http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32654

By now, Trump has "stopped the refuelling of Saudi war planes" because of the death of a "Western journalist"... We're all involved. And as we celebrate the end of WW1... we still bomb something somewhere, creating the most awful of misery... We're hypocrites with one hand on our heart in remembrance, while the other holds a gun — the gun of dispair for someone else.

Lest we forget? bollocks...

His biographer, Susan Raby Dunne, details his path from medical student to soldier, fighting with the Canadian Artillery Force in the First World War. 

She tells Rachael about his special bond with his horse Bonfire and dog Bonneau, his meetings with writer Rudyard Kipling, and how he came to write In Flanders Fields after witnessing a particularly harrowing experience on the battlefield. 

But first on the program, composer Christopher Bowen and librettist Pamela Traynor reveal the inspiration behind An Australian War Requiem.

They tell Rachael about the letters between mothers and their soldier sons that were incorporated into the requiem, how the music was developed, and the power of the performance to humanise the War.

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/spiritofthings/armistice/10476788

Dahyan, a town in the far northwest of Yemen, is a farming settlement about two hours’ drive from the Saudi border. On its dusty, unpaved main street, a large crater is still visible near a fruit-and-vegetable stand, marked out by flimsy wooden stakes and red traffic tape. It was here that a laser-guided bomb dropped by a Saudi jet struck a school bus taking students on a field trip on the morning of Aug. 9, killing 44 children and 10 adults. Even for a population that had grown accustomed to tragedy after more than three years of war, the bus bombing was shocking. Shrapnel and tiny limbs were scattered for hundreds of yards around. The bomb that hit the bus, several local people told me, bore markings showing it was made in the United States. The site has now become something of a shrine. On a brick wall a few yards from the crater, large painted letters in both English and Arabic proclaim, “America Kills Yemeni Children.”

Not far away was a fresh graveyard where the victims were buried. At each grave, a color portrait of a victim stood over a coffin-shaped mound of dry, rocky earth. Beyond a low stone wall was the carcass of the bus, a mass of twisted and burned metal. A boy was standing silently by a grave as I arrived, staring down at the headstone. “We were all in school together,” he told me. He was 14. He might easily have been on that bus, he said, but he’d already gone on the school trip. He was on the way to the market to help his father when the bomb struck. His father wasn’t hurt, but he soon found out that most of his friends and teachers were dead. He now goes to the graveyard almost every day to visit them, he told me quietly.

For the Houthi movement, a powerful and enigmatic militia that rules most of Yemen’s people, the bus bombing was something of a turning point. Unlike most of the civilian bombings that have taken place over the years, this one made headlines around the world, prompting angry reactions from political figures, human rights groups and even the actor Jim Carrey. After I saw the site, an official took me to a crowded auditorium nearby, where ushers handed us pamphlets showing gruesome pictures of dead and bleeding children. A few locals gave angry speeches about the evils of what Yemenis call “the aggression.” There was no mention of the ballistic missiles the Houthis have lobbed at Riyadh, or of their own war crimes. A small boy who had survived the airstrike was brought onstage, where he recited a prepared text in a high, strident voice. As I listened to him, I couldn’t help thinking about another tragedy of this war: Many of those fighting it are themselves children. The boy on that stage might soon be one of them.

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia unleashed a full-scale military campaign against the Houthis, who had captured most of Yemen a few months earlier. The Saudis had assembled a coalition of nine states, and they made clear that they considered the Houthis, who are allied with Iran, a mortal threat on their southern border. The war has turned much of Yemen into a wasteland and has killed at least 10,000 civilians, mostly in errant airstrikes. The real number is probably much higher, but verifying casualties in Yemen’s remote areas is extremely difficult. Some 14 million people are facing starvation, in what the United Nations has said could soon become the worst famine seen in the world in 100 years. Disease is rampant, including the world’s worst modern outbreak of cholera.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/31/magazine/yemen-war-saudi-arabia.html

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=YjmAi3hLn8c

The Senate didn’t go for Pompeo and Mattis’ sales pitch for the war on Yemen on Wednesday. That’s because it was filled with dishonest nonsense like this:

Iran’s regime has no interest in easing Yemeni suffering; the mullahs don’t even care for ordinary Iranians. Saudi Arabia has invested billions to relieve suffering in #Yemen. Iran has invested zero.

