The Saudi reformist’s Yemen carnage

The country where we can most clearly see the dimensions of the duplicity and double standards of the world’s dominant forces and rulers of countries that claim to have influence is Yemen. Yemen is a veritable litmus paper for understanding who is doing what and how.

The Western media has for days been harping on about the 32-year-old crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS), who has set out to liquidate the elites in the endeavour to pave the way for an absolute monarchy in Saudi Arabia. To the accompaniment of bashful criticism of the petrol kingdom, MbS is basically touted as being “a great reformist in love with modernisation.” They have caught the “whiff of revolution” in his granting Saudi women the right to drive, and are excited.
No more than a fleeting mention is called for of his “sins” in relation to the war that the same tyrant’s father started in March 2015 as soon as he became king. The millions of victims of this the most destructive war of the 21^st Century of which MbS, as minister of defence, was the chief instigator are numbers mentioned in reports and news, a few sorry photographs.
 
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The people of the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen, are dying in droves, if not due to Saudi bombing then thanks to the lack of food and medical supplies and the contagious diseases under the Saudi blockade. The UN’s Yemen representative Jamie McGoldrick has most recently announced that there remains enough fuel in the country to last for twenty days and pointed to the importance of this for water supplies. He has warned that if the Saudi blockade is not lifted, millions will die. According to the UN, 17 million people are in urgent need of food. There is talk of seven million people being threatened by contagious disease, especially cholera. Nobody is mobilised to do anything.
 
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For the Saudis, the shortages and contagious diseases brought about by the blockade are an instrument of war, a means for decimating the population. Nobody speaks of the Saudi coalition, with US and British support, blocking UN aid planes from landing in the capital Sana'a. On being warned, the Saudis give the impression of opening ports and airports and this suffices. There is no mention of the places opened not being in the north-west where 70% of the population lives, but in the south, in regions under the control of Saudi and its proxy forces. Apart from local smugglers, there is no way of getting food in.
The Saudis are proficient at hitting hospitals, refugee camps, factories, roads, agricultural areas and schools in Yemen. Despite the hundreds of air raids over months, the numbers of dead are stated in the tens of thousands. Who knows what the real figure is! And they get hot under the collar when the UN holds them responsible for the deaths of a full 700 children in a report.


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The Saudi operation was launched under the battle cry of crushing the coalition of the Zaydi Houthis and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh who are resisting the illegitimate president Mansour Hadi, whose time in office has long since ended, and restoring the latter to his post. The rumour now is that even Hadi has been placed under house arrest in the operation to liquidate the elites in Saudi.
If, in turn, the US administration, which has provided fuel support and intelligence on target sharing to the Saudi coalition since the time of Obama, is not calling on it through the Yemeni Embassy to lift the blockade, it states that the administration has not been authorised by Congress to go to war in Yemen. The USA’s role is actually confirmed in its supporting accompaniment for the Saudi presentation of the war.


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The news agenda is occupied, not by the Yemenis, but the rocket the Houthis fired at the Saudi capital Riyadh, and Iran. There is no mention of the rocket being in retaliation for the market murder in Saada on 1 November in which at least 29 people died. It is said that Iran most certainly gave the rocket to the Houthis and the proof is the sticker on the remnants! Former Head of State Ali Abdullah Saleh explains that the rocket was from stocks held by the Yemeni army that is fighting the Saudis alongside the Houthis, but practically nobody is listening. It is enough to speak of Afghan Shiites or Hezbollah militants in the country that is under total blockade and there is no need for proof.
This project of destruction has plenty of “takers” in the Western world. You ask about the Muslim and Arab world? There is no such thing, anyway.