RNA - The illegal war has killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children. According to the UN, from March 2015 to January 2017, 16,200 people have been killed, including over 10,000 civilians. The dirty campaign, which has included widespread bombing of civilian areas (schools, markets, weddings, funerals, hospitals and health care centers), has been sharply condemned by the international community – although the United Nations is yet to issue an anti-Saudi resolution to join the ranks!
It’s the anniversary of this criminal, illegal and dirty campaign. It has normalized the rationale that you can drop terror bombs, murder civilians, and get away with it. It’s dirty when one realizes that this is what the people of Iraq and Syria are also experiencing right now. More bomb tonnage has been dropped on them than in Yemen, but no worriers. The poorest country in the Arab world is slowly catching up - with not one word in Western “fakestream” media on what it must have been like to live under such terrible conditions. For them, Yemen is a forgotten war and a trying ground for Western weapons.
On this anniversary, equally unnerving is the lack of official protests as well as the deafening silence at the United Nations Security Council, where in fact come of the self-appointed bully-boy members are at the forefront of the air war - the United States and Britain. Tens of thousands of people killed and wounded thus far, millions more made refugees, and nary an anti-Saudi resolution, let alone a word from the new UN chief. Silly enough, they have given the Saudis a top seat at the Human Rights Council instead. What a disgrace!
In any case, the bombing of Yemen at will to invoke Wahhabi values is not a one-time thing but rather the start of a long course of military presence and permanent war in the region for the United States. All this to punish a supposed Tehran-backed resistance front, protect a deposed puppet regime, force Yemen to cooperate with the Zionist regime of Israel, upset regional security, invent new wars, hide the extent of assassinations by drone, and hide the ugliness of it all - with a helping hand from Al-Qaeda and ISIL brutes.
Today, we have the anniversary marking the start of the Saudi-led, US-backed war on Yemen in the name of the highest ideals with the most brutal tactics. Thanks to this, millions of Yemenis are still going hungry. The bombing has gone on, relentlessly, for the past two years. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein says possible war crimes have been documented with alarming frequency since the Saudis became engaged.
In addition to thousands of civilians killed directly by Saudi bombs, the bombing has also been responsible for the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, from water facilities to sewage treatment plants to hospitals. Particularly devastating has been the bombing of the port of Hodeidah, where most of the humanitarian aid has been entering the country. Two-thirds of the population now requires food assistance and a child dies every 10 minutes from hunger and the lack of medical facilities.
Don’t expect this humanitarian catastrophe, this largest food insecurity emergency in the world to end anytime soon. The Saudi war criminals are threatening to make matters significantly worse by launching a major military campaign in the area of Hudaidah that will make the port totally inaccessible. And it’s not just the Saudis for Yemen’s destruction. The United States also has blood on its hands. Like his predecessor, President Trump is selling massive amounts of weapons to the Saudis and helping them with logistical support, including refueling Saudi planes in the air. No second thoughts here.
The Trump administration is also stepping up the fight against Yemen as part of its plan “to get tough on Iran”. It alleged Iran’s military support for the Ansarullah fighters when putting Iran “on notice” in February. It’s silly when one realizes that they haven’t got a shred of evidence to back their criminal obsession with Tehran.
Whatever this is, there is no legal basis for the new escalation against Yemen, and this dirtiness, this madness has to stop. The Trump administration has no right to distort domestic and international laws limiting the use of lethal force against civilian objects. Critically, it has no right to designate parts of Yemen as “areas of active hostilities, including normalization of the practice of killings outside theater of war, with no UN oversight, as well as extending more permissive standards for killing - those applicable to actual war zones - to non-war contexts, even though far more stringent human rights standards apply in those areas.
Albeit the US-backed, Saudi-led war on Yemen is expanding fast, as a consequence of which the limits of war as we know it has virtually dissolved. The global legal framework that protects life and preserves international peace and security has also disappeared. The international civil society should hold its head in shame. Many more innocent people will die in the coming weeks and months.
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