{"id":1453717,"date":"2024-01-28T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-28T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1453717"},"modified":"2024-01-28T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T17:00:00","slug":"escobar-how-yemens-asabiyya-is-reshaping-geopolitics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/escobar-how-yemens-asabiyya-is-reshaping-geopolitics\/1453717\/","title":{"rendered":"Escobar: How Yemen’s ‘Asabiyya’ Is Reshaping Geopolitics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Escobar: How Yemen’s ‘Asabiyya’ Is Reshaping Geopolitics<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Arabic word Asabiyya, or ‘social solidarity,’ is a soundbite in the west, but taken very seriously by the globe’s new contenders China, Russia, and Iran. It is Yemen, however, that is mainstreaming the idea, by sacrificing everything for the world’s collective morality in a bid to end the genocide in Gaza.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

When there is a general change of conditions,<\/em><\/p>\n

It is as if the entire creation had changed<\/em><\/p>\n

and the whole world been altered,<\/em><\/p>\n

as if it were a new and repeated creation,<\/em><\/p>\n

a world brought into existence anew. <\/em><\/p>\n

–\u00a0 Ibn Khaldun\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance forces have made it very clear, right from the start, that they set up a blockade in the Bab el-Mandeb and the southern Red Sea only against Israeli-owned or destined shipping vessels. <\/strong>Their single objective was and remains to stop the Gaza genocide perpetrated by the\u00a0Israeli biblical psychopathy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a response to a morally-based call to end a human genocide, the United States, masters of the Global War\u00a0Of<\/em>\u00a0Terror (italics mine), predictably re-designated Yemen’s Houthis as a \u201cterrorist organization,\u201d launched a serial bombardment of underground Ansarallah military installations (assuming US intel know where they are), and cobbled together a mini-coalition of the willing that includes its UK, Canadian, Australian, Dutch, and Bahraini vassals.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Without missing a beat, Yemen’s Parliament declared the US and UK governments \u201cGlobal Terrorist Networks.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s talk strategy.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

With a single move, the Yemeni resistance seized the strategic advantage by de facto controlling a key geoeconomic bottleneck: the Bab el-Mandeb. Hence, they can inflict\u00a0serious trouble on sectors of global supply chains, trade, and finance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And Ansarallah has the potential to double down\u00a0\u2014\u00a0if need be. Persian Gulf traders, off the record, have confirmed insistent chatter that Yemen may consider imposing a so-called Al-Aqsa Triangle\u00a0\u2014\u00a0aptly named after the 7 October Palestinian resistance operation aimed at destroying the Israeli military’s Gaza Division and taking captives as leverage in a sweeping prisoner swap deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Such a move would mean selectively blocking not only the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea route to the Suez Canal, but also the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil and gas deliveries to Israel from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE \u2013 although the top oil suppliers to Israel are in fact Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

These Yemenis are afraid of nothing. Were they able to impose the triangle \u2013 in this case only with direct Iranian involvement\u00a0\u2014\u00a0that would represent the US-assassinated Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani’s Grand Design on cosmic steroids. This plan holds the realistic potential of finally bringing down the pyramid of hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and consequently, the whole western financial system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet, even as Yemen controls the Red Sea and Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, Al-Aqsa Triangle remains just a working hypothesis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Welcome to the Hegemon’s blockade<\/strong><\/h2>\n

