Our complicity in this biblical horror is shameful
IT IS a proud achievement that, in the aftermath of two terrible world wars, our leaders created the Geneva Conventions, a historic set of rules to govern conflict. Yet even this month, as we mark the sacrifice of our soldiers, that rules-based international order is crumbling.
And in Yemen, it is being fatally undermined by our own allies.
As wreaths were being laid in the UK to mark Remembrance Sunday, Yemen was enduring yet another day of a brutal blockade that risks plunging the country into the world’s largest famine. It has been imposed by Saudi Arabia.
The blockade – enforced after Houthi rebels fired a missile towards Riyadh, the Saudi capital – has now been in place for more than 20 days, cutting off half a million tons of food and fuel to a starving population, barring delivery of desperately needed medical supplies, and grounding UN humanitarian flights carrying aid workers to their lifesaving missions.
Ever more urgent pleas from the UN and humanitarian agencies to fully lift the siege fall on deaf ears. Despite Saudi protestations, it is increasingly hard to deny that this constitutes collective punishment of an entire population. This is a crime under international law – and as an ally and major arms supplier to Saudi Arabia, the UK is shamefully complicit.
The impact of the blockade could not be more grave. Yemen is a country ravaged by medieval diseases and on the precipice of a biblical famine. The Saudi pledge to open some ports to urgent humanitarian supplies does not come close to feeding a population reliant on commercial imports for 80 per cent of its food. Every hour, 27 children are diagnosed as acutely malnourished: that’s 600 more starving children every day.
The clock is ticking. Every ten minutes a child dies
Fuel shortages mean at least seven cities have already run out of clean water and sanitation; hospitals have shut down due to a lack of running water and fuel for generators. As vaccines run out, one million children are at risk of diphtheria, known as The Strangling Angel of Children.
The imagery on our television screens seems from a bygone era: emaciated children; tiny babies in incubators, their tenuous hold on life dependent on fuel for hospital generators that is fast running out.
Preventing the supply of weapons to Houthi rebels fighting Yemen’s internationally recognised government is a legitimate aim, mandated by UN Security Resolution 2216. But this cannot justify the ongoing strangulation of Yemen and its people.
A UN panel of experts found no evidence to support Saudi claims that their obstruction of civilian goods is stopping missiles being shipped to the Houthis by Iran. Such an obstruction is illegal under the international system. The UK’s silence in the face of these clear crimes against the people of Yemen not only shames us, it implicates us. This is a war waged by British allies using British weapons: we have supplied Saudi Arabia with almost £4billion of weapons and military support in recent years. As the ‘penholder’ on Yemen, responsible for leading action at the Security Council, we bear a special responsibility – political as well as moral – to lead the international response to end this conflict. Yet the British government has declined to call this what it is: an illegal blockade. While the Government was right to condemn the attempted Houthi missile attack on Riyadh airport, where is the British condemnation of 1,000 days of intensive Saudi bombing of Yemen? On the first day of my recent visit to the capital, Sana’a, the city was attacked six times by bombers from the Saudi air force. Throughout the conflict, our ‘quiet diplomacy’ has failed to curb outrage after outrage perpetrated by our allies in pursuit of what the UN Secretary General has called a ‘stupid war’.
The current blockade does not just risk the senseless death of millions. By tightening the noose around a starving population, Saudi Arabia is feeding the propaganda machine of the opponents it aims to vanquish. More than collective punishment, then, it is self-harm on a grand scale. The Houthis have publicly vowed revenge, blaming Saudi aggression that ‘shuts down all doors for peace and dialogue’.
Saudi Arabia’s borders can ultimately be made secure only by having a stable Yemen. But as it wreaks relentless havoc on its own neighbourhood, it cannot be surprised when the Yemenis refuse to toe the line.
Every action of the Saudis currently serves the narrative of Saudi’s enemies who want it to be seen as the aggressor to win support of the general population.
Prolonging the conflict serves the purpose of those who profit from war and wish to undermine stability in the region: including Iran and extremist groups. When I was in Yemen, I saw signs in the street in Arabic and English declaring ‘America and Britain are killing Yemeni children’.
The time for UK leadership is now. We must demand an urgent ceasefire, an immediate and unconditional end to the blockade, and a return to reinvigorated, inclusive peace talks. A new Security Council resolution is long overdue: it is widely recognised that Resolution 2216 is an anachronism that constitutes a barrier to a peace process.
The cost of our inaction is measured in Yemeni lives. The clock is ticking: a child dies every ten minutes. Yemen is also a time bomb threatening international peace and security.
The abrogation of our responsibility to denounce these crimes and use our leverage to stop them condemns millions of Yemenis to death. Shying away from demanding compliance by all to the international rules-based order that we helped take root also weakens a strained system that keeps British citizens safe.
We must use every inch of our leverage – diplomatic, political and economic – to demonstrate to our allies they have more to gain from peace than a fruitless military strategy that is exacerbating the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe, and undermines the international rules-based order that keeps us all safe.