Help promote human rights in the Middle East and North Africa

Donate Today
Facebook-f Twitter Instagram Linkedin Youtube Envelope
Search
Close
  • English
  • العربية
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • FAQs
    • Support Dawn
    • Work With Us
    • For the Media
  • Founder Jamal Khashoggi
    • Who Was Jamal Khashoggi?
    • Chronology of a Murder
    • UN Recommendations
    • International Reaction
    • In His Own Words
    • DAWN and Jamal
  • Countries
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Egypt
    • UAE
    • Israel-Palestine
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
  • Democracy In Exile
    • About
    • Submission Guidelines for Democracy in Exile
  • Advocacy
    • DAWN's Advocacy
    • The Lobbyist Hall of Shame
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
    • Reforming Foreign Policy
      • Aid Conditionality
      • Human Rights Go to War
    • US Foreign Policy in MENA
    • Joint Advocacy
  • Experts
  • Latest
Menu
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • FAQs
    • Support Dawn
    • Work With Us
    • For the Media
  • Founder Jamal Khashoggi
    • Who Was Jamal Khashoggi?
    • Chronology of a Murder
    • UN Recommendations
    • International Reaction
    • In His Own Words
    • DAWN and Jamal
  • Countries
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Egypt
    • UAE
    • Israel-Palestine
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
  • Democracy In Exile
    • About
    • Submission Guidelines for Democracy in Exile
  • Advocacy
    • DAWN's Advocacy
    • The Lobbyist Hall of Shame
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
    • Reforming Foreign Policy
      • Aid Conditionality
      • Human Rights Go to War
    • US Foreign Policy in MENA
    • Joint Advocacy
  • Experts
  • Latest
Donate

Ending the Yemen War: President Biden Should Deny Arms to the UAE and Saudi Arabia on Day One

December 3, 2020
in Democracy In Exile, Saudi Arabia
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Juan Cole

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and a Non-Resident Fellow at DAWN.

As soon as he is sworn in as president, Joe Biden has the rare opportunity to do the right thing and simultaneously to gain both a foreign policy victory and a domestic political one by ceasing U.S. military aid to the war on Yemen.

Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the conflict has killed more than 200,000 people, has destroyed key infrastructure, has contributed to cholera outbreaks, and has left 20 million Yemenis food-insecure. Both houses of the U.S. Congress passed a measure last year invoking the War Powers Act and withdrawing the United States from the Yemen War, in votes that included seven Senate Republicans and sixteen House Republicans, but the Resolution was vetoed by President Donald Trump when it reached his desk. 

For Biden to withdraw U.S. assistance will not be enough to end the war. The new American president should, like Germany, make it clear to both Arab nations that they cannot expect to purchase high-tech weapons systems as long as they are pursuing this ruinous war. There is already bipartisan opposition to the sale of F-35 stealth bombers to the UAE. These aircraft were pledged by the Trump administration as part of the so-called "Abraham Accords," in which Abu Dhabi normalized relations with the State of Israel, which was not so much a peace accord as an arms deal.

Yemen's tragedy began in 2015, when Saudi Arabia's then-defense minister, now-Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and the UAE's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahayan, led a coalition in launching the war. They were alarmed that the Houthis — the colloquial name of the Helpers of God (Ansar Allah), a party-militia hailing from the Zaydi branch of Shiism — had made a coup in Sanaa, deposing the President Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Mansour Hadi had come to power in a 2012 referendum after his predecessor was overthrown in the Arab Spring youth revolts. After ousting Mansour Hadi, the Houthis made a bid to take over the entire country, seizing the southern port of Aden briefly before being expelled by troops from the Emirates allied with the nationalist forces of the deposed president.

Although the belligerents charge that the Houthis are puppets of Iran, in fact the Helpers of God are an indigenous Yemeni movement growing out of grievances about Saudi hegemony over their country and Wahhabi attempts to convert them. Iran subsequently took advantage of the Saudi-UAE intervention to provide the Houthis with some armaments, including long-distance rockets, and tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, including fuel. These are relatively small Iranian contributions to a war that has cost the belligerents billions of dollars.

Iran's involvement has been exaggerated by the belligerents for propaganda purposes. In fact, most Houthi arms are American and come from Yemeni army depots to which the rebels were given access by a faction of the Yemeni military that sided with them. 

The war has riven Yemen's major political forces, and the Houthis are not the only issue — southern secessionists, the al-Islah offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the nationalists have fought one another as well as the Helpers of God. Saudi Arabia's proxies have sometimes gone to war with those of the UAE. More than a half decade later, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have signally failed to win the war, but they have contributed to transforming Yemen into the world's worst humanitarian crisis. 

U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock reported in October that there are now 47 active military fronts across the nation, which have displaced 150,000 Yemenis this year alone. A million persons displaced since fighting began have sought shelter in and around Marib in the south, where a major battle may break out. He estimates that air strikes or artillery barrages have hit at least one farm daily for the past two years, and that damage to civilian infrastructure is ongoing and widespread, worsening the country's acute food shortage. 

