Saudis want Yemen to be hub for terrorists: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Hussain al-Bukhaiti, an activist and political commentator in Sana’a, to discuss Saudi Arabia’s ongoing military aggression against Yemen.  

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What is it going to take in your perspective even though now we have had actually the UN Secretary General actually commenting on the atrocities taking place in Yemen but still Saudi Arabia is pressing ahead with its campaign? Why do you think that the Saudis, it seems that they are exerting an unbelievable amount of force, an unbelievable brutality, why do you think that that is the case?  

Bukhaiti: It seems that the Saudis are going ahead with their air campaign as long as the silence from the UN, even though this latest statement from the head of the UN Security Council, the Saudi strikes continue. There were several reports by Human Rights Watch and by Amnesty International condemning the Saudi war in Yemen but they are not going to stop unless there is an international agreement to stop this violence in Yemen and to start the peace process which the Saudis have been delaying just to advance in many areas in Yemen because as long as they get the oil money, they will continue killing Yemeni civilians, they will continue bombing Yemen infrastructure and as you mentioned just in the last few hours they have targeted a road in Bagim district north of Sa’ada, killing nine people. So they are not even allowing people to flee those areas.

There is a blockade in Yemen, there is shortage on food, on fuel and medicine and they even bombed just in the last week the only oil terminal in Yemen in Hudaydah which is called Ras Isa. They have as well two days ago targeted one of the largest oil stations in Hudaydah itself. It seems they are trying to attack everything that makes the life of Yemeni people easy. They want just to keep on this blockade and we know that the US and many countries like the UK and France, they are profiting, making huge amount of profit of this war from the Saudis by arms deals and things that will keep funding this war and the Americans in the beginning of this war they have allocated about 80 millions in aid for Yemen and on the other hand they have an agreement with the Saudis to supply them with over one billion dollars of new smart bombs to continue bombing the Yemeni civilians.

Press TV: What do you think then, I guess a question higher than dealing with Saudi Arabia would be what is Washington’s goal in supporting this oppression against the Yemeni people?

Bukhaiti: First of all just that they are allied to the Saudis. The Saudis [are] one of the main buyers of their weapons and as well we know that as soon as the Yemeni army and Ansarullah the Houthi and the Popular Committee succeeded in clearing many areas in the south like Lahij, Abyan and Shabwah from al-Qaeda and those were considered one of the strongest areas of al-Qaeda outside Afghanistan, that is why the Saudis have started its war campaign because they want Yemen to be a hub for terrorists, the same like in Syria and in Iraq and in Afghanistan and in Libya.

And we saw latest report from the Saudis that they said they might interfere and send troops into Syria to support who, because they have seen Syrian army is clearing and is advancing in many areas in Syria against ISIS (Daesh) and against al-Qaeda and all these terrorist groups and this is the same what happened in Yemen when Ansarullah have cleared most of the south and like I said before there are many reports condemning the Saudis and just I want to mention something. There is a report, it is going to be released soon by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) which has studied one of the cases in Sana’a that happened last September when the Saudis have used American bombs … and they killed a family of three and injuring other eight.

So this war is going to continue unless the Yemeni army and Ansarullah the Houthi will take more extreme steps against the Saudi border and then we can ask them to leave our country if we leave their southern border.

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