Yemen, where hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest the first anniversary of the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led offensive against the Houthi rebels. The protests were said to be the largest in Yemen since demonstrations in 2011 forced the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Since the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led intervention began last March, more than 6,000 people have been killed in Yemen, about half of them civilians. According to UNICEF, nearly 10 million children are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and 320,000 are at risk of severe acute malnutrition. Meanwhile, the U.S. launched air attacks on al-Qaeda in southern Yemen, killing 14 people described by local sources as suspected militants.
Sarah Leah Whitson talking:
What the U.S. is doing goes well beyond providing military assistance, as in the weapons that are actually being used in this war. What’s less known and less understood, and what the U.S. government has been very deliberately vague about, is that the U.S. is actually sitting in the Riyadh Command Center providing targeting assistance—this is what they’ve told us—as well as providing refueling for aircraft. Now, the targeting assistance, it is what’s most problematic, because we don’t know whether they’re providing targeting assistance on a strike-by-strike basis, whether they’re just reviewing the strike lists, whether they’re actually telling the Saudis what they should strike. And that is what we are asking the United States to come clean about. We want to know exactly which strikes the U.S. government has provided assistance for.
the U.S. and the United Kingdom have both sold cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia. And now we have documented finding in strikes the duds of American-made cluster munitions. Recently, some British-made cluster munitions were also found. These cluster bombs were used in civilian areas and civilian sites, including, for example, Sana’a University, where there were remnants of cluster munitions.
Saudi Arabia has been on a “global arms shopping spree” and is now the world’s largest purchaser of weapons. It’s a petrodollar-funded acquisition campaign, and it has been going on for a long time. The figures I cited of their purchases from the United States just last year of $20 billion is just a piece of it. They are a shopper from many, many European countries. And if you look at the arms that they’ve been buying for the past two decades, the figures are just staggering. What I think is even more surprising is that UAE, with a population of less than a million people, a fighting-age population of, you know, a couple of 20,000 or 30,000 men, is the fourth largest purchaser of weapons and is fighting, actively fighting, in five wars. It’s just—it’s very hard to comprehend the purpose of these weapons, but it’s very clear that the narrative of a Sunni-Shia war, of this enmity between Saudi Arabia and Iran, is very, very lucrative for defense companies.
U.S. companies profiting just last year, $20 billion. If you look a five-year ratio—and the figures are not always easy to come by, because they’re hidden sort of as contracts and when they’re going to be fulfilled and when they’re not going to be fulfilled—the figure just from the United States is well over $50 billion.
Farea Al-Muslimi talking:
this is something that has been going through the last year. The humanitarian situation has gotten really bad, or really worse than it was. What’s, I guess, more striking in this war in Yemen is humans are kind of the weakest cycle in this intense fighting happening between the Houthis and between the Saudis, whom—both sides have very little, if any, consideration for humanitarian laws and for international war laws. This is a serious issue because it’s not just the bombing that has—you know, and the extensive fighting that has been killing civilians, but also the imposed internal and external siege on the country have made medicine, food and all sorts of basic lives close to impossible to get in some areas, even if you had the cash. The problem of fuel shortages, the problem of—has created a lot of—or much of a black market, much of a black market around Yemen.
But more importantly, despite the fact, you know, both sides, the Houthis and the Saudis, have been claiming to fight each other, actually, the biggest payer or the biggest consequences of this war have been civilians around Yemen, not, I think—I’m pretty sure that the 6,000 figure of those died the last year are much less than they are actually—they are actually in the ground. I’m sure it’s much, much more than this. It’s just very hard right now to document, to travel around the country, and it’s very hard for international media to continue following the news in Yemen. There is obviously other crises in the region, like Syria, Libya, that has gotten a lot of attention, comparatively speaking, to Yemen, and have, in a way—in a way or another, have made Yemen’s space in the international media and in the international even aid work attention very much limited than it actually needs or much less than the catastrophe on the ground.
the issue of the U.S. policy in Yemen is not, you know, since last year, since it started, unconditionally supporting the Saudis in this big warfare, but even goes back to 2013 and much before that, when it conducted a lot of airstrikes, but also drone strikes, around Yemen. What’s, I guess, you know, as much as—and this is not just something new, but I think something that will always carry with the legacy of a President Obama, which is, you know, compared to his relative success in Cuba, with the nuclear deal, Yemen has been one of the big dark marks in his eight years in the presidency. First of all, you know, he used the drones in one year comparatively much more than even Bush used in eight years. But then it went on to this support of unconditional airstrikes in Yemen with the Saudis.
