How US, Saudi Arabia’s claimes about war on Yemen seem illogical?
YemenExtra
Y.A
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of its regional allies — mainly the united Arab Emirates and Jordan — started a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people later, the war has yielded little to that effect.
Civilian casualties are an unfortunate reality of war, bin Salman said. “In any military operation, mistakes happen,” he said. “The question is: Are these mistakes intentional?”
Yemen Data Project, an independent monitoring group, has been collecting data on the location and targets of the aerial war. The organization says the Saudi-led coalition carried out a total of 16,749 air raids were recorded from March 26, 2015 to March 25, 2018, or an average of 15 bombing runs per day. Nearly a third of those airstrikes, or 31%, targeted non-military sites, the data said.
Whether these airstrikes are intentional or not, it’s clear that the U.S. government’s patience with such attacks is running thin. Defense Secretary James Mattis expressed the Trump Administration’s frustrations with the mounting death tolls when bin Salman visited the Pentagon on March 22. “We are going to end this war, that is the bottom line,” Mattis said. “And we are going to end it on positive terms for the people of Yemen but also security for the nations in the peninsula.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has provided intelligence, munitions and midair refueling to Saudi warplanes since operations against the Houthis first began. The U.S. government has worked over that time to help Saudi commanders improve targeting processes in order to mitigate against civilians being killed. The lack of results triggered the Senate to vote on ending U.S. military support for the war, but that effort narrowly failed.
Bin salman said that Saudi Arabia is “doing our best to be sure that the interests of the people in Yemen — health care, education, whatever — it’s supported.” He added that “any initiative made from the UN or any other groups around the world, immediately we help and we try to do our best to push positively in that side.”
Kristine Beckerle, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Yemen, said bin Salman’s statements has no basis in fact. The Saudi-led coalition has “exacerbated” the humanitarian disaster in Yemen by initiating blockades that halt the spread of food, medical supplies, and care. Late last year, Saudi Arabia closed the Yemeni borders in retaliation for an intercepted Iranian-made ballistic missile near the capital, Riyadh, allegedly fired by Houthi rebels. The Saudis sealed all entry via land, air, and sea to stem suspected arms smuggling.
Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime. The Arab kingdom has also imposed a blockade on its impoverished neighbor, causing a dire humanitarian situation.