Looking at the ruins of a building destroyed in airstrikes in Sanaa, capital of Yemen, a day before the second anniversary of the military intervention in Yemen, on March 25, 2017.Xinhua/Press Association. All rights reserved.
Two years ago, on 26 March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition
started aerial attacks on Yemen, transforming a civil war into an international
conflict with the predictable result: humanitarian disaster, intensification of
the fighting, a far higher casualty toll, no exit strategy, much nonsense in international
political circles and the media.
Officially there are now some 40,000 human casualties,
including more than 2,500 children and 1,900 women killed directly by the
strikes. In addition thousands of women and children have died from lack of
access to medical facilities and treatment. UNICEF estimates that a child dies
every ten minutes from disease or hunger. Men also die, and not just in the
fighting.
A summary for those whose attention may be distracted by
other disasters.[1] The
2011 uprisings led to the formal departure of Saleh from the presidency he had
held for 33 years, and restricted him to his role as head of the General
People’s Congress, his political party. He was replaced by his former Vice
President Hadi to head a 2-year transition through the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) Agreement mechanism and with the support of the United Nations. Between
2012 and 2014 while the formal transition moves were taking place (a failed
security sector reform, National Dialogue Conference, constitutional committee,
government of national unity), the Huthi movement, based in the far north of
the country allied with its former enemy Saleh and took control of areas beyond
its own stronghold. When the transition
unravelled in 2014, this alliance moved further south, took over the capital
and eventually ousted the transitional regime. Hadi, after a brief stop-over in
the newly appointed temporary capital of Aden, took refuge in Saudi Arabia when
the air strikes started and the war was internationalised.
Making a poor country destitute
Already the poorest country in the region, Yemen has now
suffered from massive destruction of its limited infrastructure: some towns and
villages have been reduced to rubble, most bridges and major mountain passes
will need millions to repair. And while the international community, led by the
GCC, organises luxurious pledging conferences for reconstruction, anyone with
previous experience of such pledges knows that they are little more than
fantasy.
At a time of low oil prices, when Saudi Arabia is actually
borrowing to cover its budget deficit, and other GCC states are also
retrenching, there is little likelihood of their actually paying for
reconstruction of Yemen. With a few notable exceptions, mainly in Scandinavia,
the northern/western states, also cutting into public expenditure on aid and
for services at home to finance increased military spending can be expected to
find more and better excuses than those they used in the past decade to renege
on their pledges.
The coming famine
You may have read or heard about the famine which is
threatening Yemen and countries in Africa. In some areas of Yemen people are already
dying from starvation. First people can’t afford to buy food, even if prices
had not risen as they have. Government staff are not paid, private sector
employment is almost non-existent, and foreign funded development projects
reduced to a bare skeleton of their pre-war situation. In
some areas of Yemen people are already dying from starvation.
Second, as Yemen imports 90% of its staples, the blockade is
an effective weapon: although intended to enforce the arms embargo on the
Huthi-Saleh alliance, it is used to prevent basic supplies entering the country.
A UN Verification Inspection Mechanism was finally agreed in 2016, but failed
to seriously accelerate the arrival of essentials. Destruction of the cranes at
Hodeida port further slows unloading. Constraints to delivery continue as truck
drivers have to pay ‘taxes’ at endless checkpoints. Economic warfare also
includes the transfer of the Central Bank, which in any case had run out of
money. Therefore importers can no longer get the letters of credit needed to
purchase grains on the international market: as 90% of imports are commercial, simply
put, within weeks, the result will be no food to buy at any price.
The United Nations has stated that, of the four famines
predicted for 2017, Yemen is the worst, with seven million people close to starvation
and a further ten million in urgent need. It appeals for USD 2.1 billion for
humanitarian work in Yemen this year. At a time of reduced international
funding, this amount is unlikely to materialise. Last year’s appeal received
60% of the USD 1.6 billion requested.