But even more—I think even much more dangerous than the arm deals is this international protection at the U.N. Security Council. Let’s not forget, last year, the United States and the United Kingdom and much of the big powers blocked the attempt to create an international investigative committee on war crimes that have been possibly committed in the conflict in Yemen. Despite the fact there has been a clear evidence of multiple war crimes have been committed, the United States and a lot of the Western countries have blocked any attempt to investigate this, have even provided an easy path and easy, comfortable support for the coalition in the U.N. Security Council, but overall in the Western decision-making cycles.
media coverage is unfortunately not as much as it should be, very, very limited. But there is kind of also strict rules have been imposed by both the Houthis and the coalition and the legitimate government. Both are not, obviously, doing anything good around the country, so they have imposed strict conditions and strict lines against, you know, even attempting to travel to the country, or even very, very strong, tight or very oppressive, even on those journalists around the country—even those right now in Sana’a or in Yemen have been jailed multiple times. And some have been used as human shields by the Houthis. At the same time, other journalists have been killed in airstrikes around the country. So, it’s—you know, it’s a problem where there isn’t already much correspondents and much media in Yemen, but even it has just got much worse since this last coalition or since this last war started earlier last year.
Sarah Leah Whitson talking:
I was just in Yemen last week, and I can say that it’s very hard for international media to operate in Yemen, particularly to get out of, for example, Sana’a, because it’s just simply very dangerous. And airstrikes are a real, live threat. There are land mines, there are cluster munitions. It’s a very high security risk for journalists to get out, particularly to the areas that have been the worst struck. We’ve been trying to do our best in that circumstance. Very brave U.N. workers have been trying to do their best to get aid. But it’s not an easy war to cover.
What I find more disturbing, understanding the limited coverage, is the absence of a framing of a narrative into the terror that’s being brought on the Yemeni people. You know, there’s this global outrage when Brussels Airport and a coffee shop is struck, and Yemenis are asking me, “Why is there no global outrage when our schools, when our universities, when our hospitals, when our clinics, or when football fields, when playgrounds are bombed with U.S. bombs? Where is the outrage at attacks on civilians here in Yemen?” And the absence of that parallel framing, of that comparison, is very, very difficult for Yemenis to understand.
Every time there’s a major attack on civilians, like the recent attack on a marketplace where Saudi bombs killed over a hundred civilians, and there is a bit of outrage from the U.N. that comes from that, the Saudis immediately talk about a ceasefire and a peace process. Clearly, the war is going very badly for the Saudis, in that they’re not effectuating their gains, they’re not displacing the Houthis from power, they’re not able to restore former President Hadi to power. And there’s a lot of pressure domestically on Saudi Arabia to wrap it up. The Emirates already wants out. They’ve reduced their troops by half. They realize this was not a good idea. So I think there are a lot of pressure, good pressure points to get Saudi to wrap up this war, end this war. But whether that will bring peace to Yemen is very hard to say, because the country has been so seriously disrupted, not just politically, of course, but on a humanitarian scale.
Farea Al-Muslimi talking:
very few people would make people like, you know, Hamid Karzai or Nouri al-Maliki look fine. Unfortunately, our president is one of those people. I mean, there has been so much happening in Yemen and so much destruction have been done the last year and a half and before that, and it is very hard to imagine the Houthis’ ability to have done this harm or for the Saudis, if it was not for his and his Cabinet’s misperformance around the country and in their—in achieving their duties. It’s very hard to see the president claiming 85 percent of the country is liberated, while he’s still outside the country, while still remotely.
There has been serious issues in Yemen. There has—a lot of political failure has happened the last three years. And unfortunately, you know, whether the president or the Houthis or the team that has been running the country are a big part of this problem. And it’s very hard to imagine any way forward with this mentality of blaming or of mentality of, you know, not taking responsibility of what they should have done in Yemen over the last few years. It’s hard to imagine that anything could have been fixed or could be fixed in the near future, as we are still having this big failure by the government, but also this failure to act upon the international resolutions, 2216. And it’s a serious issue. For example, we have Hadhramaut in the east side of the country, where it’s literally taken by al-Qaeda, one of the richest and one of the biggest areas in Yemen, while the Cabinet and the president and the government has done nothing to liberate this from al-Qaeda. It’s a very serious issue we have in Yemen that, you know, not just the Houthis and not just all of this coup sides by Saleh, but also by the government and by the regime that is not doing what it should have been doing since the last four years.
Sarah Leah Whitson talking:
the U.S. population should know that the United States government is actively fighting in this war. According to the laws of war, it is a party to the conflict. It’s helping. It’s fighting alongside Saudi Arabia, supporting the war in Yemen, that is indiscriminately bombarding Yemeni children, Yemeni schools, Yemeni hospitals. And it will be very hard for President Obama to complain about violent extremist attacks that attack Paris and Brussels, even Ankara, when our weapons and our military personnel are assisting Saudi Arabia commit terrible attacks on Saudi schools and Saudi hospitals. That’s going to come back to us. To the U.S. government, we have an open question: What are you targeting? Tell the American people what you are targeting in Yemen.
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Farea Al-Muslimi
visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2013, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the U.S. secret drone program. He is also the co-founder and chairman of the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies.
Sarah Leah Whitson
executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division.
— source democracynow.org