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Good evening, everyone, welcome to Middle East Centre. My name is Michael Wilson and the director of Middle East Centre,

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and it gives me pleasure to introduce you to the eighth and final Friday seminar series of Hillary term.

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Thank you. Welcome to all of you joining us here in Oxford to welcome to everybody who's joining us online, our friends and colleagues elsewhere.

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This is the last of the series this term, and for the last two weeks of the seminar series, we focussed on crises in the region,

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but regrettably rather fallen away from the public eye, despite the fact that they are very regrettably very much ongoing conflicts and crises.

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Recent events in Eastern Europe, of course, have only pushed discussion and coverage of events even further from the international attention.

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But at the time, at the same time, I think they are also remind us in a very reminiscent of the crises.

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Indeed, as those of you who came to our events on last week,

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there were clear parallels between what is going on in Eastern Europe and what is going on in the two countries we're looking at.

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Last week we looked at Syria this week where we looking at Yemen with four and perhaps even

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since the events in Ukraine represented the biggest humanitarian crisis on the planet.

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And despite this fact, Yemen has not attracted the attention and the coverage deserves.

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I know where Middle East sentiment coverage as much as we should.

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Now, much of this neglect is attributed to the fact or certainly to the argument that there's a relative dearth of people

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with specialist knowledge of the country outside of Yemen and therefore very pleased to have us with this head tonight,

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someone who is a genuine expert on Yemen. But moreover, is in doubt.

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Oddly, the leading expert on Yemen in the UK, a good and long standing friend of the Middle East Centre,

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Helen Lackner, has worked on and written on Yemen for nearly 50 years.

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She has written and coached, edited no fewer than six books on Yemen, including most recently Why Yemen Matters in 2014 Yemen in Crisis.

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The Road to War in 2019, which is a new edition, is coming out this summer.

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Yes. Yeah. And also later this year, Yemen poverty and conflict.

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So we really have a speaker who is uniquely qualified to talk about the ongoing crisis in Yemen.

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Helen has a number of his books I mentioned. I think you have copies of all available, if you will be interested.

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Last chance, last chance to get them zaharias and presumably signed by the author if necessary.

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Yes, right? But therefore, with no further ado, Alan.

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OK. Good evening. Thank you very much for coming and competing with all the other events that are happening locally.

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Let alone getting away from the latest news on Ukraine.

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I just want to say one thing about Ukraine as we are all flooded at every news bulletin from the

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beginning to the end with dreadful human interest stories and how awful it all is for the Ukrainians.

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I think people suggest just trying the case just simply change the name from Ukraine to Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen,

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Congo and maybe a few others, and realise that all those people are suffering just as badly and have done for a lot longer.

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If you look at the death toll in Congo, I mean, it's beyond belief. Over the last 20 years.

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So I won't go on because, you know, this is a an incredibly sad topic.

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And as far as I'm concerned, nothing further will be said on this topic tonight.

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Very briefly, I want to go over a few dates and somehow there's a few anniversaries.

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One of them that really shocked me a couple of weeks ago that we shouldn't have done,

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which marked the fact that Abdul Jabbar Mansur Hadi has now been president of the internationally recognised government for 10 years.

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Now, that isn't immediately apparent from the way he has governed the place or what he has done there.

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But I thought this worth noting. I think it's also worth noting,

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given the earlier talks in the last term in particular that now are in the 11th year after a very major set of popular uprisings took place in Yemen,

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and they were partly involved in the resulting war, which has taken place since.

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I think also, you know, 2014 was the year the Houthis Saleh put a coalition or whatever alliance took over summer,

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which lasted for three years, because by December 17, the Houthis killed Saleh, and that was quite an important thing.

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And then there's two sets of agreements that have been signed or something

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that have taken place with one of them was actually never signed since then.

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That was supposed to contribute to peace.

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And they are the Stockholm Agreement in December 2018, which was not signed, and that he had agreement in 2019,

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which was supposed to bring about peace and cooperation between the internationally recognised government and the Southern Transitional Council,

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which is one of the southern separatist organisations.

