Yemen conflict marked by indifference
Civil war doesn’t seem to draw world’s focus
BEIRUT — It’s been called the forgotten war — and with good reason.
The war in Syria gets clicks and shares, and the fight to defeat the Islamic State group is never far from the headlines. But Yemen, a top contender in the devastation and suffering index, often goes unmentioned.
With more than enough global conflict and misery to go around, why should you care about Yemen, a country roughly the size of Texas and tens of thousands of miles away?
Here’s why: It’s the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
To understand why, it’s worth knowing that Yemen was long a place where millions were never certain when and from where they would get their next meal or drink of clean water. And that was before the three- year civil war now raging through the country.
Since early 2015, more than 10,000 people have been killed, many more wounded and 2 million driven from their homes because of the fighting between a Saudi-led coalition (composed of the Emirates, mercenaries and a hodgepodge of militiamen, including jihadis) and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
For most people, death comes from above, with warplanes from a Saudi-led alliance constantly sweeping the skies.
And, yes, the U.S. is involved — like it or not. Behind every bomb dropped in the nearly 17,000 airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition on Yemen are support services provided by the U.S.
At the behest of lucrative arms deals worth billions of dollars (Saudi Arabia alone spent $69.4 billion on arms in 2017, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, giving it the world’s third-largest military budget), the
U.S. supplies much of the hardware used by the Saudis and Emiratis, while also offering midair refueling and general intelligence sharing.
The U.S. involvement continues despite heightened scrutiny from lawmakers. In February, the Senate blocked a resolution that would have ended participation in the war in Yemen, but legislative efforts to do so are ongoing.