Boardman writes: "After a year in Yemen, the US/Saudi coalition has managed
to reduce the region's poorest country to an almost unthinkable condition,
where some 20 million Yemenis - about 80% of the population - need
humanitarian assistance."
Emiratis welcoming a UAE military convoy as it travels from the Al-Hamra
military base to Zayed city after returning from Yemen, on 7 November, 2015.
(photo: AFP/HO/WAM)
US/Saudi Aggression in Yemen Celebrated by Co-Aggressor UAE
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
18 April 16
The National is an English-language publication owned and operated by Abu
Dhabi Media, the government-run media organization of Abu Dhabi, the capital
of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There is no press freedom in the UAE.
Government media report the government point of view, which rarely includes
criticism of the government.
On March 26, the first anniversary of the UAE's unprovoked attack on Yemen
as part of the Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states, the UAE's official
media published a document about the carnage in Yemen illustrative of George
Orwell's observation: "If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it
from yourself." The truth about the war in Yemen is a largely unreported
secret. The UAE officially hides that truth from itself in an editorial in
The National (which follows in its entirety, section by section). It begins
with the headline:
After a year in Yemen, our resolve is firm
After a year in Yemen, the US/Saudi coalition has managed to reduce the
region's poorest country to an almost unthinkable condition, where some 20
million Yemenis - about 80% of the population - need humanitarian
assistance. In a country both under attack and on the verge of mass famine,
what does "our resolve is firm" really mean if not continued crimes against
humanity? The UAE editorial's first sentence has no discernible meaning at
all:
The start one year ago of Operation Decisive Storm comes as a reminder of
the importance of the war in Yemen.
The anniversary of an aggression - that the Saudis proclaimed would be brief
and decisive - is important mostly for its irony. An official Saudi press
release of March 25, 2015, quoted the Saudi ambassador to the US saying:
"The operation will be limited in nature, and designed to protect the people
of Yemen and its legitimate government from a takeover by the Houthis. A
violent extremist militia." By then the "legitimate" government of Yemen had
fled to the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Not only has more than a year of
US/Saudi-led war failed to achieve any significant military success, it has
produced collateral damage on a massive scale, making the country of 25
million people perhaps the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.
This reality makes a mockery of the UAE editorial's next assertion:
The UAE joined the Saudi-led coalition campaign driven by its commitment and
dedication to maintaining security and establishing peace in the region.
This is, almost literally, Orwellian in its "war is peace" mindset. From the
start, the US/Saudi aggression has violated international law and committed
war crimes against Yemeni civilians, using cluster bombs made in the USA
(and sold to the Saudis with US taxpayer subsidies). The recently-released
US State Department annual human rights report on Saudi Arabia for 2015
soft-pedals the allies' slaughter of civilians in Yemen, and omits
Saudi-dropped US cluster bombs entirely (perhaps because their lingering
impact killing children over years and decades is deucedly hard to assess
accurately, whereas profits can be tallied almost immediately). The full
despicability of the Obama administration's position on these inhumanities
is revealed in its official unwillingness to speak on the record about the
blatant hypocrisy of its morally indefensible defense of the murder of
civilians for profit, as reported in The Intercept:
A State Department spokesperson, who would only comment on background,
pointed out that the U.S. has called on both sides of the conflict to
protect civilians. He also claimed that the use of cluster munitions is not
a human rights violation because the United States has not signed the ban on
cluster munitions.
The State Department spokesperson did not acknowledge that only one side
bombs civilians (in schools, hospitals, markets, and homes) with US-made
planes dropping US-made munitions. This follows a years-long US campaign in
Yemen to kill civilians with US-made drones (still in use from outside the
country).
Yemen is drawn as a coherent state on maps, but most of the Yemeni-Saudi
border has never been officially defined. Yemen has an ancient culture in
the western part of the country, but it has never been a coherent state. The
Saudis and Yemenis have engaged in sporadic, armed conflict for decades. In
particular, the Saudis and the Houthis have fought over northwest Yemen and
neighboring southwest Saudi Arabia, which is home to a large Houthi
population. Security in the region is not directly threatened by the Yemeni
civil war. For any Arab state to talk like the UAE of establishing "peace in
the region" is fundamentally hilarious.
