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VOICES FROM THE ARAB PRESS
A weekly selection of opinions and analyses from the Arab media around the world
THE HOUTHIS ARE DIGGING THEIR OWN GRAVE
Al-Arab, London, May 24
The Houthi militias in Yemen continue to ignore reality and pursue a radical agenda of self-destruction. Using Iranian technology and Hezbollah know-how, these militias have been targeting Saudi and Emirati cities using missiles and mortars in an effort to gain political capital. Anyone who understands the politics of the region knows that the Houthis are a direct extension of the mullah regime in Tehran. And the people who are paying the ultimate price for this Iranian aggression are the Yemeni people who, when they overthrew their government in September 2014, hoped to build a better future for their country.
However, since then, they only experience bloodshed and war. What concerns the Houthis is not the interests of the Yemeni people, but their dark ideological project, which is no different from that of the Taliban project in Afghanistan. The two “mountainous” factions take the claim of supporting Islam through opposition to Western ideals. However, they promote everything that stands against the Muslim faith. They actively promote bloodshed, violence, drug abuse, suffering, starvation and the pushing of children into the battlefield. The Houthi movement was founded in Sa’ada in 1992 under the banner of revival of the caliphate.
Similarly, the Taliban grew up in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province on the border with Pakistan in 1994, established by Mullah Mohammad Omar under the pretext of eradicating the manifestations of moral corruption and restoring security and stability to Afghanistan. Both movements took advantage of transitional
Just like the Taliban was destroyed in 2011, so too will world powers come to destroy the Houthi militias
phases in their country’s history in an effort to seize power by force. On January 19, 2015, the Houthis attacked the home of President Abdurbo Mansour Hadi, besieged the presidential palace and stormed army camps. They put government ministers under house arrest. They stormed media headquarters and used television channels to spread propaganda against their opponents. They took over the headquarters of oil companies and appointed their loyalists to positions of power.
Throughout this entire process, the Houthis received close support from Iran and Hezbollah. In March 2015, the Arab Alliance in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, launched an operation against the Houthis aimed at restoring the country’s legitimate authorities. The Houthis rejected all political resolutions, bailed on promises made to UN envoys and rejected all negotiations. However, just like the Taliban failed to gain international recognition, the Houthis now face global isolation. The radical agendas on which these two organizations rest simply do not allow them to be functional political entities. Their suicidal impulses push them to promote projects to that only empower their own gains.
Eventually, an international agreement for Yemen will be reached. This agreement will disband the Houthi militias and remove them from any position of power in the country. Just like the Taliban was destroyed in late 2011, so too will world powers come to destroy the Houthi militias. The world will not tolerate an armed group that continues to undermine the security and stability of the region, especially given the enormous economic and political assets at stake in the Gulf. – Habib al-Aswad
STRANGER THAN PARADISE
Al-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 23
The American film Stranger than Paradise, directed by the famous director Jim Garmusch in 1983, is a simple yet disconcerting story quietly presenting the process of human detachment from nature. The story follows Eva, a Hungarian immigrant who seeks to leave the rural community in which she grew up and come to the land of opportunity in the United States of America. In one of the opening scenes, Eva, now in the US, sits in front of her cousin who is eating a sandwich and asks him what type of meat it has.
“It’s meat, it doesn’t matter which kind... maybe beef,” the young man replies. Annoyed by her question, he continues: “This is the food we eat here in America; every plate must have a piece of meat, French fries and veggies.” He then proceeds to finish his meal and throws the plastic plate away. Although the film is almost four decades old, this scene is extremely telling of the current human predicament regarding the environment. The plastic plate and utensils are a symbol of modernity and the environmental destruction brought about by mankind through uncontrollable dumping and pollution. The lack of awareness regarding the meat one is eating represents the total disconnect between the food we consume and where it comes from.
In today’s world, not a single one of us ever stops to reflect upon our food web. In the rare chance that we do think about our relationship with nature, we rarely look beyond the shelves of our local supermarket. It is easy to continue consuming without expense, wasting money and dumping garbage in unfathomable
quantities, and destroying our planet.