The truth is that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have used their donations as another weapon of war while doing everything in their power to worsen the humanitarian crisis that their policies created. Saudi “aid” efforts have been denounced by humanitarian organizations as a “war tactic,” and the Saudi government has used its donations to buy good publicity from aid agencies and silence criticism. The “investments” that the Saudi coalition governments have made are little more than poorly-concealed bribes to relieve international pressure, and these same governments have used their donations as leverage to blackmail the U.N. in the past.

The absurdity of Pompeo’s position becomes clear when we remember that Yemen would not be suffering from the world’s worst humanitarian crisis were it not for the Saudi coalition’s intervention, blockade, and interference in Yemen’s economy. The governments responsible for causing the displacement of millions of people and creating famine conditions potentially affecting up to 14 million do not merit praise for throwing a little money at the catastrophe they have unleashed. Iran’s interest in assisting suffering Yemenis or lack thereof is truly beside the point when it is the Saudi coalition backed by the U.S. that has caused so much of that suffering. War criminals do not get credit when they throw some cash at the wreckage of the country they have destroyed, and Pompeo’s attempt to give Saudi Arabia credit for “relieving” suffering in Yemen is as perverse and disgusting as it gets.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/pompeos-perverse-yemen-r...

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Rather than back out of the meeting, Paul wrote on Monday, Trump should have used the opportunity to declare that the US is not the “policeman of the world,” and that “what flag flies over Crimea is none of our business.”

“Instead of being the president who ships lethal weapons to the Ukrainian regime, instead of being the president who insists that Crimea remain in Ukraine, instead of being the president who continues policies the American people clearly rejected at the ballot box, Trump could have blamed the Ukraine/Russia mess on the failed Obama foreign policy and charted a very different course,” Paul wrote.

Crimea’s majority-Russian residents voted to rejoin Russia in 2014, rather than side with the US-supported pro-Western regime in Kiev. Trump’s messaging on Crimea has been inconsistent since. Before incurring the wrath of the media in June by reportedly telling world leaders that “Crimea is Russian because everyone who lives there speaks Russian,” Trump agreed to sell Javelin anti-tank missiles to Poroshenko’s anti-Russian government.

READ MORE: Are we the baddies? Al Qaeda team plays on the same side as the US in Yemen (VIDEO)

In a press conference after last month’s midterm elections, Trump castigated his predecessor Barack Obama for allowing “a very large part of Ukraine to be taken” on his watch, not blaming Russia but not contradicting State Secretary Mike Pompeo’s referral to Crimea in June as under Russian “occupation.”

Torn between the demands of the American electorate and the influence of foreign policy ‘experts’ in Washington, Trump seems to have been listening to the latter in recent months, Paul wrote.

READ MORE: Life in fear: Report says 1 in 3 US drone-strike deaths in Yemen are civilians, including children

On the campaign trail, Trump had slammed President George W. Bush’s $1.9 trillion wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and promised to stay out of Syria. Since taking office, however, he signed off on multiple cruise missile strikes against Syria, continues to arm anti-government rebels there –many of whom have links to Al-Qaeda–and continues to hit all three countries with airstrikes, some of them deadly to civilians.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/445494-crimea-ron-paul-trump/

Samuel Oakford and Ryan Goodman discovered that the U.S. failed to charge the Saudis and Emiratis properly for refueling their planes, so in addition to aiding in their war crimes the U.S. has been subsidizing them as well:

President Donald Trump, who repeatedly complains that the United States is paying too much for the defense of its allies, has praised Saudi Arabia for ostensibly taking on Iran in the Yemen war. It turns out, however, that U.S. taxpayers have been footing the bill for a major part of the Saudi-led campaign, possibly to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Given the president’s endless complaints about being ripped off by other countries, it is fitting that he presided over almost two years of letting the U.S. get ripped off by the Saudis and Emiratis at the same time that he has kept the U.S. involved in a disgraceful war. U.S. refueling coalition planes stopped as of last month thanks to mounting public and Congressional pressure. Increased Congressional scrutiny of U.S. support for the war is the only reason that we now know these new details. The full costs of U.S. support for the war on Yemen still aren’t known, but this brings us a little closer to a proper reckoning.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-great-saudi-rip-off/

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The Australian Government has approved the export of dozens of shipments of military items to Middle Eastern countries embroiled in the bloody Yemen war, a conflict dogged by accusations of war crimes and indiscriminate civilian killings.

