The war that is pretty much ignored by the mainstream media, particularly in the United States, just passed a milestone although you'd be hard-pressed to learn anything about it.
According toan analysis by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Projector ACLED, the war in Yemen has now resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people and more than 40,000 conflict events have taken place since 2015. Here is a breakdown:
1.) approximately 20,000 fatalities have been reported so far in 2019 - this is the second most deadly year after 2018.
2.) approximately 8,000 fatalities have been reported so far in 2019 - the number of conflict events has dropped since March 2019 thanks to a drop in the number of shellings and airstrikes however the actual number of battles has not decreased.
3.) April was the most deadly month in 2019 with over 2,500 reported fatalities compared to "only" 1,700 in September. The third quarter of 2019 has seen the lowest number of reported fatalities since the end of 2017 due to a decline in battle intensity.
4.) the number of coalition airstrikes has declined over the past year while Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia increased until the group announced a unilateral ceasefire against targets inside Saudi Arabian territory in September 2019. It is important to note that the Saudis only partially accepted the ceasefire and continue to conduct attacks inside Yemen.
The impact on civilians has been significant. Since 2015, ACLED has tracked approximately 4900 attacks that directly targeted civilians resulting in more than 12,000 civilian deaths; so far in 2019, there have been approximately 1,100 civilian deaths. The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for over 8,000 of directly targeted civilian deaths and the Houthis are responsible for over 2,000 civilian deaths from direct targeting.
Here is a map of Yemen showing the events that have resulted in 30 or more deaths so far in 2019:
Thanks to the Yemen Data Project, we also have statistics showing the impact of coalition air raids on Yemen and its civilians. According to their statistics, 20,824 coalition air raids have resulted in the deaths of 8,632 civilians and injuries to 9,714 civilians. Here is a graphic showing the number of air raids per governorate in Yemen:
Here is a graphic showing the timeline of the coalition air raids and the number of air raids per month:
Here is a graphic showing the number of attacks against various types of non-military infrastructure:
With Saudi Arabia playing a leading role in the coalition fighting in Yemen, let's close this rather sobering look at one of the world's least reported wars withthis:
You will notice that the vast majority of the Royal Saudi Air Force fighter inventory is comprised of F-15S/SA and F-15C manufactured by Boeing (formerly McDonnell Douglas) strike fighters, followed by Tornado IDS strike fighters manufactured by a European consortium and Typhoon strike fighters, also manufactured by a European consortium. In other words, the United States defense industry is largely responsible for supplying the Saudi Royal Family with the means to kill thousands of innocent Yemeni civilians. But, one thing we know for certain, Washington will go on rubber-stamping the sale of American fighter jets to their second-best friends in the Middle East, civilian deaths be damned.
For five years, Russia has been multiplying its approaches in order to re-establish international Law in the Middle East. It has relied in particular on Iran and Turkey, whose manner of thinking it does not really share. The first results of this patient diplomatic exercise are redefining the lines of division existing at the heart of several conflicts.
New balances of power and a new equilibrium are being set up discreetly in the Nile valley, in the Levant and the Arab peninsula. On the contrary, however, the situation is blocked in the Persian Gulf. This considerable and coordinated change is affecting different conflicts which in appearance have no connection with one another. It is the fruit of patient and discreet Russian diplomacy and, in some cases, the relative good will of the USA.
Unlike the United States, Russia is not seeking to impose its own vision on the world. It begins on the contrary with the culture of its interlocutors, which it modifies by small touches at its contact.
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Conclusion
With time, the objectives of each protagonist have been organised into a hierarchy and are becoming clearer.
In conformity with its tradition, Russian diplomacy, unlike that of the United States, is not attempting to redefine frontiers and alliances. It is working to untie the contradictory objectives of its partners. Thus it helped the ex-Ottoman Empire and the ex-Persian Empire distance themselves from their religious definition - (the Muslim Brotherhood for the former, and Chiism for the latter - and return to a post-Imperial national definition. This evolution is clearly visible in Turkey, but supposes a change of leaders in Iran in order to become operational. Moscow is not seeking to « change the régimes », but to change some aspects of the mentalities.
