Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club
After four years of material and human carnage
Religious and moral duty to stop the Yemen War
*Ahmad Al Mo’ayyad (A Yemeni negotiator in Stockholm)
**Marigold Bentley (activist with Quakers)
***Murad Qureshi (National Chair of Stop the War Coalition)
****Andrew Smith (CAAT)
https://www.facebook.com/jaafar.jasim/videos/10218148265836502?sfns=mo
The war on Yemen that had been launched by a Saudi-led alliance on 26th March 2015 has become a living testimony to vicious cruelty, destructive psychology and moral indifference. It has become an embarrassment to the international community which feels unable to influence decisions of war and peace as new political alliances in the world jostle for power and influence. Last month the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is the worst in the world, as UNICEF warned of catastrophic consequences to children in the war-stricken country. It is now widely felt that after four years of destruction the war must be brought to an abrupt end.
Wednesday, 27th March 2019
Marigold Bentley: Welcome to an evening to mark four years of terrible war in Yemen to look together at what has happened and what we can do to stop not only this war, but all war.
Before I start I’d like to offer my condolences to everyone here in relation to the attack on Muslim worshippers in Christchurch New Zealand on the 15th of March. We are here this evening surely because we are committed to working to build a society where people of all faiths feel safe and we challenge hate wherever it appears. Quakers are members of the Faith and Belief Forum and we have signed this statement from them.
We believe anti-Muslim prejudice has been allowed to become normalised for too long. We must all take a stand against the spread of bigotry and intolerance. We firmly oppose narratives that dehumanise and demonise people based on their religion or belief. We must stop acting in ways that divide society into ‘us and them’ along the lines of faith and belief and recognise that there is only ‘us’.
I’m Marigold Bentley, Head of Peace Programmes and Faith Relations for Quakers in Britain. Thank you for the invitation to contribute this evening. I’ve been asked particularly to focus on the religious and moral duty of all of us to address this situation. I’ll do my best. Quakers are a historic peace church, and our faith stems from the civil war in England in the 1660’s at which we declared clearly that our understanding of what faith was about was to “Take Away the Occasion of War”. The actual words used by Quakers (then called the Religious Society of Friends – the name Quakers was originally a derogative nickname – were “we utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons”. They key phrase there is “outward weapons” in other words, we do use all the tools available to us to make for a nonviolent and more peaceful world, but that outward weapons – bombs, guns, and armaments are not acceptable. Those tools I refer to are many and various – community work, campaigning, protest, organizing, political policy work and creative thinking. We as a faith community regard this as our calling, and we have always worked with others along the way. Peace is not just for Quakers it is for everyone. That is why Quakers were instrumental in creating Campaign Against the Arms Trade in the 1970’s. Weapons of the spirit are what we have. Those weapons of the spirit we all share as people of faith. From those early days, Quakers have been involved in peace making and peace building. We have witnessed and been part of the growth of the peace movement and of many movements for positive social change. We are a very political faith, with an understanding that to bring about a more peaceful world you must engage politically both at a community level, with governments and with international institutions. As an example, over the past two weeks, Quakers across Britain have been reaching out to Muslims throughout these islands and attending worship at mosques and community centres to extend the hand of friendship and support whilst offering condolences for the events in Christchurch New Zealand. Quakers have been outspoken in arguing for religious freedom since the 1660, having been subject to much persecution ourselves during the civil war here.
Tonight you are going to hear from three speakers who will tell you things about the war in Yemen which will make you really angry, frustrated and upset. What will you do with those feelings and the information? What do you think is your moral duty as people of faith and as human beings to make a difference? We Quakers have words of guidance and instruction at such times and I’m sure you do too – we are required to know one another in the things which are eternal (George Fox) we are required to acknowledge that of God in everyone. We are asked to be patterns and examples and to use quiet processes and small circles to make for a better world. Using that religious guidance, Quakers felt called to set up offices in the UN both Geneva and New York following WW2 and we have been active in the development of much progressive international law.
The challenge for us all is how do we as faithful moral people stand your ground yet work with people who have different views? How do we apply respect and tolerance but also challenge when you think things are wrong? Do you have the skills to engage in this way and to be a peacemaker yourself?
