'Yemen designed for indefinite chaos'

Interview with Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley, author and historian from Washington about the potential for real change and stabilization in Yemen now that UK-trained army officer Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has been sworn in as president of Yemen.

Our guest in London is saying that the tone now of Mr. Hadi has been conciliatory; however, he was in a one-man competition for the election. How much of a real change can actually be expected in Yemen?

Dr. Tarpley: I don’t expect any change from Mr. Hadi. He seems to be part of the Saleh circle and he perpetuates a government where lots of members of the Saleh family still have important posts.

But I think we have to focus on the tragedy of this country. It is desperately poor. It is a tribal society. It is tormented by US bombing and drone attacks. It’s in a terrible situation with the Houthi rebels in the north and a Marxist secessionist movement in Aden in the south.

I would focus on the need to break out of the current system. The US essentially created al-Qaeda in Yemen deliberately. They sent over this guy, al-Rakhi. Al-Rakhi was a double agent so obvious perhaps that he had to be liquidated in order to hide how much the US had contributed to creating this branch of al-Qaeda. Various Guantanamo alumni were sent over, al-Shiri and others.

So, this whole AQAP al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is a creation of the US. So, on the one side we have this artificial group created, which nevertheless gets support and traction. On the other side we have the Saleh establishment. The only cash cow for the officials and generals of the Saleh establishment is to do anti-terrorism.

So, we get the whole endless conflict of bombing, strafing, vendettas, revenge and so forth. This essentially never ends and it’s designed to lead to the destruction of Yemen. It’s designed to lead to failed states, mini states, micro states, war lords, what have you.

And the goal for the US is to keep a certain number of assets; to keep some bases; to control the way up to the Red Sea to the Suez Canal, but in particular to keep everybody else out. If you have a bunch of micro states and mini states the main thing the US will want to do is keep the Chinese out.

China would be very happy to add Yemen to the string of pearls that they have across the Indian Ocean. The US policy says better to destroy the whole place and have it sink into chaos rather than it have a reasonable chance.

The country needs more electrification; above all they need water - there’s going to be a water shortage, which is going to be deadly for everybody and of course the obvious roads, schools and hospitals and other fundamental structures.

Our other guests have said that the referendum in general was an insult to the Yemeni people’s intelligence and that destabilization would not work in the interests of regional powers and global powers. What is your view?

Dr. Tarpley: Well, I just have to point out that Zbigniew Brzezinski who is one of the major theoreticians of the Democratic Party foreign policy establishment is openly on record calling for micro states, mini states - that this is the path to dignity - they have a state that corresponds to every little ethnic peculiarity that you have.

Look at what the US has actually done in Libya - that’s chaos. Look at Iraq - it’s increasingly called that there is a good element of chaos going on there. Look at the NATO death squads that have been sent into Syria for the purpose of wrecking the entire country and we could go on… Look at Sudan carved into two parts; look at Pakistan, a candidate to be carved into four parts.

The use of the drones by the way is a giveaway - the drones had nothing to do with terrorism - the drones are designed to goad and enflame populations to the point of rebellion, civil war and so forth. They tend to blame it on the central government if there is one, as is happening in Yemen and that’s… wherever you see those drones those are the countries targeted for destabilization.

There’s a story about a secret US drone base, which is somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula - some people its in Oman, some people say its in Saudi Arabia… it might be in Yemen from which a lot of this drone activity is going on. And that simply means to try to destroy these countries as functioning entities.

So, you are saying Mr. Tarpley, this is a class take on divide and conquer, this is what the US is basically doing in your perspective?

Dr. Tarpley: Yes… an extreme version. An extreme version of divide and conquer, it’s kind of a scorched earth policy. If US imperialism is too weak to hold onto all of these countries then scorched earth is what the Chinese will find when they get there.

Why is there a difference in the way we see things being handled in Yemen by the West and some of their Arab proxies as opposed to Syria where we see that there are many things going on - but in Yemen they try to get the (P)GCC countries and basically force upon the people of Yemen an agreement that the majority of the people didn’t even want.

So, why the difference, why do we see this difference so close together in area?

Dr. Tarpley: Well, every country has to have a destabilization scenario tailored to create the maximum of mayhem and creative chaos, as has rightly been said, on the ground. In the case of Yemen you’ve got to make the Saudis think that it’s going to benefit them even though in reality it won’t.

I would say that in terms of solutions for all of this - we’re living through big changes in international politics. The emergence of that China/Russia block in the UN voting against the attack on Syria several times; the other countries: Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela; the Alba group and quite a number of numbers who have joined that - that’s now counter pole.

And we may be going back to the situation of something like we had in the Cold War we had the US on one side and the Soviets on the other and that meant that there was some kind of margin for maneuver for countries like Yemen in the middle and I think creative leadership… look towards that and look towards inviting the US to leave or certainly severely diminishing the US presence… and ask what the Russian could do.