The war on Yemen has lasted six years and killed over 100,000 people. The amount of Yemenis experiencing food insecurity is rapidly rising. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) 16,500 people in the country were living under famine conditions at the end of 2020 and they estimate that number could rise to 47,000 by the end of June.
A recent investigation by CNN detailed how Saudi warships block fuel from entering Yemen, making it effectively impossible for trucks to bring in aid to the beleaguered population. “CNN obtained documents from the port’s arrival log showing that 14 vessels had been cleared by the UN’s verification and inspection body to carry fuel to the country,” reads the report. “The tracking website MarineTraffic.com shows those vessels are now sitting in the Red Sea between the Saudi-Yemen border and Eritrea, unable to unload their fuel.”
On March 29, activists launched a hunger strike in Washington DC to demand that the United States end its support for the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen.
The action was organized by the Yemeni Liberation Movement (YLM). Mondoweiss spoke with Monica Isaac, an organizer with YLM who participated in the hunger strike.
Michael Arria: What’s the state of the hunger strike and how are you feeling?
Monica Isaac: I personally did it for seven days. I have a medical condition so I had to be wary about this from the beginning. I was told by a medic that I had to start eating a little bit, but there are still folks who are still fully hunger striking and are under medical supervision because your mind gets very foggy. My mental response was getting really weak, my hands were shaking. You have to remember that we were hunger striking and also fully on the ground organizing a very demanding action. We weren’t just cooped up in a room, sitting there and not eating. We were being very mobile, so it’s been very demanding and difficult on our bodies.
We really want to stress that what we’ve gone through is just a fraction of what the people of Yemen deal with.
Tell me about the Yemeni Liberation Movement.
We began last spring and we’ve been together as a group organizing for a solid year now. We came together during the uprisings at the beginning of 2020 to mobilize and educate our communities, to end the war in Yemen, and restore liberation and sovereignty to the country.
Most of us live in the Detroit and Dearborn area in Michigan. There’s a really large concentration of Yemenis in those communities. We really wanted to heed that call, educate our people, and unite our struggle with so many of the other Arab communities that exist in the area and with our black family in Detroit. We were holding a lot of rallies, public events, and demonstrations.
We’ve worked with a lot of local organizations like Palestinian Youth Movement, who have been unwavering in helping us. Anakbayan, which is a Filipino youth organization. We’ve had a lot of help from our community.
Earlier this year President Biden announced an end to U.S. support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen. It remains unclear exactly what that will end up meaning. What were your impressions of that news and what you’ve seen from the administration since?
When we heard that we were immediately skeptical. Iman Saleh, who is our general coordinator and our hero through all this–she’s on Day 10 of her hunger strike, she coined this perfectly. She called it “war crimes gymnastics.”
Biden is saying the administration does not support any offensive tactics, but they are still supporting this fuel blockade. So they’re saying they want aid to get to Yemen and they support that, but the fuel blockade does not allow that. Trucks can’t transport aid without fuel, hospital generators can’t function without fuel. So, we’re seeing a continuation of the genocide. So I think Biden’s words are just words. They’re just words to manipulate the public into thinking that they support the Yemeni people and support aid, but that’s entirely untrue.
You mentioned this already, but I was reading that Michigan is home to roughly 30,000 Yemeni-Americans. Can you talk about the community there and how they’re impacted by the situation?
We did a particular rally as an organization in the summer, a two-day rally. It brought out so many different generations of Yemenis. We had so many people come up to us and say, “We feel like nobody cares about us. We feel so ignored, even by our own Arab community.” So that was an emotional two days, to see people come up to us and really feel acknowledged.
They’re having to hear about their families dying back home and struggling back home. Their families back home are unable to pay for medication or get their family to a hospital because cabs are so expensive. I think they feel acknowledged and that’s a big part of our work, to build community.
I saw that [Minnesota Rep.] Ilhan Omar came out and spoke with the protestors yesterday. How was that interaction and have you heard from any other elected officials?
We have. We were super thankful that she was able to come down and meet Iman Saleh and her sister Muna, who have both been hunger striking for ten days. She showed a lot of vocal support and offered future support. There’s also a congressional letter that many have signed onto. We’ve been hearing from many Representatives: Rashida Tlaib [D-MI], Cori Bush [D-MO], and it’s all trickling in. People are beginning to pick up on this and realize they have to push this and that’s all from grassroots efforts.
That segues nicely into my final question. Activists often have a difficult time permeating the mainstream discourse or getting politicians to respond to the work they’re doing. This movement has had some real success in that regard. Even if the Biden announcement is just rhetoric, it still seems notable that he felt he had to do it. What do you attribute your successes to?
All credit to the people because all power to the people. I think we’re also realizing all our struggles are very much connected. So where we are finding a lot of strength, besides our internal work, is understanding how all our struggles are connected.
Folks in Yemen unable to get water? I can connect that to the fact our black communities in Detroit have homes without water, I can connect that to fact Palestinians don’t have access to water and all these things are very much tied to an imperialist and capitalist notion. We are also realizing our power. If we are talking about grassroots activism, that’s where our power lies: understanding our connected struggles and coming together. That’s what they fear, us coming together and building power together.