The mother of all crises would be closure of the country's main port for the north, al-Hodeidah, through which a significant percentage of the country's food is imported.  It is besieged by Saudi- and UAE-backed national forces of deposed President Mansour Hadi, and roads leading out of it are often closed. Lowcock warned of al-Hodeidah, "Anything jeopardizing its smooth and continuous functioning would put the lives of millions of people at risk." Even in al-Hodeidah Province near the port, 10 to 30 percent of households reported borderline to poor food consumption last year, and hundreds of thousands were displaced by fighting. Some 15,000 to 20,000 children a month were hospitalized for severe acute malnutrition or moderate acute malnutrition in the province in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic has been an additional burden, although its full effects are difficult to measure because of the war. Regardless, Yemenis feel the latest plague pales in comparison to the country's other severe problems.

The Yemen War has pushed more than two-thirds of this country of 28 million into food insecurity and displaced millions. It is a stain on the reputation of the United States, which has enabled the belligerents; on that of the United Nations, for failing to sanction the attackers, and on Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies.

Incoming President Biden has an opportunity to end this ongoing atrocity, and to begin his new administration with a principled stand that both houses of Congress have already endorsed. He can signal to the world that the United States will again lead on human rights. Before the unwise Houthi coup, Yemen had been on track to hammering out a new constitution and going to parliamentary elections. That should still be the goal. It can be attained only by negotiations and diplomacy, not by U.S.-supplied F-35s bombing civilian cities from 30,000 feet.

A resolution of this war can begin only with an end to hostilities. This is even more true because if hostilities do not end soon, Yemen could lose a whole generation to famine.

*** 

Photo caption: US President-elect Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting with the United States Conference of Mayors at the Queen in Wilmington, Delaware, on November 23, 2020. – US President-elect Joe Biden on Monday named the deeply experienced Antony Blinken for secretary of state, also nominating the first female head of intelligence and a czar for climate issues, with a promise to a return to expertise after the turbulent years of Donald Trump. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)

Tags: arms saleshuman rightshuman rights violationsJamal Khashoggi.Mohammed Bin SalmanRevolutionarySaudi ArabiaUAEYemenYemen crisis
Previous Post

The New Saudi Ambassador to Norway Ignored Reports of Torture

Next Post

"We want to create a new life": A Labor Rights Activist Struggles for Justice

Related Posts

Democracy In Exile

The Case for Reparations to the Victims of Yemen's War

In Yemen, war's costs have too often landed on civilians who bear no responsibility for the war nor for...

Kristine Beckerle
February 2, 2023
Democracy In Exile

We Are All Alaa Abdel Fattah

Alaa Abdel Fattah’s vision of a very different Egypt, along with that of millions of young Egyptians, has itself...

Juan Cole
February 1, 2023
Demonstrators are raising Syrian opposition flags and placards as they rally against a potential rapprochement between Ankara and the Syrian regime in the opposition-held city of Azaz, on the border with Turkey in Syria's northern Aleppo province, on December 30, 2022. (Photo by Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto)
Democracy In Exile

Where Would Rapprochement Between Turkey and Syria Leave the Syrian Opposition?

Turkey’s defense and intelligence ministers met with their Syrian counterparts in Moscow late last month, in the first high-level...

Emily Milliken
January 27, 2023
Democracy In Exile

The Silent Branch: How Israel's Supreme Court Crushes Palestinian Rights

Israel’s Supreme Court is a stronghold of justice for Jews only. It does not champion universal human rights, but...

Hagai El-Ad
January 26, 2023
Next Post

“We want to create a new life”: A Labor Rights Activist Struggles for Justice

The Case for Reparations to the Victims of Yemen's War

February 2, 2023

We Are All Alaa Abdel Fattah

February 1, 2023
A picture taken during a guided tour organised by Egypt's State Information Service on February 11, 2020, shows an Egyptian policeman near watch towers at Tora prison on the southern outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP) (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Egypt: Mother of Teenager Sentenced for Peaceful 2019 Protests Commits Suicide

February 1, 2023

Categories

  • Advocacy
  • Aid Conditionality
  • Anonymous Interviews
  • Anonymous Interviews Egypt
  • Anonymous Interviews Saudi Arabia
  • Anonymous Interviews UAE
  • Cases
  • Cases Egypt
  • Cases Saudi Arabia
  • Cases UAE
  • Countries
  • Culprits
  • Culprits Egypt
  • Culprits Israel
  • Culprits Saudi Arabia
  • Culprits UAE
  • DAWN
  • Dawn's Advocacy
  • Democracy In Exile
  • Editor's Pick
  • Egypt
  • Feature
  • Fellows
  • Foreign Policy
  • Human Rights
  • Human Rights Go to War
  • International Actors
  • Israel-Palestine
  • Lobbyists
  • Lobbyists Israel Palestine
  • Palestine
  • Political prisoners
  • Press Release Egypt
  • Press Release Israel-Palestine
  • Press Release Saudi Arabia
  • Press Release UAE
  • Press Releases
  • Saudi Arabia
  • UAE
  • Uncategorized
  • United Nations
  • US – Egypt
  • US – Saudi Arabia
  • US – UAE
  • USA

SUPPORT OUR MISSION

Donate Today

About Us

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) is a nonprofit organization that promotes democracy, the rule of law, and human rights for all of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Support Us

Donate Now

Newsletter

Facebook Twitter Instagram Linkedin Youtube

© DAWN All rights reserved. | Website Design by KRS Creative.

DONATE TODAY