Film One Transcript: Bijan Omrani and Rosie Llewellyn-Jones discuss the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and Asian Affairs

Transcription

1 Film One Transcript: Bijan Omrani and Rosie Llewellyn-Jones discuss the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and Asian Affairs Bijan Omrani: The Asian Affairs journal, I think it s fair to say, is very intimately linked with the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and its history. I think if we are going to talk about the society s journal we have to talk first about the society. Rosie, can you tell me a few things about where the society comes from, what it was at the beginning? Rosie Llewellyn-Jones: Yes, it actually grew out of the Royal Asiatic Society which was set up way back in the 1830s. So they got together and it was Sir Francis Younghusband, of Tibet fame or infamy, and Sir Cotterell Tupp, who met and decided that they would set up a new society with much more emphasis on current affairs. B: What were the early activities of the society, what did the luminaries like Curzon and Younghusband want to get out of it? R: It s a society for active people, people who are actually out in the field doing things, not just writing or historians, and there s always been I think a deliberate emphasis away from history, there s been anxiety that it shouldn t be seen to be replicating the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. B: And I mean let s be a bit more specific, what areas are the early lectures of the society focusing on, what are the society s and therefore the journal s main concerns in the beginning? RLJ: There s a lot of emphasis on travel, and obviously on exploration too, so the British knew which countries they ruled, what they were like, how they could move things around, and also there s quite a lot on economics, how you could exploit areas for what they could produce: coal; oil; certainly in Iraq, gas; natural resources; this kind of thing. BO: The first proper issue of the journal I think appears in 1914, and what impact (I mean as we are in the centenary) did the First World War have on what the journal was concerned with and what the journal put out? R: I suppose you could say it was an inauspicious time to start a journal, not so much because there were paper shortages, because there weren t during the First World War, there was a shortage of speakers, because they were all off doing things, fighting, on various fronts, so the secretary reports I think about 1916 that she can t find anyone at all who can actually lecture and since the journal was based on lectures that people gave, it becomes very thin indeed. B: How does the change and the decline in empire affect the concerns of the journal, especially if these are people who are really concerned with going out and administering and making money in the imperial lands? R: It s interesting because I think there was a kind of, how should I put it, a sort of feeling that independence certainly for India wasn t going to happen, perhaps people were fooling themselves but you get no sense of that at all. Certainly in the 1920s what people are much more involved in is with the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and how Britain now has the mandate for Iraq and Palestine and interestingly enough 1/7

2 what they try to do is to impose Indian administrative systems on the Middle East and of course that doesn t work. There is also later on, the spectre of Israel and to be perfectly honest there is quite a lot of anti-semitic feeling in the society and in its discussions and people are saying it s a threat, the Jewish threat which to us, you know looking back at it now is really quite unpleasant, but that s how people felt at the time. There s always been in the society a pro-arab I d almost say a pro-islam ethos about it. B: Looking at some of the back issues, you can see that Islam is something which does occupy the interest of the lecturers and hence the articles which are published, is there any recurring theme? R: What you ve got to remember is that Britons, Englishmen in particular, were always fascinated by the Middle East, by dressing up in native dress, you only have to think of Lawrence of Arabia, who was a great hero of the society, he wasn t actually a member but if you look at some of the things that were written about him and the fact that the society then set up a Lawrence medal to be awarded, it s a kind of almost school boy romanticism, romantic heroes, even Younghusband. B: Who were the other great explorers of more recent times that we see in the journal and talking to the society? R: We have a huge number of maps where people are plotting out their routes. As you probably know St John Philby and Bertram Thomas were the great explorers there, and we have some of their maps, and that strikes me as interesting. Now if you consider today how many places are there to be explored on foot, virtually nothing because everything has been mapped and Googled out of existence, so there is a perceptual change. B: We can t omit speaking about Sir Wilfred Thesiger, another great member of the society, what were his contributions to the journal? R: Not so much actual articles, he was a rather shy and retiring man, and I think what s interesting is that when he did write he wrote very, very simple prose. He and St John Philby didn t get on at all, there was a lot of jealousy, in fact Philby was even jealous of Lawrence and made some rather cutting remarks in letters. B: I think there is an occasion where Sir Wilfred Thesiger did speak to the society, I think it was on his 80 th birthday and I think there is a story after the lecture where he describes his explorations and he s asked by someone in the audience You haven t mentioned women in your talk and he replied I didn t see any. I think actually that s in contrast to the journal of the society because it seems to be that, contrary to what one might perceive, women made many contributions to the early period, and female explorers. Can you point to anyone who might be of interest? R: Women were treated rather like honorary men if they did do things like exploring I m thinking particularly of Professor Anne Lambton, the great Persian scholar, who did talk and lecture to the society. I mean it s interesting that the first editors of the journal were women and they were secretaries at the society and they simply took on editing as part of their secretarial role, and it wasn t until the 1960s that you find the names of the female editors actually published in the journal. B: There were lots of other characters who spoke to the society, are there any others that particularly stick in your mind that were in the journal? 2/7