The House has passed the antiwar Yemen resolution, H.J.Res. 37, by a vote of 248-177. Rep. Ro Khanna, the lead sponsor of the resolution, issued a statement following the historic vote:
Today is historic. This is the culmination of several years of legislative efforts to end our involvement in the Saudi war in Yemen. I’m encouraged by the direction people are pushing our party to take on foreign policy, promoting restraint and human rights and with the sense they want Congress to play a much larger role.
I applaud all cosponsors for supporting this historic effort and thank my 248 colleagues who voted yes on passage today, especially Speaker Pelosi and Leader Hoyer, HASC Chair Smith, HFAC Chair Engel, Rules Chair McGovern, CPC Co-Chair Pocan and nearly 100 cosponsors of my resolution. I’d also like to thank Senator Sanders for being my thought partner and co-lead on this work in the upper chamber.
Like last year’s passage of S.J.Res. 54, the passage of this resolution is a significant assertion of Congressional authority in matters of war. While opponents of the measure desperately tried to deny that the U.S. was involved in hostilities in Yemen, the evidence of extensive U.S. involvement over the last four years made that an untenable claim. Despite years of lies from this administration and the Pentagon, most House members could recognize an unauthorized U.S. war when they saw one. Despite the constant fear-mongering of pro-Saudi hawks in both houses, most House members understood that the war serves no American interests and implicates us in war crimes and crimes against humanity. When the only argument that the war’s supporters had was to keep shouting “Iran!” at the other side, it was just a matter of time before they lost.
It is unfortunate that it has taken almost four years for Congress to act on U.S. involvement in the war, but it has not been for lack of effort on the part of the war’s opponents. In just the last two years, we have seen the war on Yemen go from being almost completely invisible and ignored to becoming the focus of the most important antiwar vote in modern U.S. history. The successful passage of H.J.Res. 37 has once again forced the issue to center stage, and it sets up an overdue fight with the executive over war powers and over our relationship with the Saudis and the rest of the coalition.
There is still much more to be done. The people of Yemen remain in dire need of help as they face famine, cholera, displacement, poverty, and continued war, and we know that the Trump administration will fight to keep U.S. support for the war going as long as they can. Nonetheless, today’s vote was a huge step in the right direction, and it is a success that advocates for peace and restraint can be proud of.
On 12 October 2000, while sitting in the port of Aden, Yemen, the USS Cole was allegedly attacked by some guy called al-Badawi and his accomplices. A small boat was allegedly loaded it with approximately 500lbs of explosives and some ready-made suicide bombers who then drove it alongside the Cole and…Kaboom. Below is a photo of the damage to the ship.
Media reports initially claimed that “conventional explosives” were used. That was generally understood to mean something like a ‘fertilizer bomb’ sufficiently unsophisticated for non-state actors and in keeping with attacks by others groups. Here’s an image of the damage caused by a typical 500lb ‘fertilizer bomb’. The bomb explodes outwards and upwards in all directions and the damage is widespread. As you have probably realized already, the damage to the Cole didn’t fit the profile of such a bomb, so soon after the attack the narrative changed:
Officials said examination of the Cole indicated that the explosive used was even more sophisticated than initially thought. The penetrating force and the damage deep in the interior strongly suggested that the bomb was a “shaped charge,” designed to focus the explosion rather than allow it to spread in all directions, as with a typical truck bomb, officials said.
“With every piece of information, it becomes a more sophisticated operation,” one official said.
The officials have not disclosed the specific type of device used, though the use of a directed explosive led to speculation that the device operated like an warhead. Such a device is a more sophisticated weapon than those used by most terrorist organizations, and possibly came from a military stockpile.
”I can’t think of a major terrorist operation that has involved, essentially, hardware of that magnitude,” said Daniel Benjamin, a former terrorism analyst on the National Security Council and now a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington.
At the time, the BBC reported that: “the [Yemeni] president said samples of explosives taken from the destroyer had been identified by US investigators as of a type available only in Israel, the USA, and two Arab countries” (two Arab countries that get it from the US or Israel). He further stated: “we believe Israel might be involved in such incidents.”
