According to Stockholm University,
Isa Blumi is Docent/Associate Professor of Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies at Stockholm University within the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies from New York University (NYU-2005) and a Master of Political Science and Historical Studies (1995) from The New School for Social Research, New York.
Isa joined me for a conversation about Yemen and why the US-backed war is being ignored by the West.
Yemen is a country located in the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. It has a long and rich history, dating back to the 1st century AD. Yemen has been ruled by a variety of different empires and kingdoms over the centuries, including the Sabaeans, the Himyarites, and the Ottomans.
In 1962, Yemen became a republic after a long and bloody civil war. The new republic was plagued by instability and poverty, and in 1990, it merged with the Yemen Arab Republic to form the Republic of Yemen.
The current civil war in Yemen began in 2014, when Houthi rebels, who are Shiite Muslims, took control of the capital city of Sanaa. The Houthis are backed by Iran, and their rise to power has been seen as a threat to the Sunni-led government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Muslim countries intervened in the war in support of President Hadi. The Saudi-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against Houthi positions, and it has also imposed a blockade on Yemen, which has made it difficult for food and medicine to reach the country.
The West (and NATO) have played a significant role in making the war in Yemen worse.
The United States and the United Kingdom have provided logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition, and it has also sold billions of dollars worth of weapons to the coalition.
The West (and NATO) have argued that their involvement in the war is necessary to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold in Yemen which, of course, is propaganda.
It’s a lengthy conversation with a lot of complexity.
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