The UAE has long been a source of support for the Islamic State (aka ISIS,
ISIL, or Daesh), as have Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait - all part of the
coalition waging war on Yemen. Editorially, the UAE cloaks itself in the
mantle of state legitimacy:
The coalition responded to the call by Yemen's president Abd Rabbu Mansour
Hadi to restore his internationally recognised government to power.
To call the Hadi government "internationally recognized" is to fudge the
reality that the Hadi government has only limited recognition among Yemenis.
Hadi came to power through what US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power
called, somewhat falsely, the "peaceful, inclusive, and consensus-driven
political transition under the leadership of the legitimate President of
Yemen, Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi." One problem with this US formulation is
that Hadi's "legitimacy" derives from his being installed as president by an
international diplomatic coup, followed by his election in a race in which
he was the sole candidate. Essentially, there is no legitimate government of
Yemen and has not been for decades at least. The present war of aggression
by outside powers intervening in a multifaceted civil war relies for its
justification on a variety of dishonest fictions. The Houthis are a
sub-group of the Shi'ite Zaidis, who number about eight million in Yemen.
The Zaidis governed northwest Yemen for 1,000 years, until 1962. The UAE
editorial invents a different historical identity:
Houthi rebels had captured the capital of Sanaa, with the support of Iran
and loyalists to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and were advancing
towards the southern city of Aden. On the way, they had killed civilians and
destroyed neighbourhoods, leading to a vast humanitarian crisis.
Iran is widely scapegoated as a nefarious influence in Yemen, but there is
little or no evidence of Iranian involvement on a scale that could possibly
make a difference on the ground in Yemen. Iran's support of the Houthis,
their fellow Shi'ites, has been largely diplomatic, political, and
presumably financial. Former president Saleh, who has a wide following of
non-Houthis, was deposed in the coup that installed Hadi. When Saleh was
president of Yemen, he also fought a Houthi insurrection. While there is
little doubt that all sides in the Yemen civil war (including al Qaeda and
ISIS) have committed war crimes of various degree, only the US/Saudi
coalition has bombed defenseless civilian populations. There is a special
deceit in the UAE suggestion that the Houthis in 2015 are the cause of the
Yemen humanitarian crisis in 2016. A year of largely indiscriminate bombing
by the US/Saudi forces is the more proximate and powerful cause, as is the
year-long US/Saudi naval blockade that keeps Yemenis caught in the bomb
range while at the same time denying them food, medicine, and other
essentials for survival. Nevertheless, according to the UAE editorial, the
Houthis - who have suffered attacks by ISIL - are somehow responsible for
ISIL attacking coalition forces in the south:
The Houthis' disregard for Yemen's security created fertile ground for
extremism to thrive, leading to the latest attacks by ISIL that killed 20
people in Aden on Friday.
Whatever "security" Yemen has had in recent years has been largely illusory.
The US drone program in Yemen spent years creating insecurity and killing
civilians until the US withdrew just ahead of the fall of the Hadi
government (president Saleh had also sanctioned the lethal US military
presence in Yemen). And why was the US there? Because Yemen was already
"fertile ground for extremism," in particular AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, which now controls roughly half of Yemen's southern coast, about
370 miles including the port city of Mukalla, with a 500,000 population. The
effective allies in the US/Saudi war on the Houthis include not only the UAE
and other coalition members, but also al Qaeda and ISIS - not in the sense
that these "allies" share the same goals, but in the sense that the US/Saudi
genocidal obsession with the Houthis has allowed and helped both ISIS and
especially al Qaeda to expand and solidify positions in Yemen.
All the same, the UAE tries to blame the ISIL (ISIS) suicide bomb attacks in
Aden on March 14, 2016, on the Houthis, when Aden is more or less under the
military control of the Hadi government. Saudi and UAE forces have been
deployed to Aden at least since July 2015, in limited numbers, to protect
the Hadi government. The UAE has also secretly deployed hundreds of
Colombian mercenary soldiers to Yemen, along with other mercenaries from
Panama, El Salvador, and Chile, frequently commanded by Australians. During
this same time period, neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE deployed any troops
to fight ISIS in Syria. UAE troop strength in Yemen reportedly peaked in the
fall of 2015 at about 5,000 troops of one nationality or another. Currently
the UAE is estimated to have about 2,500 troops in Yemen as well as other
deployments in Libya and Afghanistan. The UAE, with a population of about 6
million, has a military of some 65,000 active frontline personnel.
