Yemen ; Famine , Blood , Censorship

[Mahan]

Ignoring the Human Disaster in Yemen

It is hard to imagine that along with the catastrophe that has been inflicted on Syria for the past six years, another calamity is unfolding in Yemen of damning proportions while the whole world looks on with indifference.


What is happening in Yemen is not merely a violent conflict between combating forces for power, but the willful subjugation of millions of innocent civilians to starvation, disease and ruin that transcends the human capacity to descend even below the lowest pit of darkness, from which there is no exit.


Seven million people face starvation, and 19 out of 28 million of Yemen’s population are in desperate need of humanitarian aid. Saudis are restricting food and medicine supplies from reaching starving children; many of them are cholera-ridden, on the verge of joining the thousands who have already died from starvation and disease. More than 10,000 have been killed, and nearly 40,000 injured. UNICEF reports nearly 300,000 cholera cases, and a joint statement from UNICEF and the World Health Organization declares the infection is spreading at a rate of 5,000 new cases per day.

The Associated Press documented at least 18 clandestine lockups across southern Yemen run by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or Yemini forces (Saudi backed), where torture of unimaginable cruelty is routine. The torture of prisoners is reducing them to less than an animal ready for the slaughter. One example of such extreme torture is the “grill,” in which the prisoner is tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire.


Another method of slow death is where detainees are crammed in shipping containers and guards light a fire underneath to fill it with smoke, slowly suffocating detainees. Prisoners are blindfolded and shackled in place in a box too small to stand in for most of their detention. Constant beating by steel wires is common, which often results in the death of the detainee. As Dostoyevsky said: “People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.” The US has been aware for some time of allegations of torture, but professes that there have not been such abuses.


Moreover, the blockade of imports of food, medicine, and fuel, which Yemen is completely dependent on, is making the situation dire beyond comprehension. If humanitarian aid is not provided immediately, millions of children will starve to death, even though the international community is cognizant of this ominous situation.


The Houthis have suffered immense discrimination, and their grievances have been addressed neither before nor after the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council’s March 2013 initiative that launched a National Dialogue Conference, which failed to resolve the dispute over the distribution of power.​

The Houthis joined forces with Saleh and expanded their influence in northwestern Yemen, culminating in a major military offensive against the military and a few rival tribes in which they captured the capital Sana’a in September 2014. The Saudis’ bombing against the Houthis has been indiscriminate: schools, hospitals, homes, marketplaces, weddings, and even funeral homes were targeted to maximize casualties, egregiously violating the laws of war and continuing to do so with impunity.


The Saudis claim Iran is behind the Houthis. Although Iran and the Houthis adhere to a different school of Shiite Islam, they share similar geopolitical interests. Iran is challenging Saudi Arabia for regional dominance, while the Houthis are the main rival to Hadi and the U.S.-Saudi backed government in Sana’a. For the Saudis, losing Sana’a would allow Iran to exert major influence in the Arabian Peninsula in addition to its alliances with Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The Saudi coalition is meant to signal to Iran that it will not be allowed to gain any influence in Yemen.


The U.S. along with the United Kingdom have for many years been selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, which are now used to attack Houthi-held areas. The UAE, Kuwait, and Jordan received licenses to sell and service American-made military helicopters for Saudi Arabia, which sends a clear message to this unholy coalition that they can kill with impunity.


U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd shamelessly said [selling arms is] “good for our industry” — not an acceptable reason to sell offensive weapons that kill people indiscriminately. Nevertheless, the U.S. does have national security and economic interests in the Arabian Peninsula: particularly, it seeks to ensure free passage in the Bab al-Mandeb, through which 4.7 million barrels of oil pass each day; and the support of a government in Sana’a that would cooperate with US counter-terrorism battles. That said, the U.S.’ direct involvement in the conflict makes it complicit in the coalition’s violation of the laws of war, and top U.S. officials could be subjected to legal liability.


Sadly, the Trump administration has forfeited its moral responsibility by not insisting that Saudi Arabia, over which it exercises tremendous influence, open the ports to ensure that enough food and aid enters the country, without which millions will starve to death.


By Alon Ben-Meir​

 

[Danbones]

Much as I hate to see it or say it, Canada is the number 2 arms seller in the mid east
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/new...ter-to-middle-east-data-show/article30459788/

That is NOT what this country was about till the globalists got control of it.

 

[Johnnny]

Saudi Arabia top non-U.S. destination for Canadian arms exports: federal report - Politics - CBC News

The sales to Saudi Arabia, however, will likely the draw the most attention and potential criticism from human rights groups, which have fought a protracted battle to halt the $14.8-billion sale of light armoured vehicles by General Dynamics Land Systems Canada — a deal approved by the former Conservative government, but green-lit by the Liberals.

