Saturday, December 05, 2009
Moroccan troops in Yemen?II
Carlos sent me this (and I cite with his permission): "Regarding the alleged Moroccan troops in Yemen I'd like to point out who has run the story in the first place here in Spain. The Spanish media that al-Quds quotes as its source is a right-wing tabloid called "El Imparcial" published and written by a bunch of Fascistic supporters of Francisco Franco. This newspaper is notoriously unreliable and fond of conspiracy theories (for instance, it was one of the staunchest defenders of the theory that purported that the Basque separatist group ETA was behind the bombings of Madrid in March 11 2004, something completely ridiculous which never had any basis). In this case, the correspondent in Morocco does his best to present the war in Yemen as a conflict between Shiism and Sunnism and a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia (described as "the custodian of the two holy sites of Islam"). He also presents the Houthis as the aggressors (following the orders of Iran, of course) and sates that the Yemeni Government didn't have any option but asking Saudi Arabia for military help. This distorted narrative fits into its agenda of criminalizing Iran at all costs, the country that they consider the biggest threat of the world. I don't know wether the story is true but I haven't seen anything about it in any other newspaper, Spanish (all of them have at least a correspondent in Morocco) or not. If El Imparcial" is the only one source of this story, it is likely that it is completely false."