The UAE's editorial summary of its year of war-making in Yemen relies on an
imaginary threat of a wider war that would somehow have magically emerged
from the possibility that the Houthis might secure their own country, or
just part of it:
The precarious situation last year required swift intervention to guard
against a wider conflict in the region. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf
Cooperation Council allies, including the UAE, realised that the security of
Yemen was critical for the Arabian Peninsula at large and that a military
operation would be required. Iran, which has a history of meddling in
regional affairs, has been backing the Shiite Houthi group to fulfil its own
nefarious agenda of expanding its footprint in the Middle East. Quite
simply, unless we had taken firm action, our security would have been at
risk. This has come at a great cost, including the lives of more than 80 UAE
martyrs.
More than a year after collaborating in an aggressive war against Yemen, the
UAE can cite no credible or rational or legal basis for joining the attack -
unless "a nefarious agenda" turns out to be an obscure casus belli under
international law. Worse, the UAE doesn't even acknowledge, much less try to
justify, the criminal brutality of its war.
This criminal brutality has been documented over and over by
non-governmental organizations. Most recently, on April 7, Human Rights
Watch issued a report centered on the war crime of bombing a civilian
market, killing 97 civilians, 25 of them children. This is no isolated
incident. The responsibility and guilt for these atrocities extends to those
who sell the weapons as well as those who use them. As Human Rights Watch
reported in part:
Since March 26, 2015, the UN and nongovernmental organizations have
documented numerous airstrikes by coalition forces that violate the laws of
war. The UN Panel of Experts on Yemen, established under UN Security Council
Resolution 2140 (2013), in a report made public on January 26, "documented
119 coalition sorties relating to violations" of the laws of war.
Human Rights Watch has documented 36 unlawful airstrikes - some of which may
amount to war crimes - which have killed at least 550 civilians. Human
Rights Watch has also documented 15 attacks in which internationally banned
cluster munitions were used in or near cities and villages, wounding or
killing civilians.. The coalition has used at least six types of cluster
munitions, three delivered by air-dropped bombs and three by ground-launched
rockets..
None of these war crimes could possibly be committed by the Houthis and
their allies, since they have no air force. Whatever the atrocities
committed by Houthis, Saleh's forces, or others, the humanitarian suffering
in Yemen is overwhelmingly the responsibility of the US/Saudi coalition,
however the UAE editorial may spin it:
The UAE has also contributed greatly to humanitarian efforts in Yemen,
especially as Operation Restoring Hope got under way. More than Dh1.6
billion has been spent on infrastructure and aid programmes to provide our
brothers and sisters there with electricity, food, health services, water,
sanitation, fuel and transport. We will continue to help the civilian
population. Of course, the ultimate goal is a political solution that
restores the legitimate government.
In late April a year ago, the Saudis announced that Operation Decisive Storm
was over and had achieved its goals. Saudis also announced the beginning of
Operation Restoring Hope, which included airstrikes and other military
actions, as well as some relief missions.
The claim that the UAE has spent more than 1.6 billion Dirham ($436 million)
in and on Yemen is misleading. In 2015, the UAE apparently contributed that
amount to United Nations humanitarian programs in Yemen, an amount exceeded
only by Saudi Arabia. A contribution in the hundreds of millions of dollars
appears generous, but represents only a couple of days of the cost of the
war. Saudi Arabia is reportedly picking up most of the cost of the war: $200
million per day ($6 billion per month).
Joining a military campaign is never an easy decision to make, but in this
case it was a necessary one. As the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs,
Dr Anwar Gargash, said on Friday, the UAE is more powerful today with the
sacrifice of its martyrs, and history will remember the important role
Operation Decisive Storm has played in drawing "a line between acceptance
and submission, and determination and will."
