Abstracts
Abstracts
Exclusive Interview with Mohammad Abd al-Salam
Part one
Hussein Safdari (editor in chief)
Mohammad Abd al-Salam bin Ahmad bin Abdollah Fliteh was born in 1982 in Sa'dah in northern Yemen. He is currently the official speaker of the Islamic Movement of Ansar Allah, the chairman of the National Board and also the chairman of the managing board of the Al-Masirah satellite network.
His father is Allameh Salah bin Ahmad Fliteh, one of the preeminent scholars of Zaidi school of thought.
Mohammad Abd al-Salam learnt Quran, tajwid (correct pronunciation of Quran), language, jurisdiction and oration in his father's classes in Bani Ma'ath Mosque in Sa'dah, and was accepted to the university after he graduated from high school. However, he was banned from studying at the university like a thousand other young people of Sa'dah because of his participation in martyr Hussein Badr al-Din's project of Houthi insurgency against the Yemeni government.
He then continued his political activism by giving khutbah (sermons) on congregation prayers on Fridays, religious holidays and other occasions in the local grand congregational mosque. He also tried to raise the level of knowledge and awareness among his countrymen by giving weekly, monthly and annual seminars all across the country.
He –aided by a number of the media activists– was also instrumental in founding Ansar Allah's media activities in Yemen's fourth war (2006-2007). He started his media activities from Seyyed Abd al-Malik Badr al-Din Houthi's office and turned into a well-known figure in the global media by accepting the position of the official speaker for the Yemeni Houthis. On November 16, 2019, major general, Mansour al-Turki, the spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, announced that Mohammad Abd al-Salam was killed along with three of his assistants during the bombing of the rural area of the castle in the Razih District (in Yemen's sixth war).
A while later, Yemenis' officials announced in another statement that he had been killed along with twenty other media workers during the bombing of Saqayn District in Sa'adah. However, Mohammad bin Abd al-Salam immediately refuted the news concerning his death by appearing in satellite channels.
After the end of Yemen's sixth civil war in February 2010 and in the beginning of 2011, Al-Masirah satellite channel was founded by Mohammad bin Abd al-Salam. The satellite channel gradually expanded to become an influential satellite network. The network covers a series of channels, newspapers, news websites and radio channels.
Mohammad bin Abd al-Salam has done plenty of media research and delivered several political and cultural lectures; he has also taken part in many political, cultural and media activities as Ansar Allah's representative. He was also present in several negotiations run by the United States of America in Switzerland, Kuwait and Sweden and had group and individual visits in both regional and other foreign countries.
He believes that the cruel invasion of Yemen by Saudi-led coalition forces has brought about disastrous consequences for the Yemenis. However, the Yemeni people have also had substantial achievements. Regarding the serious consequences of the ruthless invasions of Yemen, he says that, "This was has been all loss and no gain for both the Saudis and Americans; the war has only worked as a demonstration of Yemenis perseverance and increased their insistence on their goals."
Mohammad bin Abd al-Salam claims that Yemenis' position against the US and Israel is unchangeable and places emphasis on the role of the Islamic Republic of Iran in fighting oppression: "We maintain that the Islamic Republic of Iran is at the point of the arrow heading towards the heart of the global plutocrats."
During a friendly discussion with Mohammad bin Abd al-Salam, Tehran Foreign Policy Studies Quarterly asked questions on diverse subject matters such as Yemen's political situation and future transformations of the West Asia region.
Current Political Coalitions in Yemen
Mohammad Taher Anam
After the unification of south and north Yemen, the two parties of the General People's Congress and Yemen Socialist party (YSP) formed the first unified government for this country. After the first parliamentary elections after the unification were held in 1993, the Reform Party was also added to these two existing parties. The three parties gained most of the seats in the parliament and proved to be the most popular and influential in Yemen. Gradually, two other vast public movements appeared: Ansar Allah and the Southern Movement.
Ansar Allah was first only a Zaidi cultural and educational movement which turned into a strong and instrumental political movement over time. The Southern Movement was also founded by the soldiers and employees of Southern Yemen and started its activities as a movement with demands.
By the 2000, many of the traditional Yemeni parties were absorbed by the two big parties of Congress and Reform.
With the decline of the aforementioned political parties in Yemen, Ansar Allah and the Southern Movement grow more and more in power and Yemen's political scene was therefore divided among four strong political forces to guide the people.