• Australia is exporting to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, FOI documents reveal
• Canberra is attempting to ramp up Australia's arms exports as part of a new defence strategy
• There are also questions over the destination of a $410 million weapons systems deal involving an Australian company

Internal Defence Department documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) and from parliamentary hearings reveal since the beginning of 2016, Canberra has granted at least 37 export permits for military-related items to the United Arab Emirates, and 20 to Saudi Arabia.

They are the two countries leading a coalition fighting a war against Houthi rebels in the Middle East's poorest nation, Yemen.

The four-year war in Yemen has killed tens of thousands and an air-and-sea embargo has led to more than 85,000 Yemeni children under five dying from hunger, according to one children's agency.

Australia's burgeoning exports to the UAE and Saudi Arabia may be connected to a plan announced by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in January to drastically increase defence sales over the next decade.

Australia will spend $200 million between now and 2028 in order to make Australia the 10th-largest arms exporter in the world. It is currently the 20th largest.

The strategy states the Middle East is a "priority market" for defence exports.

Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-13/australias-secret-backing-for-nations-fighting-bloody-yemen-war/

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Count the number of times you see or hear the phrase “peace on Earth” in the next week or so. It’s one of the great Christmas themes – or great Christmas cliches, if you want to be cynical. But in the year when we remember the centenary of the end of the first world war, when the image of mass graves for millions is fresh in our minds, it needs to be more than a seasonal bromide.

It’s not even as though British involvement in war were a thing of the past. Thank God, most of us have not directly experienced in our lifetimes the impact of full-scale war; but our official policies are still helping to support large-scale slaughter and long-term misery elsewhere in the world. Think of Yemen, where up to 14 million people are on the edge of famine as a result of a war that continues to claim countless lives; a war in which the UK government is complicit through its sales of arms to Saudi Arabia. These arms sales have increased by two thirds since 2016, and now account for nearly half of Britain’s major arms exports.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/14/britain-complicity...

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The Wall Street Journal gets things backwards on Saudi Arabia and Yemen as usual:

But all 49 Democrats voted for it, as did seven Republicans. They had the political luxury of knowing the bill is going nowhere in the House this year. There’s nothing more senatorial than voting for something you know won’t pass and calling it an “historic victory,” as Mr. Sanders did.

The more useful effort was a resolution sponsored by Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker that condemned the Saudi murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and held Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman responsible.

The Senate’s passage of S.J.Res. 54 today was historic in several respects. It was the first time the Senate used the War Powers resolution to oppose ongoing U.S. involvement in a foreign war, and it was the first time in decades that the Senate repudiated a war involving the U.S. against the wishes of the sitting president. U.S. support for the war on Yemen has been a bipartisan policy that spans two administrations, but it is such a despicable and outrageous policy that it mobilized a bipartisan coalition to vote to end it. There are few other issues that could unite Tea Party conservatives, democratic socialist independents, and progressive Democrats in common cause, but the war on Yemen and our role in enabling it have done exactly that. S.J.Res. 54 challenges decades of Congressional acquiescence to illegal presidential warmaking, and it set a precedent by defining hostilities to mean everything up to and including the refueling of other governments’ air forces in wartime. The WSJ is scoffing at the resolution, but I suspect they are actually terrified of what it portends for the future of Congress’ role in matters of war and the prospects for the success of war opponents in the next Congress. The Trump administration and the Pentagon trotted out all of the usual nonsense arguments in favor of continued U.S. involvement and the Saudi relationship, and the Senate dismissed their pathetic excuses. It would have been easy for most senators to fall in line and take the easier path of deferring to the executive as members of Congress almost always do, but instead they did the more difficult and right thing for U.S. interests and peace in Yemen.

Corker’s resolution was fine as far as it went, but it was not all that useful. It was a non-binding “sense of the Senate” resolution with no consequences for the Saudi government. I have no problem with the Senate pointing the finger at the obviously guilty crown prince for Khashoggi’s murder, but absent any meaningful action it is also just so much play-acting on the part of Republican hawks. They held Mohammed bin Salman to be responsible for the crime, but saying it and doing something about it are two very different things. Corker’s resolution allowed the 41 Republicans who voted against S.J.Res. 54 (including Corker) to act as thought that they aren’t complete pro-Saudi lackeys, but there is nothing easier for a politician than voting for something that he knows won’t have any consequences for himself or anyone else.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-historic-antiwar-res...

The WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch News Corp...

US Central Command is “in the process of seeking reimbursement from” the two countries for $331 million in fuel and flight hours, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich. “Our partners have been individually notified about our intent to seek reimbursement, and have been given estimates as to how much they owe."

