Yemenis grappling with devastating situation: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Naseer al-Omari, a writer and political commentator in New York, to discuss the ongoing Saudi military aggression against Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It is not bad enough to see Yemen get bombarded and have civilians get killed and now you have eight warehouses being targeted by these Saudi jets dropping bombs there. Is this just total annihilation and the death, that’s what Saudi Arabia wants? What is the purpose behind this? 

Omari: It is another nasty war unfortunately, it is a civil war and the Saudis are supporting one side. What is happening on the ground is devastating to the Yemenis and what the Saudis are being told about this is a rosy picture of victory after victory. But if you look at what is happening in Yemen, it is devastating, people are suffering and the Yemenis are becoming more divided by the day.

This is a nasty civil war similar to other civil wars that Yemen had gone through before and it is being presented as a great victory, and the Saudis are saying we are supporting our brethren but in the final analysis when you look at it is just another Arab country that has been lost through civil war and destruction.

Press TV: You said that this is dividing Yemeni people. This comes at a very high cost for Saudi Arabia itself, these missions of dropping bombs, each bomb costing a whole lot of money altogether of a budget that is strained already. What is the end game when you have the Yemenis being divided and, I would think as a consequence, losing support for whatever it is that Saudi Arabia wants on the ground?

Omari: If you zoom out…and look at the big picture, we have a royal family that is suffering internally, that has problems internally. Its legitimacy is being questioned internally with these Wahhabis targeting security forces in the country. It is a country that is supported, unfortunately, by the United States to launch these campaigns, and in the final analysis [those] benefiting from this are defense contractors and weapons companies and people who want these wars to keep raging in the Middle East so that more people will feel the need to purchase more weapons.

But on the ground as I keep saying in Yemen, the Yemenis will wake up with a big problem after all these so-called victories on the ground and they will have a war-torn country with nobody to help as we have seen what happened in other countries unfortunately.

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