Yemen war sliding toward escalation: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Naseer al-Omari, an author and political commentator in New York, to discuss Saudi Arabia’s ongoing military aggression against Yemen.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Well, we have seen actually, especially the last few days, these retaliatory attacks being somewhat effective. Tell me about the whole situation. I mean with everything that is happening with these Yemeni fighters on the ground, how are they able to actually have the success that they are having and can they ultimately be victorious when it definitely seems like the odds are against them?

Omari: Well, the Yemenis are fighting in their own country and the Houthis are fighting in their own country. This is a war that was waged without planning. This is a war that did not have clear objectives. This is a war that replaced the political process that was supposed to bring everybody back to the table of negotiations. So, now it looks like a real war with real casualties and I am sure the Emiratis today are looking at the situation. When you have 45 soldiers getting killed, this is the equivalent of hundreds of soldiers dying in a bigger army.

So, this is a real war and I believe now withdrawing is much more difficult and going on is even more complicated and this is what everybody warned about. That situation should have been resolved politically and now we are looking at a situation that is sliding towards escalation, towards more killing unfortunately.

Press TV: Well, you just talked about this 45 Emirati troops getting killed and of course the UAE military there not really used to losing soldiers – not the Emiratis, not the Bahrainis, nor the Saudis. With the price of going to war against the Yemenis seeming to become higher and higher for them, is it likely that we are going to see more of a push to try to bring this to some type of political conclusion?

Omari: I hope so. We all hope that this situation can be brought to an end. The Yemenis themselves should realize that having gone down the path of war, it is really time to look back and try to bring everybody to the negotiating table. There is no way out of this. The Houthis are Yemenis. Ali Abdullah Saleh is Yemeni. No matter what you believe or think about him, he is Yemeni and he has his followers and he has his popularity.

This is a tribal society. This is a society that is diverse and you cannot resolve the Yemeni situation by killing. All the billions of dollars that have gone into buying weapons for the Arabs to kill each other, it could have gone to help the Yemeni economy, which probably caused this whole catastrophe, this political endless war in the first place.

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