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/446426-pentagon-refueling-error-saudis/

Fifty-six senators voted Thursday to end American support for the war in Yemen, a direct rebuke to President Trump and the Washington foreign policy establishment. This historic vote also undercut Republican leadership. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell never wanted the bill to pass.

But McConnell’s hemming and hawing was nothing compared to the stunt House Republican leaders had pulled the day before.

“Speaker Ryan is not allowing a vote on my resolution to stop the war in Yemen because many Republicans will vote with us and he will lose the vote,” thundered Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna on the House floor Wednesday.

“He is disgracing Article 1 of the Constitution,” Khanna said. “As a result, more Yemeni children will die.”

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/dont-use-the-farm-bill-to-starve-people/

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“…They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

‘Spirit. are they yours.’ Scrooge could say no more.

‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.’

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/24/charles-dickens-a-christmas-carol-at...

Stop the war on Yemen for Xmas' sake.

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Reports from Sudanese soldiers who’ve returned from Yemen indicate up to 14,000 Sudanese have been fighting for the Saudi-led coalition. Most hail from Darfur, a region still mired in chaos after a prolonged and bloody war that saw 300,000 people killed and 1.2 million displaced from their homes, and many are children, according to a shocking report from the New York Times.

So few are opportunities in war-torn Darfur that some families actually bribe militia officers to take their sons to fight in Yemen, according to the report. The Times interviewed five fighters returning from Yemen who confirmed children as young as 14 comprised at least a fifth of their units. Two soldiers said the proportion was closer to 40 percent.

The Sudanese mercenaries were literally cannon fodder, directed from afar through radio headsets and GPS by Saudi and Emirati commanders who preferred to maintain a safe distance from the front lines, according to soldiers who fought for the coalition. “They treat the Sudanese like their firewood,” said combat veteran Ahmed, who would not allow his full name to be printed for fear of government retaliation.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen is known to pad its ranks with mercenaries – including former US soldiers, controversially. But American soldiers aren’t cheap, and the Saudis have been recruiting young veterans of the Darfur conflict to get more bang for their buck. Many of these are veterans of the Janjaweed tribal militia whose brutality aroused international outcry during the Darfur conflict, where they are held responsible for committing war crimes including systematic rape, murder of civilians, and genocide.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/447801-sudanese-child-mercenaries-yemen/

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The Ministerial Conference in Poland on Peace and Security in the Middle East addressed but one important issue and this issue was not on the agenda. At the conference, Israël publicly demonstrated that it had relations with Arab States – the representatives of these countries engaging in conversations inter se. This is remarkable because officially, there are no diplomatic relations between these states.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exploited the US House of Representatives’ vote against the war in Yemen to reveal its military hand in this conflict.

If the truth be known, right at the beginning of this war in Yemen, troops from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Israel took part. These three states set up a joint general staff in Somaliland. The latter is not recognized as a state and is controlled by Israel. This war had been the subject of several years of negotiation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Its objective was to exploit the oil reserves in the “desert of Rub-Al Khali”, the area straddling Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Further exploitation will take place through a joint project in the Horn of Africa.

For Israel, showing its hand in Yemen follows on from its public recognition of its incessant interventions in Syria. This amounts to a rewriting of History, for prior to the Israeli interventions, there were no Iranians – either in Syria or Yemen.

For the United States, this revelation is another step towards the establishment of a Judeo-Sunnite alliance against the Shiites, as announced by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.

About sixty foreign delegates participated in this show and reacted as if comatosed. The Western Press has not deemed this conference to be newsworthy.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article205207.html

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The Australian defence department can’t guarantee that Canberra-made remote weapons systems, that attracted a taxpayer subsidy, won’t be used in the bloody Yemen conflict.

Officials faced a grilling over military exports to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday following revelations Electro Optic Systems is exporting 500 of the systems to the Saudi interior ministry.

The ABC reported the company had received $36m in government funding.

The systems hold military cannons, machine guns and missile launchers which mount on the back of vehicles or ships, allowing weapons to be operated from inside.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/20/no-guarantee-australian-we...

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In a private letter to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas ahead of a trip to Berlin Wednesday, Hunt said he was “very concerned about the impact” Germany’s decision to cancel arms sales to Saudi Arabia would have on both the defense industry as well as its ability to fulfill NATO commitments. The letter was seen by the German weekly Der Spiegel.

