The US had access to records of Riyadh-led coalition’s airstrikes in Yemen, and Saudis “often ignored” no-strike lists provided by Washington, The New York Times reported. RNA - “A former senior State Department official said that the United States had access to records of every airstrike over Yemen since the early days of the war, including the warplane and munitions used,” the NYT reported in an article, titled Arms Sales to Saudis Leave American Fingerprints on Yemen’s Carnage, published on Tuesday.
It stated that “American fingerprints are all over the air war in Yemen”, where the strikes killed thousands of civilians.
“At the same time, American efforts to advise the Saudis on how to protect civilians often came to naught. The Saudis whitewashed an American-sponsored initiative to investigate errant airstrikes and often ignored a voluminous no-strike list,” it reported.
According to the article, Tom Malinowski, a former assistant sectary of state, stressed that the Saudis were given “specific coordinates of targets” that should not be struck but they continued to strike those targets.
“That struck me as a willful disregard of advice they were getting,” Malinowski was quoted as saying, adding that “in the end, we concluded that they were just not willing to listen".
However, the US military continued its support for the airstrikes, the article read.
Emphasizing that the US support for the Yemen conflict came under scrutiny after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in early October, the article noted that the incident “ended American air-to-air refueling of coalition warplanes in November but has otherwise continued to support the war”.
“This month, the Senate voted to end American military assistance to the war altogether, a sharp rebuke to the [Donald] Trump administration, but the bill died when the House refused to consider it,” the daily recalled.
The article also quoted Daniel L. Byman, a professor at Georgetown University, who said, “This war has been a strategic disaster for the Saudis.”
Noting that the airstrikes could not defeat the Houthis, he stated that the United States needs to use its power to promote peace and stability in Yemen, stating that “and it needs to protect its allies from themselves”.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
Official UN figures say that more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began in March 2015. But the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) believes that at least 56,000 people have lost their lives in the war. The violence has also left around two-thirds of Yemen’s population of 27 million relying on aid amid an ongoing strict naval and aerial blockade. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
Save the Children, a charity, has reported that more than 84,700 children under the age of five may have starved to death in Yemen since the Saudi regime and a coalition of its allies launched the brutal war on the already-impoverished nation.
Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people in need and is seeing a spike in needs, fuelled by ongoing conflict, a collapsing economy and diminished social services and livelihoods.
A number of Western countries, the US, the UK, and France in particular, are accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.
an Oxfam representative stated that the US, UK, and French governments are behind millions of people starving in Yemen because they are “supporting this war".
“We have 14 million people starving,” Richard Stanforth, Oxfam UK’s regional policy officer for the Middle East, told RT, adding that "British, French, American governments are all behind this, they are all supporting this war".
A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.
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