Saleh al-Sammad and the fallacy of “international law”
By: Global Resistance
Tags: Middle East, Geopolitics

Yemenis attending the funeral of President Saleh Ali al-Sammad, who was assassinated by a Saudi airstrike in 2018.

What would you do if you turned on the news one day and saw that Boris Johnson had been assassinated by another country? Not even subtly or covertly; the aggressor country’s military literally dropped a bomb on his office whilst he was in a meeting? How would you react if you then saw that almost no one in the world was remotely bothered about this? Not the UN, not any other government, even the reporters on the news only give it a passing mention as if it’s not strange at all? Would you begin to question your sanity?

Politicians like talking about the importance of so-called “international” law. This is especially true since Donald Trump got elected; every Tom, Dick and Harry in the mainstream news media has been bawling about how Trump doesn’t care about international law or the “international community” and how much of a tragedy that supposedly is for the “international rules-based order”. Now that Joe Biden is (unless something very unexpected happens) all set to be the next US president in January, having won the election on a promise to supposedly restore American cooperation with international law and the “rules-based order”, it’s worth asking what do these buzzwords actually mean? Who makes international law? Where is the capital where such laws are made? Why don’t we get a vote like we might with national governments?

Central to international law is the concept of “recognition”. In geopolitics, the word “recognition” essentially means you acknowledge the existence of something. Conversely, non-recognition means you refuse to acknowledge its existence. This is a key point. It doesn’t mean that the situation isn’t real. It just means that you’ve decided to pretend it’s not real because it’s politically convenient for you. It’s effectively the political equivalent of sticking your head in the sand.

Take for example the state of Somaliland. Somaliland is a country located in East Africa that has been a sovereign democratic stable state for decades — indeed far more stable than Somalia itself, which it emerged from when the latter collapsed into civil war in the 90s. Yet you will never see it on maps. It is not allowed UN membership or membership of any other politically significant international body. All of its foreign contacts are unofficial and largely piecemeal. It is denied any of the rights that are supposedly guaranteed to nation states. Why? What did they do that was so awful? The answer is: nothing. The world simply collectively decided that it was too awkward to risk pissing off Somalia (a country which has had no effective central government for the past 30 years) and so they’d all just pretend Somaliland is still part of Somalia.

There are many other countries in similar situations, where the world has decided to not “recognise” them — i.e. pretend they aren’t real — for political reasons: Artsakh, Abkhazia, Transnistria, Western Sahara, North Cyprus, Taiwan, amongst many others. These states are typically relatively lucky in that, even though officially their existence is denied by the world, they are generally still allowed to trade and live their lives quite normally and peacefully. Others aren’t so lucky.

Sometimes, it’s not the entire country’s existence that is denied but merely the government’s existence. In these cases, the world pretends that the actual government in power in Country A either completely doesn’t exist or is “illegitimate” and that someone else, with little to no actual power and often “elected” in a rigged election, is actually the real government. This kind of “non-recognition” by the “international community” tends to be much more destructive than the previous kind, because it’s usually coupled up with some kind of attempt (virtually always led by America and its allies) to violently overthrow the actual existing government.

Venezuela is the most obvious example of this. More than fifty countries, led by the United States, decided in 2019 that they would “cease recognition” of President Nicolas Maduro’s government and instead “recognise” some rando called Juan Guaidó instead. To this day, the mainstream media still acts like there’s two governments vying for competition in Venezuela, rather than just one government and some random guy. (God, wouldn’t it be great if this was how life actually worked? I’m gonna “cease recognition” of Bill Gates’ fortune as belonging to him and I “recognise” myself as the owner of Microsoft).

It may sound quite amusing, but the reality is anything but: tens of thousands of Venezuelans have reportedly died as a result of the US and its allies using “non-recognition” as an excuse to circumvent international law and prevent vital food and medical supplies from reaching the country. Possibly the saving grace for Venezuela is the fact that world powers Russia and China have refused to join in with the LARP and continue to recognise Maduro. The fierce propaganda war that America and co have had to wage as a result has opened the eyes of huge numbers of ordinary people to the utter ridiculousness of the situation and the absurdity of the claim that Guaidó is “president”.

But what would happen if Russia and China didn’t recognise Maduro? If America was able to do that much damage to Venezuela even with those two powers refusing to play along, imagine what might have been the result if the whole world had joined in with the Guaidó LARP? We don’t have to imagine, because that’s literally been the situation in Yemen since 2015. Since 2015, most of Yemen’s population has been ruled by the National Salvation Government which is based in the capital , Sana’a. It was formed after the Houthi movement led a popular uprising against the Saudi-US puppet government that had ruled Yemen since the 70s, which was promptly followed by Saudi Arabia and the US using their diplomatic might to prevent UN recognition and totally isolate the new government on the international stage.

