Alwaght -Barry Grossman, an international Canadian lawyer, believes that Saudi Arabia and the US are exploiting their own-made chaotic situation in Yemen for their own interests, warning that Riyadh and Washington plan to drag the impoverished country into a prolonged war.
“…we should not automatically assume that the KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] or for that matter, the USA and its allies, want a quick end to the conflict. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that a simmering and to some extent controlled conflict in Yemen is exactly what they want,” said Barry Grossman in an exclusive interview with Alwaght news website.
Elsewhere in the interview, he said that the ISIS terrorist group, al-Nusra Front and suchlike are all creations of Saudi-Wahhabi ideology.
What follows is the text of the interview:
Alwaght: Saudi Arabia started its airstrikes on Yemen on March 26 without a UN mandate in an attempt to crush popular uprisings and restore to power fugitive president Mansour Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh. According to the latest reports, more than 4,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed since the start of the kingdom’s air raids on the impoverished country. What is the story behind Saudi attacks on Yemen?
Grossman: Mansour Hadi was elected unopposed early in 2012 for a presidential term of two years. By the time he resigned on 22 January of this year after losing de facto control of Yemen’s government, he had already remained in office almost a full year longer than his designated term without calling an election. Yemen has often been described as a kleptocracy and plagued by foreign domination, entrenched corruption, and a powerful al-Qaeda franchise linked to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) funding and religious dogma. There also can be no doubt that since Yemen’s independence in 1968, the KSA has consistently asserted almost complete control over Yemen’s political and government apparatus, in effect making it a client state of the KSA. There is simply no way to coherently argue that Hadi was not a KSA puppet. The fact that he fled to the KSA and supported the KSA-led military intervention in Yemen ostensibly to facilitate his return to power can leave no doubt about where his primary loyalties lie.
With his primary loyalties being to the KSA leadership, there is no way to prop up Mansour Hadi as Yemen’s legitimate president. Moreover, during his almost three years as Yemen’s president, he not only failed to provide Yemenis with effective governance which responded to their concerns about poverty, unemployment, foreign influence, and corruption, but he also took office through an unopposed election stage managed by the KSA and the USA that was anything but a model of democracy in action. He overstayed his term as president without any apparent plans to call an election and, bearing in mind his failures as president and his loyalty to foreign powers, he cannot in any meaningful way be considered to have been Yemen’s legitimate president when the KSA launched its belligerent military assault on Yemen.
While the KSA would not be averse to seeing their man Mansour Hadi reinstated as Yemen’s president, it seem quite clear that nobody in the KSA or the international, ever seriously considered it possible that Hadi could be reinstated as Yemen’s president. That much was clear from the start in the related KSA and Arab League rhetoric. While the carefully contrived public narrative held up Hadi as Yemen’s legitimate president ousted by popular forces, KSA rhetoric made it quite clear that its leadership’s dominant concern was to re-establish its control of Yemen instead of responding to the genuine concerns about poverty, corruption, unemployment and foreign influence consistently articulated by discontented Yemenis since the crises in government erupted in 2011.
The KSA and its allies added insult to injury by trumpeting vague and to now unproven allegations that the grass roots uprising which led to Hadi’s deposition was somehow the product of improper intervention by Hezbollah and Iran. These unproven allegations, like the KSA’s military intervention, were timed to coincide with transparent efforts by Israel and Zionist elements in the Atlantic World to derail the P5+1 Nuclear talks with Iran as a preliminary and essential step to their long standing plans to declare war on Iran.
Bearing all this in mind, only the most naive or willfully blind among us would believe that the KSA’s intervention in Yemen was motivated by a desire to reinstate Mansour Hadi as Yemen’s so-called legitimate president. Rather, there can be no doubt that the KSA leadership’s motives lay primarily in its enmity towards Iran, and in their determination to keep Yemen under the KSA’s yoke, no matter who ends up being president in the troubled and long suffering nation of Yemen. That much is certainly clear from early statements made by the Arab League which - as justification for its military strikes on Yemen – characterized Iran’s perfectly legitimate exercise of soft power and influence in the region as somehow amounting to a belligerent violation of "Pan Arab Sovereignty" a bizarre concept which is unknown in both history and international law. Racial groups do not enjoy sovereignty; nation-states do.
Of course, the irony of nations like the USA, KSA, and other belligerents justifying this attack on Yemen by invoking Iran’s exercise of “soft power” as somehow being a threat to democracy and sovereignty, is entirely lost on them. After all, these are the same nations which have made an art form out of intervening militarily in sovereign nations which have not fully submitted to the US inspired corporatist ideology which lies at the heart of today’s international order.
