The War in Yemen is Not a War, It is a Massacre

by CESAR CHELALA 

RedditEma

The numbers are mind-blowing: Since the beginning of the conflict in Yemen, an estimated 85,000 children under five may have died from extreme hunger and disease, according to the last analysis by Save the Children, the international health and human rights organization. Although children are the most affected by the conflict, 14 million people are at risk of famine, according to data compiled by the United Nations.

For almost four years, Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has been ravaged by a bloody conflict between Houthi rebels and supporters of Yemen’s internationally recognized government. In 2015, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition of Arab states to fight the Houthis, which included Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, and Senegal. These countries have either sent troops to fight on the ground in Yemen or have carried out air attacks.

Iran has reportedly sent armaments and military advisers to help the Houthis, thus exacerbating their long-held animosity against the Saudis. In addition to fighting the Houthis in Yemen, the Saudis are backing the rebels fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s government, while Iran has a strong influence over the Assad regime. In Lebanon, while Iran has shown strong support for Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia supports the Sunni Future Movement, led by Lebanon Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The Yemen war, however, goes beyond a Saudi-Iranian geopolitical or Sunni-Shia conflict. The Houthis’ demands have been primarily economic and political, trying to take the Yemenis out of a cycle of poverty. The brutal and indiscriminate attacks of the Saudi-led coalition have left a ravaged country, with millions of civilians fighting for survival.

Fearing for their lives, more than 3 million Yemenis have become internally displaced persons, and almost 300,000 have sought asylum in other countries, including Djibouti and Somalia. Both the internally displaced, as well as those who have left to other countries often lack adequate nutrition and shelter. According to UNICEF, Yemen’s health care system is on the verge of collapse.

Those remaining in the country must cope with the relentless attacks by the coalition, which don’t distinguish between civilian and soldiers. In addition, across the country, aid organizations are unable to provide needed assistance. Hospitals have been bombed, provoking tens of deaths both as a result of the attacks and those left without urgent care.

Close to 15 million men, women, and children have no access to health care. An outbreak of cholera which started in October 2016 has not yet been controlled. It doesn’t help that water infrastructure in Yemen, one of the world’s most water-scarce countries, has been continuously attacked by the Saudi coalition.

As a consequence, 8.6 million children in Yemen don’t have adequate access to water, sanitation and hygiene services. “Since 2015, the escalation of the conflict has only exacerbated this already dire situation, with attacks and military action on and around water infrastructure cutting off even more people from access to safe drinking water,” states UNICEF.
Last August, a United Nations report on the situation in Yemen sharply criticized all parties in the conflict but placed stronger blame on the Saudi coalition’s attacks on Yemeni civilians. Three UN experts said that the Saudi-led coalition routinely failed to consult its own “no-strike” list of more than 30,000 sites in Yemen, including refugee camps and hospitals. According to the experts’ report, restrictions that Saudi Arabia has placed on the delivery of aid by sea or air have had such a severe humanitarian impact that “such acts, together with the requisite intent, may amount to international crimes.”

There is something pathetic when looking at some of the most powerful countries in the world: the United States, Great Britain, and France plotting with Saudi Arabia’s criminal regime to destroy the Houthis’ resistance movement in Yemen. In the last few weeks, hundreds of airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in and around Hodeidah have endangered the lives of 150,000 children. These coalition actions violate basic humanitarian rules and the rule of law. The War in Yemen is a massacre, and it is the responsibility of the international community to uphold justice in the face of such tragedy.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of the 1979 Overseas Press Club of America award for the article “Missing or Disappeared in Argentina: The Desperate Search for Thousands of Abducted Victims.”

Indomitable Yemenis Turning Bab al-Mandeb Into a Real Gateway of Tears for the Saudi-UAE Coalition

Yemen, or more properly the patriotic people of that war torn country who hate to be under the thumbnail of the US and have over the past three years held their ground against the war machine of the heavily Saudi-UAE coalition, inflicting heavy losses on the aggressors, are worthy of salutation.
Their recent daring raid on the UAE occupied port of Mokha near the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait that wiped out a military base of the aggressors, including the killing of the regional UAE commander, once again proved their indomitable spirit.

At the same time, the Yemenis struck with missiles and sank an advanced UAE naval craft with all soldiers on board, thereby thwarting an attempt to land troops near the besieged port of Hodeidah. This was 16th ship of the coalition to be targeted and the 14th to be sunk.

With meagre resources, shortage of food and medicine due to the air, sea and land blockade, deprived of modern public amenities because of destruction of the infrastructure by the unabated Saudi air strikes, step-motherly treatment by the UN which acting as a tool of the US wants to impose the regional hegemony of Riyadh upon them, and in the face of intense propaganda on the international scale that brands these heroic defenders of their homelands as ‘rebels’, the Yemeni people led by the popular Ansarallah Movement have proved their indomitable spirit to the whole world.