It is notable that, unlike in Syria, this time Russia (and China) did not get involved in defence of Yemen’s right to freedom from US interference and Saudi control. As a result, the US and its Saudi and UAE (United Arab Emirates) allies have had free reign to initiate an extremely bloody campaign of terror against Yemen, involving air strikes on “Houthi rebel targets” that include hospitals, weddings and packed school buses. In what arguably amounts to use of germ warfare, even public facilities like sewage works and power plants are attacked, leading to contaminated water supplies and millions infected with cholera. In addition, the country is under a complete blockade by the Saudi coalition forces, through which even food and life-saving medicines struggle to pass. As a result, at least 100,000 people have died as a result of bombing, starvation and disease.

And all this just because a government took power that America didn’t like.

On the other hand, the mainstream media (BBC, CNN, major newspapers, etc) virtually never acknowledge even the existence of a government in Yemen’s capital, let alone acknowledge it as the rightful one. There is no talk of two rival governments like they say about Venezuela or Libya. Rather, the National Salvation Government is invariably referred to as “Houthi rebels”, as if they’re just insurgents living in caves or something. Beyond that, there is no further discussion or coverage. Nothing about how their system works, who their leaders are, nope, nothing. Instead, the words “Yemeni government” are used to refer to a Vichy France-style puppet administration based supposedly in the southern city of Aden and essentially controlled by Saudi Arabia, whose forces alongside UAE forces are occupying the south and east of the country. I say “supposedly” because in reality this “internationally recognised” government has so little authority and power that it reportedly has even lost control of Aden to a rival UAE-backed militia.

Google “president of Yemen” and you will see the name of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who doesn’t even live in Yemen; reportedly he lives under house arrest in Saudi Arabia. Before his overthrow in 2015 by popular revolution, this man “won” a single “election” in 2012 in which he was the only candidate on the ballot. Yet he is almost universally “recognised” globally as president, with only Iran recognising the actual sovereign Yemeni government. The situation is somewhat analogous to Palestine, where Mahmoud Abbas is universally regarded as the legitimate leader despite the fact that he won a single, highly suspect presidential election 15 years ago, his term constitutionally expired in 2009 and the last (comparatively free) elections were won overwhelmingly by his rivals Hamas, whose Gaza-based government remains “unrecognised” and, like Yemen, also under a suffocating internationally-imposed medieval siege.

“International law” does not regard a government as legitimate because it is supported by the masses. Rather its legitimacy depends on whether it is “recognised” by the “international community”. In other words, whether the representatives of imperialist world powers sitting around a table in New York decide to support it or not. Boiled down, that is all the United Nations, whose “recognition” of a government is key to it being regarded as “legitimate” by the media and liberal intelligentsia, actually is in reality. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis marched in support of the Sana’a government when it formed the Supreme Political Council in 2016, headed by Saleh Ali al-Sammad as its leader and the country’s head of state. Yet, as even the mainstream liberal Los Angeles Times reports, this was “quickly rejected by the United Nations”; i.e. by the world powers who control the Security Council, the only UN body capable of passing legally enforceable resolutions. In practice, the UN Security Council largely acts as a rubber stamp for acts of American aggression that Russia and China do not see it as in their interest to stick their necks out to prevent.

Venezuela is described as having “multiple governments” because Russia and China are too powerful to ignore. Libya is described as such because both sides are supported by countries aligned with the West and neither poses a major threat to US imperialism. In Yemen, because of the threat the National Salvation Government’s refusal to be controlled poses to the tight American grip on the region (and the world) and its lack of support from Russia or China, the very existence of the sovereign government is erased from mention, Orwell-style.

All this culminated in the brazen assassination of President Sammad in 2018, by airstrike in broad daylight by the Saudi military, ostensibly as part of their campaign to force the Sana’a government from power and return the whole country to the control of the American Empire (indirectly through Saudi Arabia). The cold-blooded murder of a serving head of state by the military of another country was almost completely ignored by the world’s governments and media. Why?

Because he was “unrecognised”.

At least there is one country where Sammad was not forgotten; in Yemen itself, demonstrated by the many rockets and drones developed by the anti-Saudi resistance named after him. Here’s to hoping he was able to take pleasure in the afterlife watching the sight of the crown jewel of the Saudi economy — the Abqaiq and Khurais oil refinery, the largest in the world — burning after being clobbered by his namesake rockets.