Even by the depraved standards of the US-UK-Saudi-UAE aggression against Yemen, yesterday’s bombing of a school bus was a new low. The bus had stopped at a market whilst taking the children back to school from a picnic when it was targeted, according to Save the Children. Health officials have informed the world that the strike killed 47 people with 77 more injured, but that that number was likely to rise. Most of those victims, tweeted the Red Cross, were less than ten years old. Following the attack, Frank McManus, Yemen country director for the International Red Cross, whose workers are treated the wounded, pleaded that: “Today should be the day the world wakes up to the atrocities going on in Yemen … a bus full of school children cannot be viewed as mere collateral damage. Even wars have rules, but rules without consequences mean nothing.”
It is hard to see how the world will wake up, however, when western media remains so committed to its refusal to give anything like adequate coverage to the ongoing aggression. You might have thought that the targeted bombing of a bus full of children parked in a market far from any military activity, by forces enjoying full military, diplomatic and strategic support from the UK, would make headlines. Yet this is not the case. Take the Guardian, for example, supposedly a bastion of liberal values and humanitarian concern. Their report on the incident went online shortly before 7pm last night. Yet this morning, it does not feature amongst their 13 headline stories, which include such gripping items as “the chips are down in Belgium at heatwave hits supply of fries”. Click on the ‘world news’ section, and Yemen is not even amongst the 11 headlines there, bumped by earth-shattering stories such as “New Zealand – Jacinda Ardern says country will ban plastic bags”. Only if you specifically click on the Middle East section would you find the story – fourth of that section’s six headlines, just behind “Mauritian presidential hopeful arrested” and “Looted Iraqi antiquities return home”.
The Independent, now online only and perhaps, you might have thought, less subject to the pressure from advertisers that drives some of the self-censorship of its loss-leading print-edition cousins, is little different. Yemen was among neither its eight ‘top stories’ this morning, which included headlines such as “British campers flee as flash floods batter France”, nor the eight pieces in its ‘more stories’ section, which included items titled “summer not over yet, despite thunderstorms and heavy rain” and “Pochettino blames Brexit for Spurs’ failure to sign any new players”
“The situation in Yemen – today, right now, to the population of the country,” UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told Al Jazeera last month, “looks like the apocalypse.”
150,000 people are thought to have starved to death in Yemen last year, with one child dying of starvation or preventable diseases every ten minutes, and another falling into extreme malnutrition every two minutes. The country is undergoing the world’s biggest cholera epidemic since records began with over one million now having contracted the disease, and new a diptheria epidemic “is going to spread like wildfire” according to Lowcock. “Unless the situation changes,” he concluded, “we’re going to have the world’s worst humanitarian disaster for 50 years”.
The cause is well known: the Saudi-led coalition’s bombardment and blockade of the country, with the full support of the US and UK, has destroyed over 50% of the country’s healthcare infrastructure, targeted water desalination plants, decimated transport routes and choked off essential imports, whilst the government all this is supposed to reinstall has blocked salaries of public sector workers across the majority of the country, leaving rubbish to go uncollected and sewage facilities to fall apart, and creating a public health crisis. A further eight million were cut off from clean water when the Saudi-led coalition blocked all fuel imports last November, forcing pumping stations to close. Oxfam’s country director in Yemen, Shane Stevenson, commented at the time that “The people of Yemen are already being starved to submission – unless the blockade is lifted quickly they will have their clean water taken away too. Taking clean water from millions of people in a country that is already suffering the world’s largest cholera outbreak and on the verge of famine would be an act of utmost barbarity.”
