If you have been paying attention - and even if you have not - by now you know that something is going on in Yemen. You have heard about the "Houthis" - that is, a group of Shi'a, who have named themselves after a leader of one of their tribes, and who live in the northern part of Yemen, where they constitute a majority of the population. They also perhaps constitute as much as 40% of the total Yemeni population. And you know that these Shi'a are not quite like the Shi'a of iran, but nonetheless, they are Shi'a, and so, to the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, they are considered to be nearly Infidels.
That didn't keep the Saudis, more than forty years ago, from supporting tribes, including "Zaidi" or Shi'a tribes, in the north of Yemen, against the dangerously "Marxist" southerners of Yemen. But that word "marxist" is treacherous. As J. B. Kelly has written, the casual application of the word "Marxist" in the context of an Arab Muslim country is misleading, for beneath that "Marxism" is Islam. The dictatorship of the proletariat, and the collective ownership of the means of production, is not exactly on the minds of Muslim tribesmen; "Marxism" has been a phrase used by one set of would-be seizers of the national wealth against whatever prior seizers of the national wealth are currently in power.
Yes, in the mid-1960s Yemen, a country that contains a larger population than its immediate northern neighbor, Saudi Arabia, was the site of what so many are content to call a "proxy war" between Nasserist Egypt (representing not so much the "Marxists" - as the American State Department appeared to think, as those who were less fanatical, and slightly more secular, in their reception of Islam) and Saudi Arabia, said to be backing people called "the Royalists." That proxy war in Yemen has no significance whatsoever save that it helped to occupy and preoccupy Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and to weaken the forces of both - an outcome that should be remembered as we try to think about Yemen today.
And in the Yemen today there is not one conflict, as much of the coverage seems to imply, but two. The one that gets all the attention is that in the north, because now at long last, everyone and his brother has finally realized that the Shi'a and the Sunnis do not exactly get along, anywhere. And having grasped at least that - which if it had been thoroughly understand five or six years ago, might have made the goals in Iraq different from what they turned out, impossibly, to be, and we would have left many years earlier, once the inevitable transfer of power from Sunni Arab to Shi'a Arab had taken place. But, in making up for their previous ignorance, many have chosen to see, a bit carelessly, the conflict in Yemen, or at least in north Yemen, as one simply of Shi'a and Sunni. But it is not. It is also a struggle of those who have rightly sensed that they do not share in the nation's wealth, the nation's power, as do others. And those people most aware of this appear to be the Zaidis, or as they now style themselves, the Houthis. The President of Yemen himself is a Zaidi. He understands that the battle against his government is that of wanting a greater share of money and power, but as everywhere in Muslim-dominated lands, religion will color and come to define a conflict. Just as a despotic and corrupt ruler cannot be opposed for being despotic and corrupt, but only for being a bad Muslim, for being a friend of Infidels and thus practically an infidel himself, so a war for money and power, conducted by Shi'a, in a country where the Shi'a ruled for centuries and now rule no longer, is likely as time goes by to take on a Shi'a against Sunni cast.
And the Islamic Republic of Iran has been supporting the Shi'a Hizballah in Lebanon, has been supporting the Shi'a Arabs In Iraq, has managed to make the Alawite rulers of Syria come closer to Iran, partly because the Iranian clerics are wiling to consider the Alawites (who rule Syria despite being only 12% of the population) as full-fledged Muslims, a judgment or endorsement that is important to the Alawites, since they are forever threatened by the real Muslims, the Sunni Muslims, who make up more than 70% of Syria's population. Whether Iran has actually been sending shiploads of weapons or not is unimportant. The conspiracy theories and hysteria that come so easily to Muslim rulers and ruled alike, make it hard for the Saudis not to believe that something is up. Their behavior now has been such as possibly to intrigue the plotters in Teheran, to make them feel that perhaps, for a little investment, they might make trouble for their enemy Saudi Arabia, the country where Shi'a are treated, by some, and regarded, by many, as not only Infidels but even worse than the normal run-of-the-mill Infidels.
