{"id":162064,"date":"2020-06-01T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=162064"},"modified":"2024-09-23T14:39:25","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T13:39:25","slug":"our-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/06\/our-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why the United States bears responsibility for Yemen\u2019s humanitarian crisis.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1 Jun 2020 –<\/em> An entire generation of Yemeni children has suffered the traumas of war, many of them orphaned, maimed, malnourished, or displaced. The United Nations reports a\u00a0death toll<\/a>\u00a0of 100,000 people in that nation\u2019s ongoing war, with an additional\u00a0131,000 people dying<\/a>\u00a0from hunger, disease, and a lack of medical care. A\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0from Save the Children, issued in November 2018, estimated at least 85,000 children had died from extreme hunger since the war began in 2015.<\/p>\n

Since then, 3.65 million people have been internally\u00a0displaced<\/a>\u00a0and the worst\u00a0cholera<\/a>\u00a0outbreak ever recorded has infected 2.26 million and cost nearly 4,000 lives. Attacks on\u00a0hospitals and clinics<\/a>\u00a0have led to the closure of more than half of Yemen\u2019s prewar facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cYemen remains the world\u2019s worst humanitarian disaster,\u201d the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0on April 23. \u201cNearly 80 percent of the population requires some form of humanitarian assistance and protection. Ten million people are a step away from famine, and seven million people are malnourished.\u201d<\/p>\n

The war has had a horrific impact on all Yemeni civilians, but it has compounded vulnerability to violence for women and girls. A recent AP report described\u00a0a network of secret detention centers<\/a>\u00a0where security forces have severely abused women they\u2019ve targeted as dissenters. In the Sanaa governorate alone, an estimated 200 to 350 women and girls are being held, according to multiple human rights groups. A U.N. panel of experts accused Sultan Zabin, the head of the Sanaa criminal investigative division, of running an undisclosed detention site where women have been raped and tortured.<\/p>\n

World health experts regard Yemen as a potential hot spot for the coronavirus and have worked frantically to prepare for its arrival.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sanaa, Yemen. 30th Apr, 2020. A health worker wearing a protective suit sprays disinfectant on the hands of people at a market in the old city of Sanaa, amid concerns of the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).
Hani Al-Ansi\/dpa\/Alamy Live News<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cFive years of fighting have degraded the health infrastructure, exhausted people\u2019s immune systems, and increased acute vulnerabilities,\u201d the United Nations\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in mid-April. As a result, warned Mark Lowcock, the U.N.\u2019s top aid official, \u201cCOVID-19 in Yemen could spread faster, more widely, and with deadlier consequences than in many other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Lowcock made this statement, Yemen had recorded just one confirmed case of COVID-19 and no deaths. As of May 31, Yemen had 337 confirmed cases and 89 deaths. On May 30, The Lancet<\/em> quoted Altaf Musani, the World Health Organization\u2019s representative in Yemen:<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on recently applied models for the context in Yemen, we are estimating in a worst-case scenario<\/a><\/em> with no mitigation measures 28 million people infected, at least 65,000 deaths, and around 494,000 hospitalisations. It is a deeply alarming situation, highly catastrophic if people do not make serious behavioural changes [and] if we do not make some course corrections.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The policies of the United States are deeply implicated in Yemen\u2019s suffering, through the sale of billions of dollars in munitions to Saudi Arabia and other countries that have intervened in the civil war.<\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has urged the United Nations to reduce the aid it delivers to areas controlled by the Houthis. A New York Times<\/em> report quoted an unnamed diplomat as saying that Pompeo, at a 2019 conference in Warsaw, said the coalition forces should kick the stuffing out of the Houthis, although Pompeo, according to the unnamed diplomat, \u201cused an earthier noun than stuffing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia\u00a0led<\/a>\u00a0a military coalition of nine Arab states to intervene in a conflict raging in Yemen. The coalition said it was acting to restore Yemen\u2019s ousted president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, to power.<\/p>\n

But professor Shireen Al-Adeimi<\/a>, a Yemeni who teaches at Michigan State University, contends the coalition\u2019s real motive was to gain control of the\u00a0Bab el-Mandeb Strait<\/a>, a maritime \u201cchokepoint\u201d through which millions of barrels of crude oil flow each day.<\/p>\n

The Saudi warmakers anticipated a brief war,\u00a0dubbing it<\/a>\u00a0\u201cOperation Decisive Storm,\u201d and expecting to quickly overwhelm the rebellious fighters, called the Houthis. They believed the rebels would be no match for the combined military strength of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the seven other Arab countries in the coalition, who were collectively backed by the United States and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

But the war dragged on for months,\u00a0turning<\/a>\u00a0into a stalemate, with disastrous consequences for Yemeni civilians. The Saudis asked the United States for massive increases in the supply of weapons. By the end of 2015, Human Rights Watch\u00a0documented<\/a>, the U.S. had sold Saudi Arabia 600 Patriot Missiles, a million rounds of ammunition, $7.8 billion in various weaponry, four Lockheed Littoral Combat Ships, and 10,000 advanced air-to-surface missiles, including laser-guided bombs and \u201cbunker busting\u201d bombs.<\/p>\n