3 R: Yes someone I ve always had a great admiration for was Mildred Cable, the great missionary who despite rejections and virtually nobody becoming converted to Christianity still went off into the Gobi desert, she is a woman I do admire because of her dogged belief that sooner or later they would become Christians. You mentioned Rosita Forbes and she is another great heroine of mine, in fact I ve just been looking at her book Russian Road when she s going from Kabul to Samarkand and her descriptions are absolutely marvellous across the Musser Pass at midnight and she says that at one point the moon had gone, so had the fan belt. B: The time of empire is now passed, we are in the 21 st century, in what ways has the journal changed? R: Oh that is an interesting question, it did at first seem inconceivable that the empire was going to slip away, but slip it did and it s interesting how members of the society reacted to it fairly quickly, they were starting to look for new business opportunities, and there is not that much nostalgia either, looking back, so I think you would find still the same kind of spirit of enterprise looking at business ventures, much more outward looking than one might imagine. B: But there are still perennial areas of concern, subjects where we see articles coming up again and again, questions which have never been answered in regions of the East. RLJ: Well, certainly, I mean the Israel question, that was debated long and hard, and really that hasn t been resolved. I suppose if we wanted to have a more recent example there is the Kashmir question, because when India was partitioned it was done in a hurry as you know, and it was done fairly messily and that s something which has rumbled on for the last 70 years, that has not been resolved, and I suppose you would have had articles saying whither Kashmir in 1949 and you could still have them today, whither Kashmir. B: I could take that cue and ask whither the journal? R: Whither the journal? What I like about the journal is that it has articles you re not expecting and I think that s good, so it s lively, I look forward to it because it s always slightly unexpected. Controversial? Not really, that s not what it s for, what it is is to inform people to extend our knowledge of places we can t ourselves always travel to, to make us think in different ways that is why it s valuable. B: Yes I don t think of it as a conventional academic journal, it s something a bit different, I mean trying to draw the threads together about the character of the journal. I mean can we tie that up altogether? R: One thing you do notice over the years is that you stop getting Britons talking about far flung places, you actually get people who are professors, diplomats, businessmen in their own countries, and they re putting their own points of view, this is a notable change, so we really have the best opinions that we can get, we ve had some excellent speakers. B: So there has been a grand rebalancing from these denizens and masters of empire. It s no longer a window into the frontal lobe of the imperial mind, it s now something much more balanced? R: Oh absolutely yes, I would say it certainly is and it s also good when we have articles by younger academics, you know people who have been out working in 3/7