When we consider events that have unfolded in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Palestine, and even the Ukraine in recent years, there certainly can be no doubt that the dominant powers in today’s international order feel absolutely no reticence about carrying out regime change in sovereign nations using assassination and pre-emptive military force. Indeed, while it is dangerous to draw comparisons with events in other regions, the establishment position on events in the Ukraine is informative.
• Like Mansour Hadi in Yemen, the Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych headed the government of a nation plagued by corruption, poverty and economic problems;
• Like Hadi, Yanukovych was considered to be the puppet of a foreign state;
• Like Hadi, he was forced to resign by a popular movement calling for his immediate dismissal;
• Like Hadi and the KSA, Yanukovych and Russia claimed that the so-called Euro maiden Revolution was in fact not a people’s movement with widespread democratic support but rather the product of calculated and sustained foreign intervention by Neoconservative elements in the US, Europe and Israel agitating for regime change in the Ukraine; and
• Unlike, the Atlantic World’s position in Yemen where they supported the KSA military intervention and denounced the popular forces that saw Mansour Hadi resign and flee to the KSA, the Atlantic World’s political establishment denounced Viktor Yanukovych as a corrupt and illegitimate president who had resigned as the result of a popular revolution.
That brings me to the last key issue; did the KSA military intervention and the manner in which it has subsequently been carried out both comply with the international legal framework for military conflicts?
It should not surprise anyone that the legal instruments and once relatively clear international laws which determine when a pre-emptive military strike is lawful and when it is not, have become decidedly unclear since 2002 when the sequence of recent US-led pre-emptive invasions started first in Afghanistan, followed by Iraq, Libya and Syria. In that regard, the Bush administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy asserted that the United States could use force “before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.” At the time, the US position was widely criticized for being contrary to international law. However, since then a number of US allies have accepted variations on the policy adopted by the Bush administration.
That said, the conventional view remains that a pre-emptive military attack on another sovereign state by definition violates the accepted international laws governing armed conflict, unless the intervention is carried out pursuant to something approaching an international consensus properly arrived at by the United Nations, or the pre-emptive strike was otherwise carried out on the strength of hard evidence that the targeted nation presented a real and present danger to the state(s) carrying out the pre-emptive strike. It is noteworthy that when the KSA intervention in Yemen started, very little was said about imminent threats to the KSA’s domestic security and a great deal was said about Yemen’s Houthi-led grass roots revolution and vague, sectarian claims that it was somehow orchestrated by Iran and Hezbollah.
In any case, historically a pre-emptive strike by a foreign power could only be characterized as lawful by establishing that, in the circumstances, the “necessity of ... self-defense [was] instant, overwhelming, and [left] no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” In general, this means that the intervention must have been motivated by justifiable concerns that an “imminent” attack being planned by the targeted nation. Related issue involve considering whether the pre-emotive strike was commensurate in strength, duration, and purpose with the apprehended threat.
The following considerations will largely determine whether a pre-emptive military strike was justified:
1. The nature and magnitude of the threat involved;
2. The likelihood that the threat will be realized unless pre-emptive action is taken;
3. The availability and exhaustion of alternatives to using force; and
4. Whether using pre-emptive force is consistent with the terms and purposes of the UN Charter and other applicable international agreements.
Without getting into a detailed analysis of the KSA-led Arab League intervention in Yemen, I can think of no coherent argument for asserting that this bloody and continuing assault which has seen more than 4,000 Yeminis killed was lawful either in its conception or in the manner which it has been carried out. Indeed, the related Arab League rhetoric which focused a great deal on the strange notion of Pan Arab Sovereignty seems to presume that the KSA and its Arab League allies do not consider themselves to be a foreign power when it comes to Yemen. Simply stated, it cannot be argued that the Houthi-led grass roots revolution in Yemen posed an imminent and substantial threat to the KSA’s security or that all other alternatives top resolving any such threats were exhausted before the KSA led air strikes on Yemen. Moreover, it is very difficult to argue that the strikes amount to a military response that was proportionate to the risks faced by the KSA or that the intervention as a whole is consistent with the UN Charter and the international laws governing armed conflict.
Alwaght: The US has always claimed that it is a staunch advocate of democracy across the globe. However, there is ample evidence that Yemen’s crisis is a direct result of Western interventionist policies presented under the guise of democracy in the West Asia. What do you think?
Grossman: Whatever may once have been the case, the US track record of military interventions around the world since WW2 certainly leaves no doubt that whatever commitment to promoting democracy in other nations it may express, the US political and security establishment along with its corporatized war machine, always invoke national security as a cover for placing US economic interests and geo-political concerns ahead of mere niceties like democracy. Despite warnings from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States, the US military machine has become a “giant self-licking ice cream cone.” Certainly, the history of the US intervention in South and Central America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia can leave no one in doubt that the quality of democracy that the US seeks to bring to developing nations is of a quality and scope which is very different from that expressed in the US Declaration of Independence and its subsequent Constitution as being the God-given right of all American citizens. Indeed, the democratic principles enunciated by America’s founding fathers are no more a reality today in the US itself than they are anywhere else in the world.
