The enduring shame

Aid agencies and medical staff on the ground in Hodeida are begging the international community to intervene to stop the violence in the besieged Yemeni city as Saudi Arabia and its coalition forces struggle to gain the upper hand in a lost war.

According to the doctors and nurses of the barely functioning al-Olafi Hospital, “The violence is unbearable. We’re surrounded by strikes from the air, sea and land. The hospital treats the hungry and people injured in airstrikes day in and day out, but there is a serious shortage of medicine. Even if we try our hardest we cannot treat patients because we lack the necessities for basic operations.”

Sadly, that’s not all. In a joint statement, several international aid agencies condemned the intense new violence in Hodeida, calling it a “deeply disturbing development”, and calling on the Saudi regime to cease the air strikes and fighting, and engage with the UN-sponsored peace process.

This is while a new round of peace talks to end the war – which has killed an estimated 56,000 people and left 14 million on the brink of starvation – are scheduled for early December in Sweden.
Whatever this is, the Saudi-led escalation does not help efforts to launch the political process. No one wants to see a catastrophe in Hodeida, much less across the country, where many other hospitals are struggling under the same terrible conditions.
After all, the Saudis cannot target hospitals and medical centers without the US support. The US forces provide free tutorials in Yemen on how to bomb hospitals and clinics, kill doctors, nurses and patients, and get away with it.

And Saudi leaders have already learned everything. They have bombed and continue to target Yemeni hospitals in clear violation of international law. This includes bombing Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospitals, as well as killing and wounding medical staff and patients.

The Saudis and their partners are responsible for these bombings and they should be booked. To substantiate, the MSF says, "On Oct. 27, Haydan hospital was destroyed by an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition, and on Dec. 3 a health center in Taiz was also hit by the coalition, killing and wounding several people." This is while the Saudis are regularly informed of the GPS coordinates of the medical sites where MSF works. So there is no way the Saudis with the capacity to carry out an airstrike or launch a rocket would not have known that these were functioning health facilities providing critical services and supported by MSF.
Under international humanitarian law, patients and medical facilities must be respected. This is while in violation of international humanitarian law, Saudi warplanes continue to target Yemeni hospitals. The siege means the only functioning hospital in Hodeida is also unable to have access to any medicine.

The neutrality of healthcare facilities and staff must be respected. They should never be attacked, and surgical and medical supplies should never be blocked from reaching the only hospital in Hodeida – something the US-backed Saudi-led invading forces have been doing for months in flagrant violation of international law.

The Saudis know fully well that their indiscriminate and at times deliberate airstrikes target hospitals and clinics – just as their chief military patron and supplier, the US, knows that it destroyed several hospitals in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. It is therefore crucial for the international civil society to intervene. Before resumption of any peace talks, and before anything else, the UN is expected to force the Saudis to stop their indiscriminate airstrikes and immediately lift the illegal siege of Hodeida. There is no other way to send in medicine.
Meanwhile, according to a new study by Brown University on the cost in lives of America’s Post-9/11 Wars, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, between 480,000 and 507,000 people were killed in the course of the three conflicts.

This includes combatant deaths and civilian deaths in fighting and war violence. Civilians make up over half of the roughly 500,000 killed, with both opposition fighters and US-backed foreign military forces each sustaining in excess of 100,000 deaths as well.

The report also notes that over 60,000 US troops were either killed or wounded in the course of the wars. This includes 6,951 US military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. According to the Brown study, these conflicts are “inhibited by governments determined to paint a rosy picture of perfect execution and progress.”

And by these governments it means Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and a host of others who continue to wage wars on Syria and Yemen, and who purchased US arms to the tune of $192.3 billion in the year ending September 30 - a result of looser restrictions on sales coupled with high-level efforts to close deals and prolong wars of choice amid international apathy and inaction.
This terrible situation will get worse, because President Donald Trump wants to make the US, already dominant in the global weapons trade, an even bigger arms merchant to the world, despite concerns among human rights and arms control advocates. This grandiose thinking in the Middle East is putting the entire world in danger too, and it has become deeply entangled with lingering resentments from the world community.

This is often stated explicitly. At the United Nations many members say it is very obvious that it’s exceptionally important for war-party Washington to accept that the reason they lost the war of choice in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen is because they were wrong. It is because they chose a coalition of allies who are corrupt, who are allied with terror groups, who are extremely disliked by the nations they rule or invaded, and who symbolize all of the worst failings of the United Nations and humanity. If they inflate the importance of the purported Iran meddling in their affairs it is to excuse their painful defeat. They see Iran bashing as a way to undermine efforts to end America’s endless wars and support for the tyrannical regimes.

The evidence is overwhelming that America is still playing a very harmful role, an unacceptable role in the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and that playing at war with Iran through economic warfare is Trump’s way of helping the failing terrorist groups, appeasing disappointed allies, and also an effort to try to undermine in a significant way the anti-terror efforts by Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia. The alliance is not, as they claim, a self-interest group relying only on its members. They are drawing support from the world community - unlike the US which is loathed and isolated, which relies on fake news and reports from terror groups and media lackeys to claim otherwise.
Let us not forget that the dire situation across the region, marked by the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, fractured societies, proliferation of non-state actors, and unbelievable human suffering, could still be resolved through policy reversal and a surge in diplomacy for peace. In any true sense, it is America’s arms sales, misadventures, threats of new war, as well as the self-appointed roles as the warden of world order, the guarantor of other nations’ security, the shepherd of the world economy, and the custodian of the global commons, that can once again open the doors to foreign intervention and manipulation, breeding instability and sectarian bloodshed.

What is clear is that America’s one-man foreign policy and wars of choice are not the answer to the region’s never-ending woes. They only prolong the humanitarian crises for America’s regional designs and wishful thinking. This being the case, it falls upon the United Nations and the international civil society to step up their opposition to America’s wars of choice, sanctions and paranoia upon the people of Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. They must help to put these failed states back on their feet again. It’s a responsibility for us all.

Perhaps US President Donald Trump thinks he is different. Perhaps he wants a fresh start only because his predecessors didn’t do well. Perhaps he thinks that America’s war machine and institutions are still superior in a multi-polar world. Whatever he thinks, it still doesn’t change the fact that he is doomed to repeat the same failed delusion and increasingly the same unenforceable foreign policy of his predecessors at huge humanitarian costs.

(Courtesy of Fars News Agency)

EA