Translated into plain English this means people of all ages, including
thousands of children, will be left to starve or die of disease, without water
or having to walk miles to collect dirty water from wells or springs. The 2
million or more displaced families have nothing, no shelter, no food, no
sanitation, nothing.
Meanwhile in the UK, the DEC Yemen appeal launched last
December, has collected more than 20 million pounds, but is now superseded by
the new appeal for East Africa. Readers are urged to contribute anything they
can to MSF, UNICEF, DEC or whichever is their favoured organisation operating
in Yemen.
Meanwhile, on the military front…
A woman paints graffiti on a wall during a campaign in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 15, 2017. Xinhua/Press Association. All rights reserved.
The Saudi-led coalition air forces have carried out over 90,000
sorties over Yemen, and there is no prospect of them ending. Many sorties involve
aircraft each dropping two 2000lb bombs. Precision targeting, assisted by US
and British advisers in Saudi operations rooms has had mixed results: four
Medecins Sans Frontières and another 270 medical facilities have been bombed, close
to 750 schools, more than 500 markets and shops damaged or destroyed, let alone
the damage to the country’s cultural heritage, with historic mosques,
archaeological sites and museums attacked. There are plenty more figures,
including the destruction of more than 400,000 homes: just think what this
means for the families who lived there! Precision
targeting, assisted by US and British advisers in Saudi operations rooms has
had mixed results.
Two years on, the short air-borne war which the newly
appointed Saudi Minister of Defence probably hoped would seal his position as
future king, has reached quagmire: most fronts have been more or less static for
18 months or more. The widely broadcast success of the current offensive along
the Red Sea coast is proving more limited and more expensive than claimed. It
is also accompanied by the usual ‘mistakes’, for example on 17 March a
helicopter and sea attack killed more than 40 Somali refugees on their way to
Sudan with UNHCR assistance. The coalition tactic of blaming the enemy fell
flat, as the Saleh Huthi alliance has not one single aircraft of any
description able to fly.
Temporary capital Aden, the north-east area round Mareb, and
most of the southern governorates (area of the former People’s Democratic
Republic of Yemen) were liberated from Saleh-Huthi control in the summer of
2015. These areas have not experienced re-establishment of effective
administration by the Hadi administration. For the first year, most ministers
made occasional brief forays into Aden and even briefer stop-overs elsewhere.
Even military control is debatable, given that current security
and military units are largely unconnected and unrelated groups of armed men,
mostly under the titles of ‘Security Belt’ or ‘Elite Forces’ trained, paid and
supervised directly by the main coalition partner in that area, the United Arab
Emirates.While Al Qaeda has evacuated urban areas, they re-appear frequently. Many
interventions publicised as being against al Qaeda are actually targeted at the
Yemeni Muslim Brothers (known as Islah), because for the UAE, Islah is the
prime enemy. What governance exists is local.
The one positive feature in the southern rural areas is that
coalition airstrikes are rare. Instead, until January 2017, the people there
had to expect US drone attacks against al Qaeda at any time. With the Trump
Presidency, they have found that drone strikes are far more frequent and, in
addition, US air strikes have become a regular feature. The now notorious Yakla
ground attack in al Baidha governorate may be a foretaste of what is to come. Al
Baidha deserves special mention as it is a front with ground fighting,
coalition air strikes and US direct strikes. It is still largely controlled by
the Huthi-Saleh alliance; resistance against Saleh’s forces is an alliance of
local tribes with jihadis, so the people of that governorate get the worst of
all worlds! Taiz city is another complex situation where all factions are
present, but air strikes are rare.
A political solution?
Negotiations? Saving the lives of
ordinary Yemenis?
Every political statement from the UN, coalition members,
even the opposing Yemeni factions, states that the only solution to the problem
is political. Meanwhile arms are delivered, the UN Special envoy travels from
one fruitless meeting to the next contributing to carbon emissions, Hadi and
his ministers repeat ad nauseam their totally uncompromising demands, the
Saleh-Huthi team claim willingness to negotiate, and the fighting and killing
go on and on.
