Ending the US’ merciless proxy war in Yemen
- Washington’s full complicity in creating the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century needs to be held to account, but something can be learned from the new US government’s U-turn
The Saudi government’s murder and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi is truly terrifying, but in the larger scheme of things, a minor horror show compared to the killing field in Yemen wrought by Riyadh with the full support – military, intelligence and diplomatic – of the United States over the past six years.
And yet, in the tried and tested tradition of switching and baiting the attention of the public, mainstream US pundits and politicians are now furious at the Joe Biden administration for releasing an intelligence report implicating Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman in Khashoggi’s murder and letting a close ally off the hook.
The report was suppressed by former president Donald Trump and ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who enabled the Saudis to pursue a ruthless war in Yemen. The scale of the killings and displacement of the population is beyond imagination and shows the truth of Joseph Stalin’s apocryphal saying: “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions a statistic.”
To get a sense of the horror, let me quote an impeccable source from the journal Foreign Affairs:
“American complicity in the Yemen war goes beyond providing training and intelligence support, and selling billions of dollars in weapons to the UAE and Saudi Arabia … The US is looking the other way while its allies commit war crimes and avoid responsibility for instigating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“Washington shared intelligence, refuelled aircraft, sold weapons, and provided diplomatic cover. Now, almost six years after the Saudi intervention, the war in Yemen is nothing short of a disaster. It has further destabilised the Middle East, empowered Iran, and sullied the United States’ global reputation.
“It has devastated the Yemeni people, who are now experiencing the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Close to a quarter of a million people have died …
United States’ Blinken discusses human rights with Saudi foreign minister
“As of mid-2020, some 24 million Yemenis, 80 per cent of the country’s population, needed some form of assistance. Roughly 20 million were teetering on the brink of starvation … The United States has had a major hand in Yemen from the beginning and thus must answer for its part in the tragedy.”
Biden is now trying to reverse course and has appointed Robert Malley, a co-author of the Foreign Affairs critique, to be the US special envoy to Iran. He is owning up to America’s crimes. Other countries can learn from this, including China.
