 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. In this week's International Roundup, we will be focusing on the war in Yemen. This war, being led by Saudi Arabia and UAE, has affected 27 million people of the country and has resulted in the largest humanitarian crisis being seen right now. Because of the different blockades by UAE and Saudi Arabia, people in Yemen no longer have access to food, clean water, electricity or medicines. And this lack of clean water has also resulted in the largest outbreak and the fastest outbreak of cholera. To discuss this crisis, we have with us today Prabir Purkayasa, the Editor-in-Chief of NewsClick. So Prabir, firstly, going to the reasons of this war going on right now. Why has Saudi Arabia and UAE done all these different blockades? Well, the attack by Saudi Arabia on Yemen is because they actually refused to accept the transitional regime that was imposed on them by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. So that is the origin of it. I will not go into the details today of that history. But it led to Houthis, who were really the forces who had been left outside of the transitional government at some point marching and taking over Sanaa. And this led to, at that time, the person who had been imposed as the head of the transitional government by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to essentially flee to Saudi Arabia. That's the start of what could be called the military war in which Saudi Arabia backs this transitional government forces supposedly, but really imposes war on the Houthis. Houthis today control about 70 to 75% or maybe 65 to 70% of the population of Yemen. But in terms of area, they control a smaller area. As you know, Yemen has a large amount of desert areas also. And different places, there are different correlations of forces which are in power. So at the moment, there are areas which are sort of broken up. Some under Saudi UAE's tutelage virtually with their soldiers, with their puppets in place. And some places, even Al-Qaeda, ISIS kind of forces controlling the ground. So Houthis are the key target as far as the Saudis and United Arab Emirates are concerned. They are what are called the Fajr Shias. They are Shias, but not like the Iranian Shias who have a different kind of, shall we say, belief systems. Even the Fajr Shias, mosques and the Sunni mosques are same. So there is really not that kind of a difference that exists, could be argued, exists between the Shias and Sunnis in other parts of the world. So this, in fact, is quite strange why you should see this kind of an attack. And why would you try and identify Houthis with Iranians? Because whatever Iranian support might be available, it's really marginal, partly because there is a blockade, partly historically Houthis have not been with Iran. So this argument that this is really a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia being fought in Yemen is not true. It's really Saudi Arabia's attempt to control Yemen, backed by United Arab Emirates and of course backed by US and the United Kingdom. So for a lot of the people in the world, it's really not a Saudi United Arab Emirates operation in Yemen. It's an operation of a colonial, it's really a colonial war being imposed to the Yemeni people in which of course Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are playing the front game as it were. As you pointed out, there is a very large impact of the colonial powers because without US, UK and France's support, I don't think the war would be possible in Yemen. So can you tell us something about this complicity of the Western powers in this war going on in Yemen? Well, first is of course what everybody knows, that huge arms sales which are being done by US, the United Kingdom and France to the Saudis and also to United Arab Emirates. We keep on talking about Iran versus Saudi Arabia, Iran being a threat in the region and so on. The reality is Iran spends probably one twentieth of its budget, of the budget that Saudis and United Arab Emirates spend on their military, militaries. The amount of rockets, aircraft that they have bought, armaments they have bought, Saudis and United Arab Emirates is way beyond what Iran ever had. So this whole question of why would you arm Saudis, United Arab Emirates on this scale when Iran does not have anything comparable is of course because you want to sell arms because that's the most profitable industry these three countries seem to have and there is nothing else they seem to be able to successfully sell to the world. So therefore the armament sale I think Saudi Arabia has bought about $115 billion worth of equipment in the last ten years from the United States. UK and France are of course way behind but there's still a very significant part of the sales and UAE also has a significant part of the sales. So this is one part of it and as you know Trump when he went I think there's a commitment to buy another ten years they will buy Saudis will buy about $110 billion worth of armaments. So recently there have been multiple arms deals done by the Crown Prince. That's right when he visited US, France and UK in every place he committed to buy a huge amount of arms and Trump went to Saudi Arabia he got commitments of selling arms. So all these leaders of these three countries act as the arms salesperson if you will but that's only one part of it other part of it the air force of these countries cannot fight without complete logistical support by the suppliers of the armaments who are there to see that everything is maintained all the equipment is serviced at regular intervals it's all the ground support for to make their air force operational is really these three countries mainly United States and United Kingdom they are personnel on the ground giving that logistical support. Third that even when this military strikes have been conducted against the Yemenis population and one third of the strikes are officially against the civilian population actual numbers are much larger then all these need in-flight fouling which is done by again US and UK aircraft their fuel as a basically gas stations in the air if you will that fuel in-flight fouling is done by these countries and it is clear that even in the command control centers you have American and British personnel who help in the military strikes. So this is a war in which UK and US are also participants though it is pretending that