With a simple, clear strategy, the Houthis perfectly understood that the deeper they draw the strategy-deprived Americans into the West Asian geopolitical swamp, in a sort of \u201cundeclared war\u201d mode, the more they\u2019re able to inflict serious pain on the global economy, which the Global South will blame on the Hegemon.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, Red Sea shipping traffic has plunged in half, compared to the summer of 2023; supply chains are wobbly; ships carrying food are forced to circumnavigate Africa (and risk delivering cargo after its expiry date); predictably, inflation across the vast EU agricultural sphere (worth \u20ac70 billion) is rising fast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, never underestimate a cornered Empire.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Western-based insurance giants perfectly understood the rules of Ansarallah’s limited blockade: Russian and Chinese ships, for instance, have free passage in the Red Sea. Global insurers have only refused to cover US, UK, and Israeli ships\u00a0\u2014\u00a0exactly as the Yemenis intended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So the US, predictably, changed the narrative into a big, fat lie: \u2018Ansarallah is attacking the whole global economy.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Washington turbo-charged sanctions (not a big deal as the Yemeni resistance uses Islamic financing); increased the bombing, and in the name of sacrosanct \u201cfreedom of navigation\u201d \u2013 always applied selectively\u00a0\u2014\u00a0placed its bets on the \u201cinternational community,\u201d including leaders of the Global South, begging for mercy, as in please keep the shipping lanes open. The goal of the new, reframed American deceit is to elbow the Global South into ditching its support for Ansarallah’s strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pay attention to this crucial US sleight of hand: <\/strong>Because, from now on, in a new perverse twist of Operation Genocide Protection,\u00a0it is Washington that will be blockading the Red Sea<\/em><\/a>\u00a0for the entire world. Washington itself, mind you, will be spared: US shipping depends on Pacific trade routes, not West Asian ones. This will ratchet up the pain on Asian customers and especially on Europe’s economy \u2013 which already took the heavies blows from Ukraine-associated Russian energy sanctions.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Michael Hudson has interpreted it,\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>there is a strong possibility that the neocons in charge of US foreign policy actually\u00a0want<\/em>\u00a0(italics mine) to have Yemen and Iran implement the Al-Aqsa Triangle: \u201cIt will be the main energy buyers in Asia, China, and other countries that are going to be hurt. And that (\u2026) will give the United States even more power to control the oil supply of the world as a bargaining chip in trying to renegotiate this new international order.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, in fact, is the classic\u00a0Empire of Chaos<\/a>\u00a0modus operandi.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Calling attention to \u201cour people in Gaza\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There is no solid evidence the Pentagon has the slightest clue about what its Tomahawks are hitting in Yemen.\u00a0Even several hundred missiles won\u2019t change a thing. Ansarallah, which has already endured eight years of nonstop US-UK-Saudi-Emirati firepower\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and basically won\u00a0\u2014\u00a0will not relent today over a few missile strikes.<\/p>\n

Even the proverbial \u201cunnamed officials\u201d informed the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0that \u201clocating the Houthi targets has proven more difficult than expected,\u201d essentially because of lousy US intel on Yemeni \u201cair defense, command centers, ammunition depots, and drone and missile storage and production facilities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite enlightening to listen to how\u00a0Yemeni Prime Minister Abdulaziz bin Saleh Habtoor<\/a>\u00a0frames Ansarallah’s Israel-blockade initiative decision as \u201cbased on humanitarian, religious and moral aspects\u201d. He refers, crucially, to \u201cour people in Gaza.\u201d And the overall vision, he reminds us, \u201cstems from the vision of the Axis of Resistance.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a reference smart onlookers will recognize as General Soleimani\u2019s ever-lasting legacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With a keen historical sense\u00a0\u2014\u00a0from the creation of Israel to the Suez crisis and the Vietnam war\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the Yemeni prime minister recalls how \u201cAlexander the Great reached the shores of Aden and Socotra island but was defeated (\u2026) Invaders tried to occupy the capital of the historical state of Shebah and failed (\u2026) How many countries throughout history have tried to occupy the west coast of Yemen and failed? Including Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s absolutely impossible for the west and even the Global Majority to understand the Yemeni mindset without learning a few facts from the Angel of History.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

So let\u2019s go back to the 14th\u00a0century universal history master Ibn Khaldun\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the author of\u00a0The Muqaddimah<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ibn Khaldun cracks the Ansarallah Code\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ibn Khaldun\u2019s family was a contemporary to the rise of the Arab Empire, on the move alongside the first armies of Islam in the 7th\u00a0century, from the austere beauty of the Hadramawti valleys in what is now southern Yemen all the way to the Euphrates.<\/p>\n

Ibn Khaldun, crucially, was a precursor of Kant, who offered the brilliant insight that \u201cgeography lies at the basis of history.\u201d And he read the 12th\u00a0century Andalusian philosophy master Averroes \u2013 as well as other writers exposed to Plato’s works and understood how the latter referred to the moral strength of \u201cthe first people\u201d in the Timaeus, in 360 B.C.<\/p>\n

