BROOKLYN, NY March 13—About 100 workers, youth and community antiracists participated in a mass forum on ending the war and capitalist crisis in Yemen. It was held in a neighborhood where many Yemeni families live. The forum was in Arabic, English, and Spanish—a great show of international solidarity (see letter, page 6).
A comrade from Progressive Labor Party linked the crisis in Yemen to the struggle against racist terror at home and raised the need to build an international movement for communist revolution. PL’ers distributed CHALLENGE and made contacts.
Dire conditions for workers
Yemen has been torn by civil war and battered by the relentless attack of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. since March 2015. With a population of 27 million, at least 10,000 have been slaughtered, more than two million have been displaced. The conditions are so dire that 80 percent of the population requires urgent food and medical aid.
With more than 14 million people without clean water or sanitation due to the targeted bombing of water treatment plants and infrastructure, Yemen has the worst ever-recorded cholera epidemic. Over 20,000 dead and 600,000 confirmed cases of cholera.
The United Nations considers it the “worst humanitarian disaster” in the world today. While the capitalist media would like to call this a humanitarian crisis (so as to strip the class politics from the situation), we know it’s a capitalist crisis of their own making.
Workers speak up
The highlight of the event was the testimony given by a number of young people who spoke of how the war impacted them. One famiy was stranded in a refugee camp, unable to come to the U.S. due to the anti-Muslim travel ban. Another was captured and tortured in Yemen.
Yet another shared a story of how beautiful Yemen was before the war, and now how her father is worried for the safety of relatives still there.
A young woman talked about the anti-Muslim racism she faces in school. A young man said that we all must do what we can to, “Stop the War! Stop the War! Stop the War!”
Yemen, hotspot of oil wars
Yemen, the most impoverished country in the Middle East, is next to Saudi Arabia, the richest. The narrow strait of Bab-el-Mandeb borders Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea. Millions of gallons of oil pass through this chokepoint each day. It may also have the largest untapped oil deposits in the world.
This area is of longtime geopolitical importance for U.S. hegemony. In 1991, the U.S. Army War College published an unclassified study that called Bab Al-Mandeb “a confrontation arena between the superpowers, which tried to establish and then promote their military presence and influence there.”
Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are desperate to keep control of the area and prevent it from falling into the hands of Iran, their major regional rival for control of the Middle East and Horn of Africa. This struggle between regional powers is drawing in the major imperialists, including Russia and China, and also explains the spreading conflicts in Syria, Somalia, Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. The widening war in the region is bringing the world closer to World War III.
When the bosses are locked in competition and war, it’s always the working class that suffers and dies.
First steps towards solidarity
A Middle East expert, who was a child refugee from the Iran-Iraq war, discussed the history of the conflict and attacked the billions of dollars in U.S. weapons sales to Israel and Saudi Arabia. A speaker from the National Writers Union spoke about attacks on media workers covering the war. A speaker from Yemen Aid detailed the crisis and what they are doing to try to respond to it. Those in attendance donated to the organizations, including a Haitian community group and a Latin group, showing working-class international solidarity.
A woman from the floor called on everyone to come out to protest the visit of Saudi Crown Prince Salman to New York City (see box).
The positive response was overwhelming. Building relationships with working-class families from Yemen is a step towards forging international solidarity. Whenever PLP can expose the bosses’ profit and war motives behind world crises while also strengthening confidence in our class to fight back, our class gains class consciousness.
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Protesters Decry war criminal Saudi Prince MBS
NEW YORK CITY, March 20—Mohammed bin Salman embarked on a three-country visit with stops in Cairo, London, and New York to strengthen his hand on the global stage.
When he was touring NYC, protesters gathered on the City Hall on Monday and in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday to decry Saudi Arabia’s war on the working class in Yemen. Mohammed bin Salman was escorted with two limousines. While MBS was making war deals with Wall Street, oil company Halliburton, aircraft company Boeing, antiracists chanted, “Say it loud say it clear—Saudi Prince Not Welcome Here!” Protesters also picked up the chant, “U.S., Saudi You Can’t Hide—You Charge You With Genocide in Yemen.”
On tour
MBS’s visit in the U.S. included but not limited to: Trump, vice president Mike Pence, CIA director, Jared Kushner, and the secretaries of defense, treasury, and commerce. He also toured Saudi-lined oil facilities on the Texas Gulf Coast and met with Houston-based oil executives. Trump “offered an optimistic forecast of lucrative U.S. arms sales to the kingdom and more Saudi investment in the United States” (Chicago Tribune, 3/21)
MBS has a war plan for Saudi Arabia: “Saudi Vision 2030,[which] calls for localizing ‘50 percent of military equipment spending’ by the end of the next decade” (Defense One, 4/4).
In London, MBS met with defense secretary Gavin Williamson, among others. He was also greeted with massive crowd of anti-war protesters.