Sunni version - maybe the influence of Iran.
Somewhat accurate IMO. However, my observation (some of it in Iraq and in other places) is Iran uses Arab Shia to do their dirty work. They of course provide Quds to advise and train. Not since the Iran-Iraq war have we seen many Shia Persians willingly walk across minefields and conduct suicide bombings. They let the Arabs do that. The pendulum swing of Arabs is predictable and the Persians know it. The Arab Shia want their their help but still are suspicious of the "Persians." That's why with Arabs sometimes they are ethnic in their approach to defense and sometimes in Islamic faction (shia or sunni). That is why when I saw overt Quds (Persian) support in Tikrit, while it did not surprise me, it did remind me there is a threshold Iraqi Arabs will tolerate even with their Shia "brothers". When and where that happens will change the relationship for years to come. Iran knows this too.
I don't even know if that is true or anti-Iran propaganda. I remember the charge the Soviets used poison gas in Afghanistan - turned out the yellow rain was bee pollen or some such - but the USA made a lot of propaganda off of that. Also the charge the Soviets boobytrapped toys - false - kids did pick up cluster bombs which kind of look like toys to kids and that was the origins of that propaganda coup. Anyway, it maybe true the Iranians had people charge a minefield in wave attacks like in WW1 against trenches but that is not the same as walking deliberately into a minefield - it is a nuanced view of course. The Soviets used POWs and punishment battalions to clear land mines but not really walk a field for that. It is not effective. You can have people walk arm in arm and miss stepping on a mine.
The Iranians during their war with Iraq did employ "Martyr Brigades." They called them that for a reason. Not just to sound scary or cool. I'll give you Wiki on the matter as anything else would be claimed biased: The definition of a martyr broadened further during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. The extremely costly and destructive war between a Sunni-controlled country (Iraq) and a Shia-controlled country (Iran) had several parallels with the events at Karbala, which led to further exploitation of the Iranian reverence for martyrdom. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was seen as the Sunni aggressor against the Shia people and therefore took on the role of the new Yazid in Iranian political discourse. Iranian leaders strongly emphasized the similarities between Karbala and the war with Iraq in order to retain public support for the war and keep the flow of volunteer soldiers steady. The death toll was extraordinarily high, with over a half a million dead on the Iranian side alone. To encourage volunteers, religious leaders broadened the definition of a martyr, announcing that all fatalities of the war were to be considered martyrs for the country, and therefore for Islam.[21] Even those who did not die in battle but were wounded were called living martyrs- however this position did not bring as much social mobility as the families of those who died.[22] Additionally, Iranian leaders would manufacture parallels between the war and the events at Karbala. In one memorable example, Iranian state television reported seventy-two deaths in a particularly bloody bombing in Iran. While in reality the death toll was higher, this fabricated number matched the number of Husayn's followers who were martyred in Karbala. [23] Battles were named Karbala Two, Three, and so on. Actors were hired to play the role of the Hidden Imam before dangerous battles, calling out to the soldiers to participate in suicide missions.[24] The promise of immediate entrance to heaven for martyrs was a key point of emphasis for Iranian leaders. In speeches, religious officials often repeated the promise of seventy-two virgins, and young men were given keys to wear around their necks that supposedly granted them instant access to heaven upon death.[25] Slogans on the soldiers shirts read Imam Khomeini has given me special permission to enter Heaven.[26] 47 For those martyred in the war who were unmarried, wedding tables were set up above their graves, a tradition that came from the death of Qassim, a companion of Husayn at Karbala who was killed just before his wedding and whose body was placed in the tent where he was intended to be married.[27] This emphasis on life after death and the comparisons to Husseins martyrdom, one of the most important figures in Shia Islam, provided the Iranian state with volunteers for their human wave attacks, where young men would attack the fronts with little or no protection. Often martyrdom meant suicide missions on the battlefield, such as the famous example of the 13-year old boy Mohammed Hossein Fahmideh who strapped explosives to his body and ran under an Iraqi tank. Such actions were widely publicized and praised as martyrdom.
The role of a lifetime for a Farsi bit player.
Actors were hired to play the role of the Hidden Imam before dangerous battles, calling out to the soldiers to participate in suicide missions. The role of a lifetime for a Farsi bit player. Somehow I don't think the speeches were as rousing as this:
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