In relation to what we are going to hear this evening, I need to remind you that violence is a terrible and bloody trap and people get consumed by it, seeing it as both the answer and the way forward. I have worked with people in that trap in Northern Ireland, former Yugoslavia and other places. We as faithful moral people have to constantly ask ourselves how are the conditions of war created and what can we do to stop that. We also need to engage in the wider consideration of what makes for a secure and safe society, both here in Britain and overseas. Take a look at what the Rethinking Security group are doing.
A core element of peacemaking is the acknowledgement that if you are part of the problem then you are part of the solution. What we will hear from these folks are how those involved in the war in Yemen are being helped to come to a solution. We will hear how arms sales from Britain to Saudi have made the situation a great deal worse, and what we can do to stop them. Whilst we are listening to these accounts, keep asking yourself, what can I as a faithful person offer to end the war and alleviate the suffering.
Before I finish I need to ask you all what you are telling your children about war. Are you listening to their views and helping them to work out the moral way forward in a world which is not as we want it to be. Do you ask how war is taught in their schools? Are you aware of whether BAE systems are influencing the science taught in their school? If you want peace education materials to help you to counter that then see me afterwards.
Faith must be about hope and possibility. We need to remind ourselves that a world without war is possible and work towards that. I hope you will find some moral courage from what you hear tonight.
Andrew Smith: It is incredibly unfortunate that we are having this meeting today. Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the bombardment of Yemen. It has created the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world today.
Sixty thousand people have been killed as a direct result of the war with many more being killed in the humanitarian crisis as a result of the war. Save the Children reports that 85,000 children under five have been killed in the humanitarian catastrophe which has been allowed to take root. The human cost has been exacerbated by the intense bombardment with tens of thousands of bombs being dropped over the last four years.
This has been intensified by the Saudi imposed blockade which has stopped vital food and medicine from reaching people in need. The people who are dying are not dying they are being killed. The people who are starving to death are not starving they are being starved. This is a man-made war and the consequences are man made consequences.
It has been four years since the war began and what we have seen has been the destruction of schools, the destruction of hospitals, the destruction of homes. We have seen weddings bombed, we have seen funerals bombed, we have seen parties bombed. Occasions which are meant to be celebrations have been turned into mourning. Days that were meant for mourning have been turned into devastation. Last August we saw the bombing of a school bus which killed dozens of children.
Not even that has been enough for arms dealing governments like the UK to question what they are doing and to end the sales because unfortunately every step of the way throughout this four year war the Saudi regime has been able depend on the uncritical political and military support which has come from the UK.
In that time five billion pounds worth of fighter jets and bombs have been licensed to Yemen. These include the fighter jets which are flying over Yemen right now. They include the bombs and missiles that have been dropped by the Saudi forces right now.
These are Saudi forces who have been trained in the UK as well. These are Saudi forces who are co-ordinating with the UK. This is the Saudi regime that has received the uncritical backing of the UK.
It is fair to say that the war could not be fought without the UK and the US. If arms sales were to stop tomorrow the war would end very quickly afterwards because ultimately the war can only be fought because of the fighter jets, because of the bombs with the fig leaf of political legitimacy that it has been given on the world stage.
And we saw that political support last year when Mohamed bin Salman the Crown prince of Saudi Arabia arrived in London for a major propaganda visit. During the time he was in London he had lunch with the queen, he had dinner with Prince William, he had dinner with Prince Charles, he got taken out to Chequeers, he got the full tour of Downing Street and got his picture taken with Theresa May.
And while these images looked like naked propaganda they would have been seen all over the world. And the audience which we are playing to is the rest of the Saudi ruling class. It is the other dictatorship of the world. The message it is sending out is one of uncritical political backing.
The message that they send out to people who are being detained and tortured in Saudi prisons was a very different one. The message it sent to people who are being bombed in Yemen was a very different one. The message it sent to them was that their human rights don’t matter. The message that was sent them is that the UK government is happy to prioritise arms exports and have close relations with one of the world’s most authoritarian dictatorships.
We will see it again this September when the Saudi regime is among those that is invited to the DSEI arms fair which is taking place in East London. This is an arms fair which takes place every two years. It brings thousands of arms dealers together with some of the most brutal regimes around the world. The sole purpose of DSEI is to sell as many arms as possible. We will be taking action against this and encourage all of you to do so as well. You can find out more from the website stopthearmstrade.org.uk
There will be activists from all over the UK coming to try and stop this because ultimately when these things are being done by governments they are being done in all of our names. There is nothing new in the UK support of Saudi arms sales or even in the UK support for arms sales to tyrants generally.