The Roots and Consequences of the Crisis
Ali Morad
After the first and second World Wars, the international centers of influence went through transformations and all the international powers seeking waterways and straits concentrated their attention on Yemen. At the time, the bipolar world had turned into an arena of gamesmanship and competition between two global superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States of America. By the time the first government was formed in Yemen (late eighteenth century), the Saudi Arabia invaded this country. After the foundation of the third Saudi state by Abdul Aziz Al Saud, Yemen was invaded again by Saudi Arabia in the third decade of the twentieth century. The game which was primarily for controlling the fate of Yemeni nation and meeting the interests of first the Britain and second the United States of America continued.
During the past decades, Saudi Arabia has been one of the main directors of the Yemen stage; so much that by the beginning of the movement known as Arab Spring, the Al Saud family came to believe that the fate of Yemeni nation is completely in their hands. This led to this thought that Yemen is subject to their control and jurisdiction and they can interfere with the affairs of this country. Proposing the project of Khalij, buying the leaders of Yemeni Reformation Party, financial support and selling weaponry are among a few of these interferences.
When Riyadh felt that they have lost the power to control Yemen, they planned for a direct invasion of this country. The main goal of this invasion –supported by the US and a coalition of some of the Arab countries- was to restore their dominance and take control of the fate of Yemenis.
The Saudi Arabia's Reasons and Incentives to invade Yemen
Foad Ibrahim
As a result of an impetuous decision which didn't consider the requirements for victory, Riyadh waged an exterritorial war against Yemen. For the first time, the war was declared from another capital. On 25 March 2015, Adel al-Jubeir, former Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs and the current Minister of State for Foreign Affairs who was in Washington officially declared war against Yemen. Declaring war from Washington implies more reasons than merely trying to boost their forces' spirit. By choosing Washington as the place to declare a war, Saudi Arabia sent clear messages to both its enemies and allies.
A thorough look at the current situation of Saudi Arabia tells us that this country has entered regional wars with a few distinct clear reasons:
It's a reaction to all the problems this country is dealing with.
It's an attempt to maintain its leadership role in the region.
It's an attempt to reinforce the political relations with its main allies both in the region and in the West.
Experts Panel
Resistance in Yemen
Achievements, opportunities and challenges
From the point of view of the political geography, Yemen is of a perfect regional situation geo-politically, geo-economically and geo-strategically. The contemporary history of the country is fraught with transformations regarding these exceptional features.
After the Islamic enlightenment in 2011 and all the transformations the Arab countries went through, Muslim Yemenis who were frustrated with their inefficient government of three decades constantly betraying their trust, poured to the streets and announced their political demands by taking oppositional approaches. In November 2011, after months of negotiations and at the culmination of military conflicts, the political parties and movements settled for decided to meet each other halfway and agreed on a deal based on which the political power was supposed to transfer to other parties during a two-year time span in a peaceful way. Therefore, Ali Abdullah Salih, the president, moved into a non-active role pending the presidential election in return for immunity from prosecution and his Vice President, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi became the acting president.
Because of the flawed approaches during the national negotiations after the formation of the national unity government, political attempts faced constant impediments which cancelled the fruition of people's revolution and it all led to the civil war in this country. Ansar Allah, which enjoyed the public support in this country, could emerge as the superior united internal power in Yemen and occupy a vast portion of this land.
Since the regime in Saudi Arabia didn't deem the current changes in its southern neighbor in its best interest, it started the first of a series of military offensives against Yemen on 26 March, 2015 with the support and encouragement from the United States government and formed a military coalition with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Sudan, Egypt and Jordan in order to force a resistant nation under the oppression of selfish policies of the bigger powers to yield.
Tehran Foreign Policy Studies Quarterly admires the independent-seeking fights of this great nation that has defended its religious and national goals through these dire years with great sacrifices and has left memorable and impressive heroic stories. This quarterly aims at discovering some hidden aspects of this important historical period of Yemeni fights by holding an expert panel with Iranian and Yemeni scholars to study and analyze the political and security incidents in this country.
We did our best to scrutinize all the transformations of the past decade –after the Islamic enlightenment- in order to be able to evaluate the prospects and future of these changes with a strategic view.
The list of the experts participating in the discussions is as follows:
Ibrahim al-Deylami, Yemen's special ambassador in Iran; Dr. Abd al-Salam Rajih, Yemeni political commentator and media activist; Mohammad Ali-Bak, former chief of the Yemen Office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Hasan Abedin, former charge d'affaires of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Yemen; Dr. Mahdi Shariatmadar, the deputy editor of the quarterly, and Meghdad Nili –the mediator of the panel- editor of the Persian Gulf section of the magazine.
We sincerely thank the efforts of all the respectful scholars and hope that the readers enjoy reading about the first part of the proceedings in this panel.
