Sore loser loses again

The major last minute deal in the Yemen talks in Sweden, a ceasefire in and around Hodeida, is under threat, with locals reporting Saudi airstrikes in the same area.

The agreement is intended to get all combatants from both sides out of the city in 21 days. There is still plenty of time to accomplish that. The presence of UN monitors will hopefully reduce violence in the area. The problem, however, is the Saudis. They think they can get away with carrying out a few more airstrikes in Hodeida. They also think they won’t be held to account.

An article under the heading of Sore loser loses again is published by Fars News Agency in this regard. Here’s more.

After the war, the Saudi-led coalition members should be and must be held to account. True, the United Nations has three priorities in Yemen: a broader ceasefire, tackling famine and propping up the economy so that families can buy food and fuel. But the world body also needs to ensure those who turned Yemen into a failed state for the worst possible reasons won’t escape justice. The warmongers are striking Hodeida because they don’t want to end the conflict or live in a reality-based universe. They will - when they are booked in the Criminal Court of Justice in The Hague.

The worst sectarian agitator in the Middle East is still desperate to highlight the sectarian aspects of the war, including Iran’s involvement, but this is overblown. The illegal war is far less about Iran and more about power and political hegemony: The US hegemony of the world and the regional hegemony of Saudi Arabia - its key client dictatorship.

American and British governments are by no means blameless. They are complicit in Saudi war crimes. They encouraged Saudi Arabia’s relentless aerial campaign on the pretext of containing Iran and because they are so financially and militarily linked to the war. Saudi terror proxies like Daesh and Al-Qaeda’s AQAP also helped to fight the only armed force that has ever fought them off. The whole idea was to impose an external solution on Yemenis. It proved futile.

There is a genuine interest on the part of Ansarullah resistance movement and other Yemeni forces to end the conflict. Yet the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia, as well as their proxy forces – including Daesh and AQAP – have other things in mind. This is while there is a rich history of negotiated settlements in Yemen and it has a culture that prioritizes and respects de-escalation.

The Saudi-led coalition has blockaded Yemen from the air, sea and land. And they still demand Iran stop supporting the resistance group of Ansarullah! The warmongers offer no real evidence that such support exists. Instead, they present the war as sectarian in nature to ensure the support of certain Arab allies. Now that there is no evidence for Iran's involvement and a ceasefire is in place, the illegal blockade must be lifted.

The costly war was doomed from day one. It went terribly wrong. Under international law, destroying a nation to reinstall a puppet ruler is not an acceptable resolution to an internal dispute. By striking Hodeida again, the Saudis show they don’t mean well in this destroy and rule offensive. They have shown state terrorism thrives in their foreign policy, reflecting an ethos of violence that has flourished over the past decade. They owe this behavior to their American masters.

The massive bombing of civilian infrastructure with American-made bombs and missiles failed to intimidate or destroy the resistance group of Ansarullah or pacify just about 26 million Yemenis. The December 13 ceasefire agreement means sooner or later the warmongers will be forced to walk away in humiliation too, if the Saudi-led coalition and their western sponsors do not turn over the table.

At any rate, there is no legal basis for the new Saudi escalation in Hodeida, and this dirty policy has to stop. Under the fundamental rule of international law, Saudi Arabia and its partners have no right to attack Hodeida. They have no authorization from the UN Security Council and they are not acting in genuine self-defense.

They offer no explanation for why their new aggression comports with international law. They have no right whatsoever to strike the strategic port city. The UN Security Council needs to intervene and use the leverage it has to save the new ceasefire agreement. This kind of aggression has gone against the UN Charter for a long time.

On Thursday, December 13, the warring sides in Yemen agreed to end hostilities around the Red Sea port of Hodeida, a breakthrough in the failed Saudi-led war that has dragged on for more than three-and-half years and brought the Arab world’s poorest country to the brink of famine.
The successful negotiations in Sweden means the people of Yemen don’t want the fighting to continue. It also means Saudi Arabia and its partners need to lift their illegal blockade and pull their troops out of the governorate of Hodeida, which is the largest port of entry for humanitarian and commercial goods to the import-dependent country. This way, the warring sides could also strike another deal to reopen the airport in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, at the end of January.