He added that the decision would cost German arms companies to the tune of €2.3 billion by 2026.

Berlin announced in November that it would hold off on providing further arms export licenses to the Gulf kingdom, following the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Istanbul consulate the month before. Several other Western governments – including the US, Canada, and Spain – condemned the killing but said arms sales to Riyadh would continue.

Read more: 

https://www.rt.com/news/452016-hunt-urges-saudi-arms-sales/

Meanwhile:

A secret clause that accompanies the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle

According to the Germany weekly, Der Spiegel, Germany and France have signed a secret clause at the side of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle [1]. It provides that neither party will oppose the sales of arms produced as a joint venture, except on grounds of national security.

Following the fall of Nazism, Germany has kept up its pacifist ideal and placed a strict ban on exporting arms to States that could use them for evil ends. However, during the Conference on Security that has just taken place in Munich, Angie, the German Chancellor, has indicated these restrictions are too narrow. They only allow very few exports and consequently prevent the sales of arms from being a profitable activity.

Under the provisions of this secret clause, France will be able to continue exporting to Saudi Arabia something which the Bundestag, the German Parliament, prohibits. The profits derived from the Saudi sales will be divided between the two States but we do not know in what proportions.

Translation 

Anoosha Boralessa

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article204625.html

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The US Senate on Wednesday voted to pass a resolution to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The measure passed with 54 for and 46 against.

The resolution, which is co-sponsored by US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and US Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), among others, seeks to end any and all US involvement in the Saudi-led conflict, including providing targeting support for Saudi airstrikes in the war-torn country. It is now expected to be voted on in the US House of Representatives.

The measure was put to vote under the War Powers Act, which allows the resolution to be fast-tracked through US Congress. Should it manage to successfully pass through both the US Senate and US House, it would be the first time that lawmakers have tapped on the act to cease US military involvement in a foreign conflict.  

US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) recently told Washington-based publication The Hill that the vote in the House could be "tight," but that it would be able to gain the required amount of vote to pass. However, it should be noted that the White House has stated that if the measure were to land on US President Donald Trump's desk, he would veto the resolution.

A similar measure was introduced in the US House in February, however, as The Hill reports, it "ran into a procedural roadblock" when it got to the US Senate, and was not able to voted on in an measure that would allow it to pass with a majority vote. A majority vote in the Senate requires a total of 51 yeas.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201903141073213664-us-senate-military-support...

...

The latest coalition attack hit a residential area. That is consistent with the coalition’s frequent attacks on civilian targets, which have consistently made up one third of their airstrikes over the last four years of war. Like many other coalition airstrikes, the jets bombed the area once and then struck it again with a second attack. Attacks on schools have unfortunately been all too common in this war. 2,500 schools in Yemen have been damaged or destroyed over the last four years. Millions Yemeni children already must cope with malnutrition and the threat of disease, and even at their schools they are not safe from being killed by coalition airstrikes. In addition to the children killed and wounded in such attacks, all Yemeni children have been traumatized by the ongoing conflict. Both the mental and physical health of an entire generation of Yemenis is being severely harmed by the effects of this war. The Trump administration continues to back the Saudi coalition as they bomb hospitals and kill schoolchildren. This is what supporters of U.S. involvement in the war are defending. 

Update: The death toll has reportedly risen to 13, and as many as 90 people, most of them children, have been injured in the blast.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/saudi-coalition-airstrik...

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See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32654

The Saudi-led coalition used weapons sold by France as part of its military operations in Yemen. Despite the official Paris denials, these weapons could therefore be at the source of many civilian casualties.

«Leclerc tanks, arrow shells, Mirage 2000-9, Cobra radar, Aravis armored vehicles, Cougar and Dauphin helicopters, Caesar guns ...»: according to the report of an investigation conducted jointly by the NGO-Disclose and the Radio France investigative unit, the armed coalition led by Saudi Arabia would have used French weapons to fire on Yemen, "including on civilian areas."

These revelations contradict the version presented by France to justify some of its controversial arms contracts. Paris has always explained that the weapons sold to its partners were used in defense, mainly in the context of the fight against terrorism.

Published on April 15 on the site Disclose, the revelations are mostly based on the leak of a document bearing the classification "Confidentiel Défense", written on September 25, 2018 by officers of the head of Military Intelligence, according to the NGO. It includes the "detailed list of French weapons involved in the war in Yemen".

