Storm Harvey has brought real suffering to people in Texas. 33 dead so far. And a lot of coverage on TV and the papers.
Meanwhile, a lot less visible on TV and the papers – but faithfully kept before readers of The American Conservative by their writer Daniel Larison – Yemen has experienced an estimated 16,200 deaths, many of them children and other civilians. (The picture above – taken from a recent article in the New York Times, entitled “The Photos the U.S. and Saudi Arabia Don’t Want You to See” shows Buthaina (or Bouthaina), a girl believed to be 4 or 5 who was the only survivor in her family of a bombing last week by the Saudi coalition that killed 14 people.)
And . . . it is now in the grip of a cholera epidemic, with an estimated 500,000 victims.
And . . . there is widespread malnutrition.
And . . . it has seen its cities demolished by years of bombing by Saudi Arabia.
And . . . the Saudi-led coalition war and blockade are the chief causes for famine and cholera crises in Yemen. The blockade is a major reason why both crises are as severe as they are, and it is why it is so difficult to combat both of those crises.
Why do we hear so little? One of the main reasons is that Saudi Arabia makes every effort to ensure that journalists are kept out – as (to quote Larison) “part of the [Saudi-led] coalition’s effort to conceal its crimes and hide the disastrous effects of their war from the rest of the world.”*
And . . . (and this is the important part) the U.S. and Britain have backed the bombing campaign and blockade from the very start, and that support has remained constant despite ample evidence of coalition war crimes and the enormous suffering that the intervention has caused and continues to cause.
Will there be consequences? There almost certainly will be. Larison: “Our government has made us the enemy of tens of millions of innocent Yemenis who have never done anything to us.”
Some of you will have noticed that I keep writing about this. This is my 8th post on the subject of Yemen. And I have been pointing out the same thing over and over again. Over a year ago, I wrote:
According to CNBC, “U.N. investigators say that air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition are responsible for two thirds of the 3,200 civilians who have died in Yemen, or approximately 2,000 deaths. They said that Saudi forces have killed twice as many civilians as other forces in Yemen.”
The United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Johannes van der Klaauw, said Sunday that coalition strikes over the weekend had targeted schools and hospitals, in breach of international law.
According to Reuters, “The U.N. report on children and armed conflict – released last Thursday – said the [Saudi-led] coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year, killing 510 and wounding 667, and half the attacks on schools and hospitals.”
According to Medecins Sans Frontiers “Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces have carried out a series of air strikes targeting schools that were still in use, in violation of international humanitarian law, and hampering access to education for thousands of Yemen’s children, said Amnesty International in a new briefing published today. The coalition forces are armed by states including the USA and UK.” Note the word “targeting”. MSF seems to be saying that Saudi Arabia is deliberately attacking schools.
And from the Red Cross: “The International Committee of the Red Cross says Saudi war planes have targeted hospitals in Yemen, killing staff and wounding patients.”
Why do I do keep writing about Yemen? Well, it seems to me that it is an important story. Much more important than most of the trivia that fills the news. And nobody seems to realise what is going on.
And also because the Bible says (Proverbs 31:8) “\Open your mouth for the voiceless, for the justice of all who are destitute.”
I reckon that describes the people of Yemen far too well.
* Note:
That is not the whole story of why so little news comes out of Yemen. Iona Craig (winner of the 2016 Orwell Prize for journalism and the 2014 Martha Gellhorn Prize for investigative journalism), who has visited Yemen several times and done a lot of first class reporting of what is going on there, writes:
“Yes, it’s extremely hard to get into Yemen. But it is possible. Getting travel costs and expenses covered as a freelancer is much harder. In my experience, greater barrier to covering Yemen than Saudi coalition is media organisations unwilling to cover expenses. I rely on donations or grants to get to Yemen. Media organisations have never covered my costs to get there. Not in seven years. And I can guarantee my travel budget is a small fraction of what BBC, CNN et al pay to get there. Yemeni friends make it possible with warm hearts, comfy floors and home cooking. I wouldn’t travel 3,000 miles around Yemen any other way. “
And then there is the way the media report Yemen . . .