There is another, different, smaller conflict. And it is in the south of Yemen, and is centered on the area that was once a separate state, supposedly full of "Marxists," - the state that we associate with Aden and Aden town. Shades of Mad Mike Hoare and Sir Humphrey Trevelyan. That conflict is important only insofar as it shows what difficulty the government of Yemen may have in holding the country together. As with the north, the revolt in the south is about the distribution of wealth and power. In the Muslim Arab countries, wealth and power come not from economic activity, as we understand that, but rather from control of the government (and the military), and then seizure or diversion of much of the national revenues to the favored family or group or tribe. Think of Saddam Hussein and his Tikrit band, of the Assad dynasty, of the Mubarak soon-to-be dynasty and the stratokleptocrats at the pharaonic court, think of Qaddafi, soon to be succeeded by Saif Qaddafi, think of the FLN generals ruling Algeria, of the Al-Maktoum, of the Al-Sabah, the Al-Nayyan, and above all of the tens of thousands, by now, of princes and princelings and princelettes, all daggers and dishdashas and sneers of cold command, of the rapacious family of the Al Saud. That is what is going on in Yemen. In the north it has another dimension, one that perhaps will grow, of a religious conflict, for part of the reason the dominant Sunnis in Yemen do not give the Zaidis (or Houthis) their due is because, precisely, that they are not Sunnis but despised Shi'a, Arabs.
What should be our reaction to all of this? The answer: Not much. We should take pleasure in the spectacle of warfare, in any Muslim land, warfare that takes up the attention of the locals, and uses up not only their resources, but also, one hopes, the resources of their neighbors. The Saudis are right to be worried. For Yemen is not only more populous, but the border is impossible to defend (the Saudis are planning to spend many tens of billions on a fence, so frightened are they). The Yemenis, unlike the pampered Saudis, are akin to the Afghans in being naturally warlike, living as they do in a Hobbesian state (and in Yemen, itself a Hobbesian state). They are much tougher than the Saudis who have become soft, since they rode out of the Hejaz and defeated the Shammar tribe in 1920, now well-used to relying on blue-eyed mercenaries, Infidels, for their ultimate survival.
Of course the Saudis have airplanes, and are perfectly willing to bomb, mercilessly, civilian villages, and have done so, killing how many hundreds we do not know. No one cares. No outrage from the U.N. That is all perfectly predictable. For Saudi Arabia can get away with this, even though exactly one Saudi soldier had been killed, while Israel, that endured years of rockets shot into Israel's villages and cities, was furiously and is still furiously denounced for actions far less indiscriminate than the bombings that Saudi Arabia has been engaged in. And note that the Saudis say they will establish a zone, within Yemen, a buffer zone that is not to be inhabited, and that will be 10 kilometers deep. Ten kilometers - why, that's just a little under 8 miles, and 8 miles is the width of Israel in the 1949 armistice lines to which some, including our immoral and ignorant government, are attempting once again to squeeze the Jews of Israel into - the wasp-waist that goes from Qalqilya to the sea is merely 8 miles, about the width of that buffer zone that Saudi Arabia is now imposing.
Oh, let them impose the buffer zone. Let the Iranians deliver weapons, including missiles to shoot down Saudi planes. Let Saudi planes be shot down. Let Saudi Arabia, with its waddling princes and its unmerited trillions, and its absurd pretensions - a primitive society based entirely on oil revenues, and on the work of foreign, chiefly Infidel, wage-slaves - be occupied with that. The Western world should show no great interest in helping Saudi Arabia. It should be secretly delighted with each day's news, the news that brings word not of Infidel casualties, but of Muslim casualties, inflicted by other Muslims. And the showdown in Iraq, that is surely coming, between Sunni Arabs (who will never accept their new, inferior status) and the Shi'a Arabs (who will never yield any of the power they have now acquired thanks to the deposing of Saddam Hussein by the Americans) is likely only to exacerbate Shi'a-Sunni tensions and war in the Yemen.
No one was paying much attention, back in the 1960s, to the war in Yemen. I did, because for a short time, in Madrid, I shared living quarters with a most unsavory Belgian who ran guns to the "Royalists" and was as big a crook as you can imagine. But it was, from the viewpoint of Infidels, a good war. It was not as good a war as the eight-year war that took up the attention of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and caused both sides to expend men, money, materiel for eight wonderful years. And if this new war continues, and does not exhaust itself soon, with too decisive a victory over the Houthis, no one in our world, in Dar al-Harb, should worry about this, or think things should be done to stop it. Let it go on. Let it go on, forever.
you say "shades of Mad Mike Hoare and Sir Humphrey Trevelyan"
Hoare was a mercenary chiefly associated with the Congo and never Aden.