So ends the official UAE version of its Yemen adventure, a version that
imagines with complete falsity that the Houthi rebellion somehow put the UAE
under threat of having to accept and submit. Accept and submit to what? The
Houthi rebellion was a thousand miles from the UAE and has yet to go beyond
Yemeni borders (except for the sporadic fighting along the Saudi border in
the northwest). In reality, the US/Saudi coalition has long demanded that
the Houthis accept and submit to domination by their Sunni enemies of a
thousand years. Now, in mid-April 2015, an open-ended ceasefire of sorts is
settling over Yemen, with the Houthis still in control of much of the
country, and the Saudis continuing to bomb at will. Ironically, if anyone
has so far shown true determination and will, it is the Houthis, in their
resistance to a ruthless and relentless international coalition.
As for "joining a military campaign," which the UAE officially says is
"never an easy decision to make," the UAE has apparently managed the
difficult choice once again. Now the UAE has reportedly asked the US for
significant increases in military support in order to escalate the war in
Yemen against AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Officials in the US
and the UAE refuse to comment on the report, which would be an expansion of
fighting long under way. According to Iranian Press TV, tensions between
Saudi Arabia and the UAE emerged after the UAE withdrew large numbers of
troops following defeats in late 2015, leading to a recent plan by the
Saudis to replace UAE troops with Jordanians.
On April 15, despite the five-day old truce, US drone strikes and US-made
apache helicopters attacked the city of al-Houta, near Aden in south Yemen.
Coalition officials said al Qaeda forces had withdrawn and the government
controlled the city, with five soldiers reportedly killed in an operation
that took four hours.
The ceasefire that started April 10 has continued to remain in effect around
most of the country, despite some violations. In the Yemeni capital of
Sanaa, more than 100 miles north of al-Houta and still under Houthi control,
tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out on April 15 for peaceful
protest against continued airstrikes by the US/Saudi coalition.
The UN special envoy leading the peace talks scheduled to begin in Kuwait
says peace has never been as close as it is today. Those talks include only
"government" and "rebel" representatives. Most of the belligerents,
including the US/Saudi coalition, al Qaeda, and ISIS, will not be taking
part.
________________________________________
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Emiratis welcoming a UAE military convoy as it travels from the Al-Hamra
military base to Zayed city after returning from Yemen, on 7 November, 2015.
(photo: AFP/HO/WAM)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
US/Saudi Aggression in Yemen Celebrated by Co-Aggressor UAE
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
18 April 16
he National is an English-language publication owned and operated by Abu
Dhabi Media, the government-run media organization of Abu Dhabi, the capital
of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There is no press freedom in the UAE.
Government media report the government point of view, which rarely includes
criticism of the government.
On March 26, the first anniversary of the UAE's unprovoked attack on Yemen
as part of the Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states, the UAE's official
media published a document about the carnage in Yemen illustrative of George
Orwell's observation: "If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it
from yourself." The truth about the war in Yemen is a largely unreported
secret. The UAE officially hides that truth from itself in an editorial in
The National (which follows in its entirety, section by section). It begins
with the headline:
After a year in Yemen, our resolve is firm
After a year in Yemen, the US/Saudi coalition has managed to reduce the
region's poorest country to an almost unthinkable condition, where some 20
million Yemenis - about 80% of the population - need humanitarian
assistance. In a country both under attack and on the verge of mass famine,
what does "our resolve is firm" really mean if not continued crimes against
humanity? The UAE editorial's first sentence has no discernible meaning at
all:
The start one year ago of Operation Decisive Storm comes as a reminder of
the importance of the war in Yemen.
The anniversary of an aggression - that the Saudis proclaimed would be brief
and decisive - is important mostly for its irony. An official Saudi press
release of March 25, 2015, quoted the Saudi ambassador to the US saying:
"The operation will be limited in nature, and designed to protect the people
of Yemen and its legitimate government from a takeover by the Houthis. A
violent extremist militia." By then the "legitimate" government of Yemen had
fled to the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Not only has more than a year of
US/Saudi-led war failed to achieve any significant military success, it has
produced collateral damage on a massive scale, making the country of 25
million people perhaps the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.
