Four years of hell: to crush Yemen’s independence, US-Saudi war created world’s worst humanitarian crisis

On the fourth anniversary of the US-Saudi war on Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest nation suffers from the worst humanitarian catastrophe on Earth. But the Houthi movement — and Yemeni people — remain unbroken.

by Ben Norton

Part 3 - Real-life dystopia in Yemen

The human cost of the damage this US-Saudi war has exacted is difficult to quantify.

A report published by United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on March 21 offers just a glimpse into the havoc. Although clinical, it paints a vivid portrait of the gruesome toll.

More than 4,800 civilians were killed or injured in 2018, an average of 93 civilian casualties per week — 30 percent killed or injured in their own homes. Airstrikes were responsible for just over half of the civilian casualties.

Many thousands of families have been displaced by the bombing. “Most live in open spaces and public buildings,” OCHA reported.

“These horrific incidents show that innocent civilians including children continue to pay the price for a conflict in which they have no say,” local aid workers said.

“Yemen’s economic and social fabric is disintegrating,” the report added. Yemen’s entire GDP has shrunk by a staggering 39 percent since 2014.

Even more shocking are the poverty rates. Since fighting began in 2014, poverty in Yemen has increased by 33 percent. OCHA estimates that 52 percent of the entire country is living in poverty in 2019.

Before the US-Saudi military intervention began in March 2015, the average Yemeni lived on US $4.5 per day. A year into the war, in 2016, the livelihood of the average Yemeni was cut by more than half, to just US $1.8 per day. This was compounded by an unemployment rate of over 60 percent.

Even those with jobs are not doing much better. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, medical workers, and government officials have gone years without receiving a paycheck.

A cataclysmic cholera outbreak has also returned to Yemen. The World Health Organization (WHO) documented 108,889 suspected cases of cholera, and 190 deaths, between January 1 and March 17. Approximately one-third of the victims are Yemeni children under age 5.

The US-Saudi coalition has indirectly resorted to biological warfare in Yemen. In 2017, Yemen suffered from one of the worst cholera outbreaks in modern history, with more than 1 million cases documented by WHO between April and December.

Cholera is an entirely preventable disease. But US-Saudi bombing utterly destroyed Yemen’s health infrastructure, leaving the civilian population defenseless against diseases that have been eradicated in almost every other country.

Source, links:

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/03/26/4-years-yemen-independence-us-saudi-war-worst-humanitarian-crisis/

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