They are neither warmongers nor saboteurs of peace, yet the World Body is unwilling to listen to their just demands for the independence of Yemen and formation of a broad-based national government representing the various tribes and religious groups of the land. Instead the UN repeats in
parrot-like fashion the Saudi taught mantra of the fugitive Mansour Hadi being the ‘internationally-recognized president’, little realizing that this is a questionable term, when the vast majority of the people, even in southern Yemen, have never granted him national recognition.

So far over 20,000 Yemenis have lost their life, hundreds of thousands have been displaced from their homes, and millions are facing starvation and epidemic diseases, but the Saudi-UAE led aggression continues against them with the full backing of the US, the UK, France and the illegal Zionist
entity, all of whom supply the invaders of Yemen with lethal state-of-the-art military technology.

When the Yemeni defenders retaliate with short and long range missiles on the military-industrial installations of the aggressors, especially of Saudi, then a hue and cry is raised that the Ansarallah are committing war crimes and the Islamic Republic of Iran is supplying them missiles and drones.

Strange logic indeed! When the Saudis have destroyed almost the entire infrastructure of Yemen, are daily killing innocent men, women, and children, and are preventing the flow of food and medicine, yet these brutalities are not considered war crimes.

More strange is Iran’s alleged supply of arms and ammunitions to blockaded Yemen – as if the Ansarallah have no right to procure weapons from international markets although they do not need it in view of their wellstacked arsenals – while there seems to be nothing wrong with the pouring in of deadly weapons into the over-stocked arsenals of the aggressors, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

If Iran were to actually supply military technology to the Ansarallah, the Saudi-UAE aggressors would not only have been defeated and driven out of Yemen, but the Yemenis would have liberated their Saudi-occupied northern provinces of Asir, Najran, and Jizan, which the Wahhabis had seized
in 1934.

With the Saudi-UAE aggressors doing a slow, face saving retreat after their failed offensive on Hodeida, the UN, ought to end its delusion of taking charge of the Hodeida port and should instead try to salvage its credibility by negotiating the complete withdrawal of the aggressors from Yemen,
so that the different Yemeni factions can get together to form a broad-based national government.

Then only can peace return to Yemen, since, as said at the beginning of this column, the Yemeni people hate any foreign meddling in their internal affairs, whether it is from Saudi, UAE, or the Americans.

In view of this fact, recently the Head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, Mahdi al-Mashart, called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to play a mediating role for a peaceful end to the crisis in order to save the Red Sea and the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait from turning into an American Lake
as the Saudis and Emiratis are trying to do.

In the meantime, the Ansarallah are determined to defeat the designs of the aggressors by turning the Bab al-Mandeb into a real Gateway of Tears and the Red Sea a crimson-blood waterway for the Saudis, the Emiratis and the Americans.

-

 Kayhan Int’l

All About Yemen’s Revolution

It has been three years since Saudi Arabia initiated a war against Yemen, the Saudi coalition continues to carry out the barbaric attacks on the Yemeni people, and as a result of the continued blockade it has placed Yemen socially and economically in critical situations, while the Yemeni army and revolutionary forces continue their struggle in the war and launched several ballistic missiles with successful hit targets inside Saudi soil.Qodsna

On this regard our correspondent in Beirut in an interview with Ebrahim al-Dulaimi, member of the Political Bureau of Ansarullah Movement and Director General of the Al-Masirah Network, discussed the issue as follows:

- It has been three consecutive years since Saudi’s led strikes started over Yemen, How is the situation evaluated there on the ground in Yemen?

-- The situation on the ground in this country in 3 years of war can be divided into three parts; in the first part, we have witnessed targeting of everything from trees and plants to Human beings and children, and nothing has been left untargeted. The siege targets women and children and has been preventing them from the least of a living. This is resulted from the use of international prohibited weapons produced by West and delivered to Saudi Arabia. This tragic scene has occurred in the 21st century and fully describes the critical situation of Yemeni people, which west keeps closed eyes on it.

-- The next part is the resistance and sacrifice of Yemeni people and their struggling against oppression in all fields and faces. This has increased the level of resistance in Yemeni people. And it influences both the society and the military. This overwhelming situation became epidemic throughout Yemen, they enter the scene and devote themselves and fight. The right to resist and choose independence is what it gives them supremacy to encounter the materialistic weapons of west.

-- The third part is the scandal of the international community which refused to provide support to the Yemeni people’s development; the failure proved that international laws and standards have no meaning when it’s violated by the Saudis, Americans and Zionists. All these together raise an overview of international laws that have been cited for many centuries in human societies.

- The role of resistance media in the process of this brutal assault on Yemen is highly essential. How do you think these media can confront Saudi aggression and the blockade of Yemen?

-- Resistance Media’s have a lot of responsibilities of course; the lack of media facilities and media resources somehow influenced the complete agenda. Inside Yemen some media’s are influenced by the regime and our hostiles. Most of the media in Yemen are run by the government, and some other media outlets influenced by political parties and groups such as Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. These media outlets are supporting the mercenaries, and they did nothing for national and patriotic interests.

-- The rest of media outlets were also providing wrong data, because they were full of former regime employees, who were providing biased data over the interest of the former regime, but since the annihilation of the former regime, many of them flee abroad and people had a chance of taking control of the official media outlets of the country.