The executive director for the anti-armament group Project Ploughshares says the most recent report once again signals an unwillingness on the part of the government to change its stance on Saudi Arabia.

"Just the fact that the top recipient of Canadian military goods is what is known to be one of the worst human rights violators in the world must in my view raise some questions about the purported strength of Canadian military export controls and the country's commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights internationally," said Cesar Jaramillo.

 

[tay]

'We don't have leverage.' Why the US can't stop the Yemen war.


In 2014, Matthew Tueller, a career US diplomat, had barely settled into his new post in Sanaa, the capital city of Yemen, when a civil war began. Tueller is still the US Ambassador to Yemen, but his embassy is now located more than 500 miles away in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, far from the fighting — and an unfolding humanitarian crisis.

“We had to close down our embassy and move the core embassy staff away, primarily in Saudi Arabia, where we continue to try to engage,” Tueller explains.

Engagement has been a struggle for diplomats such as Tueller, who has been trying to encourage people in Yemen to talk with each other and work out their differences — but from a distance.

“What we largely are doing is engaging with all of the elements of Yemeni society that are in exile,” he says, “and we devise unique and creative means in order to stay in contact with allies ... inside Yemen. And then, of course, we also engage regularly with the governments of the Arab coalition, Saudi Arabia and the UAE particularly."

Yemen has a long history of instability, but the current fighting dates back to 2014, when a UN-sponsored democratic initiative failed to unite the country, post-Arab Spring. A militant Yemeni religious group joined forces with a former Yemeni dictator to overthrow Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

In March 2015, Hadi called on Saudi Arabia to help restore his government to power. The Saudis formed a coalition of Arab countries, backed by the US, to try to bomb Yemen's rebels into submission.

Some 28 months and 10,000 lives later, the war shows no signs of abating.

Meanwhile, Tueller stays on the job, trying to guide the key players in the war toward renewed negotiations. “The political solution obviously is one that is going to involve all sides to this, both the legitimate government as well as those who are seeking to overthrow the legitimate government ... and for the sake of the citizens there’s going to have to be some give on all sides.”

The UN has tried repeatedly to broker a peace deal between the main combatants: the government of President Hadi (which operates from Saudi Arabia with military support from the Saudis and the US) and the northern rebel group known as the Houthis (who are allied with longtime Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh). The Houthi/Saleh rebels receive support — it's unclear how substantial — from Iran.

For the Hadi government, the war is astruggle to regain power and lead Yemen's central government. For the Saudis, it is an existential conflict with its regional economic, political and religious rival, Iran.

Part of Tueller's job is to determine America's role in this murky conflict and to defend the interests of its key ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia.

"We certainly are a major partner in Saudi Arabia and the security, we provide weapons," he says. "But the conflict in Yemen is not a conflict between Saudis and Yemenis," he is quick to add. "It is a conflict between Yemenis. The Saudis have intervened on behalf of the Yemenis who feel that they have a weaker military position and who want to try to resume that peaceful transition."

Humanitarian groups have raised alarms over conditions in Yemen, including a cholera epidemic, a possible famine and an economic crash that they blame on the war. Some, including the International Committee of the Red Cross are calling on warring parties to ease the fighting so that food, fuel and other relief can be delivered to Yemenis struggling with disease, hunger and extreme poverty.

But, Tueller says, the US is not in a position to enforce a ceasefire.

“We simply don't have leverage over the groups that are actually fighting on the ground,” he says. “This is a civil war. This is Yemenis fighting against Yemenis. And until we have some mechanism to get the Yemenis to step back and make political compromises the conflict is going to go on.”

Not everyone agrees that the US is without leverage.

“The United States is choosing not to have influence over the warring parties in Yemen,” says Katherine Zimmerman, who follows events in Yemen for the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “We are constraining ourselves ... in terms of who we're talking to and how we are engaging with them.”

To be sure, Tueller and the embassy staff are not slacking. “A lot of us are on the road an awful lot,” Tueller says of his efforts to restore peace and order to Yemen.

“It's an important issue before the [UN] Security Council. So I coordinate closely with my colleagues from Russia, China, France and the UK, and then in addition countries like Germany, Japan [and] Turkey have had longstanding assistance and development and military assistance relationships with Yemen.”

But the diplomatic effort is incomplete, says Katherine Zimmerman. “Our Yemeni embassy ... is understaffed for the task ahead of it.