This reality makes a mockery of the UAE editorial's next assertion:
The UAE joined the Saudi-led coalition campaign driven by its commitment and
dedication to maintaining security and establishing peace in the region.
This is, almost literally, Orwellian in its "war is peace" mindset. From the
start, the US/Saudi aggression has violated international law and committed
war crimes against Yemeni civilians, using cluster bombs made in the USA
(and sold to the Saudis with US taxpayer subsidies). The recently-released
US State Department annual human rights report on Saudi Arabia for 2015
soft-pedals the allies' slaughter of civilians in Yemen, and omits
Saudi-dropped US cluster bombs entirely (perhaps because their lingering
impact killing children over years and decades is deucedly hard to assess
accurately, whereas profits can be tallied almost immediately). The full
despicability of the Obama administration's position on these inhumanities
is revealed in its official unwillingness to speak on the record about the
blatant hypocrisy of its morally indefensible defense of the murder of
civilians for profit, as reported in The Intercept:
A State Department spokesperson, who would only comment on background,
pointed out that the U.S. has called on both sides of the conflict to
protect civilians. He also claimed that the use of cluster munitions is not
a human rights violation because the United States has not signed the ban on
cluster munitions.
The State Department spokesperson did not acknowledge that only one side
bombs civilians (in schools, hospitals, markets, and homes) with US-made
planes dropping US-made munitions. This follows a years-long US campaign in
Yemen to kill civilians with US-made drones (still in use from outside the
country).
Yemen is drawn as a coherent state on maps, but most of the Yemeni-Saudi
border has never been officially defined. Yemen has an ancient culture in
the western part of the country, but it has never been a coherent state. The
Saudis and Yemenis have engaged in sporadic, armed conflict for decades. In
particular, the Saudis and the Houthis have fought over northwest Yemen and
neighboring southwest Saudi Arabia, which is home to a large Houthi
population. Security in the region is not directly threatened by the Yemeni
civil war. For any Arab state to talk like the UAE of establishing "peace in
the region" is fundamentally hilarious.
The UAE has long been a source of support for the Islamic State (aka ISIS,
ISIL, or Daesh), as have Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait - all part of the
coalition waging war on Yemen. Editorially, the UAE cloaks itself in the
mantle of state legitimacy:
The coalition responded to the call by Yemen's president Abd Rabbu Mansour
Hadi to restore his internationally recognised government to power.
To call the Hadi government "internationally recognized" is to fudge the
reality that the Hadi government has only limited recognition among Yemenis.
Hadi came to power through what US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power
called, somewhat falsely, the "peaceful, inclusive, and consensus-driven
political transition under the leadership of the legitimate President of
Yemen, Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi." One problem with this US formulation is
that Hadi's "legitimacy" derives from his being installed as president by an
international diplomatic coup, followed by his election in a race in which
he was the sole candidate. Essentially, there is no legitimate government of
Yemen and has not been for decades at least. The present war of aggression
by outside powers intervening in a multifaceted civil war relies for its
justification on a variety of dishonest fictions. The Houthis are a
sub-group of the Shi'ite Zaidis, who number about eight million in Yemen.
The Zaidis governed northwest Yemen for 1,000 years, until 1962. The UAE
editorial invents a different historical identity:
Houthi rebels had captured the capital of Sanaa, with the support of Iran
and loyalists to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and were advancing
towards the southern city of Aden. On the way, they had killed civilians and
destroyed neighbourhoods, leading to a vast humanitarian crisis.