In Aden it was "Mad Mitch" - Col. Colin Campbell Mitchell, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders - who took back the Crater district from insurgents and performed unbelievable bravery, whilst Sir Humphrey was the High Commissioner of the then British colony
I think you have confused Hoare with Mitchell which does Mitchell's memory considerable disservice.
It may seem callous to enjoy the spectacle of brutal warfare between Muslims', not to say unchristian. However, this is the religion that is at war with the entire non-Muslim world on an indefinite basis, and is 'divinely' motivated to bring about the spread and then the dominance of Islam to the entire world, at any cost. Consider the mindset that believes human beings are simply disposable, especially in fighting for this ultimate goal.
Think, those of sympathetic disposition, of the many millions of ordinary folk that have already been killed in the pursuance of that 'holy' objective. How many more millions will die before that mission either succeeds or is finally stopped. Indeed, if it does succeed, how many more lives will then be wasted in sectarian conflicts like these.
At this point, with clear thinking in such short supply among our political leaders; with the petrodollar funded influence buying sympathy for the devil at all social and cultural levels in the West, we really need a good practical demonstration of the deadly effects that Islam has on human societies.
Let the world look and learn.
In Aden it was "Mad Mitch" - Col. Colin Campbell Mitchell, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders - who took back the Crater district from insurgents and performed unbelievable bravery, whilst Sir Humphrey was the High Commissioner of the then British colony
I think you have confused Hoare with Mitchell which does Mitchell's memory considerable disservice."You are right, of course. In my haste, I substituted one Mad Mike for another."
--- from a poster above
You are right. My fingers wrote "Mad" and, without checking with my brain, continued on to write "Mad Mike."
Hugh: You are amazingly knowledgeable, amazingly perceptive, and an amazingly good writer. Thank you for enlightening the rest of us.
Islam - over 270 million killed in the last 1400 years. A good number of them were fellow Muslims. Hugh's point is well taken - the rest of the world should ignore two groups of Muslims fighting each other over yet another piece of desert.
However, we should bear in mind that the delusion of all Muslims is that once the entire world is conquered for Islam, peace will reign. This is a dangerous falsity from a movement riddled with falsities.
The danger is that once everyone is a Muslim, there will be intramural conflict over whether one group is "Muslim" enough to be a "true believer" like the other group. We see this manifest itself in the current Shia vs Sunni fisticuffs. Bear in mind that this conflict has been going on for the last 1400 years over nothing more than an argument over which tyrant was supposed to take over from the original tyrant.
The preferred method of settling disputes of this nature in ummah is to kill the party or parties opposed to you. Islam is not really the religion of peace as much as it is the party of vendetta and armed conflict.
It may seem callous to enjoy the spectacle of brutal warfare between Muslims', not to say unchristian. - Posted by StephenA55
In principle, that is indeed true. But, if one considers the fact that we have to choose between allowing mahoundianism to take over the planet on the one hand, and the rights of women, gays, non-Arabs, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Animists, Atheists, Agnostics, children and, well, everyone non-mahoundian on the other, not to mention the rights of scientists and artists to continue to produce advances and innovation in their fields, there is no moral conflict here. There's no tough choice. If a choice is between mankind and the inbred bedouin savage tapeworms from A-rabia, and all inbred-bedouin-savage-tapeworm wannabes (non-Arab mahoundians, including self-hating black ones), I'll pick mankind's without any second thought.
It'd be noble indeed in principle to give a thought to "lives being wasted" by mahoundian-on-mahoundian violence, but when mahoundians kill each other, it doesn't matter to them at all, since that's one of mahoundianism's timeless and inherent characteristics. "... When Muslims kill Muslims, it's like talking about the weather. Nobody really cares about it", except for naive folks in the West who, unlike us, don't know it any better.
Just as Hugh is, I too will only be celebrating this conflict's unfolding, since every bloodier turn in it can only help our side, through the weakening of those worshipping mahound's imaginary alter-ego allah. Had they not done everything they have for the past 1400 years to earn our delight in their sectarian and inter-tribal conflicts, perhaps we all could show them a bit of concern for their fate.