With the Hodeidah campaign now entering a new phase, this war on the Yemeni population is set to escalate still further. Since it launched in early December, the coalition and their Yemeni assets have taken several towns and villages on Hodeidah province, and are now poised to take the battle to the city itself. On 20th February, Emirati newspaper The National reported that, in the coming days, “more forces will be committed to Hodeidah as a new front is to be opened in the next few days by Maj Gen Tariq Mohammed Abdullah,” nephew of the deceased former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. This attack would put the almost completely-import dependent country’s most essential port out of action for months, leaving millions unable to survive. “If this attack goes ahead”, Oxfam chief executive Mark Goldring told the press when a similar attack was proposed earlier last year, “this will be a deliberate act that will disrupt vital supplies – the Saudi-led coalition will not only breach International Humanitarian Law, they will be complicit in near certain famine.” His colleague Suze Vanmeegan added that “any attack on Hodeidah has the potential to blast an already alarming crisis into a complete horror show – and I’m not using hyperbole.”
There is no doubt the war’s British and American overseers have given their blessing to this escalation. In late 2016, the “Yemen Quartet” was formed by the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to co-ordinate strategy between the the war’s four main aggressors. Throughout 2017, they met sporadically, but since the end of the year their meetings have become more frequent and higher-level. At the end of November, just before the launch of operations in Hodeidah province, Boris Johnson hosted a meeting of the Quartet in London as Theresa May simultaneously met with King Salman in Riyadh, presumably to give the go-ahead to this new round of devastation for Yemen’s beleaguered population. They met again two weeks later, and then too on 23rd January, also at Johnson’s instigation, where the meeting was attended, for the first time, by Rex Tillerson. The “economic quartet” – also attended by officials from the IMF and World Bank – convened on 2nd February in Saudi Arabia, whilst Johnson and Tillerson once again met with their Saudi and Emirati counterparts to discuss Yemen in Bonn on 15th February. Of course, these meetings do not carry out the nitty-gritty of strategic war planning – civil servants in the military and intelligence services do that. The purpose of such high level forums is rather for each side to demonstrate to the others that any strategic developments carry the blessing of each respective government at the highest level. That the “quartet” met just days before an announcement that the long-planned attack on Hodeidah port was imminent, then, speaks volumes about US-UK complicity in this coming new premeditated war crime.
At the beginning of the month, highly influential former President of Yemen Abdullah Saleh was assassinated at one of his residences. It is reported that his body was displayed to the public to show them that the “traitor” was killed, while making “an attempt to escape.” It is believed that this longtime Yemeni strongman was shot by a Houthi sniper.
Anyone who’s familiar with the Houthi resistance movement would be quick to point out that this murder doesn’t fall into the pattern of typical steps that this group has made. As a matter of fact, such an approach to taking down a target is typical for professional hitmen, hired by an external power to “handle tricky affairs” in a particular fashion. It’s no secret that this latest murder will prove to be highly beneficial for at least two external players – Saudi Arabia and Israel who have dreaded the Houthi resistance as a source of Tehran’s power in the south of the Arabian Peninsula for some time now. These two states have long been seeking for a pretext to launch strikes against Iranian forces in Syria, along with nuclear facilities deep within the territory of Iran. All that Riyadh and Tel-Aviv have been waiting on was a pretext, and now they have one exactly to their liking
All through last month, various media source across the region would report an extensive amount of meetings between Saudi and Israeli secret services taking place, aimed at establishing a common position on the ongoing stand-off with Iran. Apparently, an emergence of such a position resulted in the Saudi-led coalition bombing of the Yemeni presidential palace and a number of government buildings that have been left untouched through the years of Saudi aggression against Yemen. Apparently, Saudi leadership wanted to make a point with those air strikes, demonstrating that the old Yemen is not to be found anywhere now, while the new Yemen has nothing but war ahead of it. Saudi Arabia has been in desperate need to find a state-level scapegoat to redirect the outrage of the international community provoked by its own role in Yemen’s mounting civilian death toll, and now the Houthis are going to be forced into playing such a role.
Now pretty much everyone tries to predict the future of the Yemeni conflict after the murder of Abdullah Saleh. But to make such a prediction one must examine the reasons behind the Yemeni war and establish the degree of interference that states like Saudi Arabia and Iran have shown so far..
