Will Trump help save Yemen?

ADD cholera to the famine threat and other crises that are devastating Yemen. More than 360 people have died of the disease in recent weeks, and thousands more are at risk.

All that is unfolding against a civil war that has killed 10,000 people in two years and come to a grim stalemate in which President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his Saudi and United Arab Emirates backers continue to fight Huthi rebels, an indigenous Shiite group with loose ties to Iran.

US President Donald Trump could have used his trip to Saudi Arabia this week to spotlight the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and push for a political solution to the conflict. Instead, he basked in the adulation of King Salman and his court, uncritically embraced the country’s foreign and domestic policies, and then sold the Saudis $110 billion in arms.

The package includes precision-guided munitions, which President Barack Obama withheld last year in an effort to pressure Saudi Arabia to halt attacks that have killed thousands of civilians and struck hospitals, schools, markets and mosques. He also worried about possible Saudi war crimes in which America could be implicated.

Trump made perfunctory references to Yemen on his trip, but mostly to praise the Saudi war effort and condemn Iran for supporting militant groups. He could be using the leverage he has with his new Saudi friends to push for a resolution to the fighting. After all, Saudi Arabia and its gulf allies depend heavily on Washington for aircraft, munitions, training and in-flight refuelling. The United States also helps Saudi Arabia guard its borders.

Trump’s failure to apply pressure, combined with the giant arms sale, is raising fears that he may give the Saudis a green light to escalate the fighting, as well as find other ways to beef up America’s own support for Riyadh.

Since 2015, the Saudi-led coalition has been bombing the Huthis to try to push them out of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. The war has put 7 million people in danger of starvation, crushed the economy and decimated the health system.

“This is a clear-cut decline into massive famine that is man-made and avoidable,” said Jan Egeland, the Norwegian Refugee Council head who recently visited Yemen.

After two years, it should be obvious there is no military solution to this war, stoked by the rivalry between Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Arab nation, and Iran, a Shiite nation. But the Saudis seem determined to press on.

A comprehensive peace deal may be out of reach, but the United States, Britain and the United Nations could focus on measures that would impose the quickest possible ceasefire.