Yes, this boils down to \u201cmoral strength\u201d\u00a0\u2014\u00a0for the west, a mere soundbite; for the east, an essential philosophy. Ibn Khaldun grasped how civilization began and was constantly renewed by people with natural goodness and energy; people who understood and respected the natural world, who lived light, united by blood or brought together by a shared revolutionary idea or religious drive.<\/p>\n

Ibn Khaldun defined\u00a0asabiyya<\/em>\u00a0as this force that binds people together.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like so many words in Arabic,\u00a0asabiyya<\/em>\u00a0exhibits a range of diverse, loosely connected meanings. Arguably, the most relevant is esprit de corps, team spirit, and tribal solidarity – just as Ansarallah exhibits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Ibn Khaldun demonstrates, when the power of\u00a0asabiyya<\/em>\u00a0is fully harnessed, reaching way beyond the tribe, it becomes more powerful than the sum of its individual parts, and can become a catalyst to reshape history; to make or break Empires; to encourage civilizations; or force them to collapse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We are definitely living an\u00a0asabiyya<\/em>\u00a0moment, brought about by the Yemeni resistance\u2019s moral strength.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Solid as a rock<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ansarallah innately understood the threat of eschatological Zionism\u00a0\u2014\u00a0which happens to mirror the Christian Crusades a millennium ago. And they are virtually the only ones, in practical terms, trying to stop it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, as an extra bonus, they are exposing the plutocratic Hegemon, once again, as bombers of Yemen, the poorest Arab nation-state, where at least half the population remains \u201cfood-insecure.\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But Ansarallah is not heavy-weapons-free like the\u00a0Pashtun mujahideen who humiliated NATO in Afghanistan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their anti-ship cruise missiles include the Sayyad and the Quds Z-O (range up to 800 km) and the Al Mandab 2 (range up to 300 km).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their anti-ship ballistic missiles include the Tankil (range of up to 500 km); the Asef (range of up to 450 km); and the Al-Bahr Al-Ahmar (range of up to 200 km). That covers the southern part of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but not, for instance, the islands of the Socotra archipelago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Accounting for roughly one-third of the country\u2019s population, Yemen’s Houthis, who form the backbone of the Ansarallah resistance, do have their own internal agenda: gaining fair representation in governance (they launched Yemen’s Arab Spring); protecting their Zaydi (neither Shia nor Sunni) faith; fighting for the autonomy of the Saada governorate; and working for the revival of the Zaydi Imamate, which was up and running before the 1962 revolution.<\/p>\n

Now, they are making their mark on The Big Picture.<\/strong> It\u2019s no wonder Ansarallah fiercely fights the Hegemon\u2019s vassal Arabs \u2013 especially those who signed a deal to normalize relations with Israel under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

The Saudi-Emirati war on Yemen, with the Hegemon \u201cleading from behind,\u201d was a quagmire that cost Riyadh at least $6 billion a month for seven years. It ended with a wobbly 2022 truce in a de facto Ansarallah victory. A signed peace agreement, it should be noted, has been disallowed by the US, despite Saudi efforts to seal a deal.<\/p>\n

Now, Ansarallah is turning geopolitics and geoeconomics upside down with not just a few missiles and drones but also oceans of craftiness and strategic acumen. To invoke Chinese wisdom, picture a single rock changing the course of a stream, which then changes the course of a mighty river.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Epigones of Diogenes can always remark, half in jest, that the Russia-China-Iran strategic partnership may have contributed with their own well-placed rocks in this path to a more equitable order. That\u2019s the beauty of it: we may not be able to see these rocks, only the effects they cause. What we do see, though, is the Yemeni resistance, solid as a rock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The record shows the Hegemon, once again, reverting to auto-pilot mode: Bomb, Bomb, Bomb. And in this particular case, to bomb is to redirect the narrative from a genocide committed in real time by Israel, the Empire\u2019s aircraft carrier in West Asia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, Ansarallah can always increase the pressure by sticking firmly to its narrative and, driven by the power of\u00a0asabiyya<\/em>, deliver to the Hegemon a second Afghanistan, compared to which Iraq and Syria will look like a weekend at Disneyland.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ZeroHedge<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 01\/28\/2024 – 07:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bRead More<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Escobar: How Yemen’s ‘Asabiyya’ Is Reshaping Geopolitics Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle, The Arabic word Asabiyya, or ‘social solidarity,’ is a soundbite in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}