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And the last anniversary is that later this month, we will have the seventh anniversary of the internal internationalisation of the Yemeni Civil War,

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which means that the suffering and killing in Yemen has now been going on for a full seven years.

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So I think this is kind of something that I thought was probably good to start with.

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Now, very briefly, because I don't know to what extent people here are familiar with Yemen or not,

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so I may be saying things that people know too well, and maybe some of us don't.

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I want to start by saying who is fighting whom and who is involved in the war.

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So basically, we have on one side, the internationally recognised government of Hadi,

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which is officially based in Aden with most of its main ministers, are sitting in Riyadh and a few elsewhere.

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And it is supported by what's known as the Saudi led coalition, which is indeed Saudi led.

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But where the UAE is playing a major role,

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I think the UAE until very recently had a successful public relations operation by

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letting it be called always the Saudi led coalition and keeping in the background,

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whereas in fact their involvement has been, if not as intense as that of the Saudis.

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It's also very important, and they also amongst the major decision makers on the outside of Yemen, and they are fighting the Houthis now the Houthis.

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Sailor, who lives as I've just explained, but since December 2017,

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it is exclusively the Houthis and the Houthis do not only have a very strong and strengthening military capacity,

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but they are now ruling and governing and they are indeed governing and they are indeed governing in a particularly unpleasant manner.

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But that doesn't stop it from being real. About 70 percent of the Yemeni people now there are other groups involved in the war and that.

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One who is led by Patrick Saleh, who is the nephew of ex-President Ali Abdullah and who has his own forces,

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which were previously mainly in the West Coast and have recently moved elsewhere.

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The Southern Transitional Council, which is one of these southern separatist movements and which is dominant for various reasons

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which we could go into later in question time and then various other regional groupings.

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They are the Tehama front and various other southern groups, etc. in the background.

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And all of these are militarily in the hands of arms trade, which is extremely important,

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also diplomatically and also to some extent, tactically with with intelligence information available.

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Basically, the US, the UK, France and other Western states who are opposing the Iranians,

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who are providing some technical assistance and some sophisticated weaponry to the Houthis and in the background

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also maybe sometimes from the United Nations and women who are trying to mediate and bring about peace.

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So that's it. So militarily, very briefly, the current situation is that there's basically a stalemate.

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There's been a stalemate now for many years. There's occasional moments when something's changed in the in the second half of last year,

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the Houthis appear to be making massive progress in their attack on my head, which had now been going on for two years.

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But they were then repelled in November December by the arrival of some other troops from elsewhere.

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So basically, one has a situation where the movement military movement is not that significant up to now.

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You have, you know, the the focus on the fighting for quite a long time in the last few years has been around Marib at the moment this month,

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it appears not to be. That doesn't mean that it won't be next month.

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So these things are changing very regularly, and I'm not sure we want to go.

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Another issue that needs to be addressed is the ongoing struggle between the

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Southern Transitional Council and the internationally recognised government.

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Now that again actually has a fair amount of stalemate in the terms of physical control.

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But it's so it's at least as active in terms of and constant skirmishes and conflict as the situation around Marib.

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Now to talk about negotiations and peace, which is something that people do hear about,

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and we have every month a meeting of the United Nations Security Council that addresses Yemen, where the United,

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the special envoy speaks and usually the humanitarian person speaks and sometimes somebody when a

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person who is employed or who is connected with the United Nations Hodeidah agreement and speaks,

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and they basically always deplore the lack of progress of it's worth pointing out that we now have a new U.N. special envoy since last August,

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who was previously the special envoy, the ambassador to Yemen of the European Union.

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He has taken a different approach from his predecessor, who himself had not achieved very much, to put it mildly.

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In his three years of tenure, but thanks to his great success, he's now been appointed the chief of the whole humanitarian situation in the UN system.

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So while this is basically no significant progress has taken place in terms of ending the fighting and very

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few people who are familiar with Yemen are expecting any significant progress in in any kind of a hurry.

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It's worth asking why isn't this war ending? And I think of basically three or two reasons and the third, which is the conclusion,

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which is first, that the fighting groups still think they can win.

