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Kathy Kelly on "Scourging Yemen."
By mickielynn on 2018-05-22 13:43:49
Hello Dear Readers, I have a different topic planned for this week (and will do another post towards the end of the week.)
But this article by Kathy Kelly of Creative Voices for Nonviolence was such a well written one about the topic of what the
US is doing to support and encourage the unspeakable violence that Saudi Arabia is committing in Yemen that I just had to
share it with you as an extra post for the week. [caption id="attachment_11195" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
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Scourging Yemen by Kathy Kelly May 22, 2018
[caption id="attachment_11225" align="alignnone" width="600"]
A Thumb on the Scale, a
cartoon about how the US tries to equate a few Houthi missiles with the incredible armaments and attacks on civilians by the
Saudi-led coalition. Weapons and attacks supported by our government! Cartoon by S/ Reynolds (Creative Commons by SA
4.0)[/caption] On May 10, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia informed the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General
Antonio Guterres that Saudi Air Defenses intercepted two Houthi ballistic missiles launched from inside Yemeni territory
targeting densely populated civilian areas in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. No one was killed, but an earlier attack, on March 26,
2018, killed one Egyptian worker in Riyadh and an April 28 attack killed a Saudi man. Unlike the unnumbered victims of
the Saudis’ own ongoing bombardment of Yemen, these two precious, irreplaceable lives are easy to document and count.
Death tolls have become notoriously difficult to count accurately in Yemen. Three years of U.S.-supported blockades and
bombardments have plunged the country into immiseration and chaos. In their May 10! request, the Saudis asked the UN to
implement “all relevant Security Council resolutions in order to prevent the smuggling of additional weapons to the Houthis,
and to hold violators of the arms embargo accountable.” The letter accuses Iran of furnishing the Houthi militias with
stockpiles of ballistic missiles, UAVs and sea mines. The Saudis’ letter omits mention of massive U.S. weapons exports to
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Security Council resolutions invoked by the Saudis name the
Houthis as a warring party in Yemen and call for an embargo, so the Houthis can’t acquire more weapons. But these
Resolutions don’t name the Saudis as a warring party in Yemen, even though Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has,
since March 2015, orchestrated Saudi involvement in the war, using billions of dollars of weapons sold to the Saudis and the
UAE by the U.S. and the UK. The Saudis have an undeniable right to call on the UN to work toward preventing the Houthis
from acquiring ballistic weapons that could be fired into Saudi Arabia, but the air, sea and water blockade now imposed on
Yemen brutally and lethally punishes children who have no capacity whatsoever to affect Houthi policies. What’s more, the
U.S. military, through midair refueling of Saudi and Emirati warplanes, is directly involved in devastating barrages of
airstrikes while the UN Security Council essentially pays no heed. As Yemeni civilians’ lives become increasingly desperate,
they become increasingly isolated, their suffering made invisible by a near-total lack of Western media interest or attention.
No commercial flights are allowed into the Sana’a airport, so media teams and human rights documentarians can’t enter the
areas of Yemen most afflicted by airstrikes. The World Food Program (WFP) organizes a weekly flight into Sana’a, but the
WFP must vet passengers with the Saudi government. Nevertheless, groups working in Yemen, including Amnesty
International, Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF), Save the Children, Oxfam, and various UN agencies do their best to report
about consequences of the Saudi-Emirati led coalition’s blockade and airstrikes. On May 18"", Médecins Sans Frontiéres
(MSF) issued a report about airstrikes against the Saada governorate which notes that “in the past three years, the coalition
has carried out 16,749 air raids in Yemen, i.e. an average of 15 a day. Almost a third of the raids have hit non-military sites.”
Earlier in May, MSF responded to a series of Saudi-Emirati coalition led airstrikes on May 7h Which struck a busy street in
the heart of Sana’a, killing six people and injuring at least 72. “Civilians, including children, were killed and maimed
because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Joao Martins, MSF head of mission in Yemen. “No-one
should live in fear of being bombed while going about their daily life; yet again we are seeing civilian victims of airstrikes
fighting for their lives in hospitals.” Lacking access to food, clean water, medicine and fuel, over 400,000 Yemeni children
are, according to Save the Children, at imminent risk of starvation. “Most of them will never see a health clinic or receive
treatment,” says Kevin Watkins, the organization’s UK Director. “Many of those who survive will be affected by stunting
and poor health for the rest of their lives.” Watkins says the Saudi-UAE led coalition is using economic strangulation as a
weapon of war, “targeting jobs, infrastructure, food markets and the provision of basic services.” On March 22, 2018,
Amnesty International called for an end to the flow of arms to the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen. “There is extensive
evidence that irresponsible arms flows to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition have resulted in enormous harm to Yemeni
civilians,” their statement says. “But this has not deterred the USA, the UK and other states, including France, Spain and
Italy, from continuing transfers of billions of dollars’ worth of such arms.” The UN Charter begins with a commitment to
save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. The UN Security Council has miserably failed the Yemeni people by
allowing the scourge of war to worsen, year by year. By approving biased resolutions that neglect to even name the most
well-funded and sophisticated warring parties in Yemen -- Saudi Arabia; the United Arab Emirates; the United States -- the
Security Council promotes the intensification of brutal, apocalyptic war and enables western war profiteers to benefit from
billions of dollars in weapon sales. Weapon manufacturers such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Boeing then pressure
governments to continue selling weapons to two of their top customers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Earnest,
honest and practical steps to stop the war are urgently needed. The U.N. must abandon its biased role in the Yemen conflict,
so it can broker a peace in which the Houthi minority can retain some dignity and representation in majority-Sunni Yemen,
which even before the Houthi uprising lacked any legitimate elected leader. The Houthis must be given an option to lay
down arms without landing in any of the clandestine prisons operated by the UAE in Yemen, reported to be little more than
torture camps. Even more urgent, the violence and economic strangulation by foreign invaders must cease. At the very least,
citizens in countries supplying weapons to the Saudi-Emirati coalition must demand their legislators forbid all future sales.
The time for determined action is running out in the U.S. as the State Department is already taking preliminary steps toward
a massive, multibillion-dollar sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The package is said to include
tens of thousands of precision-guided munitions from Raytheon. Yemeni civilians, especially children, pose no threat
whatsoever to the U.S. Yet, U.S. support for airstrikes, blockades and the chaos inevitably caused by prolonged war
threatens Yemeni civilians, especially vulnerable children. They have committed no crime but are being punished with
death. Kathy Kelly (kathy@ycnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)
