While the world’s attention is focused on the brutal war in Ukraine that followed Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, another conflict and humanitarian crisis is being largely ignored by global media outlets. The war in Yemen, the world’s poorest nation, is now entering its eighth year of conflict. Between indiscriminate bombing by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, more than 200,000 Yemenis have lost their lives due to a blockade of food, fuel and medicine amid rampant disease. With at least 17.4 million people – more than half of the country’s population – now facing famine, the UN estimated last fall that the Yemen death toll could rise to 377,000 people.
Often viewed as a proxy fight between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran, the oil-rich monarchies intervened in Yemen after Houthi rebels, seen as protectors of the Shia Muslim minority, seized control of large portions of Yemen in September 2014, including the capital city, Sanaa. When elected, President Biden said he would work to end the war in Yemen, but he continues to sell arms to the Saudis and UAE used in their war.
The sanctions imposed on Russia after its Ukraine invasion have dramatically increased the price of food and fuel, making the situation in Yemen more dire. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Kathy Kelly, a lifelong nonviolence activist, board member of World Beyond War, and co-founder of the former Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Here, she discusses the crisis in Yemen and members of Congress now working to end U.S. involvement in the war.
KATHY KELLY: This is the eighth year and you know precisely the kind of coverage that’s been devoted to suffering, displacement. People plunged into refugee status. People orphaned, people bereaved. People maimed — precisely that kind of empathetic coverage has never really been focused on Yemen over the eight years of a hideous bludgeoning, terrible war in which the U.N. estimates that 377,000 people have died.
Now, people may say, “Why? Why is there a war in Yemen?” Well, Yemen is strategically located. It’s right at the point in the Bad al Mandab Strait which could be a choking point for the passage of ships carrying fuel. So it’s a very strategic location. As this war has gone on, there have been consistent atrocities committed through airborne strikes that have wrecked, decimated, devastated Yemen’s infrastructure, for one thing.
And I think that’s so important to realize, because when you bomb the food production sites and the sewage and sanitation facilities and the electrical facilities, and the fisheries and the roadways, then the infrastructure is so nonfunctioning that more children in the future are sure to become diseased, malnourished, and with the combinations of not enough food and no clean water and hospitals that have also been bombed, they can’t survive.
So it’s just a guaranteed ongoing suffering paid for in terms of who pays the price by children. And you wonder, do we ever learn to ban child sacrifice? So, you know, parents who have been displaced three and four and five times over in Yemen could surely identify with those seeking refuge from Ukraine.
But now we see the huge differences because you know, there’s not a major refugee camp in all of Poland. Homes have swung open the doors and people have been welcomed. Now, I should qualify, the brown and black people living in Ukraine, some of them Yemenis, have not been similarly welcomed. And so President Biden campaigned saying, you know, “I’m going to stop arming the Saudis for their offensive war.” But then he said, “But I’ll let them keep getting defensive weapons.”
And so actually, there’s been no significant stopping of the importation of U.S. weapons into Saudi Arabia, the U.S. willingness to maintain their airplanes, to send them spare parts for their airplanes. And now with the sanctions against Russia, the United States wants Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to free up some oil, a lot of oil to kind of make up for what’s not coming from Russia.
And the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia have made a quid pro quo: “If you want us to produce more oil, you have to send us more weapons so that we can attack people in Yemen.” It’s very cruel.
SCOTT HARRIS: I would like you to comment, Kathy, on measures that are being proposed in the U.S. Congress to rein in the United States support and assistance to Saudi Arabia and the UAE in prosecuting this war in Yemen. Tell us about that, if you would.
KATHY KELLY: Well, there are two congresspeople, Pramila Jayapal and Peter DeFazio, both Democrats who have said that they are going to introduce a bill that would be considered the Yemen War Powers Act. Right now, the Congress has never authorized the United States to support this war. And this blockade against Yemen has been a presidential decision and so a war powers act would give the Congress a chance to weigh in.
And in the past, there was a joint resolution. Senators and congresspeople together all voted and said, “Stop, we want the capacity as a Senate and Congress to stop the flow of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the coalition which includes the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and Sudan, other countries that are in a nine-country coalition.” Well, President Trump vetoed that.
Now, it really is very, very sad that in all the time which has elapsed since President Trump vetoed that resolution, they still haven’t come up with a new resolution. Why not? You know, the blockade hasn’t been lifted. The famine conditions are still being predicted by the United Nations.
Well, now Joe Biden might be put on the spot if by any chance there can be a joint Senate-Congressional resolution saying to Joe Biden, “We want to force you to enact your campaign pledge and stop the horrible support for what the Saudis are doing to innocent people in Yemen.”
Well, you know, I think average, ordinary people are going to have to push their congresspeople and their senators to take that step. But it’s not unthinkable. And then Joe Biden would have to decide, “Am I going to veto that?” — which I think in many ways he would not want to do, because the despotic actions of Mohammed bin Salman have been so consistent and the cruelty of the UAE, and I would mention Bahrain as well.
