This statement was addressed to the Chairman of the international Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

I speak to you from Sana’a, the capital of steadfastness. I speak to you as we have passed the seventh year of resistance to the Anglo-Saudi-American-Emirati aggression against Yemen. And I remember with reverence, the first statement issued by you on March 26, 2015, in which you condemned the aggression, and you quoted my saying that the goal of the aggression is to cut Yemen’s access to the New Silk Road.

Allow me to bring to you this statement, which is written under the impact of dozens of missiles falling on our city and on our country daily. Added to that is the siege which is imposed on us, the occupation of southern Yemen by foreign powers, and the planting of ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the depth of Yemen. We also considered the U.S. Senate’s announcement of the Strategic Competition Act targetting the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative, as the biggest threat to the international law of the United Nations, and an attempt to divide the world into superior and inferior sections, as was described by the great Dr. Shaaban.

For all of the above, I share with you and your guests, the following three points:

First, the peace that we seek for Yemen is comprehensive peace, that is, economic freedom in controlling our currency and credits, our right to develop within our borders, and coexistence with our surroundings in the world. So, we do not want to limit any talks about Yemen to the question of famine and the immediate health crisis. Nor limit any conversation to the ongoing battles. Rather, any talking about peace must start by stopping the aggression, lifting the siege, stopping Western financing of the aggression, meaning ISIS and Al Qaeda in Yemen; the complete departure of foreign forces and withdrawing the occupation forces from our southern province and our islands, especially Socotra.

Therefore, from this stage, we call for inclusion of the Belt and Road Initiative in a new UN Security Council resolution to address the Yemeni/Western conflict.

We know here, too, that in our defense and striking deep inside Saudi Arabia, that the Yemeni military power is developing, but also that the Army will have a role in the reconstruction process. We also want to arm ourselves with the philosophy of national credit, the policy of President Abraham Lincoln, and before him the Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, so that we leave no one behind.

Secondly, with regard to the humanitarian situation: it is more tragic and worse than what has been reported in the news. Imagine that funerals never stop now, due to the deaths as a result of the coronavirus. Those who did not die by the impact of a missile, die of COVID-19. The conspiracy now, is the slow killing of the Yemeni people by cutting off all access to food and medicine in the entirety of our territories. Also, by denying us the development opportunities of joining the New Silk Road.

Third, we value highly what the LaRouche Youth organization has offered to the youth of the world, in terms of the knowledge of economics, culture, and the true nature of mankind. It is our good fortune in the BRICS Youth Parliament in Yemen that we have been learning that metric of progress as developed by the economist, the immortal Lyndon LaRouche.

In conclusion, we would like to express also our heart-felt condolences to the family and friends of former Attorney General Ramsey Clark [the defense attorney on appeal in LaRouche’s case], who will forever be remembered in Yemen and the Arab world.

Thank you for your intellectual and moral solidarity with Yemen.

Fouad Al-Ghaffari

Mike Gravel was a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 and a U.S. Presidential candidate in 2008 and 2020. As a Senator, he became known nationally for his attempts to end the military Draft—unsuccessful, but he was very forceful about it—and for putting the so-called “Pentagon Papers” into the public record in 1971, a courageous action.

Since Vietnam, America has been engaged in many endless wars. These wars have cost many American lives and much treasure—treasure much better spent on economic development, food, and health, here and abroad, as in Syria. To continue these endless wars means more military lives lost and more civilian deaths from sickness and starvation.

America must intervene with economic development—development that will improve the lives of those in other nations. We must end the endless wars now!

Mike Gravel