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UN's $2Bln
Yemen Appeal? Send the Bill to Washington, London and
Riyadh
By Finian
Cunningham
February 10/11,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Sputnik"
-
The United Nations this week launched an emergency
appeal to raise $2 billion for humanitarian aid to Yemen
– the Arabian Peninsula country where war has been
raging for nearly two years.The UN
says some 12 million people – half the population –
are facing starvation unless the international community
urgently comes to their aid.
UN officials
are making dramatic statements urging nations around the
world to dig deep and come up with the necessary funds.
Stephen
O'Brien, head of UN relief operations,
called for "immediate action."
Another official,
Jan Egeland, put the dire situation like this: "In
Yemen, if the bombs don’t kill you, a slow and painful
death by starvation is now an increasing threat."
These UN
officials are the same shameless people who have been
distorting the nature of the conflict in Syria. They are
now doing the same in Yemen. Their so-called
"humanitarian" appeals are carefully disguised
distortion about who the real culprits and causes of the
crisis are.
As in Syria,
the violence and humanitarian crisis in Yemen is the
result of external, criminal aggression against the
country. In both cases it is the United States, Britain
and Saudi Arabia who are largely driving the war, either
covertly as in Syria through sponsoring proxy terror
groups, or openly in Yemen through the aerial
bombardment of that country.
Since March 2015,
a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states have been bombing
Yemen relentlessly on a daily basis. Ceasefires have
been routinely broken and not even the holy Muslim
fasting month of Ramadan has been spared from the Saudi
bombs.
Before the war
erupted, Yemen was already one of the poorest countries
in the world.
Saudi Arabia is
fully supported by the United States and Britain
to carry out this aggression on Yemen. Washington and
London sell to the Saudi regime the F-16 and Typhoon
warplanes and the bombs that they drop. The munitions
include internationally banned cluster bombs, as
documented by various rights groups.
Just one
measure of how much the US and Britain are making a
financial killing from the Saudi aggression on Yemen is
this: since March 2015, Britain alone
has sold $4 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia.
This week, US
president Donald Trump
is reportedly lifting a temporary freeze on American
weapons exports to Saudi Arabia that his predecessor
Barack Obama latterly imposed. The Obama administration
flogged a total of $115 billion in arms to Saudi
over eight years. Due to pressure from humanitarian
critics over Yemen, Obama moved to curtail future sales
to the Saudis. Now Trump is going ahead to resume the
deadly business.
It's not just
military hardware that the Americans and British are
supplying. They also provide the logistics and refueling
of Saudi air operations over Yemen. In other words, the
Saudis would not be able to drop one bomb were it not
for their American and British handlers.
Mainstream Western
media, like they also do in Syria, indulge in the
official lies and distortions over Yemen. Britain's
Independent
tells its readers that Yemen "descended
into full-scale civil war in March 2015." Like all
Western news media, the Independent peddles claims
by Washington, London and Riyadh that they are
supporting the "internationally recognized government
of Yemen".
The truth is
that the Western and Saudi-backed puppet regime of Abdu
Rabbo Mansour Hadi was kicked out by a popular uprising
that was underway since 2011. The so-called
"international recognized government" is more accurately
described as a "Western-backed" corrupt cabal which is
sheltered in luxury palaces while exiled to Saudi
Arabia.
When Hadi and
his cronies fled Yemen, his Saudi and Western patrons
immediately began bombing the country in an attempt
to reverse the popular uprising led by the Houthi
rebels. (Western claims that the Houthis are Iranian
proxies is another load of propaganda lies.)
No target
in that forsaken country is off limits, in brazen
violation of the Geneva Convention. Family homes,
schools, hospitals, farms, markets and mosques have been
blasted with American and British weapons. Over and
over again. In many instances, whole families of parents
and children have been obliterated in the raids.
Even funerals have
been hit. Last October, some 140 people were killed when
a mourning ceremony in the Yemeni capital Sanaa was
bombed from the skies.
The total death
toll is
estimated at 10,000. That is most likely a flagrant
underestimate to distract from the real carnage. Most
of the dead are civilians, mostly from air strikes,
according to the UN.
In addition
to the merciless bombing, Yemen is blockaded by air and
sea. That blockade is imposed by Saudi and American
warships patrolling the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The UN
even admits that the embargo on the entire country is
restricting what little flow of aid is being sent.
Shipping ports have also been bombed for despicable good
measure.
The UN and the
mainstream Western media are now calling upon people
of the world to respond with an emergency relief effort
to Yemen. They show videos of skeletal children so weak
that they can hardly cry from the pain of starvation.
But what the
so-called humanitarian agencies and mainstream Western
media don't tell is that this abomination is being
caused by American and British governments who are
making billions of dollars from weaponizing a barbaric
Saudi regime.
This is the
same triumvirate of evil that weaponized head-chopping
terrorist mercenaries to wage war on Syria for regime
change over the past six years.
Only Russia's
military intervention in Syria from the end of 2015
salvaged that country from the disaster that befell
others like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and which is
befalling Yemen, where the West pursues similar
regime-change machinations.
And yet the
mainstream Western media have the audacity to accuse
Russia of "killing civilians in Syria."
This week,
American media were full of unfounded
claims about Russian President Vladimir Putin being
a "killer". In the same week that news
emerged of a US military raid ordered by Trump
in Yemen that resulted in over 20 civilians being
slaughtered.
The Western
double-think and hypocrisy are stupendous.
What is
happening in Yemen is heartrending beyond words.
Children are dying from thirst, hunger and shrapnel
wounds that go untreated. And still the Saudi, American
and British bombs continue to rain down on them.
No doubt the $2
billion fund that the UN is appealing for on behalf
of Yemen is a gross fraction of the actual damage to the
people and their country. The real figure could be
as high as $200 billion considering two years
of wholesale destruction.
But that bill
of damage should not be spread over the world
for responsibility. It should be presented precisely
to Washington, London and Riyadh for them to pay alone.
And then after the financial reparations are made, the
UN should stop sanitizing the criminals and facilitate
an international court to prosecute American, British
and Saudi leaders for war crimes.
Finian
Cunningham has written extensively on international
affairs, with articles published in several languages.
He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and
worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of
Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career
in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and
songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor
and writer in major news media organisations, including
The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
