Yemen

I cannot understand why the Western media are silent about the atrocities being committed by an ally of the United States in Yemen. Michael Horton describes the current situation.

Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners are enforcing a naval blockade of Yemen. Yemen—already the poorest country in the Middle East— imports 90 percent of its food and medicine. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis face starvation as food prices have soared and aid is either non-existent or slow to arrive. The United Nations estimates that more than 80 percent of Yemen’s population of 23 million are in immediate need of humanitarian assistance.

The chief executive of Oxfam, Mark Golding, stated: “Yemen is being slowly starved to death. First there were restrictions on imports including much need food. When this was partially eased, the cranes in the ports were bombed, then the warehouses, then the roads and the bridges. This is not by accident. It is systematic.”

Concurrent with the naval blockade, Saudi Arabia is waging an aerial campaign that has laid waste to Yemen’s limited infrastructure. There are few parts of the country that have not been impacted: bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, water wells and, according to some reports, even farms and orchards have all been targeted. The damage to Yemen’s infrastructure will take billions of dollars and probably decades to rebuild, if it is ever rebuilt.

However, this is only the physical cost of the war. The cost to the Yemeni people and particularly to its young people—roughly 60 percent of Yemenis are under the age of 24—is incalculable. Vast numbers of Yemeni children are unable to attend school, child malnourishment—already high—has soared, and unemployment—also high before the war—is now endemic. It is likely that an entire generation of Yemenis, who already faced profound challenges, has been further disadvantaged and made more vulnerable by a war that is even more senseless than most.

Why is they United States and the United Kingdom supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia to wreck this poor country. What on earth do they think they are achieving. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world. What can be achieved by destroying its inadequate infrastructure.