The U.S. Is Wrong On Yemen. Again.

For four years, U.S. officials in both Republican and Democratic administrations told me in my work as a human rights advocate that “Saudi Arabia is ready to end the war,” and that it’s just a matter of “finding a face-saving way to exit.” What they mean is, “Is there a way for Saudi Arabia to credibly claim it won the war?” Ignoring the obvious answer of no—Saudi Arabia started a war everyone knew was a mistake—the U.S. government has instead engaged in the business of helping to starve millions of people to assuage crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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The Global Links Of The Recent Escalation In The Yemen Conflict

The last month has seen a drastic escalation in the war in Yemen. According to the UN, January will most likely be the month with the highest ever casualties reported since the war began in 2014. The January 21 strike on a prison in Sa’ada which killed 91 people marked the highest death toll in a single strike in the last three years. The number of airstrikes carried out by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition last December was already the highest in years. In all likelihood, this figure will be even higher by the end of January.

On the other hand, the Houthis have demonstrated their capacity and willingness to retaliate against members of the Saudi-led coalition by sending drones and missiles hundreds of miles away to Abu Dhabi.

Exactly at a time when decisive international intervention to find a political solution to end the war is needed, the UN and the international community have shown their unwillingness to take the extra efforts required.

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Media Beats War Drums With Russia While US/Saudis Kill Hundreds In Yemen

Journalists Benjamin Norton and Alan MacLeod join Mnar Adley to discuss how the mainstream media spent the last week beating drums of war with Russia over Ukraine with headlines and talking heads funded and sponsored by Lockheed Martin and NATO.

Meanwhile, there wasn’t a single article covering how the US-Saudi-UAE coalition cut off the internet to Yemen for several days while dropping hundreds of bombs on civilians resulting in hundreds dead and over a thousand injured. Guess which story CNN covered? Both conflicts were brought to you by weapons manufacturers.

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Following ‘Unjustifiable’ UAE Bombing, US And UN Condemn Yemeni Retaliation

Saada, Yemen – In a scene rife with chaos and crying, volunteers and a rescue squad pulled the bodies of 91 prisoners from the rubble of the Sa’ada City Remand Prison in southern Yemen on Tuesday. Early last Friday morning, United Arab Emirates (UAE) warplanes supported by the United States targeted the overcrowded prison, which houses up to 3,000 inmates from across Yemen and Africa. The attack was one of the deadliest since the war began in 2015.

At least  91 people were killed and more than 236 seriously injured in the attacks, which left bereaved families in shock across Yemen and Africa. Witnesses describe the scene of the attack in its first minutes as chaotic and tragic. Fighter jets were heard over the skies of Saada while people were sleeping, before three violent explosions were heard from the prison, red fires mixed with dust and smoke illuminated flying rubble.

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Yemen Conflict: Blowback Of Obama’s Botched Syria Policy

After Arab Spring protests erupted in the Middle East in 2011, toppling longtime dictators of the Arab World, including Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Yemenis also gathered in the capital’s squares demanding removal of Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Instead of conceding to protesters’ fervent demand of holding free and fair elections to ascertain democratic aspirations of demonstrators, however, the Obama administration adopted the convenient course of replacing Yemen’s longtime autocrat with a Saudi stooge Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Having the reputation of a “wily Arabian fox” and being a Houthi himself, Ali Abdullah Saleh wasn’t the one to sit idly by and retire from politics in ignominy.

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Another Saudi Coalition Massacre In Yemen

A Saudi coalition airstrike on a prison killed at least 60 people and wounded at least 100 more in northern Yemen as part of the coalition’s reprisal attacks after the Houthis claimed drone and missile attacks that hit targets in Abu Dhabi earlier this week:

At least three children are among the dozens of people killed Friday, the humanitarian organization Save the Children said in a statement on Twitter. It noted that “the true number is feared to be higher.”

This follows coalition airstrikes in Sanaa that killed at least 20 civilians. The coalition response to the Abu Dhabi attacks has been consistent with the way they have waged the war from the beginning: reckless and indiscriminate bombing that slaughters civilians. The AP reports on the aftermath of the bombing:

“The initial casualties report from Saada is horrifying,” said Gillian Moyes, Save the Children’s country director in Yemen. “Migrants seeking better lives for themselves and their families, Yemeni civilians injured by the dozens, is a picture we never hoped to wake up to in Yemen.”

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Talking ‘Peace’ US Arms Saudis For Latest Attack On Yemen

Hodeidah, Yemen – Inside the ruins of a modest Yemeni home where human and animal remains were strewn together, local rescuers struggled to evacuate a pregnant mother and other potential survivors from the rubble as warplanes circled above. There, they found the body of a toddler covered in ashes beside the remains of a humble dining table. The chaotic cries of rescuers covered in blood filled the scene as they examined his remains, exposing what appeared to be an umbilical cord. Near the boy, they found his young mother covered in rubble, barely groaning in a muffled voice of pain.

Just two days after World Children’s Day and three days shy of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women,

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How Britain Aids Saudi Massacres In Yemen

A small English village is hardly the first place that comes to mind when mentioning the war in Yemen. Yet Warton in the northwest of England is playing an oversized role in what the United Nations has repeatedly called “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” The Lancashire village is home to an airfield and a manufacturing site where weapons dealer BAE Systems maintains, repairs and rearms Saudi jets responsible for much of the worst destruction in Yemen.

