Saturday, October 13, 2018

One Man's Death and the Killing of a Nation

The murder of the journalist Jamal Kashoggi is by no means the worst act carried out by Saudi Arabia. Neither the US or the UK have any intention of cancelling their arms exports to the country.

 A report just published shows that bombing and other military activities by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is deliberately targeting food supplies and distribution in a bid to win the war by starving millions of civilians on the other side.  In July, King Salman of Saudi Arabia issued a general pardon to all Saudi soldiers fighting in Yemen.

There is nothing collateral or accidental about the attacks according to the report. Civilian food supplies are the intended target.

22.2 million Yemenis or three-quarters of the population are in need of assistance, 8.4 million of whom are not getting enough food to eat, a number which may increase by 10 million by the end of the year. 

“It is bleak,” UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council. “We are losing the fight against famine.”

Saudi Arabia, UAE and their allies in Washington, London and Paris do not feel any regret and are intent on creating conditions for a man-made famine as the best way of winning the war against the Houthis. This is the conclusion of the highly detailed report called “The Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial Bombardment and Food War” written by Professor Martha Mundy for the World Peace Foundation.

The report concludes here is strong evidence that the coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in the areas under the control of the Houthis. It adds that the bombing campaign aimed directly at food supplies appears to have begun in 2016 and is continuing and becoming more effective.

 Professor Mundy says that “from August 2015 there appears a shift from military and governmental to civilian and economic targets, including water and transport infrastructure, food production and distribution, roads and transport, schools, cultural monuments, clinics and hospitals, and houses, fields and flocks.”  Mundy says that “livestock production has been devastated as families in need sold animals and also found it increasingly difficult to access markets”. When the farmers do reach a market, their troubles are not over.

On Yemen’s Red Sea coast no less than 220 fishing boats have been destroyed and the fish catch is down by 50 per cent according to the report. It cites one particular incident on 16 September when 18 fishermen from the district of Al Khawkhah were seized, interrogated and released by a coalition naval vessel which then fired a rocket at “the departing boat carrying the fishermen, killing all but one of them”. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi-disappeared-journalist-washington-post-embassy-a8581341.html

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