by JOHN CHERIAN
A community hall in Sana ’a that was hit in air strikes on October 8. This photograph was taken on October 16 PHOTO/Mohamed Al-Sayaghi/Reuters
The West, led by the United States, has in recent months been crying itself hoarse about the alleged “war crimes” being committed by Syrian and Russian forces in the ongoing offensive to liberate the eastern part of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Hillary Clinton, supported by senior figures in the Obama administration such as Secretary of State John Kerry, has accused the Russian government of “committing war crimes” in Syria as the final push to evict the terrorist groups from Aleppo and the rest of Syria intensifies. As the Kremlin has pointed out, the Russian air force is in Syria at the invitation of the legitimate government in Damascus and is engaged in the targeting of extremist groups such as the al Nusra and the Daesh (Islamic State, or I.S.). These groups have been classified as “terrorist organisations” by the United Nations and, for that matter, the U.S. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that it is his patriotic duty to expel all terrorists from his country and regain sovereignty over parts of the country that have been invaded by foreign jehadists.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration and the Western media have been conspicuously silent about the massacre of innocent civilians in Yemen for more than a year and a half. The Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in the impoverished country, which started in March 2015, has already brought the country to the brink of a famine and led to to the death of more than 10,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians. The campaign has had the full political and military support of the U.S. and its major allies, including the United Kingdom. The Obama administration has already sold arms worth more than $110 billion to the Saudi Kingdom since 2008. Sophisticated weaponry worth more than $20 billion was sold after the Saudis started bombing Yemen in 2015. In the past year alone, Britain has sold more than $6 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia. These two countries have supplied the sophisticated armaments that the Saudi-led coalition has been using against Yemen.
With the military campaign led by the Saudis against the Houthi-led forces bogged down and on the verge of defeat, the Saudis have, nevertheless, continued to target civilian areas, including schools, marriage and funeral venues, busy marketplaces and hospitals. A survey by the Yemen Data Project revealed that one third of all Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen targeted civilian areas. The project was started by a group of independent academics and human rights activists. The same civilian areas have been attacked repeatedly by the Saudis. One school building in the Taiz area was reportedly hit nine times. American and British military personnel advise the Saudis in their choice of “military targets”, and the Americans also help in the mid-air refuelling of Saudi fighter jets. Most military experts believe that the Saudis will not be able to sustain their military campaign without American help.
An attack ‘by mistake’
The latest horrific strike by the Saudi air force was in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, on October 8. As mourners gathered for the funeral of a prominent Yemeni citizen, Saudi planes targeted the venue, a well-known landmark which hosts weddings and other social events, killing more than 170 people and injuring over a thousand. Saudi Arabia, after initially denying that its aircraft was involved in the bombing, admitted its culpability and said its air force was given wrong intelligence inputs by its Yemeni allies. Riyadh has offered apologies, along with compensation for the victims. Human rights groups called the strike a “war crime” and “unlawfully disproportionate”. Yemenis refused to accept the argument that the strikes were a “mistake,” as Saudi authorities claimed.
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