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Ending the Other
War in Yemen
By Brian
Terrell on February 12, 2021
Photo, Brian Terrell at left, with Joan Pleune, Felton
Davis and Bud Courtney, blocking the US Mission to the UN, December, 2017, by
Joanne Kennedy
On February 4, in
his first major
foreign policy address, President Joe Biden announced, “we are ending all
American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including
relevant arms sales.” Speaking of the Saudi-led coalition that has been at war
in Yemen since 2015, creating what he called “a humanitarian and strategic
catastrophe,” Biden declared “This war has to end.”
Stating an intention is not fulfilling it and
considering Biden’s further pledge, “to continue to support and help Saudi
Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people,” his
use of the word “relevant” to modify “arms sales” could indicate a convenient
loophole. Still, it is refreshing to hear a U.S. president at least recognize
that the Yemeni people are suffering an “unendurable devastation” and this is
due to the hard work of grassroots peace activists around the world.
Whether Biden’s
proclamation will mean much in the real world beyond a temporary hold on the
weapons deals Trump made just before leaving office is yet to be seen. The
Saudi kingdom welcomes Biden’s
announcement and the U.S. arms sellers who have profited from the war seem
unruffled by the news. “Look,” Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes reassured investors
anticipating this move, “peace is not going to break out in the Middle East
anytime soon. I think it remains an area where we’ll continue to see solid
growth.” The prospects for peace in Yemen probably depend more on sustained
international pressure than on a kinder and gentler administration in the White
House.
The Congressional
Research Service in a report updated on December 8, 2020, “Yemen: Civil War and Regional
Intervention,” references a major factor in U.S. policy
planning regarding Yemen that the president did not mention. Roughly five
million barrels of oil pass through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen’s
western coast on a daily basis, eventually making their way to Asia, Europe,
and the United States.
In case the
president gave the misimpression that the U.S. was getting out of the business
of killing Yemenis completely, the next day the State Department issued
a clarifying statement, “Importantly, this does not apply to offensive
operations against either ISIS or AQAP.” In other words, whatever happens in
regard to weapons sales to the Saudis, the war that has been waged for 21 years
under the guise of the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by
Congress authorizing the use of the US Armed Forces against those responsible
for the September 11 attacks, will continue indefinitely, despite the fact that
neither ISIS nor Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula existed in 2001.
The “offensive
operations” in Yemen that will continue under Biden include drone (UAV)
strikes, cruise missile attacks and U.S. Special Forces raids and are a part of
the larger “war on terror” that began in the administration of George W. Bush
and was expanded under Obama. Despite his campaign promises to end the “forever
wars,” a report from Airwars
suggests that Trump has bombed Yemen more times than his two predecessors
combined.
In January 2017,
just days after taking office, Trump
ordered Navy Seal commandos supported by Reaper drone air cover to raid a
compound suspected of harboring officials of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
While the raid’s targets escaped, one Navy Seal died in the raid, and
eventually, it came out that 30 Yemenis were also killed, including 10 women
and children. The Navy Seal was not the only US citizen killed in that raid:
the other was an 8-year-old girl, Nawar Awlaki. In September 2011, Nawar’s
father, Yemeni-American imam Anwar Awlaki, was assassinated in a drone strike
in Yemen that was ordered by President Obama, on secret intelligence that he
was an al Qaeda operative. A few days after her father was killed, Nawar’s
16-year-old Denver born brother Abdulrahman was killed in another drone strike.
Many other
Yemeni families have suffered in these attacks. On January 26, 2021, relatives
of at least 34 Yemenis alleged to have been killed in American military actions asked the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to determine whether the deaths were
unlawful. The petition asserts that six drone strikes and one Special
Operations raid during the Obama and Trump administrations inflicted
catastrophic damage on two families.
The
statistics around the U.S. war in Yemen are difficult to come by, in part
because many of the attacks are carried out secretly by the CIA and not by the
military, but the Airwars and other studies count the number of drone strikes
and their victims conservatively in the hundreds. The casualties
of Saudi led war, in contrast, are more than 100,000 dead with almost
as many killed by hunger and disease caused by the Saudi blockade and millions
of Yemenis being deprived of food and other needs.
While its
death toll is much smaller, the U.S. drone attacks have a disproportional
effect on Yemeni society. A 2014 screening study of
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms among civilians by the Alkarama
Foundation found that “for a large swath of population in Yemen, living under a
sky that has become a constant source of trauma is an everyday reality” and
that under drone attack and surveillance, Yemen is “a precarious time and a
peculiar place, where the skies are becoming traumatic and a generation is
being lost to constant fear and suffering.”
If the
Special Forces and air strikes are intended to defeat terrorism in Yemen as in
the other countries under attack, they are having the opposite
effect. As the young, late, Yemeni writer Ibrahim Mothana told Congress
in 2013, “Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis
to hate America and join radical militants. … Unfortunately, liberal voices in
the United States are largely ignoring, if not condoning, civilian deaths and
extrajudicial killings in Yemen.”
Mothana’s observation about liberal voices in the US “largely ignoring, if not
condoning, civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings in Yemen” was affirmed in
Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign for president. While Sanders has become
outspoken in his opposition to the Saudi led war, as a presidential candidate
he repeatedly voiced his support of Obama’s drone wars. “All of
that and more,” he replied when asked if, as president, drones
and Special Forces would play a role in his counter-terror plans. Again, in the
2019 resolution “To
direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the
Republic of Yemen” offered by Sanders, passed in both houses of
Congress and vetoed by Trump, U.S. participation in this other war was given a
pass: “Congress hereby directs the President to remove United States Armed
Forces from hostilities in or affecting the Republic of Yemen, except the
United States Armed Forces engaged in operations directed at al Qaeda or
associated forces.”
In Biden’s foreign policy address, he left open the possibility of arms sales
as he pledged his commitment “to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia
defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.” The
threats Saudi Arabia faces include, he said, missile attacks and UAV (drone)
strikes from weapons he says are supplied by Iran. In fact, Yemeni Houthi Ansar
Allah rebels have launched drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, most notably a
September 14, 2019, attack
on Saudi Aramco refineries that disrupted world crude oil
supplies. It is a strange irony, that after the U.S. assaults Yemen with
thousands of Hellfire missiles launched from Predator drones for over 20 years,
the U.S. now must arm Saudi Arabia to defend itself (and our oil supply) from
Yemeni drones and missiles.
The
global proliferation of weaponized drones is no surprise and Biden’s plea for
peace in Yemen that allows for their continued use is a hollow one. Giving a
pass, continuing to ignore, if not condone, civilian deaths and extrajudicial
killings in Yemen and elsewhere will not bring peace but will ensure that for
generations to come, profiteers like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General
Atomics, will “continue to see solid growth.” Peace in Yemen, peace in the
world, demands no less than an end to the production, trade and use of
weaponized drones.
Article printed from
CounterPunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org
URL to article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/12/ending-the-other-war-in-yemen-2/
Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore
Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.
Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to
gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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