Joe Biden Foreign Policy
THE FORGOTTEN WAR
Biden Signals a Desire To End the Yemen War. Here's Why Yemenis Aren't
Buying It
If Biden is serious about reaching a diplomatic end to the war, he has a
real chance to add ending one of the twenty-first century's most violent
conflicts to his presidential legacy, but the chance of the happening may be
slim reports Ahmed Abdulkareem.
by Ahmed Abdulkareem
November 13th, 2020
By Ahmed Abdulkareem
As news broke that Joe Biden almost certainly won the U.S. presidential
election, some Americans became hopeful that the new administration could
hearken in an era of calm in the Middle East. In Yemen, however, that
sentiment was not shared.
Most Yemenis have little hope that the new White House will end the blockade
and the devastating war in their country, which is now nearing the end of
its sixth year. Nor are they hopeful that the announcement that U.S. support
for the Saudi military intervention in Yemen could end during Biden's
presidential term will materialize into action after he is sworn into office
on January 20, 2021.
Ibrahim Abdulkareem, who lost his 11-month-old daughter, Zainab when a Saudi
warplane dropped an American-made bomb on his home in Sana`a in 2015, told
MintPress that Biden's statement is not good news to him, "I am not
optimistic that Biden will stop supplying Bin Salman with bombs like the
ones that killed my daughter," he said. Like Ibrahim, Yemeni civilians are
losing their loved ones, homes, and infrastructure to American weapons
supplied to the Saudi Coalition in droves, and there is little hope that
president-elect Biden will end support, including the supply of weapons and
military equipment, to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The Iranian boogeyman
In fact, officials in both Sana'a and Aden - the respective seats of power
for the opposing sides in Yemen's war - see little chance that Biden will
take action to end the conflict given the current geopolitical reality in
the Middle East. That reality includes the fever of normalization with
Israel sweeping across Arab governments, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are no
exception. Closely related is the ongoing obsession from concurrent U.S.
administrations with trying to contain so-called "Iranian influence" in the
Middle East and linking the war in Yemen with that effort.
War-Weary Yemenis See Threat in Israel's Increasingly Public Role in Their
Country
Many in Yemen fear Israel's ambitions in their country don't end at the
Bab-el-Mandeb Strait amid rumors of a Palestine-style land grab.
MintPress News | Ahmed Abdulkareem | 01:35 PM
Yemeni politicians have called on Biden to change how the White House views
the conflict and to stop treating it as a proxy war with Iran over
influence. Unfortunately, it has been reduced down to that binary argument,
with U.S. officials on both sides of the aisle blaming the entire affair on
Iran, reductively claiming that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy, and
framing the entire conflict in an Iran-centric geopolitical context - and
not the true context of foreign aggression and a battle to control the
strategic areas and some of the region's most lucrative untapped oil and gas
reserves.
American support
Most Yemenis view American support for the Saudi-led coalition not only as
fueling the fighting but also view the American government as a party to
serious war crimes in their country, directly at fault for the devastating
humanitarian crisis they now face. Yemen is on the verge of yet another
countdown to catastrophe as it faces a devastating famine within a few short
months according to a recent report by the UN issued on Wednesday. That
famine, in large part, stems not only from the Saud-led war and blockade,
but from drastic cuts to humanitarian food and aid programs implemented by
President Trump.
Since March 2015, when the war began, rather than halting weapons sales or
pressuring Saudi Arabia diplomatically, the White House instead opted to
ignore calls from the international community to address the suffering of
Yemeni civilians. Worse yet, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been given carte
blanche to carry out the most brazen and egregious violations of
international law and collective murder in modern history without so much as
a scolding from the United States.
Meet the Filthy Rich War Hawks That Make up the Joe Biden Foreign Policy
Team
Meet the filthy rich war hawks, including Susan Rice and Michele Flournoy,
that make up the foreign policy team of President-elect Joe Biden.
MintPress News | Alan Macleod | 01:37 PM
The Saudi-led war has killed more than 100,000 people since January 2016,
according to a report by the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data Project
(ACLED). That figure does not include those who have died in the
humanitarian disasters sparked by the conflict, particularly famine and the
thousands of tons of weapons, most often supplied by the United States, that
have been dropped on hospitals, schools, markets, mosques, farms, factories,
bridges, and power and water treatment plants.