The Obama Administration, notes Al-Adeimi,\u00a0sold<\/a>\u00a0Saudi Arabia $115 billion of weapons and provided additional support in the form of targeting assistance, training, and maintenance of aircraft and vehicles. The Trump Administration has continued to support Saudi Arabia, including its\u00a02017 pledge to sell<\/a>\u00a0$350 billion in weapons to the repressive regime over a ten-year period. President Donald Trump\u00a0cited<\/a>\u00a0this lucrative package in declining to take action against Saudi Arabia for\u00a0murdering<\/a>\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.<\/p>\n

The United States has also provided cover for Saudi Arabia in the U.N. Security Council, which passed a\u00a0resolution<\/a>\u00a0in April 2015 that demanded an end to Yemeni violence but made no mention of the Saudi-led intervention.<\/p>\n

Al-Adeimi understands the difficult position the United Nations is in, since it depends heavily on donations from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. But she is dismayed by what she calls its\u00a0\u201call-siding\u201d the war<\/a>\u2014addressing the conflict as though it were between evenly matched opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne hundred thousand Yemenis have been killed,\u201d Al-Adeimi says. \u201cThe Yemenis don\u2019t have even one plane, much less fighter jets and warships!\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 27, the Trump Administration\u00a0suspended aid<\/a>\u00a0to Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, where\u00a070 percent<\/a>\u00a0of Yemen\u2019s population live. It accuses the Houthis of obstructing aid deliveries. Meanwhile, the Saudis are\u00a0enforcing<\/a>\u00a0a blockade on all of Yemen\u2019s land, sea, and airports, forcing its population into dependence on relief organizations.<\/p>\n

Aisha Jumaan, a Yemeni who works as an epidemiologist in Washington State, says the effect of these aid cuts was immediate. She worries that Yemen may be manipulated by donors who can threaten to withhold desperately needed food, medicine, water, and fuel.<\/p>\n

Jumaan and her organization, the\u00a0Yemen Relief & Reconstruction Foundation<\/a>, along with Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the Yemeni Alliance Committee, are\u00a0urging<\/a>\u00a0the United States to reconsider its aid suspension, to give Yemen all possible resources to prevent and respond to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

In May 2017, the Saudi-led coalition\u2019s war against Yemen had clearly gone on longer than predicted. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appeared on national television and asked the Saudis to be patient. He\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0having a dialogue with the rebels was not possible, so the coalition was waiting them out, adding \u201cTime is in our favor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three years later, the war is still dragging on, and the flow of weapons from the United States continues unabated. Even now, in a shipyard in Marinette, Wisconsin, Lockheed Martin has a\u00a0multibillion-dollar contract<\/a>\u00a0to build four Littoral Combat Ships, which will be delivered to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

In 2019, the investigative website\u00a0Bellingcat<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that eleven individual U.S. states plus the District of Columbia have each exported more than $100 million worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Altogether, the United States provided up to $6.8 billion in weapons including bombs, rocket launchers, and machine guns through March 2019.<\/p>\n

Some of these weapons may be linked to war crimes. Identifying marks on U.S. bombs used in the 2018 Dahyan bus bombing, which\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0forty children and eleven adults,\u00a0linked back<\/a>\u00a0to a Lockheed Martin plant in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

On a monthly basis, Saudi Arabia\u2019s state-owned shipping company, Bahri,\u00a0sends<\/a>\u00a0cargo ships to Wilmington, North Carolina, the Port of Baltimore and other U.S. ports, to collect bombs, grenades, cartridges, and defense-related aircraft. The United States also\u00a0supplies<\/a>\u00a0weapons to Bahrain and other countries actively participating in the Saudi-led war against Yemen.<\/p>\n

On April 8, the Saudi-led coalition\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0a unilateral two-week ceasefire, expressing concern about the spread of COVID-19. But within days, the Houthis were\u00a0battling<\/a>\u00a0groups loyal to the coalition, which retaliated with dozens of air strikes. The Houthis had already issued their own proposal for ending the war and insisted that no durable peace could be achieved without the withdrawal of foreign troops and a termination of the blockade.<\/p>\n

When the two-week ceasefire expired, a spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0a month-long extension. Yet there were\u00a0numerous reports<\/a>\u00a0of continued coalition air strikes. The Saudis may want to extricate themselves from the war, but so far they haven\u2019t stopped the bludgeoning air strikes or lifted the blockade.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Kathy Kelly is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>,<\/em> an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of <\/em>Voices in the Wilderness, and currently a co-coordinator <\/em>Voices for Creative Nonviolence. <\/em>Three times since 2000, she has been nominated for the <\/em>Nobel Peace Prize. As part of peace teamwork in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US-Iraq wars. Her recent travel has focused on Afghanistan and Gaza, along with domestic protests against U.S. drone policy. She has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences among targets of U.S. military bombardment and inmates of U.S. prisons. She lives in Chicago.<\/em> Kathy@vcnv.org<\/em><\/a> – info@vcnv.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

A version of this article first appeared in <\/em>The Progressive Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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