There is No ‘Proxy War’ in Yemen
By Rannie Amiri
October 20, 2018 "Information
Clearing House"
-
THOSE in the western media too busy
to be bothered trying to understand the
complexities, intricacies and nuances of the
Middle East often resort to concluding
nearly all conflicts there are some kind of
‘proxy war’ between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
This is usually out of ignorance, reducing
disputes to the lowest common dominator of
Sunnis versus Shiites or to that between
their two most prominent patron states.
Often though there is deliberate
obfuscation; there must be justification for
a US ally to cause regional mayhem on the
pretext of containing an enemy. The easiest
and most convenient scapegoat has been Iran
and efforts to contain its alleged
expansionism by Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates and of course, Israel, go
unchecked.
One of the most devastating and tragic
episodes occurring in the Middle East today
is in Yemen. But this is not a de facto
proxy war its bankrollers hope we have all
grown too weary of hearing to investigate
further.
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Despite the
constant disclaimers by a lazy media, there
is no proxy war in Yemen.
The war which has ravaged the Arab world’s
poorest country since March 2015 is a
Saudi-led, unilateral onslaught which has so
devasted the nation, its economy,
infrastructure and social services that
malnutrition has become widespread and
cholera epidemic.
Ostensibly, the Saudi-UAE military campaign
was to oust Houthi-led rebels who unseated
the deeply unpopular Saudi-backed
puppet-president Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi in
January 2015 (elected on a ballot in which
he was the only candidate and who remained
in power even after the expiration of a
one-year mandate that had extended his
term). The Houthis, a politico-religious
group officially known as Ansarullahand
named after their founder, Hussein Badreddin
al-Houthi, initially formed in opposition to
late Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The Houthis generally belong to the Zaidi
school in Islam, a branch of the larger
Shiite sect. Branding the Houthis as
‘Iranian-backed Shiite rebels’ as is now
routine, makes for easy and convenient
categorization of who the ‘bad guys’ are in
Western and Gulf media. But this is
disingenuous. The inconvenient fact is
Zaidis are generally closer to Sunni Islam
than Shiite (and the longtime military,
Saudi-backed dictator Saleh was Zaidi). More
significantly, other than voicing solidarity
with the Houthis, there has been no
substantive evidence of Iranian military
intervention or that of affiliated parties
in Yemen. On the contrary, and starkly so,
it has been the Saudi and Emirati
governments’ inhumane bombing campaign which
has been the most glaring example of foreign
interference in the internal affairs of
another country.
When a school-bus was struck during an air
raid that killed 40 children, it was
initially justified as a ‘legitimate
military target’ by the Saudi coalition
before international outrage finally led to
the conclusion it was otherwise. On the
other hand, intermittent Houthi missiles
launched at Saudi military installations and
considered evidence of foreign military
supply belie the Houthis as a legitimate,
capable, battle-hardened fighting force.
Apparently, the regime cannot fathom that
despite daily attack, they have had the
muster to retaliate and demonstrate
offensive, rather than strictly defensive,
capabilities.
Yemen is not a sectarian conflict or one of
proxies, but a war stemming from the fallout
of removing yet another Saudi-backed ruler
from power.
Since 2015, at least 10,000 Yemenis have
been killed, 22 million are now in need some
form of relief (out of a total population of
approximately 29 million) and eight million
are malnourished. These numbers can only be
expected to climb after evidence has shown
Saudi Arabia is targeting food supplies.
The war waged in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and
its allies and their wanton use of US and
UK-supplied arms is everything short of a
formal invasion. It is a one-sided, vicious
military adventure which has rendered
millions destitute and to date, has proven
completely unsuccessful in fulfilling its
stated objectives. The only proxies in this
struggle are the victims of its war crimes;
innocent men, women and children starved or
killed, stand-ins for an apparition of a
foreign power waiting to be found.
This article was originally published by "New Age" -
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