4 China if you like, a Chinese school, how the Chinese look at education, this kind of thing. Another thing you notice is that it is beautifully written, it s not awkward, it s something easy to read. In fact I gave a couple of the journals to a Saudi Arabian student of mine and I said this is good English, this is the kind of English you should follow and I like to think it is a model for younger people too, this is how you should write. B: Well hopefully we can keep it like that. R: I hope so. B: Rosie, thank you very much for coming in to talk about the history of the journal today. R: Not at all, my pleasure. Film Two Transcript: Dr Noel Brehony and Sir Harold Walker, KCMG, discuss the article Yemen and the Huthis: Genesis of the 2015 Crisis Sir Harold Walker (HW): We were looking for solid articles in English English and, if I may say so, your article on Yemen and the Huthis: Genesis of the 2015 Crisis is a model. I mean, if you were a captain of industry or a senior civil servant or somebody and you asked a junior for a briefing on Yemen today, they could hardly do better than say Well Sir, here is it, here is Noel Brehony s article. Is this a sectarian religious movement, or a tribal movement, or a political movement named after an eponymous Houthi family, or how would you characterise it? Dr Noel Brehony (NB): The Huthis movement arose originally in the early 1990s, but the background was a long term unhappiness by the Zaydi Shi a which really had its origins in the civil war of the 1960s, but from the Huthis perspective they ve seen a regime in Sana a which is mostly run by Zaydi politicians, pursuing an agenda which is not in their view the right agenda for Yemen. The actual movement began in the early 1990s in an organisation called The Believing Youth, founded by a member of the family, with the encouragement at the time of the regime, which was at that time trying to encourage a revival of Zaydism to combat the growing (as they saw it) threat from the Salafi Islam which they had in a sense released. It was repressed in the early 2000s in a violent way by the regime which in turn produced violence, which led to 6 rounds of fighting between 2000 and HW: I remember from my own experience years ago, there was a strong civil society including strong trade union movement so, a difficult question, but how, for the viewer, would you characterise the Yemeni polity? NB: Much of the current issues to try and answer your question, we need to go back to the way that Ali Abdullah Saleh, who became president in 1978, set up his regime. He came to power at the end of a very difficult period for him. His two predecessors were assassinated in the previous 18 months and very few people expected him to last very long, and he created a system whereby if you were loyal and prepared to back President Saleh you were provided with patronage, and if you weren t you were excluded. Over the years he s developed a system, which essentially has a military heart, but embraces tribal leaders throughout the 4/7

5 country, local leaders throughout the country, business interests in a system which as long as you cooperate and are loyal there is some form of reward for you, if you are not you are excluded, and the Sa ada area which is where the Huthis are from was one of those which were excluded from this, as indeed was South Yemen in the 1990s. In 1967 when the British were in fact forced to leave by the National Liberation Front, it set up a communist regime, a Marxist regime. Unity in 1990 was really forced because of flaws in the southern state, which in their memory is a very good state, the leading figures in it were unable to settle their political differences through normal politics and it eventually ended in a civil war, a party civil war, in 1986, which I think destroyed the legitimacy of the regime, and also the legitimacy of the People s Democratic Republic (it was called) had become beholden to the Soviet Block for support, particularly military and security support and when with the collapse of the Soviet Union from 1989 the state really lost its way and it was really in effect forced to either to enter unity, it was just a matter of what terms. The problem was the terms of the unity were rushed. I mean if you can imagine trying to sort out the two states I described in 6 months, which was a challenge that they set themselves, you can understand why it led to a civil war in 1994 which led to the extension of the Saleh regime and all its characteristics to the south, which from the southern perspective has been seen increasingly as an occupation. Well, I wouldn t want to give the impression that all southerners see it in that way, it s quite divided in the south, and this is one of the problems with the southern movement. HW: So in your view what are the motivations behind the Saudi intervention in Yemen? NB: What the Saudi objectives are, are to restore the rule of President Hadi which is in their perspective and indeed internationally implementing the UN resolution 2216 of this year, which called upon the Huthis to withdraw from the areas they ve taken and for the restoration of power of President Hadi. I think more recently the Saudis have said that they recognise that the Huthis must play a part in the future of Yemen but it shouldn t be a special part. HW: So what extent do you think foreign intervention other than the Saudi has had an effect, beneficial or otherwise, or is there still a role to play? NB: The international community I think did do a very good deed in 2011 intervening, which led to the deal whereby President Saleh resigned, but that was essentially designed to stop a civil war because by that time the two factions within the Saleh regime were about to fight each other. I think if the international community hadn t gone in, there might well have been a civil war within the regime at that time. The second part of the UN deal was that there would be a restructuring of the military and security services designed to reduce the power of the networks and I think the failure was that that wasn t done. It s difficult to blame anyone because the reality is those networks remain very, very powerful. One has seen their effect today although we talk about the war between the Huthis and perhaps the international coalition, of course the Huthis are allied with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the large section of the army which is the elite section of the army that was under his influence. So despite the fact there has been 4 years of transition the army, at least the elite parts, have been unaffected. Without that happening political reform, even the implementation of the national dialogue, is not really possible. The other flaw of the deal was to allow President Saleh to remain in Yemen, he is no longer president but he remains head of the main political party of which President Hadi became president, was the deputy, and he operated and just 5/7