On this basis, the survey reveals, for example, a map of the region showing where the weapons sold by France to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were used. "Population concerned by possible artillery strikes: 436,370 people," says the NGO's confidential report on the coalition bombing.

These documents were "presented at a meeting at the Elysee, October 3, 2018, in the presence of Emmanuel Macron," says the NGO Disclose, in a tweet presenting his investigation.

Read more:

https://francais.rt.com/international/60994-armes-francaises-tuant-civil...

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The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) has released a report on the effects of the war on Yemen, including the long-term effects on the country’s future development. This comes from the start of the report’s executive summary:

The ongoing conflict has further reduced the pace of development. The impacts of conflict in Yemen are devastating—with nearly a quarter of a million people killed directly by fighting and indirectly through lack of access to food, health services, and infrastructure. Of the dead, 60 per cent are children under the age of five [bold mine-DL]. The long-term impacts of conflict are vast and place it among the most destructive conflicts since the end of the Cold War [bold mine-DL]. The conflict has already set back human development by 21 years (Figure 1). If the conflict were to end in 2022, development would be set back 26 years—over one generation.

The report is the most comprehensive assessment yet of what the people of Yemen have endured over the last four years, and its findings are a damning indictment of the Saudi coalition intervention and our government’s support for their war. Beyond the estimated 233,000 deaths caused by the war (102,000 from fighting, 131,000 from hunger and disease), the war has set back the entire country by a generation. It will take decades for Yemen to recover, and that’s assuming that the war stops now. If the war continues for much longer, the loss of life will be even greater and the long-term damage will be almost unimaginable. According to the report, at least 140,000 victims of the war on Yemen have been children under the age of 5. They are among the most vulnerable, and they have borne the brunt of both mass starvation and the cholera epidemic. One Yemeni child dies approximately every twelve minutes. 

If the war continues until 2022, the estimated death toll would be closer to half a million (482,000) with the vast majority of those deaths caused by lack of access to food and medical care. Of those 482,000, 316,000 are estimated to be children under the age of 5, or 65% of the total. The longer the war drags on, the more innocent civilian lives will be lost to preventable causes, and Yemeni children will continue to make up the bulk of the victims. Bear in mind that these are projections that assume reduced conflict intensity compared to last year, so the actual costs of prolonging the war could be much higher if the conflict escalates further.

Read more: 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/233000-have-died-in-the-...

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‘Why do we fuel the war?’ French peace activists manage to stop arms shipment to Saudis – report

The Bahri-Yanbu, a cargo ship that was meant to deliver the latest shipment of French weapons to the Gulf kingdom arrived in the port Le Havre on Thursday. Protesters gathered there to denounce their government’s refusal to stop arms trade with Saudi Arabia after reports revealed that French weapons have been used by Riyadh in its four-year-long military campaign in neighboring Yemen.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/458983-france-protest-arms-saudis/

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British target training of Saudi air force ‘did not stop Yemen atrocities’

Court documents in arms sales case show civilians were bombed soon after training sessions

Government claims that British military training improved the humanitarian record of the Saudi air force have been contradicted by documents suggesting it did little to prevent atrocities.

On 20 June the court of appeal ruled that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia were unlawful, in a judgment that accused ministers of failing to properly assess the risk the weapons posed to civilians in Yemen.

Government lawyers, attempting to justify the arms exports, argued that British training for the Royal Saudi Air Force embedded good practice and ensured “greater compliance” with international humanitarian law.

Yet court documents from the case show that indiscriminate bombing of civilians by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen took place after British training – sometimes almost immediately after. Three days after Britain provided training – between 27 July and 14 August 2015 – up to 70 people were killed by airstrikes and shelling at the port at Hodeidah.

The following month airstrikes on a wedding in the village of Wahijah, near the Red Sea port of al-Mokha, killed at least 135 people.

In October 2015 repeated airstrikes on a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Haidan occurred, despite the hospital’s GPS coordinates being shared with the coalition. The episode prompted the UK to provide further training to the Saudi air force between October and January, including targeting training.

However, in March 2016 airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition on a crowded village market in Hajjah province killed 106 people. Days later deadly attacks struck a civilian building in the city of Taiz.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade, which brought the case, said: “We are always being told how positive the UK’s influence supposedly is on Saudi forces, but nothing could be further from the truth. The atrocities and abuses have continued unabated, regardless of UK training and engagement.

“The training and rhetoric has only served to provide a figleaf of legitimacy to a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/23/british-training-saudi-air...

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