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The WHO says if they think of where they were in 2000 or even where they were in 2010,

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when the last war against Saleh took place and where they are today can see a clear upward trend of increasing power and increasing control,

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and therefore they are not inclined to to basically to withdraw or to give in.

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And on the other hand,

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the internationally recognised government is in a position where if it if it agrees to any serious changes to any serious peace,

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it will instantly and automatically sign this death warrant.

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And therefore, it's not about to do that. On the other hand, at the same, we'll have at the same time,

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because do you have a situation in which there are a small number of war profiteers who are doing extremely well out of this war?

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And they are not only people who are trading in weapons and such objects that very much.

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One of the big focus of this fighting of the profiteering is connected with fuel and fuel supply.

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And that's a very long and complicated scene that I won't go into.

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But I think it's something that I always say it is that it is shocking and

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shameful and any as strong a word as anybody can think of to look at the complete

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indifference that all these warmongers have to the conditions and disastrous

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living conditions of the vast majority of the Yemeni population and those,

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you know, repeating it doesn't change it. Unfortunately, now, because of the military war has not been and any sense and roaring success.

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The internationally recognised government has basically developed and started a financial and economic

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war and is hoping to to defeat the WHO sees basically through economic and blockade effectively.

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And, of course,

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that economic war and this and its implications again cause more suffering to the population and precious little to the leaders on any side.

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But the main features of this war were basically started in 2016,

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when they transferred the central Bank of Yemen from summer to Adam, which resulted in having two competing central banks,

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both of which are operating, one of which has things like the Swift code,

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while the other controls the details and the information, and all the main operations that are needed.

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The main impact of this has been that you now have a incredibly vast differential in the exchange rate to the

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dollar for the Yemeni people in the area under the algae control supposedly and the area under the U.S. control.

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And here it's important to remember that Yemen imports about 90 percent of its base.

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Foodstuffs I this basic grains and staples, let alone massive amounts of fuel, so you now have at the latest count a few days ago,

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one USD is worth 600 Yemeni rials or give or take one in New Zealand, whereas in the rest of the country, it's now worth one thousand one hundred.

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It rolls up to one of the at some point last December.

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So the cost of living, the cost of surviving for Yemenis is incredibly high.

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And another aspect, of course, of this war is the payment of salaries.

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One point two million Yemenis, teachers, administrators, health staff, etc. And they pay the salaries you would try inadequate to the best of times,

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haven't been paid or have paid only very occasionally since that happened.

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So since 2016. Now you'd think that in the areas that is not controlled, but it is.

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So we have, you know, and both of the houses and the others are running oil and gas black markets, which again benefit a few people.

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So and of course, the anti-U.S. groups are very dependent on financial and other support from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

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The Houthis are dealing with this by since they have very little access to foreign currency by basically taxing anything that moves.

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And that includes humanitarian aid, and it also includes having a multiplicity of taxation and customs points throughout the country.

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Again, we don't want to go on forever, so I shall move on to the next one.

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This is really.

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Looking at why we have such a fundamental conflict in Yemen and this first slide is focussing on the issues which have to be addressed in Yemen,

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regardless of the war or no war, peace or no peace.

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These particular factors will remain major constraints and are very important to, you know, Yemeni development.

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And so first, we have the limited natural resources and economic potential water scarcity, which is well known but is very important.

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There's been a mismanagement of agriculture and fisheries resources.

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The country has a low level of industrialisation and it meets supplies of oil and gas.

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Had the war not occurred, oil would have more or less by mouth by now.

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Gas has some potential, I think, 17 trillion something or other.

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And that's, you know, although it has reasonable potential,

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it is limited basically by a the cost of the infrastructure to export it and b the fluctuation of gas markets worldwide,

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particularly if we look in the foreseeable future ignoring the current emergency.

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Climate change, which of course, also includes the issue of water that is becoming an increasingly important factor,

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and I'll talk about that briefly later on. Another factor is that Yemen still has a rapid population growth, which is almost three percent per annum.

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So we have a doubling of the population in 50 and so in 20 years.