Moreover, we should not be confused about the collective character of the US public. While many Americans are still opposed to war and foreign adventuring on moral grounds, the vast majority of Americans cannot even find it within themselves to be concerned about the erosion of democracy in their own nation, or about the way their own government targets Americans who dissent from the Neo-Liberal dominated establishment’s policy positions. For the most part, public interest in the US foreign policy starts and stops with individual concerns about the effect related polices will have on their take home pay. The US public certainly cannot be relied upon to hold its government accountable for what are widely considered immoral foreign adventures.
That said, we must avoid being too reductionist in our assessment of the US and understand how the mechanisms of US government actually work. It is only through such an understanding that we can further understand the apparent hypocrisy of US government policy.
Analysts could barely keep from laughing when the Yemen intervention started and the Arab League announced plans to create a standing military force similar to NATO. It is almost universally recognized that the only effective response to the conflict in Yemen will be a political solution and, as far as any such solution attempts to imply reassert the status quo which existed when Mansour Hadi and his predecessors were in power, it is difficult to imagine a quick end to this conflict. Then again, we should not automatically assume that the KSA or for that matter, the USA and its allies, want a quick end to the conflict. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that a simmering and to some extent controlled conflict in Yemen is exactly what they want. Of course, Yeminis in general and the Houthi in particular no doubt have a very different idea of how any continuing conflict will proceed.
Alwaght: According to a report released on June 5, representatives from Israel and Saudi Arabia have secretly met five times since the beginning of last year to discuss latest regional developments. Do you believe that Israeli regime is playing an operational role in Yemen?
Grossman: There can be no doubt that Israel, like the US itself, has long had contingency plans which call for stoking regional, sectarian conflict with a view to weakening the Arab/Persian world and Balkanizing the region along lines which advance foreign geo-political agendas. The US, KSA and Israeli support for armed thugs rallying around various flags of convenience in the region – including ISIS and al-Nusra – and which aim to unseat the Assad government and break up Iraq is well established. Indeed, it is almost inconceivable that both the US and Israel intelligence apparatus is not, in one way or another, heavily involved in all events which unfold throughout the region and North Africa.
That said, while we can only speculate about the extent and nature of Israel’s involvement in Yemen, the KSA led operation benefits Israel in several ways.
The Arab League’s position, which is in broad terms supported by the Atlantic World and the UN, definitely weakens the moral standing of those nations among them which criticize Israel for its record in Palestine.
For its part, sadly the UN has again exposed its partisanship by failing to discharge its moral and legal mandate to denounce this murderous violation of Yemen’s sovereignty. Moreover, the UN resolution which imposed an arms embargo on the Houthis is reminiscent of the way the British disarmed Palestinians while at the same time had armed Zionist Militias during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine. Whereas the UN Charter obliges the Security Council with primary responsibility for maintaining regional security, the hypocrisy of its permanent members and its resolution which aimed, in effect, to support the belligerent intervention by disarming the Houthi-led fighters which had de facto control of Yemen’s government, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the arming of forces aligned against the Houthi, will inevitably make it more difficult for the international community to take action against Israel for its own war crimes against Palestinians.
Moreover, with the Houthi being one of few fighting forces to actively oppose al-Qaeda in Yemen, Security Council support for Arab League action against the Houthi will certainly have the effect of strengthening the foothold enjoyed in Yemen by groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS and al-Nusra, which are the progeny of religious dogma and funding that have their roots in the KSA.
The few qualified statements that have come out of the UN about violations of international law arising not from the decision to attack Yemen but rather from the way the Arab League has carried out military strikes by allegedly targeting civilians, only makes the UN’s failure to denounce the intervention itself that much more reprehensible.
Certainly, the longer this one-sided conflict in Yemen continues, the more it resembles the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza which many supporters of Palestine hope will see Israel prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. Israel has already openly threatened the International Criminal Court’s very existence. As the Arab League assault on Yemen takes more and more innocent victims, it is difficult to see how the ICC can now take decisive action against Israel without also doing the same with the Arab League. It is also difficult to see how Arab League countries could support an ICC action against Israel without subjecting themselves to similar consequences.
Barry K. Grossman received his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary in 1984 and his LLB from York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in 1987. After working as a litigator at a major commercial law firm in Toronto, he moved to Australia to teach at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Law in 1988. He later worked for several years as a litigation consultant to the national Australian firm of Freehill, Hollingdale and Page before later taking up a full time lectureship at Monash University’s Faculty of Law. Grossman has written extensively on various legal subjects and is a frequent commentator on political affairs.
Interview by Javad Arab Shirazi
