How America facilitates the UAE's occupation of southern Yemen

Medieval torture methods, kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, empowerment of Salafist groups and figures, and foreign military occupation of their country are just a few of the things afflicting Yemenis as the United Arab Emirates expands its influence in southern Yemen, thanks to the help of the United States.

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey, a freelance journalist, has written an article in this regard titled “How America facilitates the UAE's occupation of southern Yemen.”

The UAE has used its position in the anti-Ansarullah coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, as an opportunity to fulfill its long-term ambitions to control southern Yemen's resources and the port city of Aden, which would expand Abu Dhabi's global maritime trade and give it greater access to East Africa.
Though part of Saudi Arabia's coalition on paper, it has divergent aims, as the Saudi-backed President Abdrabbo Mansur Hadi actually hinders the UAE's ambitions to control Aden.
While other countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Belgium sell the UAE weapons and provide military support, the United States plays a larger and more direct role in facilitating Emirati control of south Yemen.
Under the guise of "counter-extremism" against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Daesh in Yemen - as well as previously fighting the Ansarullah movement and the revolutionaries - the UAE has trained more than 60,000 militias, who are concentrated largely in southern coastal and commercial cities such as Aden, Mukalla and Mokha.
These territories were seized during Yemen's ongoing war. The militias are not accountable to the Yemeni government, but to the Emiratis, and are actually paid regularly - unlike Hadi-controlled troops - while rivalling them in number, suggesting they are the stronger force.
Now the Ansarullah no longer in the south, the UAE's militias allegedly fight extremist factions. However, they mainly consolidate the UAE's presence in the south.
More recently, US-supplied armored vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns, including M-ATV, Caiman and MaxxPro models, have been documented in the hands of UAE-backed militias, including those called Security Belt, Shabwani elite forces, Hadrami elite forces and "The Giants".
Billions of dollars' worth of American weapons have been sold to the UAE, from firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon; many of which are siphoned off to these various militias. Abu Dhabi recently purchased $1.9 billion worth of weapons from such companies, indicating USA-UAE cooperation is set to continue.
The US denies any involvement in training Emirati ground forces. General Joseph F Dunford Jr, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed in December that the United States was "not a participant in the civil war in Yemen, nor are we supporting one side one side or the other".

However, a CENTCOM document reported by Yahoo! News also reveals that the US has taken a direct role in training UAE forces and air fighters specifically for "combat operations in Yemen". America plays a direct role in facilitating the UAE's geopolitical ambitions.
Due to recent growing awareness about US complicity in the UAE's military campaign, raised by Amnesty International and others, one top US general said officials would investigate if weapons were transferred to unintended recipients in the conflict.
These UAE-backed militias have committed abuses against civilians and carried out excessive force in raids, and have even set up numerous secret prisons across southern Yemen. In these dungeons, the detainees have experienced torture, sexual abuse, while there are also various punishments such as hanging detainees from ceilings –what is called 'the grill' – where people are literally spit-roasted over a fire.

Yemeni prisoners in these dungeons have talked about the presence of US personnel during their interrogation, sometimes taking part in the torture. America now admits that the US troops are stationed in the facilities too. Even UAE-backed guards in these prisons have been seen with American weapons and tanks. Given these reports, America is, with full knowledge of what it is doing, aiding human rights abuses in Yemen.
Even more controversial, American weapons have ended up in the hands of Al Qaeda - as delivered by the UAE, as CNN and Associated Press have both documented.
Supporting Al Qaeda has given the UAE more reason to expand its presence in Yemen and increase its influence. Meanwhile, some Al Qaeda-aligned figures are gaining political power with UAE support, including Hani bin Breik, who is now the vice-president of the prominent Southern Transitional Council (STC), the UAE-backed secessionist movement.
The STC could play a significant future role in Yemeni politics, especially if it gains an independent state of South Yemen, and as a UAE-backed faction it would give Abu Dhabi freer access to the port of Aden and the rest of the region if it gained power.
The UAE has also supported the Al-Qaeda-aligned Abu Al-Abbas militia, which has also raised money for Al Qaeda and seeks to impose a Salafist form of rule over Taiz, similar to Al Qaeda's ideology. Al-Abbas would help the UAE control the city, keeping out unfriendly forces such as the Ansarullah movement or Al-Islah Party (Yemen's Muslim Brotherhood branch).
Though the US placed Al-Abbas on its terrorism list in 2017, its support for the UAE goes against its commitments to counter-terrorism, as does the impunity awarded to the UAE, which enables Al-Qaeda's expansion.
In targeting al-Islah, the UAE hired US mercenaries to assassinate top figures. This revelation further highlights US-UAE cooperation, which also helps the Emiratis crush, if possible, all opposition to their rule.
While US lawmakers and senators are pressuring the Trump administration to end military support to Saudi Arabia over Yemen, which could eventually lead to Riyadh scaling back its bombing campaign, far less attention is given to Washington's enabling of the UAE's occupation of south Yemen.
The US therefore needs to address whether its connection with Abu Dhabi over Yemen - which also undermines the current UN-led peace talks for the country - is unlawful due to Emirati support for extremists. And if such support does anything but adds further complexities and divisions to Yemeni politics in the future - unless that support is halted.
International aid leaders are saying now what has been known for several years that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are practicing double standards for both providing aid and instigating violence and humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Humanitarian aid leaders say the two Persian Gulf countries give large cash flows amid their vicious military campaign in the war-torn country. Worse still, aid chiefs note that the Saudi-led coalition members have been committing war crimes in Yemen, including bombing villages, torture and the use of child soldiers.

For instance, Jan Egeland, who previously headed United Nations aid operations, railed against the “hypocrisy of nations trading in arms or raining down shells and bombs on Yemeni civilians” in a strongly worded statement.

According to Egeland, head of the charity Norwegian Refugee Council, 60 percent of last year’s so-called aid packages to Yemen came from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US which has at the same time helped its Arab allies’ war effort with arms, intelligence and aerial refueling. Not so much surprisingly, the said countries are ruining the country’s infrastructure and killing innocent people in one side, and take a humanitarian gesture on the other by sending aid packages.

It is time for the United Nations to take aim at this vicious hypocrisy, this double standard. The world body should put people before politics and Saudi-Emirati cash flows.

It is no longer acceptable to hear that Saudi Arabia has once again managed to successfully lobby against such moves at the UN; there should be no compromise. The world body and its Human Rights Council should establish a new commission of inquiry into these violations in Yemen, where Riyadh and company have been killing thousands of innocent civilians with impunity and no accountability.

Per its Charter, the UN should carry out a comprehensive examination of such bogus aids and all violations and abuses of international human rights and other appropriate and applicable fields of International Law in war-torn Yemen. This includes embracing its legally defined duty to blacklist Saudi Arabia and the UAE for murdering children and using child soldiers in the vicious conflict.

Failure to do so will only scar the UN’s reputation, for the irresponsibility of allowing Western governments and others, the US in particular, to help this humanitarian crisis continue to unfold as well. 
The US continues to provide massive support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal military campaign. This illegal participation is equally responsible for creating the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, pushing millions of human beings to the brink of famine. Indeed without US participation and arms, this Saudi-UAE war and “humanitarian” theatre in Yemen would not be possible.

By looking the other way as this double standard and hypocrisy unfolds, the UN cannot bring stability to Yemen, nor can it increase prospects for lasting peace. The inaction will only cause a horrible circumstance to turn into a nightmare. It is the time the world body get on the right side of history, play a real role in addressing and ending this deliberate catastrophe, and hold to account those responsible in this regard.

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