Iran is widely scapegoated as a nefarious influence in Yemen, but there is
little or no evidence of Iranian involvement on a scale that could possibly
make a difference on the ground in Yemen. Iran's support of the Houthis,
their fellow Shi'ites, has been largely diplomatic, political, and
presumably financial. Former president Saleh, who has a wide following of
non-Houthis, was deposed in the coup that installed Hadi. When Saleh was
president of Yemen, he also fought a Houthi insurrection. While there is
little doubt that all sides in the Yemen civil war (including al Qaeda and
ISIS) have committed war crimes of various degree, only the US/Saudi
coalition has bombed defenseless civilian populations. There is a special
deceit in the UAE suggestion that the Houthis in 2015 are the cause of the
Yemen humanitarian crisis in 2016. A year of largely indiscriminate bombing
by the US/Saudi forces is the more proximate and powerful cause, as is the
year-long US/Saudi naval blockade that keeps Yemenis caught in the bomb
range while at the same time denying them food, medicine, and other
essentials for survival. Nevertheless, according to the UAE editorial, the
Houthis - who have suffered attacks by ISIL - are somehow responsible for
ISIL attacking coalition forces in the south:
The Houthis' disregard for Yemen's security created fertile ground for
extremism to thrive, leading to the latest attacks by ISIL that killed 20
people in Aden on Friday.
Whatever "security" Yemen has had in recent years has been largely illusory.
The US drone program in Yemen spent years creating insecurity and killing
civilians until the US withdrew just ahead of the fall of the Hadi
government (president Saleh had also sanctioned the lethal US military
presence in Yemen). And why was the US there? Because Yemen was already
"fertile ground for extremism," in particular AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, which now controls roughly half of Yemen's southern coast, about
370 miles including the port city of Mukalla, with a 500,000 population. The
effective allies in the US/Saudi war on the Houthis include not only the UAE
and other coalition members, but also al Qaeda and ISIS - not in the sense
that these "allies" share the same goals, but in the sense that the US/Saudi
genocidal obsession with the Houthis has allowed and helped both ISIS and
especially al Qaeda to expand and solidify positions in Yemen.
All the same, the UAE tries to blame the ISIL (ISIS) suicide bomb attacks in
Aden on March 14, 2016, on the Houthis, when Aden is more or less under the
military control of the Hadi government. Saudi and UAE forces have been
deployed to Aden at least since July 2015, in limited numbers, to protect
the Hadi government. The UAE has also secretly deployed hundreds of
Colombian mercenary soldiers to Yemen, along with other mercenaries from
Panama, El Salvador, and Chile, frequently commanded by Australians. During
this same time period, neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE deployed any troops
to fight ISIS in Syria. UAE troop strength in Yemen reportedly peaked in the
fall of 2015 at about 5,000 troops of one nationality or another. Currently
the UAE is estimated to have about 2,500 troops in Yemen as well as other
deployments in Libya and Afghanistan. The UAE, with a population of about 6
million, has a military of some 65,000 active frontline personnel.
The UAE's editorial summary of its year of war-making in Yemen relies on an
imaginary threat of a wider war that would somehow have magically emerged
from the possibility that the Houthis might secure their own country, or
just part of it:
The precarious situation last year required swift intervention to guard
against a wider conflict in the region. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf
Cooperation Council allies, including the UAE, realised that the security of
Yemen was critical for the Arabian Peninsula at large and that a military
operation would be required. Iran, which has a history of meddling in
regional affairs, has been backing the Shiite Houthi group to fulfil its own
nefarious agenda of expanding its footprint in the Middle East. Quite
simply, unless we had taken firm action, our security would have been at
risk. This has come at a great cost, including the lives of more than 80 UAE
martyrs.
More than a year after collaborating in an aggressive war against Yemen, the
UAE can cite no credible or rational or legal basis for joining the attack -
unless "a nefarious agenda" turns out to be an obscure casus belli under
international law. Worse, the UAE doesn't even acknowledge, much less try to
justify, the criminal brutality of its war.
This criminal brutality has been documented over and over by
non-governmental organizations. Most recently, on April 7, Human Rights
Watch issued a report centered on the war crime of bombing a civilian
market, killing 97 civilians, 25 of them children. This is no isolated
incident. The responsibility and guilt for these atrocities extends to those
who sell the weapons as well as those who use them. As Human Rights Watch
reported in part:
Since March 26, 2015, the UN and nongovernmental organizations have
documented numerous airstrikes by coalition forces that violate the laws of
war. The UN Panel of Experts on Yemen, established under UN Security Council
Resolution 2140 (2013), in a report made public on January 26, "documented
119 coalition sorties relating to violations" of the laws of war.
