By Joti Bee, Deputy Leader of the Communists in Britain
Quickly, by way of an introduction, I just wanted to make a few points about Yemen that are not generally explained in our mainstream media. In general, the media, the imperialist media, the corporate media, they ignore the question of Yemen. But when they do talk about it, they recite a few facts. facts and these are the facts that everybody knows that Yemen is the poorest country in Africa in Arabia that that in the Middle East that Yemen is the is suffering from a huge humanitarian crisis but what they never do is put any of that in context it's as if Yemenis were always poor victims that they were somehow born to need our charity. And that is how Yemen is presented as a charity case. So what is Yemen and why is it being targeted? I think it's worth asking ourselves. You know, the short answer is that Yemen is a vital strategic location. And it's a country that's attempting to have an independent government while occupying this vital strategic location. And that's the short answer to why is Yemen being targeted? You know, Yemen occupies the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. It's bordered by Saudi Arabia in the north and Oman in the northeast. And at the southernmost tip, it's just a few miles from the coast of Africa, very close to Djibouti, to Eritrea, to Somalia. miles from the coast of Africa, very close to Djibouti, to Eritrea, to Somalia. And the small channel that runs between the southern tip of Yemen and the coast of Eritrea is the southern entrance to the Red Sea. That's the Bab el-Mandab Strait. It's a vital geostrategic shipping lane linking Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal at the northern end. And this is a point on the map that imperialism is very keen to hold on to, has worked very hard to cling on to during the days of empire and still harbors a desire to control. And beside that, it's an area that the Saudis, who are one of imperialism's chief proxies in the Middle East, also have desires to control. The country occupies about 200,000 square miles. That's more than twice the size of Britain, but its population is just around 26 and a half million people. That's just over one third of the population of Britain. So it's much less densely populated than we are, but it's a decent size of territory. And it was the landing place of our ancestors when they left Africa. And it's the home to a great many sites of importance for understanding human prehistory. And it's also being close to where agriculture developed in Eurasia. Yemen was also home to some of the first great human civilizations with complex social organization, flowering of the arts, of science, of engineering. All the great kingdoms of southern Arabia in the ancient world were located in modern day Yemen. So it has a rich cultural, architectural and artistic history, which is never acknowledged or talked about in the West, in our media. How many people do you bump into on the streets of Britain who would know the first thing about any of that? But of course, it's a history that the Yemenis are very aware of. In fact, the whole of the Middle East knows about Yemen. It has a stature in the Middle East because of its ancient history and culture and its vibrant political traditions. You know, I'm not going to going to talk more about that. But it's something that we should be aware of how important it is and also aware that the Saudi bombing campaign has been targeting and raising much of this ancient civilization and culture. And that in itself is a criminal criminal act that what there is to learn about human history and prehistory in Yemen is substantial and what has been destroyed can never be replaced um and then of course at a strategic location you know it's been of interest to empire for hundreds of years. The British were not the first, but they were the longest occupiers of Yemen. First, it was the Portuguese, then the Ottomans. The British naval fleet docked there during the Napoleonic Wars.
And then the East India Company took control when they realized that it was a really important staging post on the way guarding the sea lanesto India. a really important staging post on the way guarding the sea lanes to India, India being, of course, the most important colonial possession of the British Empire for 200 years. And then with the development of the Suez Canal, Yemen developed another importance as guarding the entrance into the Red Sea that links you up to the Suez Canal. So before we knew about the oil in the Middle East, the British interest was focused on the passage to India, but of course, and it still is a vital shipping lane, the key link between Asia and Europe, vital for energy supplies, very important for the running of modern imperialism. But after oil was discovered, Yemen acquired, of course, a new significance to the British Empire. And they really wanted to hold on to that for all of those reasons. It was, in fact, fierce independence wars waged by the Yemenis that kicked the British out during the 1960s, first of the north and then of the south. during the 1960s, first of the north and then of the south. The south, in fact, was a socialist republic for some 20 something years until the collapse of the USSR when it was reabsorbed and the two Yemen's were reunited. So Yemen's had a long, had a pivotal role in Arab politics. It might be the poorest country in the Arab world, as we're always being told. But as a country with an ancient history and a vibrant political tradition, you know, it's always been respected and looked up to. And in fact, many of the leading Saudi families actually come from Yemen. Saudi Arabia always wanted to control the whole of the peninsula. And that's become really quite obsessive since the rise of Crown Prince MBS to the leadership of Saudi Arabia. And on the other hand, there's a real fear amongst both the imperialists and their proxies in the region, Israel in particular, and Saudi Arabia of an independent Yemen, because an independent Yemen is going to be aligned to the axis of resistance in the Middle East against imperialism, against Saudi Arabia, against Israel for the popular masses, which, you know, is is terrifying, frankly, to to the imperialists and to their proxies. So we can understand a little more, I hope, from that, why Yemen is targeted and what Yemen actually is. You know, it's not just some poor bit of desert. It's a very important and a very historic place.
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