For decades government of all political colours have followed much the same policy. Blair’s Labour government was just as keen on arms sales as was David Cameron’s Conservatives or Margaret Thatcher back in the 80s. But this is not something that the public stands for. Every single poll shows that the overwhelming majority of people in the country are firmly opposed to these arms sales.
The last poll I saw on arms to Saudi shows that only six percent of people in the country support these arms sales. Six percent despite the major effort of the government in promoting these arms sales and trying to justify them.
We are seeing a change in parliament right now because we are seeing the Labour Party in parliament under Jeremy Corbyn taking a very strong position what it has in the past. We are seeing the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats doing the same. We have seen the Green Party and the Welsh nationalists doing the same.
And we are seeing growing opposition. These week we saw five opposition leaders sign a letter to Jeremy Hunt urging him to end the arms sales. So that political pressure is increasing. Every single day that these arms sales continue is another day of bombardment and of destruction.
One of the things which is coming up very soon which could make a big difference is next month when the campaign against the arms trade will be in the Court of Appeal because we are trying to get these arms sales banned. We have taken a case against the government which was in the High Court in 2017. Unfortunately we lost but we have been given permission to appeal.
In the time between the original verdicts and this appeal tens of thousands of people would have been killed and it is for them that we are taking this action because we cannot have more bombardment, we can’t have more war, Yemen can’t take another year of this. Yemen can’t wait for change and this is ultimately why we all need to take action.
If we win in the Court of Appeal it will set a major precedent. But if we lose the message it will send is an incredibly stark one. The message it will send is that a brutal dictatorship can inflict the worse humanitarian catastrophe in the world on one of its neighbours using UK arms and this will not be enough to stop the arms sales.
That raises a key question. If the destruction of schools and hospitals is not enough, if the death of tens of thousands of civilians is not enough, if the worst humanitarian crisis in the world is not enough then what more will it take for the UK government to act of its own accord and to finally end its complicity in this war, to finally end its support for the brutal Saudi regime.
Ultimately there is a choice to be made. It is impossible to talk about human rights and democracy on the one hand and to sell weapons to dictatorships on the other. It is impossible to talk about freedom while at the same time backing those who are carrying out mass suppression. It is impossible to talk about peace while you are playing a fundamental role in the prosecution of war.
That is what has happened. In the last four years the UK government has been an accessory to the terrible destruction of Yemen. We need to mobilise as many people as we can to make sure those arms sales end and to send a message that this is not in our name.
Ahmed Al-Moayyad: Tonight I will provide some information about the Stockholm Agreement and its affect on the peace process in Yemen and who benefits from achieving this agreement. When you see the objectives of the Saudi-led coalition you see that the aim of the Emiratis is to take over all Yemeni ports as they have now. Only Hodeida is under the control of the Sana government. So they are keen to take over Hodeida because the rules of the negotiations will be changed completely.
The Saudis have more interest in making Yemen very weak and divided and to control the wealth there. There is a lot of oil in Yemen. Baab Al Mandib is there and they have many important ports like Aden and Hodeida.
The Stockholm agreement was in September two months after the murder of Al Khashoggi. Saudi signed this agreement or gave the order to El Hadi to sign this agreement just to get rid of the global media press. Everybody in the media was talking about Khashoggi and the war crimes in Yemen so they needed to reduce it and if anybody talked about Yemen they could say it is sorted out here in Sweden so it is clear now. But in reality it is nothing.
The Stockholm agreement consists of three parts which should go together at the same time but in Stockholm they changed it. One week before they travelled to Stockholm there were three parts which have to go together and at the same time they would sign the agreement.
The first one was to build confidence steps which consists of three steps. The first one is military de-escalation the second the economic side and the third one is opening Sana port. These are the confidence building measures which have to be undertaken.
The second category is the detainees and prisoners agreement which has been signed one week before going to Stockholm. There were 45 days for it to be implemented. By 21st January all the detainees had to be released.
The third category was the common negotiation about the political solution because the UN always said the solution in Yemen is political and the Stockholm or the Hodeida agreement would just be a small part of that common agreement.