But there is another problem. Even the news that does come out of Yemen is often reported in a way that seems designed to keep people in the dark, according to Ben Norton, in an article yesterday at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) entitled “How Media Obscure US/Saudi Responsibility for Killing Yemeni Civilians.” He writes:
“A coalition of Saudi Arabia, the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, with minor support from several other Middle Eastern nations, has relentlessly bombed Yemen since March 2015. This August, the coalition ramped up the ferocity of its airstrikes, killing dozens of civilians.
On August 23, the US/Saudi coalition bombed a hotel near Yemen’s capital Sanaa, killing 41 people, 33 of whom—80 percent—were civilians, according to the United Nations.
Then on August 25, the coalition bombed homes in Sanaa, massacring a dozen civilians, including eight members of the same family.
Major Western media outlets have, however, obscured the responsibility Saudi Arabia, and its US and European supporters, bear for launching these airstrikes.
There are no other parties presently bombing Yemen, so media cannot feign ignorance as to who is responsible for the attacks. But reports on the bloody US/Saudi coalition airstrikes were nonetheless rife with ambiguous and downright misleading language.”
His complaints are basically that headlines about deaths in air strikes rarely mention Saudi Arabia, headlines sometimes speak of Yemeni air strikes, when the air strikes are never carried out by Yemenis, and that stories often give the impression that air strikes on civilian targets are Saudi mistakes, when there is a lot of evidence that they are deliberate.
He writes:
“Media frequently obfuscate and downplay the culpability for bombing when the US and its allies are responsible.
When the US bombed a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in October 2015, killing dozens of civilians, media scrambled to craft almost laughable euphemisms. FAIR (10/5/15) documented at the time how news outlets used circuitous headlines like “US Is Blamed After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital.” Also seen in the August 23 NPR report cited above, this brand of misleading, ambiguous rhetoric is the “officer-involved shooting” of war reporting.
On the other hand, the responsibility of US enemies for killing civilians is rarely if ever obscured.
It is instructive to compare Western media coverage of Yemen to that of Syria . . . .”
In fact, Norton reckons that calling the war in Yemen a “civil war” is misleading, on the grounds that the reality is that “the conflict is actually a foreign war on Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their US and European sponsors.” And there is also the uncomfortable fact that in reality, “if the US wanted the war in Yemen to end, it would end overnight. The “Saudi-led” coalition is only led by Saudi Arabia in name.”
Is he right? It is interesting to look at recent BBC reports about Saudi bombings. It turns out that Norton is spot-on. An article about Bouthaina says nothing about who dropped the bomb. The only mention of Saudi Arabia is in the middle of the article, and reads, “Since 2015, Saudi-led forces have been fighting Houthi rebels, who control northern Yemen including Sanaa.” .
There are two linked BBC stories about Saudi bombings. Neither mention Saudi Arabia in the headlines. One, entitled “Yemen war: Air strike on hotel outside Sanaa ‘leaves 30 dead‘” does mention Saudi Arabia in the opening sentence of the report: “At least 30 people have been killed in a Saudi-led coalition air strike on the outskirts of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, local medics and an aid group say.”
The other, entitled “Yemen war: Children dead after Sanaa air strike” when it does mention Saudi Arabia in the text, suggests that there is uncertainty about who dropped the bomb:
“At least nine people, including children, have been killed after an air strike hit a residential area of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. Witnesses said two buildings in the south of the city, which is controlled by Houthi rebels, had been destroyed. Saudi-led forces have been fighting Shia Houthis – backed by Iran – for the last two years. Thousands of civilians have died. The country is on the brink of famine and facing a cholera outbreak. The planes, thought to be from the Saudi-led Arab coalition which backs Yemen’s government, hit the buildings in the southern district of Faj Attan, according to AFP.”
By the way, the article does not point out that: 1) The part of under the control of the “government” only contains about 20% of the population. 2) It is questionable whether the government has popular support among Yemenis. 3) And it is actually a government in exile, since the president actually resides in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. 4) The “president”, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, was overthrown in an uprising in 2015, resigned, then fled the capital and proclaimed himself president again.
Temporary Resident 