Today, Lowkey speaks to Phil Miller, an investigative journalist and producer who is currently a staff reporter for Declassified UK. He has just released the documentary “Warton’s War on Yemen,” which exposes how BAE Systems is playing a key role in the carnage in the Middle East.

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Being A Child In Yemen Is The Stuff Of Nightmares

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – along with other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – began to bomb Yemen. These countries entered a conflict that had been ongoing for at least a year as a civil war escalated between the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the Ansar Allah movement of the Zaidi Shia, and al-Qaeda. The GCC – led by the Saudi monarchy – wanted to prevent any Shia political project, whether aligned with Iran or not, from taking power along Saudi Arabia’s border. The attack on Yemen can be described, therefore, as an attack by the Sunni monarchs against the possibility of what they feared would be a Shia political project coming to power on the Arabian Peninsula.

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British Soldier Arrested For Protesting Against Yemen War

The war in Afghanistan appears to be drawing to a close. But Western atrocities in the Middle East continue, with the 20-year-old War on Terror estimated to have displaced over 37 million people globally.

One particularly noteworthy example is the onslaught in Yemen, driving the country to become “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” in the opinion of the United Nations. Currently, more than half the country — 14 million people — are considered to be at risk of starvation.

While the Saudis may be doing the majority of the fighting, they are being armed, trained, aided and supported by the United States, Great Britain, and other Western nations profiting from the suffering.

One man who knows more than most about this is Ahmed Al-Babati. Ahmed was a lance corporal in the British Army until last August, where he staged a public protest in London, demonstrating against British complicity in the violence.

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Saudis And US Double Cost Of Yemen’s Staple Goods

Aden, Yemen – “The prices are skyrocketing. We can’t feed our children. They are starving,” Saher Abdu Salem, a government employee and a mother of five, said as she participated in a protest in Aden against Saudi Arabia and the government of ousted Yemeni President Abdul-Mansour al-Hadi. The protests took place at the Aden port this week in the wake of a recent decision by the Saudi-backed government in Aden to raise the U.S. dollar exchange rate for major life-saving goods. Now Saher and her husband are struggling to feed their family in the coastal city where the price of the staple ‘rooti’ loaf of bread has soared 250% in a month, its portion halved in size. “When the U.S. State Department expresses its concern over us, this means that it will deal a new blow to our hungry stomachs,” she said.

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Protest Rally To Commemorate 2018 Dahyan School Bus Massacre

Yemeni and other Arab and international community organisations have on Tuesday held a protest rally denouncing the crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition against the Yemeni people.

The rally, which was held in in front of the United Nations building in New York City, came to mark the anniversary of the Dahyan student bus massacre that was committed by the US-backed Saudi aggression’s airstrikes in 2018, killing 40 children in Saada province.

The participants called the rally of “For the grievances of the children of Yemen”, and said they considered the Dahyan student bus crime in Saada and other massacres by the aggression coalition in various Yemeni province as contradicting international humanitarian norms, charters and laws that criminalise targeting civilians.

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Civil Society Calls On Congress To End War And Blockade On Yemen

New York – Civil society groups rallied at U.S. legislators’ offices in New York, Boston, and San Francisco on Friday, July 16th as part of a National Day of Action for Yemen. They called for U.S. senators & representatives to introduce a new War Powers Resolution to end U.S. participation in the 6-year war and blockade on Yemen that has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, according to the U.N. 

In Boston, Brian Garvey of Massachusetts Peace Action noted, “We’re not going to stop until we end the U.S. war in Yemen, and that means War Powers….It’s the only legislation that meets the urgency right now.”

During the Day of Action, letters were hand-delivered (see letter to Sen. Sanders below) to local offices of the following legislators signed by dozens of local civil society groups in each state calling for the new War Powers Resolution.

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Hunger Strike: Yemeni People Are Being Starved

During the early days of the war, when Iman Saleh called her family in Yemen, they would lie to reassure her they were safe. “They would always say, ‘Don’t worry, it’s happening far from us,’” Saleh said. “It felt like I was becoming a burden to them, because now they were trying to make me feel better, on top of trying to survive.”

Now, when Saleh calls her family in Yemen, she simply asks how their day is going. For the past six years, the 26-year-old organizer from Detroit has struggled with survivor’s guilt, watching her homeland ravaged by a war between the U.S.-backed Saudi coalition and the Houthi rebels. As a founding member of the Detroit-based Yemeni Liberation Movement, Saleh works to educate and mobilize the Yemeni diaspora for an end to the war.

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Activist Confronts Defense Industry CEO For Company’s Role In War Crimes

An anti-war activist confronted General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic on Wednesday during the company’s shareholders’ meeting, accusing the defense industry giant of profiting off war crimes and arming repressive, undemocratic regimes without “moral reflection.” 

“I appreciate the care you’ve taken to keep us safe during COVID,” CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin told General Dynamics’ board, which included Novakovic and former Defense Secretary James Mattis. “But,” she added, “I wonder about the care that this company takes to keep people safe from the bombs and the other weapons that you produce that kill innocent people around the world.” 

Benjamin then listed off a handful of instances in which General Dynamics’ products were involved in gross human rights abuses and civilian deaths during war, including a marketplace bombing in Yemen in 2016 that killed nearly 100 civilians, including 25 children, and former President Trump’s child separation policy at the U.S. southern border. 

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