Saudi Arabia Carries on its Deadly Harvest in Yemen

In spite of countless demands voiced by the international community against the continuous slaughter of Yemeni civilians, the so-called Arab coalition, led by Saudi Arabia carries on the destruction of residential areas in Yemen.

On January 10, Saudi airplanes destroyed a school in the small Yemeni mountain village, located some 30 miles to north-east from Sana’a. The air raid was launched in the afternoon when classes weren’t over, which resulted in at least 8 people killed – a teacher and seven minors aged from 8 to 12 years. This was not the first case of Riyadh bombing peaceful Shia villages, since last year, a total of 12 Yemeni civilians was killed in a similar attack.

It seems that nobody wants to speak about the fact that Saudi Arabia is waging a full-out war on Yemen, therefore Saudi bombs raining from the sky is a daily occurrence in this poor country. According to the World Health Organization, in just two years of the armed conflict a total of 7 thousand people were killed, on top of a total of nearly 40 thousand injured. As a result, the number of refugees fleeing the country has already reached 3 million people.

In the course of the conflict, Saudi Air Force subjected to their merciless bombardment two wedding processions, the sole center in the whole center that was assisting the blind and visually Impaired and a number of hospital run by Doctors without Borders. A number of areas of the Yemeni capital – Sana’a has been reduced to rubble. But no atrocity is despicable enough for the Al-Saud royal family, since its troops have been using phosphorus and cluster bombs, which are prohibited by a number of international treaties.

Since the start of the armed aggression against Yemen, the coalition led by Saudi Arabia claimed the lives of a total 1.5 thousand children. This has recently been stated by a UNICEF representative in Yemen Meritxell Relano. She stated that the UNICEF is aware of at least 2140 children getting seriously injured in the conflict, even though the real figures must be much higher, she added. A total of two thousand schools can no longer be used for their intended purpose, since they have been badly damaged or destroyed by Saudi air raids. Some of them now used for the housing of displaced families, while others were claimed for military purposes. The UNICEF representative has been urging the Saudi coalition to stop bombing residential areas and civilian infrastructure in Yemen, but to no avail.

At this point it’s safe to say that such atrocities are unable to break the spirit of the local Shia resistant movement – the Houthis from the Ansar Allah movement, the better part of which remain loyal to the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudi coalition claims that is has the right to destroy the lives of common Yemeni citizens, since it’s supporting the ousted president that enjoy no support within the country – Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The Saudi armed aggression and the death toll it produced has provided outrage of a number of international human rights organizations, that demand to put an end to endless war crimes that could have never been committed without the continuous supply of weapons to the Saudi regime.

In particular, such demands have repeatedly been voiced by the Human Rights Watch, that would insist on the stop of the flow of US weapons to the Persian Gulf. The Obama administration has been supplying billions of dollars of weapons and munitions to Riyadh, which pisses off the Washington director at Human Rights Watch, Sarah Margon that is convinced that the atrocities that the Saudi royal family commits would never happen without this assistance.

Despite of these protests, according to the German journal Der Spiegel, Saudi Arabia continues receiving most advance Western weaponry from a number of Western countries, including Germany. In particular, at the last meeting of the German Federal Security Council (BSR), which is headed by German Chancellor, Angela Merkel and the Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Sigmar Gabriel, it was decided to supply a total 41644 units of so-called multi-functional artillery fuzes produced by Junghans Microtec to France, which will then be installed in artillery munitions and sold to Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, you will hardly come across an analyst who genuinely believes that the Saudi monarchy is capable of making a single step without consulting its masters in Washignton. It would never be able to get away with sponsoring radical Salafi groups across the region and the war crimes that it regularly commits without the support of its Western masters.

We should not forget that the Yemeni aggression was partially supported by two superpowers – the US and Britain, that have their officers constantly present in the coalition headquarters. They use the Yemeni conflict to increase weapons sales to Gulf countries, which has recently reached the level of tens of billions of dollars which vastly surpasses the level they enjoyed before the crisis, but also to expand their military presence in the strategically important area of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait.

That’s why, when charging the Saudi authorities with war crimes, one should direct these accusations against the authorities of the United States, Germany, France, Britain, that are supplying weapons to the Saudi monarchy and actually do everything they can to ensure the continuation of the bloody conflict Yemen.

Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”