Spotlight on Yemen’s forgotten war
Saudi Arabia, Iran engaged in proxy battle
The spotlight is on in the showdown between Russia and the U.S. over Syria and the wars against jihadists in Syria and in Iraq, where Canada is part of a U.S.-led coalition providing military advice and aid to Iraqi and Kurdish forces trying to recapture Mosul.
Far less attention is being paid to Yemen, where the United Nations says more than 7,000, nearly 4,000 of them civilians, have died since early 2015.
Many of the civilian deaths are the result of Saudi airstrikes in support of the predominately Sunni government of Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. It has been pushed out of the capital, Sanaa, and much of western Yemen by ultraconservative Iranian-backed Shia rebels, who call themselves the Revolutionary Committee Supreme Council, more commonly known as Houthis.
Ottawa must not remain silent on Yemen, says Grant Kippen, who probably tracks the situation there more closely than any other Canadian.
The former aide to prime minister Pierre Trudeau went to Yemen four years ago to help create conditions for democratic elections. Until January 2015, he was living in Sanaa, but the situation became so dangerous there he had to leave.
“I don’t mean to detract from what is going on in Syria or Iraq because that is horrendous in its own right, but the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is dire,” Kippen said in a telephone interview from his home in Ottawa.
He cited figures from UN organizations that show more than half the population of 27 million people is “food insecure,” with the food situation varying from a “crisis” to an “emergency” in most of the country.
“This whole thing came about as a domestic political issue and has somehow morphed into a pseudoregional issue with a proxy war between the Saudis and Iran. This is a case of a domestic political problem that was not dealt with and we are left with an even worse situation. Yemenis are suffering from disease, lack of food, lack of water, lack of medicine. Something needs to be done.”
Rounding on Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion for tweeting a demand that Russia stop bombing Syrian civilians in Aleppo, Kippen said, “I have not seen anything anywhere where he has condemned the Saudis for airstrikes in Yemen that clearly need to stop. The talk that they are targeted strikes is hooey.”
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam have accused Saudi Arabia of possible war crimes after its forces bombed hospitals, shopping areas and a camp for displaced people.
The Saudis were not the only ones responsible because “all the actors there are implicated in this,” Kippen said.
The latest of many ceasefires between the Houthis and the Hadi-led rump government began in Yemen Wednesday, but was immediately breached by sporadic fighting. This followed calls by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, for a lasting ceasefire and a push in the U.S. Congress to ban further arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
“But we do not seem to be talking about it at all in Canada,” Kippen said.
One of the main reasons that Yemen has not seized the world’s attention may be because it has not spawned a refugee crisis in Europe. Still, the UN reckons that about 2.4 million of its people are internally displaced.
Like the wars in Syria and Iraq, the fight in Yemen is complex and brutal. Keeping track of the belligerents requires a scorecard and a good map. Aside from the Saudi-Shia dimension, alQaida in the Arabian Peninsula controls about onethird of the country including some important coastal areas, and a faction of its bitter rival, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has been conducting suicide bombings and attacks on mosques.
An ominous new twist is that Washington, which has been providing the Saudi-led coalition with logistical support, responded to missile fire on U.S. navy ships this month with Tomahawk missiles aimed at Houthi radar sites that had been tracking them.
Canada should “right off the bat ... put some money toward humanitarian assistance,” Kippen said. This would help make up for the half of the UN’s request for emergency funding this year that has not yet been met.
“On the diplomatic side, there needs to be a political solution through a political dialogue. That is the only thing that will bring an end to this.
Having overseen Afghanistan’s first elections, Kippen has been touched by similarities between Afghans and Yemenis.
“I was overwhelmed by the generosity and hospitality,” he said.
“People in both countries are just trying to get on with their lives and to provide for their families. They want a safe and secure environment, to educate their children, to give them better opportunities than they had. That is no different than what we desire in Canada.”
YEMENIS ARE SUFFERING FROM DISEASE, LACK OF FOOD, LACK OF WATER, LACK OF MEDICINE. SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE. — GRANT KIPPEN, DEMOCRATIC SYSTEMS EXPERT