Third Anniversary: Saudis Are Not Going to Get Everything They Want in Yemen – Nor Are Americans

Rasa - It’s the anniversary of the 2015 US-backed, Saudi-led war on Yemen, which is made up of nine Middle Eastern and African countries, and is supported by the United States.

News ID: 437012

Date: 27 March 2018 - 23:43

RNA - After three years, and instead of ending the failed war, the warmongering hordes are conducting growing joint operations inside the poorest country in the Arab world. That these war crimes don’t get a lot of attention in the ‘fakestream’ media is by design. Direct US involvement in the Saudi invasion, despite being well-documented, is increasingly controversial, and has the Trump regime on the defensive with the international civil society. Washington would like us to believe its joint operations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are something different, that they focus not on fighting Ansarullah forces, but on the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula forces in the South.

Far from it, the Saudi invasion and focus on the Houthi Ansarullah has given a perfect excuse for US forces and others to strike everything and everyone on the ground, even impose an air and sea blockade and seize substantial territory around the country. US officials cannot just hype the Saudi-led operations as against Al-Qaeda. Defense Secretary James Mattis presents the criminal airstrikes against Yemeni civilians as a “model” for the region, and other officials try to present it as vindication for US involvement in Yemen. The war, however, is more than naval blockades starving millions.

The Saudis are equally very eager to hype their airstrikes against Al-Qaeda, their own creation, saying it proves the majority of their own military forces that the US is willing to cooperate with so closely. But the US is cooperating with them because the Saudis buy American weapons and are helping them to impose their regional designs on Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The Saudis have been spending massive money increasing their military’s size too, and looking at more regional wars, conflicts they probably envision the US also being involved in. As far as the current partnership goes, and given the fact that the US has just sold weapons to the Saudis and their regional allies worth over $100 billion dollars, there is little reason to believe the US won’t be up for more wars.

After all, this is the same War Party that says will continue to offer intelligence and logistical support to the Saudis, but that’s really only a piece of it: The Saudi military is equipped with billions of dollars in advanced American-made weapons. As acknowledged by a new Congressional Research Report, “These ties would be difficult and costly for either side to fully break or replace.”

These ties, likewise, put the US at risk of complicity in unlawful attacks. It also underscores the urgent need for all Western governments to suspend all arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and for the United Nations human rights office to send additional investigators to Yemen to carry out credible investigations of deliberate abuses by the Saudi-led coalition. As reported by Human Rights Watch, “Saudi-led forces are bombing civilians in Yemen with newly supplied US weapons,” and the Trump administration is running out of time to completely suspend US arms sales to Saudi Arabia or be forever linked to Saudi wartime atrocities.

Unquestionably, the continued transfer of arms by the United States to Saudi Arabia, despite evidence of their repeated use in unlawful attacks, makes the US complicit in Saudi violations in Yemen. The UK is also a party to the conflict, providing targeting intelligence and refueling planes during bombing raids. The British government sells arms to Saudi Arabia, despite growing international pressure over its support for the criminal military campaign and evidence of the use of British-made weapons against civilians. Human Rights Watch has documented the use of UK-made weapons in these unlawful coalition attacks. And since March 2015, the UK has approved £3.3 billion in military sales to Saudi Arabia, according to the London-based Campaign Against Arms Trade.

Simply put, this Western complicity in Saudi war crimes will only make the situation worse in Yemen. Since the war began, at least 15,700 Yemeni civilians have been killed, though the number is potentially much higher, because few organizations on the ground have the resources to count the dead. Some three million people have been displaced, and hundreds of thousands have left the country. More than a million people have cholera, and thousands have died from the disease. UNICEF, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization have called the situation in Yemen the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Yet the US and the UK continue to support the Saudis, even though their leaderships agree the war has gone on too long, proved too costly, killed too many lives, and caused too much humanitarian damage and too much infrastructure damage. They also agree that they are not going to get everything that they want in Yemen, nor are the Saudis.

Source: Fars News Agency

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