So if we talk about the economic side there were two committees: a committee from the Sana government and a committee from the Riyadh. Three for each committee. When we arrived in Stockholm they said just one from the Riyadh Committee came and he can’t take any decision. The economic negotiations are about the salaries. For two and a half years there are no salaries in Yemen so they have to come to Stockholm to solve this problem and see how they will pay the salaries for the Yemeni people.
The economic committee did not come there so there are no salaries and there are no negotiations. Opening Sana port according to the Stockholm agreement signed on 13th December and at 9pm on December 12th a member of the delegation came to us and said we have very good news, we agreed that Sana airport will be open and all the flights would go through Aden. We said it is okay. We need Sana airport to be open. But at 3am they said this is sovereignty. We can’t let the UN supervise flights from Yemen. This touches on sovereignty.
The Sudanese, the Saudis, the Emirates are there and now you are talking about the sovereignty. So they cancelled this issue as they don’t want to say that the Sana government won.
The second category was the detainees and prisoners agreement which was already signed before the Stockholm agreement. It is four months now and no one has been released according to this agreement. When they were in Stockholm they asked on Twitter and Whatsap who knows if there is anybody here or in Sana to give us his name. They did not prepare their list so they asked who has any detainees here or in Sana or anywhere so just give us the details. The other side had all the lists and all the information about the detainees from the war.
So some information came from the committee. They said 1500 detainees are in Dubai. They brought them and they paid money for them. There is no war, there is no fighting between the Saudi soldiers and the Emiratis so they buy the detainees – they pay them. So 1500 detainees from the Emiratis, 1560 with the Saudis and the others are in Aden or Marib or other cities in Yemen.
In their list when they gave the list and said there are our detainees 111 were from Al Qaeda soldiers and they were prisoners from before 2013. They were previous prisoners in Sana prison. And 2140 were duplicates. They take their names and write them here and there but they are the same people with the same name. There were a lot of mistakes there and the last meeting was in Jordan. They could not achieve anything because the decision is not with the head of the committee. The decision is in Riyadh or in Dubai so they could not release them.
So now it is four months and there is nothing on this point.
The last category was the negotiation about the complete solution for Yemen. They did not want to discuss this issue because they want to stay like an official government and the others are rebels forever. This is a very important point. Now they have a lot of salaries from the Saudis, flats, a very luxurious life style and they are the official government recognised by the UN. So they can go and fly and do what they want but they can’t come to their country. So they want to stay like this and you are rebels, you have to stay like this forever.
So what is the solution? It is a unity government from all sides but they can’t come to Sana or to Yemen. Even if you swear one thousand times that you will protect them. They will not believe you. They can’t trust the Yemeni people because no Yemeni people will believe them. Four years of the Saudis and they kill us every day and they destroyed everything in our country and you just stand with them and support them and now you want to come to Sana and stay and be a minister. So they don’t want to go to this category. It is a very important point in the agreement.
So the Stockholm agreement is an initial step which will lead to the final solution which is the political solution or negotiation. They don’t want to implement the Stockholm Agreement because they do not want to go to the final step to solve the problem. This is a summary of the Stockholm agreement. It makes me pessimistic to see any light of peace especially when Jeremy Hunt went to Aden and said Houtis have to withdraw from the Yemeni ports.
I was surprised. You are a foreign minister of a big country and you go there to talk about the small details. Where is the first step of the Stockholm agreement which is the ceasefire? When you implement a ceasefire you achieve something big so all the parties can go through and complete the agreement. So I hope that we can mobilise our efforts and go to the MPs and talk to them and ask them to stop selling arms to the Saudis and ask for real negotiations between Yemeni parties and follow these negotiations and the results. Now after four months there is nothing on the ground and I am afraid the war will continue. All the indicators are for that.
Murad Qureshi: The title of today’s discussion is about our moral duty to stop the Yemeni war. I don’t for one moment suggest I am a religious person but this is something that the British public needs to be aware of. The people the Yemeni’s have to depend on us the British people raising this issue.
I remember being there last year when we had a day discussion about the geo politics of the Saudis in the Middle East and one of the main things that came over was the brutality of the war being undertaken by the war in Yemen. It is now another year down the road and that is a tragedy. It is only last night that many of us were demonstrating outside Downing Street about just that fact. Stop the War Coalition, CND, Campaign Against the Arms Trade and the Arab Organisation for Human Rights were there to remind people that this war is entering its fifth year.