As is, the Saudi-led war and blockades of the coast and airspace have exacerbated Yemen’s longstanding struggle for food security, putting 14 million people at risk of starvation. The United Nations found in August that Riyadh and its partner the UAE could be guilty of war crimes in Yemen. The deal also comes in parallel to mounting pressure by US lawmakers on the Trump administration to end support for the Saudi-led war.

As the conflict has destroyed cities and forced villages into starvation, Yemeni citizens have scattered around the world as refugees. The military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - with training, weapons, and technical support from the United States and United Kingdom – have failed to preserve the status quo. It has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis: So far, more than 100,000 children have died of starvation, malnutrition, and disease as a result. And the number is rising.

Saudi and Emirati forces have been blamed by humanitarians for the famine and epidemics. The Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly blocked access to the country’s ports and made it impossible for humanitarians to reach the millions of desperate Yemenis for quite a long time. Saudi-led forces have been accused of torturing detainees and of holding Yemenis in secret prisons. Most troubling has been the indiscriminate nature of the bombing campaign, which has repeatedly struck civilian targets such as school buses and funerals.

The world must act now to end this war and save millions of people from the brink of famine and mass starvation. If the conflict continues, then the enormity of the humanitarian task to try and keep people alive will be mind-boggling. Yemen is now on the right side of the line in terms of whether it can be resolved. But it won't stay there - if the world doesn’t address this quickly.

The United States and Britain supply arms to Saudi Arabia - a relationship that has caused concern because of civilian casualties in coalition airstrikes in Yemen. This has to stop too. The international community wants the fighting to end – including Western complicity in Saudi atrocities. These Western governments claim the strategic benefits justify the humanitarian costs. Under scrutiny, however, the baseless claims and justifications don’t hold up. How on earth could Iran send any military aid to Ansarullah when the country is under a tight siege by the 14-member Saudi-led coalition assisted by the US and UK warships, radar systems, satellite and other high tech systems from the air, land and sea.

In almost every case, the war has made old problems worse while creating new ones. The Ansarullah movement is not by any stretch an Iranian proxy. Furthermore, the harm to civilians is a clear result of the air war and blockade: Saudi and Emirati talking points on this part of the conflict have failed to convince most Yemen observers. Worse still, the prolongation of the conflict and the resultant instability has provided terrorist groups like Daesh and Al-Qaeda with a conducive environment to sustain themselves and regenerate that external capacity, in addition to the Saudi-led coalition's periodic deals with such terrorist and extremist groups in war on Ansarullah.

The United States is directly implicated in the air campaign as well, because it refuels the bombers and provides targeting intelligence. The Pentagon even wants to get paid for that complicity! The United States has thereby lost considerable face in the region, which has further diminished its ability to condemn Saudi war crimes with authority and to call for reasonable dispute resolution between all warring sides in Yemen. Furthermore, as the war has dragged on, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been unable to achieve any of their stated war aims. In private, they all make clear that they no longer expect a military resolution in Yemen, and hope that a political agreement can give them a way out. May be, this is the exit door that the Saudis have long been looking for to get rid of their Vietnam quagmire before they go bankrupt in the next few years.

In the prevailing environment, the world community, through the United Nations, can and should pass a resolution with more teeth against the war, and demand that Western governments provide compelling national security arguments to continue their arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including tough direct questions that Pentagon can answer about the impact of American refueling, and the nature and impact of targeting intelligence.

No doubt the problem of weapons sales and military support transcends the Yemen War and has contaminated a growing swathe of Western policy. This policy continues to be a major driver of the conflict and has routinely complicated the ongoing peace talks. It should end now. The United States and its NATO allies must give up their weapons contracts and avoid misguided policies and extremes. They are counterproductive to the ongoing peace efforts. It's a strange world; countries and their media outlets speak of the need for a change of rulers in Riyadh for the merciless killing of one journalist, which of course should be condemned and be destroyed on the head of Crown Prince MbS like a brickwall, but they never say that the same rulers should stand trial at an international tribunal and be punished and deposed for massacre, genocide and an unending list of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and killing and maiming tens of thousands of innocent civilians who are citizens of another sovereign state is only one of the items of that list.