Yemen is Another US Dirty War
YemenExtra
SH.A.
By: David William Pear
On October 31st the US Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis and the US Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo called for a cease fire and a negotiated settlement to the war against Yemen. This was more than an obvious publicity stunt. It was a cruel Halloween prank?
It is the US that is leading from behind the Saudi and other Gulf Cooperative Council countries’ war against Yemen. The GCC front countries for the US are the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar. The KSA and Qatar are embroiled in a feud. Oman has opted out of the war for now. Non-GCC countries Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia are also contributing to the massacre of the people of Yemen.
The US has recruited the usual suspects of non-state actors, Blackwater mercenaries (rebranded Academi), Daesh, and al Qaeda to terrorize Yeminis on the ground, while Saudi pilots pound them with 2000-pound bombs. The Saudi coalition pilots purposely target school buses, villages, markets and hospitals with precision guided bombs.
The United Nations is just a US lapdog that gives the US and Saudi coalition a fig leaf of legality for the genocide in Yemen. The UN has authorized a one-sided arms embargo against Yemen, which the US and Saudis have turned into a total blockade of food, water, and humanitarian supplies. The blockade is keeping vital supplies from the Yemeni civilians, which are desperately needed by them to sustain life.
The UN continues the façade that the “internationally recognized legitimate government” of Yemen is Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. His term as an interim president in Yemen expired in 2014. He illegally extended his term for one year, and then he was driven out of office by the Yemeni people. The people had had enough of Hadi’s corruption, catering to the International Monetary Fund, austerity and the privatization of state enterprises at fire sale prices.
In a Houthi-led uprising the people of Yemen forced Hadi out of office. Hadi resigned as president and then fled from the capital city of Sana’a and went to the southern port city of Aden. In Aden Hadi rescinded his resignation and tried to reconstitute his moribund government. When that failed, he fled to Riyad, Saudi Arabia.
With US and Saudi backing, Hadi makes the claim from the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton Hotel that he is the legitimate government of Yemen. He has no portfolio with which to govern, and it is rumored that MBS is holding him prisoner in the Ritz-Carlton. Regardless of the rumor, he is still just a Saudi tool. The de facto government of Yemen is the Houthi-led movement’s leaders, which are supported by the people and the security forces of Yemen.
The US blames the war on Iran which has not invaded another country in over 200 years. The US does not have a shred of evidence that Iran is backing the Houthi movement. Yet the mainstream media constantly regurgitates whatever the US government’s warmongers feed them to say.
The Houthis in Yemen are the Zaydi Shia sect, which is similar to Sunni Islam. For centuries the Zaydi Shia and Sunnis have lived in peace and even pray together in Yemen’s mosques. Simplistic Western propaganda has tried to fabricate that the war in Yemen is a Sunni vs. Shia war, with the Houthis being backed by Shia Iran.
The Zaydi Shia in Yemen are a very different sect of Shia than the Iran Twelvers. (Western journalists are too lazy to look it up in Wikipedia). So, the US government dominated mainstream media never fails to repeat the propaganda that the Houthis are “Iran-backed”. Iran is the imaginary boogeyman that the US has invented.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of YemenExtra.