Thirsty for peace
If Biden is serious about reaching a diplomatic end to the war, he has a
real chance to add ending one of the twenty-first century's most violent
conflicts to his presidential legacy. Yemen is thirsty for peace. Both the
resistance forces led by Ansar Allah and the Saudi-backed militant groups'
that oppose them have signaled a desire to reach a political settlement, a
sentiment, of course, not readily reflected by the governments of Saudi
Arabia and the UAE. Those governments, however, do face increasingly
dwindling support among the same forces in Yemen that allegedly invited them
to intervene in their country under the auspices of returning ousted
president Abdul Mansour Hadi to power. Now, even among the coalition's
staunchest allies, Saudi Arabia's actions are increasingly seen as little
more than an effort to balkanize the nation into regions and factions that
can more easily be managed.
Among the Houthis (Ansar Allah), the most stalwart of forces opposed to a
foreign presence in Yemen, an attitude of reconciliation pervades.
Throughout the conflict, the group has proven its propensity for diplomatic
rapprochement and a desire to work within the structures of international
mediators to negotiate an end to the war. According to high-ranking
officials in Sana'a, preparations for negotiations are being made in case
the Biden administration is serious about ending the war.
However, the group's leadership is taking Biden's statement with a grain of
salt. A wait and see approach persists among decision-makers in Sana'a, and
rumors are flying that Biden may work with Yemen's Brotherhood, a Saudi
Arabia ally.
Untangling the quagmire
Trump's own legacy in the Middle East is another factor that Biden will have
to maneuver if he wishes to untangle the complex quagmire that is Yemen. The
Trump administration recently notified Congress that it approved the sale of
more than $23bn in advanced weapons systems, including F-35 fighter jets and
armed drones, to the UAE, Saudi Arabia's most prominent partner in its war
on Yemen. The Houthis have played down the announcement, saying that
consent is one thing, but delivery is another entirely and if the Biden
administration does go through with the sale, they will consider it a crime
against Yemen.
High-ranking Houthi officials told MintPress that while they do not expect
the president-elect to recognize their right to sovereignty, they are
hopeful that the situation in Yemen will be re-assessed by the incoming
administration and that the Houthis will no longer be seen as a threat to
Washington or their allies in the region, and there is some evidence to
substantiate that idea.
Every Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia and the UAE has been retaliatory, not
preemptive, in nature. Even the attack on the Saudi Aramco facility on
September 14, 2019, came in response to ongoing Saudi Coalition military
maneuvers inside Yemen. Prior to the 2015 Saudi-led Coalition war on their
country, the Houthis did not show animus towards the Kingdom, nor a desire
to target it militarily. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia a major exporter of the
same kind of jihadist ideology that drives groups like al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula and ISIS, groups that the Kingdom has used to try to
undermine Houthi power, making the Houthis a natural ally to any force
working to contain those organizations.
Saudi Arabia launched its war on Yemen in March of 2015 under the leadership
of Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman. Salman claimed his objective in
launching the war was to roll back the Houthis and reinstate ousted former
Yemeni president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who fled the country to Saudi Arabia
following popular protests during the Arab Spring. From the moment the
highly unpopular war began, Saudi officials have worked hard to frame it as
a necessary step in liberating the Arab country from Iran, repeating the
still unfounded claim that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy.
Trump's Middle East Policy is Pushing Yemen's Houthis into Iran's Hands
Donald Trump's aggressive policies towards Iran and support for the Saudi
war on Yemen is bringing Iran and the Houthis closer together.
MintPress News | Ahmed Abdulkareem | Jul 20, 2019
Continued pressure on Yemen will inevitably force the Houthis to lean more
heavily into their relationships with Iran, Russia, and China, all perceived
enemies of the United States, as they indeed have done under the Trump
presidency. Iran's newly appointed ambassador to Yemen arrived in Sana'a
last month, and prior to that, the Houthis sent an ambassador to Tehran.
Syria and Qatar are expected to follow and reopen their embassies in Sana'a
according to Houthi officials, and if the staggering human cost of the war
is not enough, that should give Biden an incentive not to allow the
protracted conflict to carry on..
