As Secretary of State John Kerry and other spokesman of empire decry “human rights abuses” in Syria and other U.S. targets, they have remained silent about the destruction of Yemen. Yemeni civilians have been the primary victims of the Saudi attacks over the past year and a half. Oxfam reports that 2.8 million people have fled their homes in Yemen since March 2015 and an estimated 21 million people are in need of life-saving aid. Some 82 percent of the population, that is 14.4 million people, are in urgent need of food assistance.
If Yemen is in such a state of acute crisis, why is it largely being ignored by the Western media?
Peace talks break down
Peace talks were suspended in April as Saudi bombs continued to rain down on Yemen. Houthi representatives refused to leave the capital, Sana’a, to go meet with Gulf Cooperation Council representatives in Kuwait until the air strikes ceased. This never happened.
The GCC is an alliance of the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. The ruling classes of the member states—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—have a common objective of securing their power and squashing any move away from ultra-conservative and pro-U.S. dictatorial rule in the region. Part of their notorious record has included funneling massive resources to ISIS and other terrorist forces in Syria and Iraq to overthrow the central Syrian state. In Yemen, they have once again teamed up to punish a disobedient neighbor.
The U.S.-Saudi alliance
The U.S. continues to give the green light to the Saudi royal family to carry out this bloodbath with the most high-tech U.S. and British weapons. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s report on 2011-2015, Saudi Arabia is the number one purchaser of U.S. arms. With massive profits on the line, the U.S. and the British refuse to utter a word in critique of the Saudis. Earlier this year the United Nations issued a report indicting Saudi Arabia as “child killers” in their annual Child and Armed Conflict Report. When the Saudis threatened to cut off their funding to the U.N., the report was retracted. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon testified that the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir made the threats to clear their name.
The Yemeni resistance to the Saudis is a tale of David verse Goliath. Yemen was already the poorest Middle Eastern country before the Saudi war of aggression. Saudi Arabia has the third largest military budget in the world, spending $81.9 billion dollars on their military capacity in 2015. It is worth noting that Saudis’ master, the U.S. government, spent seven times this amount on weapons and war. The country with the largest economy in the region continues to unapologetically bomb the country with the smallest economy in the region.
The devastation of infrastructure and stability has also given “a kiss of life” to a new branch of al Qaeda that is setting up shop in Yemen. The last thing the people of Yemen and the Middle East need is more war and investment in arms; they need investment in human development.
Houthi-Saleh alliance formalized
On July 28, supporters of deposed former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthi movement jointly declared the formation of a “supreme political committee” to function as the governing body of the territory under their control. As Yemen’s president from 1990 to 2012, and previously as the President of North Yemen from 1978 until reunification with South Yemen in 1990, Saleh repressed the Houthis.
The Houthis are a tribal and religious group based in the north of Yemen; they are Zaydi Shi’ites, a branch of the religion found only in Yemen who started to rebel against the Yemeni state in 2004. Their influence spread as they participated in the 2011 Arab Spring revolts which culminated in the in the toppling of Saleh. The Saudis then moved to install the puppet government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi as the preferred option to the Houthis who are perceived to be allies of Iran. The Hadi government collapsed in February of 2015 and the Houthis appeared to seize power in Sana’a, beginning to move to consolidate control of the nation while facing opposition from a variety of groups. However, the U.S.-backed and Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out both bombing and ground operations since March 25, 2015, in an attempt to re-instate the government of Hadi.
Now, before the Saudi offensive both groups’ followings are standing together and cooperating before the common threat.The Houthis and followers of Saleh, once fractionalized themselves, have now converted their fight into Saudi Arabia’s quagmire.
According to the founder of the UK based Islamic Human Rights Commission, Massoud Shadjareh, “The real goal in sending troops to Yemen is to place a puppet president in power who will obey Riyadh.”
Though there are complicated divisions, the people of Yemen have a long history of struggle and are refusing to submit before the superior military power of the Saudis/GCC. Despite a U.S./Saudi naval blockade and the indiscriminate bombing campaign, the Yemenis continue to fight back. In the war-torn, impoverished country, this is only possible because of widespread indigenous resistance.
Sana’a has been the site of protests where seas of humanity have come out to protest the Saudi-GCC attacks. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have fearlessly stood together becomes all the more heroic considering the Saudis again dropped bombs on the mass demonstrations last week. The Saudis have routinely bombed schools, hospitals and civilian infrastructure.
It is clear that the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia fears democracy or an independent international orientation in Yemen or any neighboring country and will violate any international law to teach Yemen a lesson.
The U.S. government has a long record of politicizing humanitarian catastrophes. If they can pin human rights abuses on a political enemy, it makes front page news until the task of overthrow is complete. “Regime change” then is nothing more than a sophisticated euphemism for recolonization.
Appeal to the anti-war movement
Yemen’s dire reality is similar to Syria, Iraq, Libya and other formerly sovereign, stable Arab countries that have been pulled apart at the seams by outside intervention.
Every day the mainstream media decries the refugee crisis as the U.S. government continues to play a central role in displacing millions of people from Sana’a to Kabul to Damascus. Humanitarian-minded people cannot even begin to address the refugee crisis until they come to terms with and oppose the United States’ imperial role in the Middle East. The number one task of the anti-war movement in the United States, Britain and the world over, is to expose and resist the U.S. wars and aggression.
