Sara Flounders: Riyadh has failed to prevail in Yemen even with US support

Sara Flounders is the co-director of the International Action Center from New York. She was interviewed by Press TV on the implementation of a ceasefire in Yemen before the April 18 peace talks in Kuwait.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Given the history in the backdrop, what are the guarantees that this time around the truce will actually hold?

Flounders: As with any ceasefire there are no guarantees, but the hope and the expectation is that this time Saudi Arabia, who violated the ceasefire last time and then finally cancelled the ceasefire, will abide by the ceasefire... Saudi Arabia has been unable to prevail even with enormous US support, US equipment, US directing, the satellites and the jet aircraft and enforcing the sanctions and the blockade of Yemen. All this has been possible through US support of Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, and yet it has not succeeded.

So there is again a UN effort at a ceasefire. We can only hope that it will go into effect. Certainly, the Ansarullah movement has stopped their actions in preparation for the ceasefire and wants very much for there to be a ceasefire. This was a democratic coalition that wanted to refashion Yemen really as a country where all the people could participate. And that is against what Saudi aims were, which was for a dictatorship really headed by the Hadi government.

Press TV: In order to have a lasting peace anywhere in the world especially in this area it seems like there must be justice, and justice needs to be served. Now, given that backdrop, what are your predications if this truce will actually succeed to hold? There would be a prosecution now for the Saudi war crimes as we all know. Human rights organizations have been criticizing the government for committing that.

Flounders: There certainly should be, I mean, this is a humanitarian disaster. We have Saudi Arabia directly bombing cities, hospitals, schools, well-marked and defined hospitals, and almost 10,000 people have been killed in this bombing and great ruin in every city and every part of Yemen already the poorest country of the region. So the war has been enormously destructive and yes there certainly should be prosecution for those who carried out this war and that has very much been Saudi Arabia.

And I demand for accountability, but for right now there’s a ceasefire. And there’s a ceasefire because Saudi Arabia may have realized that they cannot succeed and they have not succeeded in more than a year of war and war where their own coalition is coming apart at the seams. Militarily and politically they’ve absolutely failed and that maybe the reason and there maybe US pressure because so much of the assistance came from the US and yet it has been unsuccessful.

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