The problem of Yemen’s crisis is critical, as there’s a massive gap between the industrial south that serves as home to some 20% of the total population of Yemen and the archaic north. The gap has never been overcome. Moreover, the so-called “Arab Spring” caught the country while it was still in a transitional period triggering a number of serious conflicts within Yemeni society. It is not that difficult to understand how the “Arab Spring” in Yemen has almost immediately transformed from a stage of urban populations demanding their rights, into a bitter inter-tribal feud. Under these circumstances, Yemen regressed into a national divide, with the industrialized South opposing the tribal North. Abdullah Saleh was adept at steering the country through this storm by striking a deal with the Houthis, thus obtaining a means to control the most archaic power of Yemen. Frankly speaking, if Saudi Arabia hadn’t launched its invasion, the longtime strongman would most certainly have achieved power once again, since there has been no other leader in Yemen who could have contested him.
The war on Yemen has finally taken a turn towards an end. Former President Saleh is back in his leading position. They Saudis accepted their defeat. The Houthis will be thrown out of the capital Sanaa and return to their northern areas. Yemen is devastated and will need to rebuild. Everyone who participated in this war has lost. The only winner is Russia.
SAUDI ARABIA’S YEARS-LONG blockade and bombing campaign in Yemen has gotten very little coverage in the United States, even as the extreme food and fuel shortages have developed into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Now, as the Saudi noose on Yemen tightens — leaving 7 million people facing starvation and another 1 million infected with cholera — the war is having its moment in the media spotlight.
On Sunday, “60 Minutes” aired a 13-minute segment on the war’s devastating humanitarian toll. The program featured imagery of starving children and interviews with displaced people, all obtained after Saudi Arabia blocked “60 Minutes” from entering the country.
“You keep going like you’re going, there’s not going to be anybody left,” David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, told CBS’s Scott Pelley. “All the children are going to be dead.”
Coverage on such a high-profile program is frequently enough to get politicians to pay attention to an issue, and the “60 Minutes” feature comes amid a growing debate about the U.S. role in the war. Just last week, the House of Representatives voted to say that Congress has not authorized American military support for the Saudi-led coalition.
Still, the program did not once mention that Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally, and that U.S. support is essential for the Saudi campaign to continue.
For two-and-a-half years, the U.S. government has backed Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen every step of the way. The United States has dispatched warships to reinforce the blockade. It has refueled Saudi planes, sent the Saudi military targeting intelligence, and resupplied them with tens of billions of dollars worth of bombs.
The U.S. has had the power to pull the plug on the intervention since the beginning. Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a 30-year veteran of the CIA, explained last year that “if the United States and the United Kingdom, tonight, told King Salman [of Saudi Arabia], ‘This war has to end,’ it would end tomorrow. The Royal Saudi Air Force cannot operate without American and British support.”
The war against Yemen – sponsored by the West and executed by their ever-loyal Saudi fall guys – is going badly. Very badly.
When the Saudis began their bombardment of the Arab world’s poorest country, named ‘Decisive Storm’, in March 2015, they promised a ‘limited’ mission. In reality, it has proved to be seemingly limitless and completely indecisive. A Harvard study estimates the Saudis are spending $200million per day on this war, driving their military budget up to $87billion, the third highest in the world. But they remain nowhere near achieving their stated goal of defeating the Houthi-led resistance and recapturing the capital, Sanaa. Indeed, Hadi, the ‘President’ the Saudis are supposedly supporting, is still holed up in Riyadh,apparently unable to set foot in his own country, such is the depth of popular animosity towards him.
Meanwhile, the ‘coalition’ which Saudi Arabia purports to lead is falling apart. Qatar – the world’s richest country in terms of per capita income, who were supposed to bankroll a large chunk of the war – pulled out long ago; whilst the Pakistani parliament – whose allotted role was to provide the ground troops – unanimously vetoed the proposal last year. Meanwhile, in the South, the Emiratis are backing forces hostile to the very President the war purports to be defending. Indeed, Hadi’s own troops are now complaining that the Saudis and Emiratis are actually bombing them. Yes, the ‘legitimate government’ of President Hadi – the one the whole operation is supposedly being fought in support of – is now itselfbeing targeted by the aggressors, with Hadi accusing the Emirati crown prince ofacting like an occupier.