Muslim on Muslim conflict is to be encouraged -yes-as well as the effort to hightlight the universal nature of this inbred conflict at every turn. Here in the US, witness:
Pass the popcorn.
I once rashly said that all Arabs are indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula, now Saudi Arabia.
Someone corrected me and said that Arabs are indigenous to Yemen, from whence they migrated into Saudi Arabia, before the time of Mohammed.
Would anyone like to fill me in on this?
Right on, Hugh!
As the saying goes: "Confusion to our enemies!"
It may seem callous to enjoy the spectacle of brutal warfare between Muslims', not to say unchristian.
What do you do when they want to put your baby in the oven?
a bit OT, but still concerning Moslem vs. Moslem violence:
the ROP website is listing an article -- itself taken from Pajamas Media -- about attempts by a mosque in Columbus, OH, to take over another, less jihad-supportive, mosque in the city. The latest attempt was an arson attack.
Finally some good news. Shia and Sunni fighting each other in Yemen. I remember when the Russians and Chinese were shooting at each other over the Amur River which is part of the Russain-Chinese border. This was in the late 60s. This too provided some relief to lovers of freedom.
There is way more going on in Yemen than meets the eye. First of all Bin Laden's family is from Yemen, Nidal Hassan was in contact with terrorists in Yemen, Sheikh Anwar who recently stated, "Sheikh Anwar told us to expect the unexpected. But the message had nothing to do with Fort Hood. Instead, his focus was closer to hand: "Could Yemen be the Next Surprise of the Season?" he asked."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/yemen/6542612/Is-Yemen-the-most-dangerous-new-front-in-the-war-on-terror.html
Then there is this little tid bit ....
You can't make this stuff up.
I was doing a little research into what is going on in Yemen right now, and I stumbled upon this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybridon,_Inc and I think huh that is weird the Bin Laden family is involved in bio engineering, so I did a google search on http://www.iderapharma.com/, and discover that they are involved in the production of adjuvants, http://www.iderapharma.com/pipeline/tlr7-8-9_agonists_adjuvants.php which were used in the vaccine which was just distributed to millions of people http://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFluNews/story?id=8296948.
Then I remember this story out of L.A. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OYVws9uJbk&feature=player_embedded
anyways I'm glad I didn't take the stuff.
Yemen is considered a part of the Arabian peninsula, isn't it?
Sorry, miira, I posted my comment about the Columbus mosque arson before I saw that you had already made reference to it.
Let Saudi Arabia, with its waddling princes and its unmerited trillions, and its absurd pretensions - a primitive society based entirely on oil revenues, and on the work of foreign, chiefly Infidel, wage-slaves - be occupied with that. - Hugh
Brilliant verbiage, Hugh. It captures the essence of Saudi Arabia, and in fact much of all Arab dominated lands, exactly for what they are, "absurd pretensions - a primitive society", ala Dubai tasteless style. Take away their unmerited oil wealth, and they're back to what they had always been, primitive goatherds pounding sand, House of Saud included.
We should definitely be suppling small arms to the underdog.
Speaking of the essence of Arabia (and by extension Islam), here's Lawrence:
"This people doesn't go beyond primary colors, especially white and black: it ever sees the world following a straight line. A people filled with certitude, despising doubt -- that modern crown of thorns of the Western man. An Arab isn't capable of comprehending our metaphysical difficulties, the questions that we pose for ourselves. The Arab knows not but that which is true, and that which is not, that which one believes, and that which one doesn't: all our hesitations, our reservations, are foreign to them. It is not only the Arabs' view that abides in the black-and-white; it is also their interior equipment. Their thoughts pass with the greatest facility from one extreme to the other. They move spontaneously among superlatives. Sometimes, the greatest inconsistencies seem, by them, to be seized en bloc. They exclude all compromise and follow the logic of their ideas to the absurd conclusion, without seeing anything incompatible among their opposed conclusions. Their serene judgment oscillates with sangfroid from asymptote to asymptote so imperturbably that they seem hardly conscious of their vertiginous leap from the one to the other."
