In a blatant
effort to drag attention away from war crimes in Yemen, the Saudi
regime decided to lift its ban on women drivers. Whitney Webb
explained in detail the real motives behind this decision in a recent
article. As pointed out:
When
Khaled bin Salman told reporters on Tuesday, regarding the recent
decree, “this is the right time to do the right thing,” he
certainly wasn’t kidding. Indeed, the timing of the decree could
not have been more convenient for the Saudi kingdom, though the Saudi
royal family made no mention of why it really was the “right time”
to end its ban on women drivers.
Between
now and this Friday, when the United Nation’s Human Rights Council
concludes its ongoing session, the international body will vote on a
resolution to decide whether or not to establish an independent,
international probe into war crimes committed in Yemen.
The
United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has consistently
pushed the Human Rights Council to create an independent
investigation into the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen, which
began in March 2015. Since then, over ten thousand civilians have
been killed and the Saudi’s blockade of Yemeni ports and its
bombing of civilian infrastructure have led to 17 million Yemenis
lacking access to clean water and food, as well as to the worst
cholera epidemic in history.
The
Saudi regime is clearly uncomfortable with the resolution. They have
vowed to “not accept” the findings of the probe, were the
resolution to pass, and have also threatened any nation that votes in
favor of the probe with economic and political retaliation. Yet, now,
with the international media fawning over the Saudi government’s
human rights “progress,” international pressure against the
kingdom may be reduced as its role in the destruction of Yemen again
fades into the background.
But the
US-backed war crimes in Yemen by Saudi Arabia are so cruel that there
is no way that could somehow be drawn away from the international
attention. As Larry Wilkerson said to Sharmini Peries and the Real
News:
This is the
worst humanitarian disaster since World War II. People are dying left
and right, young people, middle age, whatever you want to say, of
cholera. They're dying of starvation and we have things like the
Saudis, for example, using our precision-guided munitions and
possibly even our intelligence and AWACs control, and certainly our
refueling aircraft, doing such things as bombing the port side cranes
that offload food and water. Now, they can't offload food and water
because the Saudis bombed those cranes and that's just one example of
a really unsavory and even heinous way of warfare that the Saudis
have engaged in in Yemen.
As the war
crimes in Yemen are more than evident, the US Congress finally
decided to take action. As Peries said:
A growing
movement in the US Congress is working to stop US support for Saudi
Arabia's war in Yemen. Last week, four US representatives, two
Democrats: Ro Khanna from California and Mark Pocan from Wisconsin
and two Republicans: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Walter Jones of
North Carolina introduced House Resolution 81 which would invoke the
War Powers Act to end US involvement in the civil war in Yemen.
It is
extremely doubtful whether some countries with the biggest arms sales
to Saudi Arabia, like US and UK, will change anything in their
policy. We know that the military-industrial complex is very powerful
in both of them. Only under socialist leaders, like Bernie Sanders
and Jeremy Corbyn, there is hope that the arms sales and support to
the brutal Saudi regime will be decisively reduced.
Recall that,
recently
“The Labour Party has barred Saudi Arabia and Sudan from
attending its party conference in Brighton. In response, the League
of Arab States wrote to Labour MPs and peers to tell them a reception
and dinner hosted by Arab ambassadors would be cancelled. [...]
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has called for the Government to
stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, arguing they are being used in
Yemen's civil war.”
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