Saudi Arabia applies aid balm after devastating air campaign
MARIB: At a wind-swept camp for those displaced by Yemen’s war, a young Yemeni woman named Leemi, who supports her child and eight others, gratefully accepted aid from Saudi Arabia.
That’s even after she said a Saudi-led airstrike destroyed her home near Sirwah, some 30km from the tent she now calls home in Marib province.
Leemi’s story reflects the two faces of the kingdom in the nearly three-year-old war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia says it has spent nearly a billion dollars in aid to Yemen and plans with its partners to spend another US$1.5 billion.
Meanwhile, the campaign by the Saudiled coalition against Yemen’s Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, has been a major cause of the country’s humanitarian disaster, rights groups say. The kingdom’s devastating air campaign repeatedly has struck markets, medical facilities and civilian targets, drawing international criticism. The coalition’s blockade on ports under Houthi control has been a main factor pushing the country into near starvation, according to UN agencies and rights groups.
Saudi relief officials, however, stress their role has nothing to do with the ongoing military fight and say they also try to get their aid into Houthi-controlled territory as well.
“They are our neighbours,’’ said Abdullah al-Wadei, the assistant director of medical and environmental assistance at the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center. “They are human beings first.’’
Associated Press journalists recently travelled into Yemen as part of a tour for foreign reporters organised by the Saudiled coalition to highlight their relief efforts.
Even before the war, Yemen was the Arab world’s poorest country and one of the world’s most water-scarce places. Since the war, Yemen’s 28 million people have been pushed to the brink of famine. Its poor water situation led to a cholera epidemic. There has been an outbreak of diphtheria, a potentially fatal disease that primarily infects the throat and airways.
A Saudi-led airstrike in 2015 destroyed cranes at the rebel-held Red Sea port of Hodeida, a major entryway for a country that imports 90 percent of its food. The coalition maintains a blockade on Hodeida and other Houthi-controlled ports, an effort it says aims to prevent weapons from reaching the rebels.
Rights groups like the Norwegian Refugee Council say Saudi Arabia must allow “unhindered’’ commercial imports into Yemen to ease the crisis. The Saudi-led coalition says it wants to increase importing capacity at the ports, but it is not clear if the Houthis will cooperate. Saudi officials also accuse Houthi militants of diverting or stealing aid.
“Yemen is slowly choking and millions of Yemenis are at risk of dying of hunger, cholera or any other consequence of the conflict in a severely impoverished country already on the brink of collapse prior to the current crisis,’’ the UN’s Development Program wrote an analysis in late January.
To speed relief, the Saudis have run some 20 aid flights with secondhand American C-130 military transport planes into Marib, about 115km east of Sana’a. The aid has included rice, flour, sugar, salt, oil, beans and other foodstuffs, as well as blankets, tents, carpets and other material for those in need, said Fahad al-Osemy, the director of urgent aid at the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center.
“There’s different people here because there’s more safety in Marib,’’ Mr al-Osemy said. “You have people coming from Sana’a, Dhamar, and they need more than anyone’’ as they’ve been forced from their homes.
The Saudis also provide food for Houthicontrolled territory in unmarked boxes that get distributed by local partners, he said.