When Europe eventually becomes dominated by Islam, will it be largely Sunni or Shi'a? Will the dominant population differ country by country? What will become of the European Union when the new countries struggle against each other?
Too early to take such questions seriously, right?
Let me through a little gas on the fire. My brother's wife was formerly married to a Turk (Muslim). They had two daughters. One is married to a Turkish man and is living in Turkey. He is a Sunni. He does not consider Shia as Muslim. Yet here is the twist. When asked about the actions of Shia terrorist against the west he felt no compulsion to denounce them. In a sense, although he would admit it, he is willing to play both against each other (west against the Shia's). Maybe it has something to do with my enemies enemy is my enemy as well.
Any thoughts, Hugh or others?
I will add, that I heard this through my brother not directly from him. My brother and his wife realize the Muslim threat but blame it on a minority extremist group.
My thoughts are, how can we further cause this difference to fester and work in our favor? Maybe giving credit for some act to the other. The act could be a terrorist attack or something benevolent.
In the Muslim Arab countries, wealth and power come not from economic activity, as we understand that, but rather from control of the government (and the military), and then seizure or diversion of much of the national revenues to the favored family or group or tribe.
...........................
Exactly, Hugh. And how has this changed since the days of "the Prophet" himself? Not one whit.
Many Arab tribes lived entirely by razzias on what few trade caravans passed through their territories, and Mohammed himself was so sneeringly dismissive of hardworking farmers that he declared, while passing a home with agricultural tools in its yard, that "no house with such implements would ever know Allah's favor".
Of course, now Muslim countries such as "Saudi Arabia" have another form of unearned wealth to fight over—oil.
I just got finished reading a horrifying book, Imam Abdul Rauf's "What's Right with America is What's Right with Islam". It may be the most meretricious book I have ever read, which is saying a great deal.
At one point—seemingly to reassure the Kufr!—he stresses that the great explosion of Islamic conquest ushered in by the "Prophet" wasn't so much about converting Infidels as it was finding another revenue source when Arab tribes could no longer raid each other for their livelihood.
The idea that Muslims conquering Infidel lands to live off the productive labour of non-Muslims didn't seem to trouble him in the least—nor did he think apparently, that it would give any of those Infidels pause, either.
Excellent comment, Gravenimage. And let's not forget that mahoundianism hasn't changed at all in that sense, in its lack of appreciation for hard labor of any kind, since its invention in Arabia. The hordes of incapable-of-generating-any-economic-activity-through-actual-work inbred bedouin savages mahoundians, lacking the military might to raid Western nations and do to them what they did to all of those lands which once fell under their control, these days raid the welfare offices of Western European countries, and the pockets of Americans and Canadians who can be sued for "racism".
Can this be the peace loving muslims that the White House Muslim Obama likes to talk about? It can't be. Muslims are gentle allah fearing people who wouldn't hurt a fly. So they stone a few women to death and chop off a few heads, and maybe crucify a few folks. But then there are bad dogs in every society. It just seems that muslims have more bad dogs then the rest of the world combined. Could it be that Muslims have been eating some of that bad dog food that was manufactured in China? Or perhaps too much exposure to the sun. Maybe its just another sign of global warming. lol
Not to be picky after the Mad Mike/Mad Mitch fiasco, but I don't think Yemen has or had a larger population than Saudia. Acc to the CIA book:
Yemen: ~23 million
Saudia: ~29 million.
But Hugh's points are sound, as ever.
J. B. Kelly told me many years ago that the Saudis deliberately inflated their population figures, and that many people in the Gulf knew this (not least, Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi). They routinely count the foreign wage-slaves as part of their population. This is done for two reasons. One, it is akin to animals that swell up to frighten would-be predators. Two, it makes the actual figures about unearned, unmerited Saudi oil wealth less unbearable if there are more people to factor in as sharing in that wealth -- and that also can lessen demands from Infidels that the Saudis start sharing in, or paying for outright, the poorer Muslims now supported through Western foreign aid or, what it amounts to (in attitudes of both donor and donee), jizyah.
I can't give a figure, but I still suspect, and would maintain unless evidence other than the official figures offered by the Saudis themselves were presented, that the native Arab population of Yemen is larger than the native Arab population of "Saudi" Arabia.