First You Bomb and Starve a Country. Then You’re Praised for Sending in Aid.
The perverse diplomatic charade of Saudi Arabia starting a fire then getting credit for providing fire blankets.
The United Nations describes
itself in its charter as an international moral authority created to
“save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” But activists who
are trying to end the U.S. war on Yemen say that, in a dark twist on
this mission, the international body is withholding criticism from the
U.S.-Saudi military coalition, and effusively praising its leaders, to
avoid jeopardizing donations to humanitarian funds aimed at helping ease
the suffering created by that war. As Jehan Hakim, the chair of the
Yemeni Alliance Committee, puts it, “The same hand we’re asking to feed
Yemen is the same hand that is helping bomb them.”
On June 15, UN
Secretary-General António Guterres
removed the U.S.-Saudi military coalition, which has been waging war in
Yemen for more than five years, from an international blacklist of
states and armed groups responsible for killing and maiming children, in
a huge P.R. win for Saudi Arabia. He cited a supposed decrease in child
killings, even as he acknowledged the coalition was responsible for
killing 222 children last year, 171 of them from bombings—a number that
certainly does not include the toll of
famine and
disease outbreaks (including
Covid-19) worsened by the war and blockade. The UN’s move provoked instant
rebuke from anti-war and humanitarian organizations, particularly as it coincided with
reports
that, the same day the report came out, the U.S.-Saudi coalition had
bombed a vehicle in northern Yemen, killing 13 civilians, four of them
children.
Hassan El-Tayyab, lead lobbyist on Middle East
policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a progressive
lobby organization, tells
In These Times that the move has a simple explanation.
“To me,” he says, “it’s really clear what they’re trying
to do: They’re trying to curry favor so that Saudi Arabia will pony up
more money for Yemen to keep humanitarian aid going.”
El-Tayyab’s theory is supported by a number of indicators. In June 2016, former UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon publicly admitted that he removed Saudi Arabia from the same “
child-killer list” in the UN’s 2015 report in response to unspecified threats to pull funding from UN programs. (Media outlets
found these threats came from Saudi Arabia, one of the largest UN donors in the Middle East.)
“The report describes horrors no child should have to face,” Ban said
at a press conference in 2016. “At the same time, I also had to
consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would
suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund
many UN programs.”
Despite this admission, Ban did not immediately restore the U.S.-Saudi coalition to the blacklist, although it was eventually
returned.
But there are more recent indicators to draw on. On June 2, the UN
co-hosted a virtual donors’ summit with Saudi Arabia to raise money for
humanitarian relief in Yemen, which is being devastated by Covid-19, in
large part because the U.S.-Saudi coalition has
decimated
its hospital system, and a Saudi-led blockade is cutting off critical
medical supplies. Guterres, who made the recent decision to scrub Saudi
Arabia from the blacklist, gave the
opening remarks for the event.
“I thank the Government of Saudi Arabia for co-hosting
this pledging event, and for your continued commitment to humanitarian
aid to the people of Yemen,” he said.
Saudi Arabia was the highest donor at the event,
pledging a token $500 million in aid, the exact amount of money Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler,
Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
spent
on his personal yacht. The United States pledged $225 million, or less
than the cost of three of the numerous F35 fighter jets the U.S.
military
has purchased from Lockheed Martin.
These numbers also pale in comparison to the value of the arms the United States ships to Saudi Arabia—amounting to at
least $3 billion
in 2019—despite calls for a global embargo due to Saudi atrocities in
Yemen. Yet the event, the global equivalent of a GoFundMe campaign for
Yemen aid, fell $1 billion
short of its goal, or roughly the equivalent of only two of the Leonardo Da Vinci paintings bin Salman
bought for himself in 2017.
El-Tayyab says he is concerned about whether the U.S. aid that was
pledged will be sent to Houthi-held areas, where a majority of Yemen’s
population lives.
“We don’t know if the aid is going to get to north
Yemen,” he said. “A major sticking point is what is actually happening
to Houthi-held territory. Is the aid getting to where the majority of
the country lives?”
Shireen Al-Adeimi, Yemeni-American anti-war activist, board member of Just Foreign Policy, and
frequent contributor to
In These Times,
agreed with El-Tayyab’s explanation for why the coalition was removed
from the UN blacklist. According to Al-Adeimi, the UN lives in fear that
the very countries responsible for unleashing humanitarian crises will
withdraw funding for humanitarian aid. “Anytime the UN has held any kind
of fundraiser for Yemen, they go out of their way to thank the
coalition countries for whatever aid they pledge,” she says. And indeed,
on April 9, Mark Lowcock, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator,
tweeted,
“Thank you to KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] for announcing another
major contribution to humanitarian aid in Yemen! Your generosity will
benefit millions of people who need help.” This echoes similar effusive
praise he’s given the coalition for its humanitarian donations to Yemen
(see
here and
here).