Indeed, the war is going so badly that even the Saudis themselves are now privately saying they want out. Leaked emails last August revealed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – who as defence minister was responsible for initiating the war in March 2015 – is keen to end the war. Yet still the war continues. London-based Yemeni Safa al-Shami told me that “The Saudis are in trouble; they don’t want [the war] to continue anymore. But they are being told ‘you have to finish the mission to the end’.” By this analysis, far from ‘turning a blind eye’ to a ‘Saudi war’, the West are positively demanding that a reluctant Saudi Arabia continue its futile and murderous campaign.
Last Thursday was the last day of the current UK parliamentary session, before its summer recess. This made it the date for a particularly obnoxious new British tradition called ‘take out the trash day’. The UK government is obliged to issue all its public reports before the end of the parliamentary year; but to avoid scrutiny from MPs, the government now regularly withholds any potentially embarrassing reports until the very last day of that session. Then it can release them safe in the knowledge that there will be no time left for MPs to examine them, and no opportunity to question ministers over them.
So having issued very little information over the preceding weeks, once MPs were heading back to their constituencies, the government took the opportunity to releasedozens of reports and ministerial statements detailing everything from cuts to police, to the revolving door between cabinet ministers and private corporations, to the millions in legal fees the government spent attempting to prevent parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit. Buried deep amongst them was a Foreign Office report on the state of human rights in 30 countries deemed to be of ‘priority concern’. What makes the report embarrassing to Britain, however, is that 20 of these countries are major customers of British arms exports; with Saudi Arabia, of course, topping the list. The Saudis, whose mass executions, public lashings and restrictions on women’s rights are all detailed in the report, increased their UK weapons purchases from Britain by 11,000% following the start of their bombing campaign against Yemen in March 2015, and have purchased more than £3.3billion worth since then. Those weapons have played a major role in pushing Yemen to its current catastrophic situation, facing the fastest-growing cholera epidemic since records began, with 7 million people on the verge of famine. No wonder the UK does not want to draw attention to what is being facilitated by its relationship with the Saudis. It is right to be ashamed.
The day after the Saudis began ‘Operation Decisive Storm’, David Cameron phoned the Saudi king personally to emphasise “the UK’s firm political support for the Saudi action in Yemen”. Over the months that followed, Britain, a long-term arms dealer to the Saudi monarchy, stepped up its delivery of war materiel to achieve the dubious honour of beating US to become its number one weapons supplier. Over hundred new arms export licences have been granted by the British government since the bombing began, and over the first six months of 2015 alone, Britain sold more than £1.75billion worth of weapons to the Saudis – more than triple Cameron’s usual, already obscene, bi-annual average. The vast majority of this equipment seems to be for combat aircraft and air-delivered missiles, including more than 1000 bombs, and British-made jets now make up over half the Saudi air force. As the Independent has noted, “British supplied planes and British made missiles have been part of near-daily raids in Yemen carried out by [the] nine-country, Saudi Arabian led coalition”.
Finally, it is worth considering British support for the Saudi bid for membership of the UN Human Rights Council. The Council’s reports can be highly influential; indeed, it was this Council’s damning (and, we now know, fraudulent) condemnation of Gaddafi that provided the ‘humanitarian’ pretext for the 2011 NATO war against the Libyan Jamahiriya. And the Yemeni government’s recent expulsion of the UN Human Rights envoy shows just how sensitive the prosecutors of the Yemeni war are to criticism. It would, therefore, be particularly useful for those unleashing hell on Yemen to have the UN Council stacked with supporters in order to dampen any criticism from this quarter.
Britain, then, is the major external force facilitating the Saudi-fronted war against the people of Yemen. Britain, like the Saudis, is keen to isolate Iran and sees destroying the Houthis as a key means of achieving this. At the same time, Britain seems perfectly happy to see Al Qaeda and ISIS take over from the Houthi rebels they are bombing – presumably regarding a new base for terrorist destabilization operations across the region as an outcome serving British interests.