Europe's Approach toward Yemen's Crisis and its Key Players; A Move from Normative-ness to Pragmatism
Dr. Behzad Ahmadi (European affairs expert)
Sohrab Sa'daddin (European affairs expert)
Following the protests, uprisings and armed rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia early 2011, the Yemenis also poured into the streets to protest as a result of their frustration with the incompetent and corrupt government ruling over them for nearly three decades. They protested against Ali Abdullah Salih who had brought about nothing but poverty, cultural and political backwardness and deprivation of the public services. In November 2011, at the height of armed conflicts and after months of negotiations, the main political parties of the country settled for the solution offered by the Gulf Cooperation Council and signed an agreement. Based on this agreement, the power was supposed to be transferred during a two-year time span. According to the agreement, Ali Abdullah Salih, the president, had to move into a non-active role pending the presidential election in return for immunity from prosecution and his Vice President, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi was supposed to become the acting president. The main parts of the process were first the formation of a government of national unity and then a conference of national dialogue. Two years of attempts failed to achieve what was intended and 2015 marked the beginning of crisis and conflict (Saif, 2015:5).
Most of the members of the European Union had either a minor or no role at all in solving the crisis especially after the conflicts were aggravated in 2015. Late 2014, some of the members such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland defined some missions for themselves especially based on mediation or human rights-related issues. However, we can hardly recognize them as important players trying to solve the crisis or claim that they were managing it either regionally or internationally. But the UK is an exception among the European countries; on the one hand, the British Martin Griffiths is playing an effective role as the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen at the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen and tries to accelerate the peace negotiations in this country, and on the other hand, by a vast military support of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition against Yemen, the UK is one of the main instigators of the crisis and violators of the human rights in this country (Bonnefoy, 2020:70).
The Beginning of the Regional and International Conflicts in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait Following the Zionist Regime's Provocations
Abbas Abdollah al-Seyyed
(Al-Thawra's Editor in Chief in Yemen)
The strategic importance of the Red Sea is mainly because of its geographical situation; this sea connects three continents of Africa, Asia and Europe. It is also connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal in Egypt. Therefore, from the point of view of political geography and strategy, the Red Sea is an important shipping route.
This sea is considered significant from different angles for the surrounding countries and also regional and international powers; some are focused on the security, military, political and economic aspects of the sea and other on the social and cultural respects. However, what has mainly created the competition among all the countries and regional and trans-regional powers is the security, military and economic significance of the Red Sea.
This significance has led all the super powers of the world to try to assert their control over the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait in during the past centuries and spare no attempts or rivalries to claim dominance over the sea and the strait. They took the matters too far that the greed to own the sea and its benefits led to colonization of the countries surrounding the sea.
Since there are still conflicts going on to exercise influence and assert dominance over the Red Sea in the three domestic, regional and international arenas, we aim to both get more familiar with the influential regional and international powers in this conflict and reveal Israel's role in it.
We will also try to answer some of the questions in this regard:
Given that the world is moving toward the unipolarity, would the Red Sea turn into an exclusive territory for the West and Israel?
Can the eastern powers such as China, Russia, Iran and Turkey have a position in this conflict?
We will then examine the situation of the countries bordering the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait and show the effects of the so-called conflict on them.
In the end, we will answer the two following questions:
Why has Somalia, as one of the countries bordering the Red sea, been neglected during the past three decades?
In what ways are the Yemen war and the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab related?
There's no Return from There
Anis al-Naqqash
(Coordinator for Aman Network of Strategic Studies)
Anis al-Naqqash is a political activist and a scholar and researcher in the field of strategic and regional affairs. He was born in Beirut in 1951 and joined the Palestinian Fatah Movement. He was one of the first supporters of Iranian Islamic Revolution and has played an important role in founding the resistance movement in Lebanon. He is specialized in sociology and international politics. He has written a book, Confederalism of the East; the Conflict of the Policies and Identities, and several articles for newspapers and journals.
There's no cloud in the sky; where does this smoke come from?
Nobody has been killed in this neighborhood, so why all these cries, all this mourning?
Why are all the Yemeni lands so difficult to cross?
Alas! Yemen is in dire situation … why they killed all that was buoyant, all that was alive?
There's no return for those who go there [Yemen] … why?
It is the Castle of Housh with an impassable route.
There's no return for those who go there … why?
The swans are marching in front of the garrison
My hands, my arms and my painful heart are shaking.
The girls are mourning for those set out to go to Yemen.
Alas! Yemen is in dire situation … all that was buoyant, all that was alive is now dead.
There's no return for those who go there … why?
It is the Castle of Housh with an impassable route.
There's no return for those who go there … why?
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