An April 2018 exchange between Guterres and a reporter at a
press event
for a Yemen fundraising conference sheds light on this dynamic. The
reporter asked Guterres about the event, at which both Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates, also part of the military coalition against in
Yemen, were significant donors, “How do you see the contradiction of
one country presenting itself as a main donor and a main helper of Yemen
while it is striking since three years the country, including civilian
areas?” Guterres replied, “This country is giving money to repair what
it is destroying. Well, we all know that there is a war, we all know who
are the parties to the war, but the two things need to be seen
separately. Independently of the fact that there is a war, there are
humanitarian obligations that are assumed by countries, and today we
were exactly registering a very strong support of the international
community to the people of Yemen.”
One could argue that the UN is forced to perform ethical gymnastics, due the Trump administration’s abrupt
withdrawal of tens of millions of dollars in assistance from USAID, the World Food Programme’s 50%
cut to aid in Houthi-held areas, and threats to
close
critical UN-run food aid programs in Yemen, all as Covid-19 is
battering the country. The UN has no choice, therefore, but to do what
any fundraiser must do: cavort with unsavory donors, and flatter the
wealthy in hopes that they will keep the organization afloat.
But the UN is not just a passive observer of the Yemen war: By
shielding the United States and Saudi Arabia from even the most modest
political consequences for a war that has unleashed the worst
humanitarian crisis in the world, it has used its institutional power to
enable this onslaught. In 2015, just six months into the war, Saudi
Arabia launched a diplomatic campaign to prevent the UN from launching a
human rights investigation,
abetted
by the silence of the Obama administration. This effort was ultimately
successful. What if it had not been: Imagine if, more than five years
ago, the war had been roundly denounced on the global stage.
Even activists who acknowledge the tragic irony of relying on the
perpetrators of a war to provide aid to victims of that war are
themselves forced to call on the United States to restore aid. In late
May, more than 80 progressive and anti-war organizations signed a
letter calling on chairs and ranking members of Congress to “do everything in your power to press USAID to reverse its
suspension.”
The letter warns, “Millions more are needed, in particular, for
emergency stocks of personal protective equipment, ventilators, ICU
beds, and other vital supplies for Yemen’s battered health care system.”
Hakim, who is part of a coalition of activist groups that is fighting
to restore this aid, says the effort brings up difficult political
questions. “It really feels like a violation of us, calling on this
agency [USAID] that is part of the system that is profiting off of this
war with arms sales and all this military support.” But, she says, U.S.
activists face a stark reality: Abrupt withdrawal of aid in the midst of
a pandemic will certainly kill numerous Yemenis. “People ask us, ‘Why
are you calling on USAID? They’re problematic.’ And I’m like, I know,
but what about the people who need the food right now? We’re doing it
for the people.”
Unlike the UN, Hakim and her fellow organizers do not flatter the
military coalition. And most importantly, they are working to end the
war—the root of the suffering, even after the Trump administration in
2019
vetoed an effort to end U.S. participation in the war.
“We’re in talks right now with a few other organizations
to draft a fresh War Powers Resolution,” says Hakim. “This is the
strongest vehicle we have to check U.S. involvement. Without arms,
military support, intelligence sharing and targeting assistance the U.S.
is providing, the coalition cannot continue to aggress in Yemen in the
same way.”
“We’re going to keep pushing,” Hakim says.
*
Note to readers: please click the share
buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists.
Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Sarah Lazare is web
editor at In These Times. She comes from a background in independent
journalism for publications including The Intercept, The Nation, and Tom
Dispatch. She tweets at @sarahlazare.
Featured image is from Yemen Press
Blogger's note: As I said the crime goes on, only a different way.
Blogger's note:
subterrnews.blogspot.com does not send cookies, or collect any information on
those using the blog. However, the blogspot is on google, and google may
collect information, and send cookies. Many of the links that we
connect to do not send out cookies or collect information, but some do.
You are keying in to this blog, and you have agreed to this.
The views expressed in the articles
do not necessarily represent the opinions of this blog. They are the views, and opinions of the
author(s) of the article.