they really are not doing so that after 2016 they have not participated that's a US claim but in reality they are fully a part of the command control centers to execute the military strikes against the Yemenis who at the best have some 40-year-old scuds which occasionally they fire at Saudi Arabia which immediately brings up the issue oh it could be Iranian it could be this it could be that but the reality is that this is a completely one-sided war. Other part of it is unfortunately the Saudis do not seem to have the kind of armed forces on the ground you know running a feudal empire monarchy does not give you those kind of forces so therefore the Houthis of the ground have been not only able to hold their own but they have even been able to occasionally penetrate into South Africa, Saudi Arabia and conduct raids and so on. So you have this very peculiar shall we say constellation of forces where they completely rule the air and the seas therefore able to block it Yemen completely preventing food medical supplies fuel from reaching Yemen at the same time of the ground they're not able to do anything so what they're doing instead is bombing them mercilessly hoping at some point they will thus Houthis will give in at the point this does not seem to be happening so the air war the blockade is causing huge issues as you have said I think there are two million children who don't go to school because there are no schools the teachers have not been paid there are the UNICEF reports as 400,000 children are under conditions of life-threatening malnutrition the largest number of malnutrition among children are today in Yemen so all these figures look at the enormous pain that is being inflicted in Yemen but at the same time of the ground they don't seem to be able to make any headway and that's the that's a crisis that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as the colonial powers have. Of course one part of the support comes the air support as you said comes from US and UK but the ground support is also coming from the mercenary armies which are largely composed of Sudanese people of the Sudanese forces but now recently we have seen there have been a lot of casualties amongst the Sudanese forces so you expect that Sudan will continue in supporting Saudi in this war you know the mercenary armies are not just Sudanese of course there are also other African players involved there are also white mercenary armies involved there are also mercenary armies for different parts of Asia which also they are trying to hire you know ex-servicemen from maybe Pakistan maybe other countries they're trying to hire and also armed mercenaries with the United States is using which is really what used to be called the black water which has now undergone various name changes which these are white they should these are these are actually American mercenary armies which are also being used for specific tasks as a part of privatization of US wars so this is a part of the larger game looking at the largest number of soldiers probably the Saudi Arabian ground forces if you will this is the Sudanese forces okay they're supposed to have about 10,000 Sudanese forces as a part of the Saudi attacks and trying to hold territory over there they're they're trying to hold the Aden port which is at the at the moment under the control of United Arab Emirates and Saudi forces so this Sudan seems to be a linchpin in the mercenary army as you said now the mounting casualties and there were some serious casualties that seem to have taken about a week back this has raised question in Sudan that what is the benefit of the Sudanese in Sudan in this war and yes we're getting money okay but does this money does it really compensate us for the kind of record losses we are suffering and the the initial promise the Saudis had made and the United Gulf states had made that will build your infrastructure will do this for you do that for you will help to remove the sanctions which are the US had imposed on the on Sudan so all that has not materialized neither has any of these investments materialized nor have the sanctions been lifted so there seems to be growing resentment of this involvement of the Sudanese forces in this kind of a war but at the same time you know a lot of these countries as as the US presidents and the UK prime ministers and the French prime ministers are also amenable to shall we say the larger military industrial complex all of which may mean jobs may mean political bounties in giving money to the country's concern could also be in private benefits so a lot of these countries the leaders of these countries could be in were complicit in different kinds of payoffs by which they are willing to sacrifice their people for the wars of the sky and this is I said is across the board whether it's a Trump it's a Teresa May or a Macron doing this for arms sales and sacrificing shall we see the interests of the people and the really in favor of the armaments companies or it's the Saudis who don't have arms to sell but they could be selling that people in such arms so I think the mercenary game of using the using mercenary soldiers has become important because most countries are not willing to commit their soldiers so given all of this the options the Saudis have a limited but as I said the cost to the eminence are enormous and it is something which the world is turning its face away from the United Nations is not even willing to give figures beyond 1950 2015 this 10,000 figure they've given is only 2015 figures they said we can't we're not able to count because health facilities are not there and therefore we have not been able to count how many are dying but the conservative figures are probably 70,000 have died in this attacks the others attacks of the civilians so enormous losses and enormous suffering that the many people are not being registered at all of course when the US UK France are so I mean involved in carrying out this word in all their statements condemning the war also quite ridiculous and hypocritical so apart from raised shedding crocodile tears about shall we say Syria and the civilian population in Syria blaming the Assad government in Syria continuously for the sufferings of the Syrian people while they are complicit in a party to what they're inflicting on Yemen and they're not even willing to talk about it thank you for joining us in this discussion and thank you for watching this clip