The War in Yemen
As of March 2022, the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed war has gone on for seven years.
This last month marked a disheartening anniversary of the war in Yemen. As of March 2022, the Saudi-led war has now gone on for seven straight years. Unlike Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the war in Yemen has received very little attention here in the U.S., and rather than demonizing the perpetrators, the U.S. government has instead supported Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in their brutal assault.
The war began when a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE decided to support Yemen’s official government after a rebel group known as the Houthis, supposedly backed by Iran, seized control of the country’s capital of Sanaa. The Saudi-led coalition began conducting airstrikes on Yemen in March 2015 and the war has continued to this day. As Antiwar.com’s Dave Decamp recently reported, the last four months have been the longest period of heavy bombing since 2018, according to the Yemen Data Project.
The role of the U.S. government began during the Obama administration which provided “logistical and intelligence support” to the coalition. Obama also oversaw billions of dollars of arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The war was significantly ramped up during the Trump administration, which included him vetoing a bill that was intended to end our support for the war, yet his supporters often praise him for reaching the incredibly low bar of not starting any new wars during his presidency.
At the beginning of his term, President Biden claimed he would end U.S. support in the war, but shortly after it was revealed that we were servicing Saudi warplanes the entire time. More recently, Biden used a series of Houthi attacks on the UAE as an excuse to increase support for the Saudi-led coalition by selling fighter aircraft to the UAE and threatening to redesignate the Houthis as a terrorist organization.
The U.S. government has also been complicit in the ongoing blockade of Yemen which has further impoverished one of the poorest countries in the world, and along with the war itself, has contributed to the humanitarian crisis that continues to plague the country. As Ben Norton reported for Multipolarista, according to the U.N. the death toll from the war was estimated to be around 377,000 people by the end of 2021, with more than two-thirds of that number likely being children and a large portion of the total deaths being attributed to indirect causes like preventable diseases due to lack of healthcare and malnutrition from lack of food and water.
This ongoing assault on Yemen is a horrific and despicable injustice and the U.S. government has been facilitating it for the past seven years. Unlike our response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which resulted in severe sanctions, including on Russian oil, the U.S. government has continuously bought oil from Saudi Arabia despite their ongoing assault on their neighboring country. The stark contrast between the general response to the war in Yemen compared to the war in Ukraine shows how little U.S. citizens pay attention to the atrocities of our own government.
Our government’s ongoing support for the war in Yemen will continue to result in the death of innocent civilians while emboldening the cruel and authoritarian regime that is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It also weakens our stance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as any attempt by U.S. officials to condemn Putin’s war of aggression rings hollow when compared to the devastation they’ve helped to facilitate.
It should go without saying that we should absolutely condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but you can’t do that honestly without also condemning the war in Yemen. The difference between those two situations is that as U.S. citizens we can actually do something about the latter. Instead of focusing on celebrity drama at the Oscars, we need to direct our attention to issues that matter and insist that our elected representatives end their cooperation in the despicable and deadly war in Yemen. Seven years is far too long.
**Update**
For anyone who wants to see an end to the war in Yemen, call 1-833-STOP-WAR. You will be connected to the office of your representative in Congress. From there you can urge your representative to support H.J. Res. 87, a War Powers Resolution that would end our support for the war. A similar resolution passed both chambers of Congress in 2019 but was vetoed by former President Donald Trump.
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