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And finally, and I think that's extremely important is the low level of skill and the low quality of education in Yemen.

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Solving and responding to the earlier list of problems I've given can be done very effectively and has been damaged and buying

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a highly skilled labour force that can take initiatives and operate in the kind of economy developed by in the 21st century.

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This low level of education and still high levels are even of illiteracy mean that it's very difficult for Yemenis to benefit from this.

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More quickly and in a more temporary way, the silence autocratic regime left a legacy of divisions.

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The ill management of unit of the process of unification and after 1990 certainly contributed to the southern separatist movement is divided and rule

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policy again contributed to the current fragmentation and the prevention of new political forces has basically also affected today's situation,

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where there's very few new people prefer to be involved in the in the discussions or anything.

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And of course, the regime was known to be very corrupt. But I must say corruption is a feature that the new relevant today.

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At the economic level, I think there was a clear concordance between the neoliberal economic policies of Saleh,

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who was in favour of basically providing financial and other support to the clique of his friends and therefore enriching a small group of people.

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And the neoliberal policies of the international financial institutions they were there was no conflict between these two.

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And again, obviously none of these things were focussed on addressing the needs of the poor of the Yemenis or Yemenis in general.

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So again, I shall try and be brief on this one.

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I think it's important to note that you know what's been going on for seven years.

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Yemen has been going on for millennia and dealing with it all in one hour is will guarantee

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missing out and forgetting a fair number of important things that need to be said.

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So as I just said,

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one of the main causes of underlying causes of stresses and tensions in Yemen are the very high level of poverty and social fragmentation.

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Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. I mean, what we're talking about pre-war.

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Needless to say, it hasn't improved and social fragmentation.

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As I've just described, there was a series of six wars between the houses and the Saleh regime between 2004 and 2010.

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From 2007 onwards, there was a separatist movement in the South, which has developed and is ongoing.

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You had a whole series of tensions between the formal political parties in the in the early parts of the of last decade,

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mainly between the Saleh G.P.S. General People's Congress and the GNP.

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The Joint Meeting parties, which was a conglomerate of the Islamist and tribal Islamic Party with all of the other important parties.

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So it included some Zaidi parties, and it also included the socialists and the nationalists and the Baath.

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And they were kind of forming a kind of coalition. You could say that there was increasing tension around the elections and electoral law.

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And again, these are things that you know, we can't deal with in this amount of time.

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There was a succession crisis in the Salafi camp, and I think it's important to note that, you know, the existing political parties 10 years ago.

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And indeed still today, we're very well, you know, to find differences in proposed political policies between them was really not that easy.

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I mean, yes, you could say Islam had an Islamist trend, but you know, they were.

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I mean, the allegiance to any party in Yemen was not fundamentally based on the proposed policies of state parties.

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I mean, the nationalism, the nationalist by their name. But you know, none of these parties had real policies.

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If one goes into the history of the JPC, it's very clear that that it's not.

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It wasn't the one thing which I think could have helped the Republic of Yemen avoid fighting or certainly

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improve its overall economic condition would have been the into disintegration in the Gulf Cooperation Council,

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which would have many advantages, I think, for all sides.

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It was systematically excluded, and I think that also contributed to, you know, it was another, we could say, proximate cause of the war.

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Now, I want to just talk very briefly about the humanitarian crisis.

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So the humanitarian crisis, as Michael just said,

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is described as the worst in the world and there's been a lot of that has been quite a bit of criticism recently about its management.

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And there's the there's also currently a an internet and an evaluation of the overall intervention,

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and it's fairly clear that it whole, you know, it could have been done a lot better.

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It said it may not be the worst in the world. I think if you really look at what's happening in happened in Syria over that decade.

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You know, it's it's also pretty bad. However, there's no doubt that the humanitarian crisis is extremely serious.

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In Yemen, there are 16 million people who are, as they now say, food insecure,

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which means that they are hungry and 20 million who need some kind of support.

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I was just looking at some figures from the WFP and others,

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and they claim that they did a great job in managing to provide support and food distribution for about 11 million people.

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So that leaves five million who didn't get anything in recent months.

