#john wight

The war in Yemen is considered part of an ongoing regional proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. From the rebellion's outset in 2015, Riyadh has claimed that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy, thus justifying their own involvement. However, in 2015, veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn was writing that this claim was "widely seen as propaganda or an exaggeration." Three years on and the Iranians are now certainly involved, supplying the Houthis with weapons and, according to some sources, also military advisers. Thus, Saudi Arabia's intervention in 2015 on the spurious claim of Iranian involvement has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After three years of relentless conflict, it has been estimated that out of a population of 27.4 million, 22.2 million people in Yemen are in need of humanitarian assistance, 17 million are food insecure, 14.8 million lack basic healthcare, 4.5 million children are suffering malnourishment, while 2.9 million people are internally displaced. The country is also facing the "largest documented cholera epidemic of modern times." Saudi Arabia bombed a cholera treatment center in the west of the country, causing the French NGO Médecins Sans Frontières to halt their work at the facility. The Saudi-led Sunni coalition has  unleashed a massive air, land and sea offensive against the Houthi-controlled Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, one of the last remaining points of entry of food, medicines, and other essential humanitarian aid.

It is time people woke up to the connection between the UK foreign policy, part of a wider Western foreign policy, and the increasing regularity of these attacks. That’s certainly not to justify them in anyway. They are heinous attacks and those who participate in them in any way are to be condemned. But there is a correlation undoubtedly between our foreign policy and what is going on in the streets of Manchester and certainly what is happening in London as we speak. Because ISIS and Salafi jihadism was not in Libya until Britain participated in a NATO air campaign which toppled the countries government led by Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. And Salafi jihadism and terrorism was not present in Iraq until we destroyed that country in 2003. So, there is a deep connection. The establishment can no longer deny it. And every time it does deny it, it only increasingly discredits itself.

Exit Notes 2

UK arms sales have also been key to the Wahhabi state's ability to project hard power in the region, amounting to £4.6bn (US$6bn) since 2015 alone. As with the US, Saudi Arabia is the biggest market for UK arms sales and has been for a number of years. In 2017, campaigners brought a legal case against the UK government over its sale of weapons to the Saudis, alleging that some of them have been used to kill Yemeni civilians. Britain's role in the conflict has amounted to more than arms sales - a military operation, known as Operation Crossways, involved up to 50 British military personnel training Saudi troops to be deployed to take part in the conflict. British Tory MP and former Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell lambasted it as evidence of the UK's "shameful complicity" in the suffering of the Yemeni people.

Beginning with the Obama administration, and ramped up under Trump, US involvement in this brutal conflict has consisted of direct military airstrikes (carried out against Al-Qaeda and Islamic State targets, according to Washington), along with logistical, intelligence, and other non-combat support provided to the anti-Houthi Saudi-led coalition. This, of course, is not forgetting US arms sales to the Kingdom, consisting of over 50 percent of all US arms exports. Meanwhile, in 2017, the Pentagon confirmed that US ground troops were also present in Yemen, again justified on the basis of being engaged in operations against Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi heads the country's internationally recognized government. In the accustomed manner of legitimate leaders, however, Hadi is currently living in exile. President Hadi was elected as sole candidate for the office of president in 2011 after his predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, relinquished power in the face of growing and sustained protests during the Arab Spring. Saleh had led North Yemen since 1978 before assuming the presidency of the Republic of Yemen in 1990, upon the reunification of the country's northern and southern halves. The former president, whose reign was mired in allegations of corruption and mismanagement of the country's resources, aligned himself with the very Houthi minority which played a role in ousting him during the aforementioned Arab Spring protests, when their rebellion against Hadi's government began in 2015. The casus belli of the Houthi rebellion was President Hadi's refusal to countenance more autonomy for the Shiite minority upon assuming office. As for Saleh, the Houthis killed him at the end of 2017 after he broke with the rebellion and declared his willingness to enter into dialogue with the Saudis over the country's future.

The Role of Neoliberalism in Spain's Constitutional Crisis - John Wight