Yemen has been engulfed in a catastrophic war since March 26th, 2015. A war that has left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead and an even larger number injured. Saudi Arabia, together with the UAE and with firm political and military support from the United States and the United Kingdom, has tried with all available destructive means to impose a regime upon Yemen that was rejected and overthrown in 2014.

The nature of the war and its belligerents has been a point of contention in established media and between states alike. To its advantage, the Saudi media lobby has managed to instil the notion in most people globally that they, in fact, have the moral high ground fighting against “Houthi rebels” which is nothing but an extended arm of Iranian regional ambitions. An inherently flawed narrative at its core.

The International Commission for Solidarity with Yemen, having been established in 2018 and changed its scope and name over the years, was created to build a firm support base with what is a legitimate right of the Yemeni people to resist aggression and colonial exploitation. The ICSY is a socialist organisation at its core, believing that the Yemeni struggle against aggression is an inherent anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist struggle driven by the peasantry that constitutes a majority of people in the poverty-stricken, war-torn nation.

The ICSY believes, and considers true beyond any reasonable doubt, that the current war on Yemen is led and directed by the same forces that colonized the country in 1837 and up until 1967. The ICSY maintains that Yemen has not achieved status as a truly independent nation, having been kept chained as a semi-colony since its modern foundation in the sixties, shared between the two Yemeni nation-states.

The ICSY upholds the main tenets of the September 21st Revolution of 2014, which sought the overthrow of a kleptocratic feudalist system monetarily backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States. A system designed to keep multiple doors open for Saudi interference in virtually all affairs of Yemeni politics and society. The ICSY also believes in the notion shared in Yemen that September 21st, while unique in many ways, constitutes a corrective movement meant to straighten the paths of the two defining anti-colonial revolutions of modern, contemporary Yemen. Namely September 26th 1962, and October 14th 1963. Revolutions that, while ignited to rid the country of colonial exploitation, never properly managed to do so as Saudi Arabia became increasingly cunning in its tactics and found ways to exploit Yemen otherwise.

Believing in internationalist solidarity as a principle, the ICSY connects Yemen and its institutions to the world. We republish reports produced internally within Yemen and connect interested and outsiders with Yemen’s many state organs, cooperative mass movements and NGOs based in Sana’a. We are militant and uncompromising in our solidarity with this forgotten struggle and will fight tooth and nail to broaden the global perspective on the current war, as well as Yemeni history that ties in with current political events. Long-term, our efforts will hopefully contribute to the establishment of a broad internationalist solidarity movement in support of Yemen’s decision to become politically autonomous and independent in the face of incalculable odds.