And so we don't have enough people to meet with Yemenis,” she says. “We should be engaging with all parties and understanding what they want.”

By being headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the US may be signaling its support for one side in a civil war that has divided the country dramatically. "As we're looking at how the United States is moving forward with the conflict, we're moving forward in lockstep with the United Nations political process — and also with Saudi Arabia," Zimmerman says.

And that may distort how the United States engages with the civil war writ large because, she says, "Saudi Arabia is a belligerent."

Zimmerman wants the US to engage more directly with more parties to the conflict, people outside the powerful elites who tend to dominate Yemeni politics. "There are millions of people outside of the capital that have grievances," she says, "and that's why there are such strong opposition bases."

"If we focus on restoring a central government [such as the government of President Hadi] it only goes so far. I think this is to the ambassador's point," Zimmerman adds, "where even if we were to resolve the political issues at stake — that drove the war in the first place — it actually won't end the war, because there are now local grievances in many of the provinces that are being fought at the local level. And there are no processeses in place to start resolving those grievances."

Nearly three years since the war began, the US role in Yemen remains a work in progress for Tueller.

"We're doing this job, even though it's particularly difficult to operate under these circumstances, because we see that the US interests are so important. And that if we're not involved, the conflict almost certainly is one that's going to become worse," he says, "and that ultimately our own interests will become much more compromised in this region if we're not part of a solution that leads to a stable unified Yemen."

audio and more relevant links

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-08-04/we-dont-have-leverage-why-us-cant-stop-yemen-war

 

[Johnnny]

What else is new? Were like, "selling" them the f'ing weapons...

 

[tay]

It’s remarkable that whenever you read an article about Yemen in the mainstream media, the central role of Saudi Arabia and the United States in the tragedy is glossed over or completely ignored. A recent Washington Post article purporting to tell us “how things got so bad” explains to us that, “it's a complicated story” involving “warring regional superpowers, terrorism, oil, and an impending climate catastrophe.”

No, Washington Post, it’s simpler than that. The tragedy in Yemen is the result of foreign military intervention in the internal affairs of that country. It started with the “Arab Spring” which had all the fingerprints of State Department meddling, and it escalated with 2015’s unprovoked Saudi attack on the country to re-install Riyadh’s preferred leader. Thousands of innocent civilians have been killed and millions more are at risk as starvation and cholera rage.

We are told that US foreign policy should reflect American values. So how can Washington support Saudi Arabia – a tyrannical state with one of the worst human rights record on earth – as it commits by what any measure is a genocide against the Yemeni people? The UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs warned just last week that Yemen faces "the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims." The Red Cross has just estimated that a million people are vulnerable in the cholera epidemic that rages through Yemen.

And why is there a cholera epidemic? Because the Saudi government – with US support – has blocked every port of entry to prevent critical medicine from reaching suffering Yemenis. This is not a war. It is cruel murder.

The United States is backing Saudi aggression against Yemen by cooperating in every way with the Saudi military. Targeting, intelligence, weapons sales, and more. The US is a partner in Saudi Arabia’s Yemen crimes.

Does holding hands with Saudi Arabia as it slaughters Yemeni children really reflect American values? Is anyone even paying attention?

The claim that we are fighting al-Qaeda in Yemen and thus our involvement is covered under the post-9/11 authorization for the use of force is without merit. In fact it has been reported numerous times in the mainstream media that US intervention on behalf of the Saudis in Yemen is actually a boost to al-Qaeda in the country. Al-Qaeda is at war with the Houthis who had taken control of much of the country because the Houthis practice a form of Shi’a Islam they claim is tied to Iran. We are fighting on the same side as al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Adding insult to injury, the US Congress can’t be bothered to even question how we got so involved in a war that has nothing to do with us. A few conscientious Members of Congress got together recently to introduce a special motion under the 1973 War Powers Act that would have required a vote on our continued military involvement in the Yemen genocide. The leadership of both parties joined together to destroy this attempt to at least get a vote on US aggression against Yemen. As it turns out, the only Members to vote against this shamefully gutted resolution were the original Members who introduced it. This is bipartisanship at its worst.

US involvement in Saudi Arabia’s crimes against Yemen is a national disgrace. That the mainstream media fails to accurately cover this genocide is shameful. Let us join our voices now to demand that our US Representatives end US involvement in Yemen immediately!


The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Why Are We Helping Saudi Arabia Destroy Yemen?

 

[Hoid]

General Dynamics is not a Canadian company.

 

[Curious Cdn]

General Dynamics is not a Canadian company.

As a matter if fact, Canada is a division of General Dynamics.