The Saudi Crisis in Yemen

On August 9, 2018, a Saudi-led coalition dropped a bomb in a busy marketplace in Dahyan, Yemen. The explosion killed 51 people, 40 of whom were children on a school bus going on a field trip. The attack also left 79 people severely wounded. When looking over the wreckage of the bomb, it was found that that the bomb was one sold to Saudi Arabia by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Since then multiple weapons used by the Saudi-coalition in many deadly attacks have been identified to be sold to Saudi Arabia by the United States.

It shouldn’t be a big surprise that the weapons being used were American. The United States has been providing the Saudis with military aid for decades now, mainly as a way to maintain good relations with the most influential country in the middle east, as it is key in keeping peace within the region as well as make sure the US has easy access to oil. The Saudis, however, haven’t used the full extent of their weapons given to them until somewhat recently, when Iran’s started allying with neighboring countries and creating proxy wars within those nations. One such nation was the already economically troubled country of Yemen.

How the civil war in Yemen started is very complicated, but it mainly involves a majority Shia Muslim group that started what was called the Houthi movement. These rebels began to undermine the authority of the current government and gained control of much of the country’s territory within a relatively short period of time, partially due to aid coming in from Iran. Saudi Arabia, seeing this as a threat from Iran, interfered in the civil war in Yemen by claiming they will try to restore peace, but thus far they have done the complete opposite.

The country, already suffering from the civil war and its impacts, were further hurt by the Saudi-led coalitions and their attacks. The Saudi-led coalition of routinely failed to consult its own “no-strike list” of more than 30,000 sites in Yemen, including refugee camps and hospitals. A shocking percentage of all deaths resulting from these strikes have been innocent civilians who have no connection to any sort of terrorist or rebel group. The current famine within the country has been linked to these ill-thought attacks on harmless civilians. The United Nations recently released a war crimes report alleging that the strikes on civilians “certainly contributed to Yemen’s dire economic and humanitarian situation.”

The United States may have realized its own mistake in this situation, as the House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill to halt much of the military and financial aid going to Saudi Arabia in February of 2019, and is currently on its way to the Senate. The Democrats are hoping to pressure the Republican-controlled Senate into taking action for preventing these atrocious acts from occurring and making sure the blood isn’t on the United State’s hands.