Desperately Seeking Asylum TV - Hadim Suleiman Pasha - BBC News TV - Noam Chomsky - Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield 2013 - John Pilger TV - Dispatches TV - Captive 2016 - Secret Wars Uncovered TV - Adam Curtis TV -
Ali is from Yemen in the Middle East. It’s a country in the midst of a brutal civil war. Since 2014 more than four million people have had to flee. Almost a quarter of a million have lost their lives as a result of the conflict. Desperately Seeking Asylum, Samantha Poling reporting, BBC 2021
Yemen is a land with no lord, an empty province. It would be not only possible but easy to capture, and should it be captured, it would be master of the lands of India and send every year a great amount of gold and jewels to Constantinople. Hadim Suleiman Pasha
The Yemen Republic is an exotic mix of mountains, deserts, frequently rebellious tribesmen and guns. Maybe 16 million of them are in circulation. BBC News 24th November 2007
An inconvenient Amnesty International release of November 2 reported that Saudi security forces tortured and abused hundreds of Yemeni ‘guest workers’, also expelling 750,000 of them, ‘for no apparent reason other than their nationality or their suspected opposition to the Saudi Arabian government's position in the gulf crisis’. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
In December 2009, 5 strikes with over 150 casualties in a country without a declared war: Yemen. Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, 2013
It was clearly a cruise missile that struck the Bedouin camp. ibid.
Awlaki began to see the expanding wars as part of a global attack against Islam. And his sermons reflected a growing anger. After 9/11 Awlaki was put under surveillance … he was locked up for a year and a half without charge and spent seventeen months in solitary confinement. When he was finally released Awlaki was a changed man. And after JSOC tried to kill him his transformation was complete. ibid.
The war in Yemen really is the Vietnam of this generation. John Pilger Special: A Look Back at 2018 and Going Ahead to 2019, RT Going Underground, Youtube 28.13 December 2018
Saudi pilots are relentlessly bombing Yemen. Schools, mosques and hospitals have been destroyed. Thousands of civilians are dead. But is Britain helping the Saudis fight this war? We investigate the British officers in the Saudi operations centre and the defence contractors helping the Saudis keep their planes in the air. Dispatches: Britain’s Hidden War, Channel 4 2019
19,500 air strikes on Yemen in the last 4 years. ibid.
The arms: We sell twice as many to the Saudis as we sell to anyone else. ibid.
In 2009, Pierre and Yolande Korkie left South Africa with their two children to begin a new life doing charitable work. Captive VII: Al Qaeda Hostages, Yemen, caption, Netflix 2016
Yolande and Pierre did not know that their children had been returned safely to South Africa a week after the kidnap. ibid.
Yolande returned home to South Africa in 2014. ibid.
Later it emerged that Pierre and Luke had been moved just days before the American raid. ibid.
Six Al-Qaeda fighters were reportedly killed in the raid. Two of the tribal negotiators were later killed by Al-Qaeda who suspected they had cooperated with the Americans. ibid.
The fire burned for hours. The largest oil refinery in Saudi Arabia had been hit multiple times. The attack was claimed by Shia-backed Houthi rebels from the neighbouring country of Yemen. It appeared to be the latest escalation in the deadly Saudi-Yemeni war that had been raging since 2015. But all was not as it seemed. Secret Wars Uncovered s1e2: Yemen: Britain & the Saudis, History 2020
Fighting in Yemen has cost the lives of thousands and triggered a humanitarian crisis. ibid.
The Unified Republic of Yemen was declared on 22 May 1990. ibid.
Early in 2015 the Houthis seized the presidential palace and dissolved parliament. ibid.
‘The Saudis have been bombing Yemen indiscriminately’ … Impossible without its [Saudis’] oldest allies in the West: the United States and the United Kingdom. ibid. David Wearing, Royal Holloway University
Saudi Arabia-UK: At stake was one of the most valuable arms deals in history. ibid.
In 2003 The Guardian printed new allegations … [arms deal] secured by corruption on a massive scale. ibid.
Why is Britain selling arms to the repressive Saudi state? ibid.
Donald Trump had authorised a special forces raid in central Yemen … What was meant to be a precision raid turned into a chaotic hour-long battle. The White House insisted the operation had been a success. ibid.
Then an event occurred in the Middle East which gave Stirling the chance to reassert Britain’s power abroad but in a new different way: in September 1962 Egyptian troops invaded the Yemen. Adam Curtis, The Mayfair Set I: Who Pays Wins ***** BBC 1999
Stirling and Avery had dinner with the foreign secretary Alec Douglas Hume at White’s Club in St James’s. They proposed a plan: a group of ex-SAS men would mount an operation to fight the Egyptians but they would do it privately. ibid.
[Prince] Faisal was terrified that Nasser would invade his county next and agreed to the British idea: the Saudis would pay for the war. ibid.
The Saudis agreed to pay for the British mercenaries but also to smuggle weapons into the Yemen. ibid.
What was invented in the Yemen was a new private form of foreign policy for Britain, paid for by other countries’ money. But then at the very moment when Stirling’s team seemed to be on the brink of success, an economic crisis hit Britain which threatened his whole concept. ibid.
[Denis] Healey believed that instead British defence industries should make money for the country. The Americans were selling weapons throughout the world and Healey wanted Britain to compete with them and earn precious foreign currency. But Britain was not very good at selling weapons until David Stirling decided to get involved. ibid.
He [Khashoggi] told Lockheed that the only way to win the [arms] deal was to bribe the Saudi government. Ten years later in a Senate investigation Lockheed’s chairman admitted what had happened. Stirling told the British government they would have to do the same as the Americans: pay commission to their agents in King Faisal’s entourage. If they didn’t, Britain would lose the deal. In December 1965 the Saudis announced they would buy the British planes: the bribes had worked. It was the biggest export deal in Britain’s history. And King Faisal came on a state visit to celebrate it. It was also the beginning of the modern arms trade with the Middle East which has grown to dominate Britain’s economy. And from it also came a much wider commercial relationship with Saudi Arabia. ibid.