West Complicit in Saudi Rape of Yemen
Tuesday, April 26, 2016 5:59
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(left, Fatima Noman 17, begs the world to take notice of the travesty taking place in Yemen.)
More than 8,900 people have died in the year-long Western-backed
Saudi onslaught against Yemen which is motivated by a desire to
control a new oil route and acquire Yemen’s riches. Western complicity is
another example of its moral bankruptcy, greed and hypocrisy.
Out of Yemen’s 26 million people, about 23 million require some form of humanitarian aid, including 14.4 million who are starving.
If ever there was in fact a proxy fight in Yemen, it would be over the control of Bab-el-Mandeb, the world’s oil route; Saudi Arabia’s proposed, U.S.-backed Hadramawt pipeline; and Yemen’s water resources in a region where desertification is a matter of national security.
by Catherine Shakdam
(abridged by henrymakow.com)
By continuing to sell weapons to a known violator that has done little to curtail its abuses, the US, UK, Canada, Israel and France risk being complicit in unlawful civilian deaths.
Over 8,900 Yemenis have died in the onslaught, according to Sheba Rights.
Schools, electric grids, water towers, factories, hospitals, cultural heritage sites, NGOs, and residential areas have been levelled by the fury dispensed by Riyadh, earmarked for destruction so Yemenis would be made to suffer absolute destitution.
Adding insult to injuries, Riyadh arranged for Yemen to be completely sealed off from the rest of the world — an isolated political pariah which had to be broken and starved before being allowed back into the kingdom’s fold as a pliable vassal of the House of Saud.
Dr. Riaz Karim, the director of the Mona Relief Organization, one of the very few truly independent NGOs based in Yemen, attested to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Yemen as a result of Riyadh’s aggression.
“Yemen is a veritable humanitarian black hole. I have witnessed firsthand the destruction and the despair civilians have been put through under al-Saud’s draconian siege,” Karim told MintPress News. “Hospitals have long run out of medicine — no antibiotics, no anaesthetic, no pain relief in any form.”
GEOPOLITICS
A jewel among all geopolitical jewels, Yemen today is to Saudi Arabia what India was to the Crown in the 19th century. Both a bridge and an access point onto several continents, Yemen also happens to possess vast natural resources, rich arable lands, and water.
It’s also a geostrategic key to the world’s oil route, Bab-el-Mandeb, and holds the promise of an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz through the construction of an oil pipeline in the eastern province of Hadramawt.
With Yemen as its vassal, Saudi Arabia stands to eclipse not just Iran, but any contender to its might through an almost absolute monopoly over the world’s oil route.
“The geopolitical importance of Yemen cannot be ignored. The country controls entry into the Red Sea (towards the Suez Canal) and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, which although less important than the Strait of Hormuz, is the point of passage for oil and gas on its way to Europe,” wrote Alain Gresh in April 2015 in a report published for The New Arab….
For fear of upsetting the wealthy and growing Saudi lobby the international community has mostly chosen to [ignore the slaughter], only too aware of the lucrative contracts a “friendly Saudi Arabia” could offer in exchange for political pliability.
“For Yemen dared imagine itself free, for Yemen had the audacity to stand in rejection of Riyadh’s U.S.-backed imperialism, an entire nation was allowed to suffer the abomination of a genocidal war, a war so violent and murderous that not even the most Saudi-sold and Saudi-controlled NGOs and other international institutions have been able to keep mum,” noted Kim Sharif, founder and head of The International League for Yemen War Crimes, to MintPress.
For the sake of appearances, and likely to justify the military violence which Riyadh’s military coalition unleashed upon Yemen, this war has been sold as a legitimate struggle against Iran’s covert militantism.
Touted as a necessary evil set in motion to return Yemen to its democratic transition and to prevent Tehran from claiming yet another capital to its growing coalition of allies, the so-called “Shia Crescent,” which Saudi Arabia and its Western backers have been so intent on portraying as a nefarious development.
Writing for The Huffington Post on Feb. 8, Akbar Shahid Ahmed explained: “The Saudis see Yemen a key arena for their regional competition with Iran. They and the U.S. both say Iran has supported the Houthis as a thorn in Saudi Arabia’s side.”
And while there is little to no proof of Iran’s influence in Yemen, aside from Iranian advisers urging the Houthis not to attempt a takeover of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, Tehran’s shadow has not exactly darkened Yemeni skies. The only clear link between Yemen and Iran is that the countries share similar religious sensibilities, in that they’re both home to Shiite Muslim communities.
Iran’s role and pull in Yemen have long been overblown and taken out of context. More than that, though, experts have mostly misinterpreted Iran’s real connection to Yemen, playing into pre-packaged propaganda instead of assessing geopolitical realities.
However, this has not prevented Saudi Arabia from playing the Iranian card ad nauseam….
LOCAL FACTORS
In November 2014, Asher Orkaby wrote for the Washington Institute: “For its part, the foreign media has portrayed the Houthi rebellion in global terms of religious sectarianism, Iranian foreign policy, and al-Qaeda, while largely ignoring local Yemeni factors.” …
The Houthi-led resistance movement has been conflated with Iran’s alleged Shi’ization campaign, an argument which echoes a dangerously rancid xenophobia.
“The Saudis’ principal aim – to restore Yemen’s deposed President, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi – has not been achieved. If they hoped to contain spreading Iranian regional influence, that has not worked, either,” Simon Tisdall wrote for the New Zealand Herald in March 2015.
This race for access and control is the true red line between Iran and Saudi Arabia that’s at the heart of the war on Yemen. Sectarianism was only ever played up as a weapon of mass deception and mass distraction.
YEMEN’S RICHES
Yemen was thrown into the fires of war so its land and the power it hides would remain under the control of Riyadh and, by extension, the United States.
Yet Yemen’s oil and gas reserves pale in comparison to that of its neighbors. The country’s true strength lies in its geography, even if foreign oil and gas companies’ interests suggest the country has more to offer than officials might have proclaimed.
With over 1,000 miles of coastline, this poorest nation of Arabia sits atop the world’s most strategic chokepoint. Should Gulf monarchies lose control over it, the Arab world as we know it would simply cease to exist. This is why Riyadh’s call for war was answered so fervently by the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and their regional and global allies.
What would happen if unruly Yemen were to unite with non-aligned Iran and resist an imperialist power-grab in the region? What power would the Islamic Republic hold over those nations which long sought to curtail its independence?
Indeed, Yemen’s war was devised long ago as a last attempt to protect interests regional players cannot afford to abandon. Everything else is mere political decorum.
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Related- Saudis Hidden Agenda in Yemen
Source: http://henrymakow.com/2016/04/West Complicit-n-Saudis-Rape-of-Yemen.html
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