6 continued to operate from behind the scenes. The UN resolutions were designed to prevent that, but were simply unable to do so. HW: One aspect of affairs in the Yemen has received a lot of attention in fact from a Western point of view, I suppose probably exaggerated attention; you referred to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which seems to be the strongest offshoot of Al Qaeda and I suspect that attention to it has skewed United States policy somewhat being rightly here very focused on terrorism. Can you say why it is that AQAP took such root (or did it?) in the Yemen and can you forecast whether it will be defeated? NB: Post 2000, well post 9/11, there was a significant campaign against Al Qaeda in Yemen which really did defeat it, but in 2006 there were a number of escapees including the current leadership who revived the organisation and in 2009 it linked with the Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia which had been expelled, driven out of there by a very effective Saudi counterterrorist programme, to form this new organisation which from the outset has had an international agenda which I think is why the US and others are interested. It clearly has the ambition and retains the capacity to launch, to mount attacks abroad, and as there has been evidence of this, but in particular it also helped pioneer the use of the Lone Wolf attacks through the internet. A man called Anwar al-awlaki was a leading figure in the Al Qaeda and he I think has been seen as one of the factors in several successful and frustrated terrorist operations in the west. But what has happened really in the last few years is with the problems in 2011 and subsequently, Al Qaeda has opportunities which it didn t have before to move into areas which were vacated for one reason or another by the State or by the Security Services, so it has expanded in this period and it is using the current situation for example to pose, blend itself as a defender of Sunni Islam against Shi a militias. HW: Noel, can I ask you briefly about the economy, the statistics that come out about the degree of poverty, lack of employment, declining water supplies, declining oil revenues, are all rather appalling and obviously these figures won t have been improved by the fighting, so would you like to say something about the economy and how it can be improved? NB: For the last 20 years it s really dependent on oil and gas revenues, and these have been declining for the last 10 years and it will decline even more sharply in the future and it s very difficult to see any oil companies or gas companies going into Yemen in the next few years given the political circumstances. Yemen is primarily still an agricultural country, in the sense that over 50 per cent of the people live in rural areas although it actually does import something like most of its food needs, and a party will need to I think look at the whole way that agriculture has been developed. It s going to take a massive sustained economic aid programme for a very long time. HW: Yes thank you. I have one last question, a no doubt unfair one, but you may or may not answer it. It s always said that forecasting is dangerous to the point of impossibility, particularly about the future, but could you just give us a few lines on what you see as the Yemen s future against the complicated background you ve given us? NB: Well, I have always tried to be an optimist on Yemen, but I am outnumbered I think 20 to 1 by the pessimists, and I have to say they ve been right more than me. The particular problems at the moment and I think, because the short term problems will affect the long term, is that the way the war is going, it s empowering local groups in different parts of the country, but particularly in South Yemen. Many of the people that liberated in the southern provinces are local groups, some of whom would like to see an independent South Yemen I 6/7

7 think, and I would regard most of these forces as being anti Huthis, not necessarily pro the current regime, and it s going to be difficult for whoever follows the current system to try and re-integrate these people into the country. I think over the next few weeks we will see forces moving closer to Sana a, I think there will be a siege of Sana a perhaps, I doubt if the Saudiled coalition want to go to the southern and northern areas because the terrain there is one that the Huthis know very well. Now what will emerge from that is very unclear because the international community, Saudi Arabia, want the restoration of President Hadi. I think there are negotiations going on in Muscat which are looking at the formation of the Presidential Council that would replace these people, and there has to be some way of finding a place for the Huthis who remain pretty strong, and all that s going to be very, very difficult, but unless this can be done I think one is in for a very long period of instability in Yemen I m afraid. HW: Well thank you very much, the situation in the Yemen is clearly extremely complex, but your scope of knowledge is really very impressive and speaking for myself I shall read my newspapers with a great deal more clarity on the Yemen from here on in. Thank you so much. 7/7