Dr John Chipman, Director General and Chief Executive, IISS
Let me invite the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Yemen, Mr Al Qirbi to address us.
Dr Abu Bakr Al Qirbi, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yemen
In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Ladies and Gentlemen, peace be with you.
First of all, I would like to express my thanks to the International Institute for Strategic Studies and to the government of our sister country Bahrain for inviting me to the Manama Dialogue. I had been invited on previous occasions, but unfortunately I was not able to attend. I also wish to begin my remarks by thanking everyone who spoke this morning and expressed an interest in Yemen and spoke of the concern which should be devoted to Yemen, first of all on the part of its sister-countries in the region, then on the part of its friends both in Europe, the United States of America and in other regions of the world.
In fact, my participation at this morning's session took me by surprise after my arrival in Manama. For this reason, I would ask you to excuse me if some of my thoughts jump from one point to another. Another matter which will be more difficult is that I will also certainly be suffering now from low sugar levels after these long sessions and all the many speeches we have heard.
The fact is that the first thing I asked myself was about the title of this session: "Regional Conflicts and Outside Powers". How would it be if we turned this title around and said, "Outside Powers and Regional Conflicts", because the first title means that there are regional conflicts which arise by themselves, and then outside powers come to see how they can intervene to resolve them, and so on; whereas if we consider the other title, it means that these regional crises which occur might perhaps originate from outside powers and not from inside the country or from inside the region itself. I therefore believe that this matter calls for us to think deeply so as to discover on whom we should place the responsibility and also how we should find a treatment, because if we do not identify how the problem or the conflict basically began and who is behind it, we will not be able to find the right treatment for this conflict. I would like to speak about this in general in a few points and would like to request that none of you think I am speaking of the situation in Yemen. In fact, I am speaking about matters which concern the whole world, both in our region and outside the region.
Regional conflicts are, of course, either conflicts between states or conflicts within a state. Conflicts between states in most cases usually have causative factors. Perhaps they are border conflicts, and we in Yemen, thank God, have settled our border differences with both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and with Oman in the best possible way, that is, by means of direct dialogue based on a principle of neither harm nor malice. Thanks to this principle which begins with direct dialogue to resolve conflict, we were able avoid foreign interventions or resorting to arbitration with the political and psychological consequences resulting from it. However, in another case, when Eritrea captured the Hanish Islands in the Red Sea which are subject to Yemen, we were forced to resort to arbitration and to choose the path of peace to resolve this disagreement, and the court gave a verdict returning the islands to Yemen. Thus, we are in reality in the context of these two types of internal conflicts resulting from within or the conflict between states. We must also see how we should view this in its international context.
The third point is that true regional conflicts, if we want to be exact, may indeed be regional as far as the geographical dimension is concerned, but I do not think that anyone today can say that the political dimensions of such conflicts are limited geographically. We see the consequences of any conflict or disagreement which occurs now in North Korea or South Korea all over the world. In a similar way, any conflict which occurs today in Africa or Asia or any region of the world cannot be considered a purely regional issue but is directly transformed into an international issue.
As I said, such conflicts do not only directly or indirectly influence neighbouring countries which are perhaps affected by this conflict or are close to it. For instance, we in Yemen have been very much affected as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict because extremist and terrorist elements in Yemen exploit this Israeli conflict to show that there is an international alignment with Israel, that there is a threat to Islam, that is, there are many allegations which we have all heard about. Thus, the effect of conflicts on countries may not become apparent in many cases when we only consider the region in which this conflict has taken place.
Today, we are also in a world in which we have perhaps finished with the colonial period, and the issue has now become the issue of economic domination of the world. Regions such as ours, as we know, are of great importance to the countries of the world as a source of energy - and I believe that most of the interest shown in our region is due to energy. If there were no energy in our region, perhaps no one would be greatly concerned about conflicts here, perhaps the most important one being the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, energy is in reality the basic matter of concern and international interest in this region. I am saying that these economic interests have become directed towards outside intervention in regions. For instance, when the matter of piracy in the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean commenced, at the beginning no one was concerned about it. Then some concern began to be shown by a number of countries, and they sent their ships to combat piracy in this region, and after a short period of this, warships began to flock in from the north and from the east and from everywhere, because every country had begun to see the presence of others in the region and it was as if this would threaten or harm their interests. Thus, such foreign interventions sometimes do not come about because the country in question has a direct interest but because it is afraid of the presence of others in this region as a result of a crisis or a conflict.
In the context of these conflicts too - especially when there are internal conflicts in the country itself - these always create internal conflicts, then the neighbouring countries primarily consider how they can help resolve these differences. For instance, when we in Yemen were faced with the matter of al-Qaeda, when we were faced with the matter of the Houthis, this of course had an effect on the region. How could they help Yemen in facing these two crises? However, as regards foreign intervention too - and I believe this is a fundamental point - how is it possible to control it so that it really helps to resolve the problem and does not contribute to complicating the problem? I do not wish to give examples of foreign powers which came to help resolve a problem but in fact complicated the problem in the regions of conflict in our region and perhaps in other regions too outside this region.
For this reason, it needs to be completely clear that powers which want to come and contribute to resolving these conflicts must guarantee three extremely important matters. First, as Mrs Hillary Clinton confirmed last night, we must preserve the sovereignty and independence of states. The second point is that solutions should not be imposed from outside, but solutions should come from within the country itself. And thirdly, these crises should not just be seen as episodes of violence, but also from the standpoint of the most important element, as is the case in Yemen, and that is the economic viewpoint, because we always find that outside powers, when they come to help, always concentrate on the security aspect and completely ignore the social and economic aspects and the special situation of the country which has a great influence on the success of the solutions which are introduced. Finally, I believe that any solution in any region in which there are conflicts must not disregard the main point which will help to build stability and security, and that is the issue of human security. Thank you very much.
Dr John Chipman
Minister, thank you very much for those remarks