We have lost respect for animals, for the Earth and the seas, and for all living things. We forgot the origin of the fruit on our table, the sun that nurtures our plants, and the hands that plant and harvest the food we eat. In following our daily rituals without questioning our habits, we are contributing to the rapid demise of our planet. We are losing accountability to ourselves and to others. We have become creatures who waste without any remorse or guilt. We have come to forget that nature is a complicated web of living and nonliving things that have been inextricably tied to each other, maintaining a delicate balance, for hundreds of thousands of years. It is time we looked beyond our plates. – Raja’a Alem
In today’s world, not a single one of us ever stops to reflect upon our food web
IRAN IS MAKING DANGEROUS BETS
Asharq al-Awsat, London, May 23
It is no secret in Washington that the United States does not want a military war with Iran. The Trump administration will try to go far in its economic war to achieve the goals it seeks, chief of which is the return of Iran to a normal state that limits its concern to the welfare of its own people. However, this does not mean that the US is a charity organization committed to avoiding war at any cost. The US simply wants to see the Iranian people liberated from a dictatorial regime that has nothing to do with what is civilized in our world.
Iran’s misfortune is that America’s interests converge to a large extent these days with the interests of the Arab world, which has grown tired of Tehran’s expansionist agenda in the Middle East. The US remains interested in stability in the region. This is because oil remains important despite all of the developments in the last decade, including the development of shale oil extraction technologies. This is a costly technique that benefits those countries that invest in it, and only when a barrel of oil exceeds a certain price.
There is no doubt that if a war were to break out, Iran would be its biggest loser. In the face of an economic war aimed at changing its behavior, Iran is betting that Washington wants to avoid a full-scale military confrontation. There is also an Iranian bet that the Trump administration will not last long and that a major political change will take place during the 2020 presidential election, leading to the return of a president like Barack Obama to the White House.
But Iran is ignoring several factors, most notably that economic war is no less effective than kinetic war. Most importantly, it overlooks the fact that the war remains a viable option not because of the whims of Donald Trump, but rather because of Iran’s criminal activity in the last 40 years, ever since the fall of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Therefore, war can happen regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office. Hedging all of its bets on the next presidential election is a dangerous bet for Iran.
– Kheir Allah Kheir Allah
TIME TO REEVALUATE AID IN YEMEN
Al-Roeya, UAE, May 23
Last week, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) warned that aid to Yemen could be suspended to areas controlled by Houthi rebels. This is the right step, but a very late one, nonetheless. Every Yemeni person knows that the country has been struck by widespread hunger. The Houthis not only divert the aid that is sent to Yemen, but also sell it to hungry and needy people in the war-torn country.
The United Nations recognizes that the UAE and Saudi Arabia have provided over $300 million in aid to the Yemeni people during last year. They should therefore ask themselves where all these millions of aid dollars, meant to ease the hunger and suffering of the Yemeni people, have gone. The United Nations must stop aid that is funneled through the Houthis and begin to immediately develop an alternative and orderly mechanism to deliver food and medical supplies where they are needed.
So long as the UN’s aid program continues in its current format, the Houthis will be able to continue their military campaign unabated. This will only prolong the war and dissuade the Houthis from coming to the negotiating table and accepting a political solution. Experts believe that some 14 million Yemeni people are starving. Given that the hundreds of millions of dollars provided by the UAE and Saudi Arabia have still not stopped this problem, the UN must find the culprit for this tragedy and take the necessary measures to feed the hungry and treat the sick.
It is not enough to blame all parties as equal culprits in this tragedy. But this is, unfortunately, what the United Nations does: It places the thief and the robber in the same pool. The Arab Coalition, led by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is working tirelessly to aid the people of Yemen. Meanwhile, the Houthi militias, which are the real aggressors, are robbing the Yemeni people of any chance to improve their livelihoods and end the war. – Muhammad al-Hammadi