We enter the fifth year of the war with half the population going to potentially a famine. I am actually someone who saw the 1973 Bangladesh famine and believe you me when you smell the stench of famine in the tropics it really does hurt you very hard. It may be different in the climate of the Middle East but I have seen it a number of times in other contexts and in other times in the early 1970s. I do not want anyone to suffer the same fate as one and half million Bengalis suffered in 73 – 74.
Along with that we have had tens of thousands killed because of the activities of Saudi repression in Yemen. The reality is that the British government has been complicit in this. It is not only supplying the arms – dare I say it is actually operating many of the arms. The Saudis have an army that does not operate any of the very sophisticated armoury that is sold to them by mostly Europeans. I don’t think they buy any stuff from the Chinese yet.
But nonetheless there is no doubt where we can point the finger and the collaboration of the British government in those activities. It was only during the summer one should not forget that Mohammed Bin Salman had the red carpet rolled out for him in June-July. He had good media coverage and no one in the media questioned what he was up to in the Yemen for the simple reason that they have all been bought off by the petro dollars that the Saudis provide.
In the summer we realised what a murderous regime the Saudis are. You only have to hear the story of Jamal Khashoggi who was chopped into pieces and was buried in the consulate in Istanbul. It is not surprising that the Saudis have no compunction about pushing the Yemenis into the stone age. We have been with them from the outset since 1922.
I don’t know if at Christmas time we ever see the re runs of some of the movies. One of the ones I look out for is Lawrence of Arabia which tells the story of British involvement with many Arab tribes to coerce them to revolt against the Ottoman Empire. This alliance dates back to that time. Britain has been close to the Saudis since 1922 and until this day it has not been effectively critically analysed what we get out of it.
You only have to look at more recent times like 9/11 and the extent of Saudi involvement is quite clear. But coming back to what they are doing in Yemen. There is no doubt that if we want to help the Yemenis we have to raise the profile of the issue.
The reality about yesterday’s demonstration outside Downing Street was that there were not that many who knew what was being done and the best thing we can do is to inform our colleagues and those in our neighbourhoods and at work that this is something we are actually complicit in and we need to take a stand against these activities and align ourselves with the Yemeni community up and down the country and all those campaigning organisations involved in this fight.
There is no doubt that many of our parliamentarians are ignorant about what is being done there. Today it was the celebration of Bangladesh’s independence day on another front. Nonetheless we had dozens and dozens of MPs coming along. We have to do something similar for the Yemenis. I hope you will shed some light about what has been done and what will continue to be done unless we raise the issue.
Like I said when the murderous bastard Mohammed Bin Salman came to London he was given the red carpet by the British establishment. Interestingly his man servant murdered a person in the Landmark Hotel a few years ago. He got away with it under diplomatic immunity. They think they can get away with it and they can buy everyone off. It is time we tell them they can’t buy off the British public and we will hold meetings like this up and down the country particularly in London.
* Ahmed Al-Moayyad is a political analyst and commentator, and an activist with Sheba for Democracy and Human Rights. Over the past four years he has campaigned for the war on Yemen to stop. He appeared on many TV shows and debates. Ahmed has also participated in the negotiations to end the war, most recently in Stockholm last December.
** Marigold Bentley is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and has worked on behalf of Quakers nationally and internationally for over 30 years. Her work has included service work in the Occupied Territories and Egypt during the 1980’s, and at the Quaker United Office in New York. During the 1990’s she worked in peace education, particularly in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. She is currently Head of Peace Programmes and Faith Relations for Quakers in Britain. She is a member of the Rethinking Security Group.
*** Murad Qureshi is a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician, and former Member of the London Assembly. He is the current chair of the Stop the War Coalition. Qureshi was born in Greater Manchester, but he was brought up in Westminster. He has a degree in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia and an MSc in Environmental Economics from UCL. He had worked in Housing and Regeneration for 15 years, helping establish housing associations and co-ops in the East End. He was an Executive Committee member of SERA from 1994 to 2000 and a former board member of BRAC U.K, an international NGO seeking to alleviate poverty and empower the poor.
****Andrew Smith is the Media Coordinator for CAAT and works with the team to ensure that positive campaigns and messages reach as many people as possible. Andrew has worked on press and media strategy for all sorts of companies and charities and has written about politics and culture for a range of publications.