Human Rights Watch has documented 36 unlawful airstrikes - some of which may
amount to war crimes - which have killed at least 550 civilians. Human
Rights Watch has also documented 15 attacks in which internationally banned
cluster munitions were used in or near cities and villages, wounding or
killing civilians.. The coalition has used at least six types of cluster
munitions, three delivered by air-dropped bombs and three by ground-launched
rockets..
None of these war crimes could possibly be committed by the Houthis and
their allies, since they have no air force. Whatever the atrocities
committed by Houthis, Saleh's forces, or others, the humanitarian suffering
in Yemen is overwhelmingly the responsibility of the US/Saudi coalition,
however the UAE editorial may spin it:
The UAE has also contributed greatly to humanitarian efforts in Yemen,
especially as Operation Restoring Hope got under way. More than Dh1.6
billion has been spent on infrastructure and aid programmes to provide our
brothers and sisters there with electricity, food, health services, water,
sanitation, fuel and transport. We will continue to help the civilian
population. Of course, the ultimate goal is a political solution that
restores the legitimate government.
In late April a year ago, the Saudis announced that Operation Decisive Storm
was over and had achieved its goals. Saudis also announced the beginning of
Operation Restoring Hope, which included airstrikes and other military
actions, as well as some relief missions.
The claim that the UAE has spent more than 1.6 billion Dirham ($436 million)
in and on Yemen is misleading. In 2015, the UAE apparently contributed that
amount to United Nations humanitarian programs in Yemen, an amount exceeded
only by Saudi Arabia. A contribution in the hundreds of millions of dollars
appears generous, but represents only a couple of days of the cost of the
war. Saudi Arabia is reportedly picking up most of the cost of the war: $200
million per day ($6 billion per month).
Joining a military campaign is never an easy decision to make, but in this
case it was a necessary one. As the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs,
Dr Anwar Gargash, said on Friday, the UAE is more powerful today with the
sacrifice of its martyrs, and history will remember the important role
Operation Decisive Storm has played in drawing "a line between acceptance
and submission, and determination and will."
So ends the official UAE version of its Yemen adventure, a version that
imagines with complete falsity that the Houthi rebellion somehow put the UAE
under threat of having to accept and submit. Accept and submit to what? The
Houthi rebellion was a thousand miles from the UAE and has yet to go beyond
Yemeni borders (except for the sporadic fighting along the Saudi border in
the northwest). In reality, the US/Saudi coalition has long demanded that
the Houthis accept and submit to domination by their Sunni enemies of a
thousand years. Now, in mid-April 2015, an open-ended ceasefire of sorts is
settling over Yemen, with the Houthis still in control of much of the
country, and the Saudis continuing to bomb at will. Ironically, if anyone
has so far shown true determination and will, it is the Houthis, in their
resistance to a ruthless and relentless international coalition.
As for "joining a military campaign," which the UAE officially says is
"never an easy decision to make," the UAE has apparently managed the
difficult choice once again. Now the UAE has reportedly asked the US for
significant increases in military support in order to escalate the war in
Yemen against AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Officials in the US
and the UAE refuse to comment on the report, which would be an expansion of
fighting long under way. According to Iranian Press TV, tensions between
Saudi Arabia and the UAE emerged after the UAE withdrew large numbers of
troops following defeats in late 2015, leading to a recent plan by the
Saudis to replace UAE troops with Jordanians.
On April 15, despite the five-day old truce, US drone strikes and US-made
apache helicopters attacked the city of al-Houta, near Aden in south Yemen.
Coalition officials said al Qaeda forces had withdrawn and the government
controlled the city, with five soldiers reportedly killed in an operation
that took four hours.
The ceasefire that started April 10 has continued to remain in effect around
most of the country, despite some violations. In the Yemeni capital of
Sanaa, more than 100 miles north of al-Houta and still under Houthi control,
tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out on April 15 for peaceful
protest against continued airstrikes by the US/Saudi coalition.
The UN special envoy leading the peace talks scheduled to begin in Kuwait
says peace has never been as close as it is today. Those talks include only
"government" and "rebel" representatives. Most of the belligerents,
including the US/Saudi coalition, al Qaeda, and ISIS, will not be taking
part.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
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Supported News.
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