This is CVS I in the world. I'm John Bautzer with Edmund Fitten Brow.

Writing at Long War Journal and appearing on podcast with Bill Rajo at Long War Journal.

The ambassador is former UK Ambassador to Yemen, a coordinator of the UN Security Council's monitoring team before that for the bad guys and now a senior advisor to the Counter-extremism project.

So what is to be done about the huthies?

Edmund in generally I read history that the battlefield settles nothing, that the

politician settles something. Is there a motive for the

politicians in NATO, in the EU, in Washington, certainly in Riyadh, is there a motive to settle the huthies once and for all?

Because this is costing money.

Yes, John, it is costing money and it's also, this is a conflict that suffers from being a little bit far away.

It doesn't quite capture attention in the United States or the United Kingdom or Europe in the way that the conflict in Gaza has or in Syria, many other places in the Middle East which are just closer to the West and also

which may be more strategically important in the Islamic world.

Yemen is a little bit further away and people don't know it as well.

And so I think there has always been, I think the policy on Yemen has always suffered from being slightly under-resourced by the West.

One of the things that resulted from that was that when I was ambassador I found that

Western governments were very easily distracted by criticism of Saudi Arabia and it's very popular to

criticize Saudi Arabia it's a it's a large prominent country and you

there are things that people object to about it particularly to do with

women's rights quite correctly of course and you know an aversion to aspects of islamic law

chari law

uh... the uh... the uh... the uh... the uh... the uh... the sort of overuse of the death penalty

and things of that kind

so i would find that our policy on yen Yemen was influenced more than it should be by some natural aversion

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