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So we are talking about a situation where there is not a famine in Yemen, nor is there likely to be, but there is a very major crisis.

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And that and you know, not only is the food situation grave, but also medical situation, infrastructure and all other aspects are very serious.

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It's also important to differentiate between what is done under the UN system through the

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Humanitarian Response Plan and what is financed by people of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

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The Saudis have a thing called the King Salman Relief Fund, which also does put money into the UN system, but also operates a lot independently.

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And the UAE operate primarily through the UAE Red Crescent.

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The UAE Red Crescent has is reputed to be operating in a very partial based system in a very biased manner.

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The King Salman fund is also to some extent operate in primarily in areas where we are on the IRG side,

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or at least not on the Houthi side, but they also provide a fair amount of funding to the UN system, which is used everywhere.

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If you look at the I mean, without going into the details of each yes,

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funding the main year where there was a high level of funding a 20 19 when 18 seven percent of the humanitarian response plan was funded,

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which was the best in Yemen and possibly one of the best in the world.

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I mean, usually humanitarian response plans tend to be funded at around 60 to 70 percent.

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The reason 2019 was so highly funded is because both the Saudis and the Emiratis put in a significant amount.

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I think about one and a half billion between them. If I remember, right?

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If you look at what's happened in 20 and 21, you can see that the funding has been much lower even from a lower basis, lower requirement basis.

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I think that's very, you know, it's very important because there are many issues.

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Of course, the houses have been accused, I think, very correctly of.

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Influencing the list of beneficiaries of making sure that the, you know,

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putting taking people off the list if they don't like them, but even without that,

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the lists that have been used have been very out of date and they have not been updated for a whole host of political reasons,

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which can be blamed on, I think, all parties concerned. I think another element that is the problem trust.

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I mean, the vast the overwhelming majority of humanitarian assistance is going into basically food security.

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So it's both food distribution and cash distribution, which is mostly used for food purchases.

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Another thing which, you know,

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operating on an emergency basis is one thing and reasonable when you are in a few days of an emergency or even a few weeks,

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that when you're getting to year seven, some of it is beginning to look a bit permanent and that, you know, different approach.

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It could be much cheaper and more effective, and particularly in things like domestic water distribution and medical assistance and things like that.

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But if you look overall at the situation, most years have been underfunded.

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And it's also important to note that if you look at the death toll in Yemen, which is, you know,

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getting worse by the end of twenty twenty one, estimated to be three hundred and seventy seven thousand people,

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the vast majority of these people have been people who have died directly or indirectly

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from lack of food and malnutrition and aspect that are not directly war related.

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And that's partly connected with the blockades. It's connected with all these other factors that I've just mentioned.

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So I'll finish with a few words on the environmental issues. As mentioned, you know, we've had water is a very, very fundamental problem in Yemen.

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This level of scarcity is very high.

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Again, it's a situation that should not be regarded as one size fits all because it varies enormously from area to area,

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both in terms of the type of water that's available and the quantities and what it can be used for.

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It's worth remembering for those who are not familiar with Yemen, that Yemen has no permanent reserves,

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has no lakes, obviously hasn't got any glaciers are melting or anything of that sort.

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All the only, basically, it's groundwater and rainfall prior to the war, and probably not.

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That changed since one third of the water used annually was not replenished.

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So it came from fossil aquifers and therefore it's being mined and will no longer be available.

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Another thing that's important to remember is that the distribution of water and the distribution of the population are not,

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you know, and not complementary. So one of the areas that have the highest population densities, which are the mountainous areas,

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are areas where water is very difficult to stock and retain, and therefore they're more dependent on rainwater.

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Which brings us to the next aspect of the will of the climate situation, which is that with climate change,

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rainfall has become both more unpredictable in timing and more unpredictable in quantities.

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So while you still have a large number of people who are dependent on rain fed agriculture,

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they cannot, you know, they used to be able to plant the seeds in March,

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and they knew the rain was going to make and plant the seeds in March, and they might get flooded next week or the rains might not come at all.

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So you end up losing everything.

