A shameful relationship: Complicity in Saudi war crimes in Yemen

Civilian casualties were reported yet again in Yemen on September 10, with more than 20 people falling victims of Saudi airstrikes.

It should be recalled that the coalition led by Saudi Arabia has repeatedly attacked civilian targets in Yemen, hitting residential areas with cluster bombs and routinely attacking hospitals. For instance, the hospitals run by Doctors without Borders were subjected to a number of severe bombardments, just like local weddings that usually attract a lot of people in Yemen. The human rights organization Oxfam that has been operating in Yemen for several years, time and time again stressed the fact that the Saudi intervention plunged the country into a humanitarian crisis. Jean Périer, an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, has more on the US and Britain’s complicity in Saudi war crimes in Yemen as follows:

The eighteen months long armed conflict that has already claimed the lives of 6.5 thousand people, left more than 30 thousand were heavily injured. Today, a total of 14.5 million Yemenis are in dire need of food and drinking water, yet the so-called Saudi coalition is desperate to prevent the seizure of the country by the Houthis-led resistance that is already in control of the better part of Yemen, including its capital – Sana’a.

In late August, Oxfam announced that the UK Cabinet has been violating the Arms Trade Treaty by carrying on arms shipments to Riyadh for the last five years that allow Saudi Air Force to carry on its bombing campaign in Yemen. This human rights organization is convinced that the continuous sales of arms to Saudi Arabia prolong the war that has already produced more than 2.8 refugees.

Oxfam argues that the UK has switched from being an “enthusiastic backer” of the Arms Trade Treaty to “one of the most significant violators”. Only last year, the British government approved 4 billion dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia. In comparison, the United States approved 5 billion dollars worth and France almost 18 billion. The Arms Trade Treaty adopted in 2014 sets a set of standards for arms exports, including the prohibition of exports of conventional arms in violation of the existing embargos and sanctions, while banning those sales that can result in acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and acts of terrorism.

However, Oxfam is not the only one to object to the fact that Western countries supply weapons en mass to Saudi Arabia, which results in the mounting tensions in the Middle East and massive civilian casualties in Yemen. At the Second Conference of States Parties of the Arms Trade Treaty, which opened in late August in Geneva, human rights activists have accused Paris of exporting arms to the states that are using those against civilians. The Arms Trade Treaty was introduced in late 2014 and was immediately signed by 130 states, that announced their commitment to the cause of prevention of new war crimes being carried out across the globe in violation of human rights.

The Control Arms organization has recently condemned the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other European countries that are providing all sorts of weapons to the Saudi-led coalition. According to its reports Paris authorized the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia worth 16 billion euros in 2015, but these rifles, armored personnel carriers and bombs kill civilians. The Mediapart Journal has made it its mission to investigate the details of the report that was presented at the Second Conference of States Parties of the Arms Trade Treaty on the use of French military equipment against civilians. The journal noted that: French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Kuwait earlier to sign a contract for the sale of 30 French helicopters worth more than one billion euros. In 2015, Qatar clinched a 6.3-billion-euro deal with Paris to buy 24 Rafale fighter jets.

Aymeric Elluin, an arms and international law expert from Amnesty International, says that the organization has been trying to attract the international community’s attention to the events in Yemen for several months. He believes that the coalition should be brought to the International Criminal Court and charged with the crimes it committed in Yemen. According to Aymeric Elluin, hospitals, schools, mosques constitute the primary targets for those weapons that were purchased from France. For example, the United Arab Emirates use dozens of the French-made Leclerc tanks in its operations on the ground. The information was confirmed by Stephane Mayer, head of the defense company Nexter Systems, when he was giving a speech at a hearing in French National Assembly last March.

Experts predict that with the expansion of conflict zones across the world, the volume of weapons sold could reach the volume of 100 billion euros. This means that not only in Yemen, but also in other countries the blood of innocent civilians will be spit due the ever growing greed of the Western military contractors, since they do only care about their profits, paying no heed to some poor folks dying every day in faraway countries.

It seems it’s high time to force those arms sellers into answering for every drop of innocent blood shed on their part by assembling an international tribunal that will investigate every separate case of unlawful violence.

In Yemen, Saudi Arabia and its wicked coalition of regime changers - backed by the United States and Britain - fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their “consciences”. Here, the international civil society never wonders to see them wicked, but they often wonder to see them not ashamed. The criminal hordes have done wicked things they are proud of. It means they have no “conscience.” It also means they have no remorse at all.
At a time when the UN’s High Commission for Human Rights says “the Saudi forces are responsible for a disproportionate amount of attacks on civilians,” and while members of UK’s parliament are debating whether to impose an arms ban on Saudi Arabia in light of the reports that its dirty war has indiscriminately targeted civilians and civilian objects, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is arguing that there has been no "serious breach" of International Law and International Humanitarian Law!

In a letter submitted to the parliament, he wrote, “The key test for our continued arms exports to Saudi Arabia in relation to International Humanitarian Law is whether those weapons might be used in a commission of a serious breach of International Humanitarian Law. Having regard to all the information available to us by the Saudis, we, (in Britain) assess this test has not been met."

Rather than condemning this dirty war, the United States also stands fully behind its Saudi vassals. Secretary of State John Kerry makes this shameful relationship abundantly clear, saying: “We have made it clear that we stand with our friends in Saudi Arabia.” Mind you, the supply of military advisers underlines that this is no passive acquiescence in what the Saudis are doing either: The British and American governments are directly involved - through long-standing, pre-existing arrangements.

Worse yet, the harm-doers in London and Washington insist that killing, maiming and inflicting mass suffering in Yemen is truly comely. That with such crimes, the more blood, the more horror there is, the more imposing they are, the more picturesque, so to speak; that these crimes are not shameful and disgraceful - all horror aside. They say that these barbaric acts are even legal and justified, as all the arms the Saudis have received thus far to the tune of $110 billion, the British and American governments are running them through legal and international channels.

Like it or not, these reckless arms sales are the main driving force behind massive humanitarian and refugee crises, not just in Yemen, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Documented instances by various international rights groups and aid organizations, including the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch confirm all this and more. They say where the Saudi-led coalition has targeted civilians, munitions have continued to flow from both Britain and the United States. Since the dirty war began last year, the Brits alone supplied $2.8 billion in weapons and provided training for Saudi forces – just like their American cousins. All told, don't expect emotive calls for an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia any time soon, much less international scrutiny or British and American governments being held to account to what they are doing in the name of War on Terror and “humanitarian” intervention in Yemen. That will never happen. You will never see a policy and strategy of preventing wars in London and Washington either.

The “saviors of humanity” don't have a policy that is based on human rights around the world; a policy that says stop arming and aiding repugnant regimes like Saudi Arabia which is bombing and killing civilians in serious violation of International Humanitarian Law. This is an incontestable fact. The world needs to know that Yemen is a human-made disaster, a condemnable dirty war, and that the fingerprints of the United States and Britain are all over it.

EA/ME