UN Could End Saudi War Crimes in Yemen - It Just Doesn't Want To

Rasa - The United Nations is warning that the humanitarian situation in Yemen is getting worse, saying it is time to recognize that the crisis has already arrived, with mounting starvation, war casualties, and an outbreak of cholera.

News ID: 430071

Date: 02 June 2017 - 20:11

RNA - Yemen was already the Middle East’s poorest nation in 2014, when Saudi Arabia attacked the country, intending to reinstall their former puppet president. The failed military aggression has been far longer than the Saudis expected, and heavy airstrikes have killed thousands of civilians. Strange enough, UN special envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould-Cheikh Ahmed is particularly quick to fault the people of Yemen and the resistance group of Ansarollah for their unwillingness to enter into peace talks!

Ahmed claims, “Yemenis are paying a price for their needless delay,” which is far from the truth for the following reasons:

1- It is important not to lose sight of the fact that peace talks and ceasefire proposed by the UN failed because the aggressors – the Saudi-led and US-British sponsored coalition bombing the country – wanted them to fail. This criminal policy mirrors precisely the start of the bombing campaign itself. A month after the bombing began, it was revealed that “Operation Decisive Storm” had been initiated just as Yemen’s warring parties were on the verge of signing a power-sharing agreement that could have ended the political crisis and war.

2- The war, intended to stop the progress of democracy, is being waged by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, and whispers have been circulating for months that Yemen is his Vietnam. Just as the Saudis helped the Al Khalifa regime in Bahrain squash a pro-democracy uprising during the Arab Spring, or when many of America’s rogue allies leapt behind efforts to depose the pro-Iran Syrian government, the real aim behind pulverizing Yemen is “to blunt Iran's independence-seeking movement and cause”. The campaign is never intended for democracy, legitimacy and security.

3- A Wikileaks report of Saudi Foreign Ministry documents has uncovered a near obsession with Iran, with diplomats in Africa, Asia and Europe monitoring Iranian activities in minute detail and top government agencies plotting moves to limit the spread of Iran's influence and independence-seeking model. This is why the Saudis often seem reluctant to put their full energies into peace talks.

4- Both the US and Britain are arming and aiding a fundamentalist dictatorship that’s bombing and killing civilians. This is an incontestable fact. The Saudi tyranny has been waging war on Yemen for over two years. The regime changers are intervening: not simply by supplying weapons but by providing the Saudi-led coalition of Arab dictators with military advisers and intelligence. The US and Britain are effectively at war – and they don’t want peace either.

5- Yemen is a Saudi-made disaster, and the fingerprints of the West are all over it. As the UN reports, Western-backed, Saudi-led airstrikes “have targeted civilians and civilian objects, in violation of humanitarian law, including everything from refugee camps to schools to weddings to buses.” Yet the UN also accuses Ansarollah of war crimes and refusing to enter peace talks! According to the UN’s High Commission for Human Rights, the Saudi forces are responsible for “a disproportionate amount” of attacks on civilians.

6- Rather than condemning this dirty war, the UN stands fully behind its rich member, one of the world’s most repugnant regimes. Through its deafening silence and even offering top seat at the Human Rights Council, the UN has made it clear that it stands with its friends in Saudi Arabia. But the world body surely needs to hold the Saudi regime to account for what it does in its name.

As is, the UN has fueled this conflict through complicity and double standards which breaks its own laws. It is in violation of a number of international obligations, including its own Charter and its common position on Western arms exports and intervention, which is to look the other way.

In between, the West’s alliance with the Saudi dictators – who, chillingly, refuse to rule out subsequent attempts to acquire nuclear weapons – does not receive the scrutiny it deserves. It’s not simply about the tragic war on Yemen, human rights, or Western traded votes to ensure the Saudis were elected on to the UN Human Rights Council. It is also about Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi ideology and consistent threat to Western security: the regime is at the epicenter of international extremism.

Its assault on Yemen is not only killing, maiming and inflicting mass suffering. It is also building up bitterness towards the UN, where there are too few voices speaking out: That Yemen needs a peaceful, negotiated settlement. Its people need humanitarian assistance, not more American-British bombs. Western arms and UN silence and complicity are helping to escalate this war, aiding a cruel regime that they know is bombing civilians. This is criminal. The Saudis, the West, and the UN must be held responsible for the collapse of peace talks.

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