The coalition boasts advances on the ground, while their
demands can be summarised as complete surrender by their opponents. The
Huthi-Saleh alliance remains militarily strong and don’t appear to be running
out of weapons or ammunition. Their evident shortage of cash is alleviated by a
taxation system which levies cash from citizens anywhere and everywhere as many
times as possible along the routes of food supplies and anything else. This success of the Saudi public relations
machinery is a rare achievement for the millions of dollars spent with western PR
firms.
Internationally, the war is mostly described as a proxy one
between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This success of the Saudi public relations
machinery is a rare achievement for the millions of dollars spent with western PR
firms. Although the Obama administration provided uncritical support, only
slightly tempered by public protests at civilian deaths, Saudi Arabia is
expecting and finding even more uncritical support now.
While Trump decides whether Al Qaeda, Daesh or Iran is its
prime target, whichever it chooses leaves Yemen in the firing line: although
Daesh is barely present, propaganda about deep Iranian involvement has trumped
the reality of little more than propaganda support, while the presence of
famous Al Qaeda leaders in remote locations provide great targets. History
analyses longer than tweets are probably of little interest to a US president whose
concern is limited for the lives of human beings who are not Christian
fundamentalists. It would be ridiculous to expect his administration to devote
funds and time on famine relief, wider humanitarian needs or good governance at
the expense of good relations with GCC millionaire monarchs.
Making America Great again includes increased military
budget and more arms sales. Since the conflict began, the US and UK have
together transferred more than US$5 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, more
than 10 times the US$450 million that the US State Department and the UK’s
Department for International Development have spent or budgeted for aid to
Yemen.[2]
Where does the UK come into this?
While boasting of being one of the largest aid and relief ‘donors’ to Yemen, with just
over Sterling 130 million last year, that same year Britain agreed weapons
sales worth USD 3.3 billion to Saudi Arabia. It has been demonstrated that some
of the cluster bombs dropped in civilian areas were of British manufacture. Under
pressure, the Saudis stopped using British cluster bombs and promptly replaced
them with Brazilian ones, rather than giving up weapons which are known to kill
and maim civilians and children decades after being dropped (see Laos, Cambodia
for example).
Opposition to British arms sales has led to a
judicial review of their legality, whose findings are awaited. In addition
there has been increasing discomfort in Parliament and beyond. While these are
likely to lead to somewhat greater public attention and possibly to ensuring
that more than half the British population know about the war, the May
government is unlikely to stop weapons sales to allies expected to save the
British economy from Brexit-related recession. Yemenis
are actively being starved first by
their own warmonger leaders, and second by the foreign states which feed this
war with weapons and ammunition and allow the blockade of food and fuel.
In conclusion,
as we enter the third year of this awful war, the only new feature is the
impending faminewhich is likely to kill thousands, possibly hundreds of
thousands. Yemenis are not starving, they are actively being starved first by
their own warmonger leaders, and second by the foreign states which feed this
war with weapons and ammunition and allow the blockade of food and fuel. Prospects for peace are nowhere in sight. No
serious pressure is being put on the internationally recognised government and
its coalition partners to compromise while the other side has enough military
capacity to continue indefinitely. Local smugglers of weapons, food and fuel
are laughing all the way to their cash stores while international arms dealers
are counting their profits. The Yemeni people have justifiably lost what little
confidence they ever had in their leaders who, yet again, prove daily that they
haven’t got an ounce of humanity in their souls. Eventually one can only hope
that ordinary Yemeni men, women and children, will succeed in imposing their
voices and views, and overcome the nightmarish obstacles in their path to peace
and reasonable living conditions.
Meanwhile let us all try and bring this day forward.
[1] For details see my earlier pieces in openDemocracy.
[2]
See Amnesty
International (23 March 2017) Yemen: Multibillion-dollar arms sales by USA and UK reveal shameful
contradiction with aid efforts.