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And not only is the unpredictability and timing, but also the the, you know, the types of downpours have become increasingly violent and short,

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and therefore the absorption of the water into the into the ground water into the shallow aquifers does not, you know,

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it doesn't happen because if you have this and the terraces have been destroyed, basically everything gets washed away.

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So, you know, you have that problem, then you have some problems of floods and droughts.

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See, there's no water, nothing grows and there's nothing available to be drunk.

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And you know, if you look at floods again, you have a few, if not every, five or six or seven years in specific areas.

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If you look at last year, you had three or four major floods in most of the country.

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I think that's pretty unprecedented. You've also had new massive storms that have happened and cyclones again, much more frequently.

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We don't give people time to recover from that from, you know,

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the previous flood by stocking up on food or stocking up on drains, you know, before they get the next one.

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So that really aggravates and reduces what they now call resilience.

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And I want to talk briefly about this affair ship now.

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While the English word Sasha is most certainly the most inappropriate terminology to just discuss this particular ship.

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You may have heard about it. It's the first. So she's just floating but floating something.

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Basically, it's a floating storage ship,

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which is seven miles off the coast in the Red Sea and which contains 1.1 million

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barrels of oil has been there is falling apart or it's not falling apart.

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It could blow up, it could sink, it could rust any time.

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The situation has been extremely serious now for many years.

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There's been big efforts to try and deal with this.

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The U.N. has tried very hard, but again they had different departments in charge of the issue at different times.

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And basically until now, nothing was done because ultimately the squabbling between the WHO and the IRGC prevented anything from being done.

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The squabbling was based over what would be done with the sale of this 1.1 million barrels of oil.

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It ignores the fact that after sitting seven years in all, previously five or six years in basically disintegrating tanker, the value of this oil is.

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Debateable and certainly would not command the price per barrel of the cost of

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oil either today or even when it was at its lowest point in recent months.

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In addition, of course, to the fact that officially it would be embargoed and wouldn't nobody be allowed to buy it now?

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This situation may have changed. I'm saying May, because it's happened before that.

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That appeared to have been agreements to solve it and to do it.

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But I think it's possible that this time it might work because an agreement was signed this week on the fifth whenever.

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Between and that's the interesting point that was signed between the U.N.,

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which is basically in charge of dealing with this, the Houthis who control it.

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And the third party is a very big business company responsible for importing most of Yemen's grains.

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So the internationally recognised government has not been involved in this at all.

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They could try and sabotage it, but they've said that they will.

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They want this problem solved, so it will be embarrassing if they do.

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But it does prove and it also that the agreement basically formally gives the WHO sees what they want,

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which is they don't want this oil to be removed. They want the oil to remain under their control.

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And this agreement, so it says that the ship, a new tanker, would be brought and this oil will be transferred to that new tanker.

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And then what happens in future remains to be discussed. So I think it's important because it might show a solution.

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It's also important because this is a threat that for all those who have been at all aware of,

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it could not only destroy living conditions all over the Yemeni coast,

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but depending on the wind in the season, way up into the Red Sea and possibly the whole of the Red Sea.

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You know, it's a very I mean, if it and it could still happen if it either sinks or explodes, it will be a very, very, you know,

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all the previous ones that we've heard of Exxon Valdez or whatever their jokes compared to what would happen if this thing collapsed.

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To conclude, I just want to say that I apologise for not covering more things,

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and I've thought there are many things while talking that I should have covered and that I have.

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So maybe some of you will ask questions do that. And I look forward to the questions.

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I do want to remind everybody that the Yemeni people continue to suffer from this war and this situation,

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and there's no no immediate prospect for improvement, which is something that I think is extremely sad.

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Just one final thing I know anybody who's read Yemen in crisis will note that I start by saying,

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I hope that when you read this book, things will have war will have ended.

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And I'm just about to write an updated preface for the second edition.

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I'm going to repeat that. I said that five years ago, and I'm probably going to try and say it again.

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And I hope that next time, if they have any third edition, I won't have to say it.

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Thank you. Thank you very much. Had another sobering view of Yemen.

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The thank you particularly for looking at the environmental and economic.