Almost
three years have passed since Saudi Arabia announced it was
intervening militarily, with its allies, in Yemen, to remove the
Houthis (officially called Ansar Allah) from power after they had
taken over the capital. Western analysts saw it as a bold move from
recently-empowered (deputy) crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS),
weapons manufacturers and their political representatives were
delighted. But what had been predicted as a swift military operation
has turned into a humiliating stalemate. Unable to impose its will by
force, Saudi Arabia and its bold prince have resorted to war crimes
and collective punishment, imposing a humanitarian catastrophe on the
Yemeni people.
by
Ricardo Vaz
Part
2 - Western outrage and responsibility
As the
Syrian army moved to re-take eastern Aleppo, a monumental PR campaign
saw people who had never bothered before rise up from their Starbucks
couches to proclaim that humanity had lost its ways. One day,
hopefully, people will wonder how large swaths of western public
opinion were manipulated into working in a propaganda stunt to defend
a city held by al-Qaida. Months earlier we were bombarded by the
media about the siege of Madaya, where 40.000 people were being
starved to death. Yet now, with an entire country on the brink of
famine, the media silence is telling.
Anyone
can voice their horror at a hospital being bombed in Syria. The issue
here is not one of comparing tragedies and demanding proportional
levels of outrage. The issue is that the West is directly responsible
for the tragedy in Yemen. Western companies supply the weapons,
western military advisors are involved in the intelligence work and
the selection of targets, US airplanes are refuelling Saudi (and
coalition) jets as they carry out their savage bombings in Yemen. The
supposed outrage is not connected to any concern for human rights, it
is merely a foreign policy propaganda trick. And the main priority
for people in the west should be to stop the crimes being committed,
or abetted, by their own governments.
There is
no point in invoking this or that convention, because all western
governments and weapons manufacturers will claim that they do not
sell weapons if they end up being used to commit human rights
violations. But there is overwhelming evidence that war crimes are
being committed left and right, from double-tap strikes to bombings
of hospitals, schools, or even funerals, and nobody has suggested
putting the brakes on this money train of weapons sales. Evidence of
war crimes will be either ignored or, as British Foreign Secretary
Boris Johnson suggested, left to the Saudis themselves to
investigate!
Some
media outlets could even be mistaken for Saudi propaganda pieces. The
media coverage of MbS is nothing less than fawning in outlets such as
the Guardian, not to mention the ineffable Thomas Friedman. And Saudi
officials always get to voice their positions and denials through
western outlets. One recurring example has a Saudi official denying
that a given airstrike has been carried out by the Saudis, and the
western media are happy to publish this without reminding their
readers that nobody else is flying over Yemen. It is as if wayward
bombs just wander into Yemen.
Even the
United Nations has all but sidestepped its responsibilities. Its role
is reduced to calling on Saudi Arabia to stop blocking the ports of a
foreign country. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a western
puppet par excellence, is his latest report, mentions the horrific
suffering in Yemen. But while the usual suspects (North Korea,
Venezuela, Iran, etc) had all sorts of claims – real, exaggerated
or fabricated – amplified in the report, Saudi Arabia is not even
named as responsible for this situation, only “coalition
airstrikes” are mentioned.
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