Yemen
Good news and bad news from the war in Yemen. A truce between the (British-armed) Saudi-led coalition and their Houthi opponents broke down on 2 October – but the country has not returned to full-scale war.
More aid has been able to get into Yemen – but a top UN humanitarian official said on 22 November that 17 million people in the country ‘still do not know where they will get their next meal’.
The UN did raise enough money to stabilise the FSO Safer, the…
On 3 December, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) organised a day of action in solidarity with the people in Yemen and against the companies fuelling the war there, in the run-up to their legal challenge to British arms sales to Saudi Arabia, due to be heard in the High Court on 31 January.
Some events took place before the official day of action. On 2 December, there was a demo outside BAE Systems in Holyhead, on Anglesey, and, in Lancaster, Demilitarise Lancaster, Solidarity…
All year, it has been infuriating to watch the debate about Boris Johnson as pressure built up against the British prime minister until he was finally forced from office on 7 July by his own party – which believed he would damage its chances of winning the next election.
Johnson was sacked by the Conservatives for his personal weaknesses, such as dishonesty and irresponsibility. This was what the media also focused on. Near the liberal extreme, the Guardian editorial on his…
US president Joe Biden’s foreign policy advisors applauded themselves for devising a ‘sensitive’ itinerary for his mid-July trip to the Middle East.
In a Washington Post op-ed before he left, Biden defended his controversial planned meeting with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud (known as ‘MBS’), saying it is meant not only to bolster US interests but also to bring peace to the region.
Biden’s trip did not include Yemen, though if this had truly been a ‘…
After seven years of war which have plunged the country into the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet, Yemen has just enjoyed a four-month truce, likely to be extended for several more months. In another hopeful sign, there is a chance that Yemen’s ‘floating time bomb’, a huge, crumbling oil storage ship just off the coast (see pic), may be drained of oil soon.
However, the British state continues to arm Saudi Arabia, despite overwhelming evidence of Saudi war crimes since the…
Noam Chomsky once wrote that some things were almost painful to have to say, they were so obvious. One example is that we have more responsibility for things that we can affect than for things that we have little or no influence over.
In Britain, we can help relieve the suffering of Ukrainians, but we have little influence over the Russian state which is raining destruction on Ukraine.
Whatever influence we have, we should try to use. Bruce Kent gave us a fine example of that…
Boris Johnson told the Conservative spring conference in Blackpool that the Ukraine war was ‘a moment of choice... a choice between freedom and oppression’, where victory for Russia would be ‘a green light for autocrats everywhere.’ (19 March)
He had already given that green light to the autocrats by backing the Saudi war in Yemen wholeheartedly, ever since he became foreign secretary in 2016.
Saudi Arabia’s record on democracy, freedom and human rights is even worse than that…
More than 70 people were killed in an airstrike by a Saudi-led coalition on a prison in a Houthi-held city, Saada, in northern Yemen on 21 January.
Observers believe violence has increased since Saudi Arabia used bribes and threats to shut down the UN’s ‘Group of Eminent Experts in Yemen’ in October. The human rights panel was investigating war crimes in Yemen.
At least five million people in Yemen are on the edge of famine. Food prices increased by 30 – 70 percent in 2021, as…
Yemen continues to suffer the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, with half the population going hungry and hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine.
A dramatic fall in the value of Yemen’s currency, the riyal, has only worsened the situation, while peace negotiations drag on without an end in sight.
Britain’s response to Yemen’s suffering has been to worsen the crisis, not just by supporting but by joining in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.…
In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder created The Massacre of the Innocents, a provocative masterpiece of religious art. The painting reworks a biblical narrative about King Herod’s order to slaughter all newborn boys in Bethlehem for…
On 26 September, the secretary of state for international trade, Liz Truss, told parliament that the government breached a court of appeal ruling by granting further licences for military equipment to the Saudi-led coalition for use in Yemen.
This followed revelations the previous week that the government had breached the ruling on at least two occasions.
We are always being told how rigorous and robust arms export controls supposedly are, but this shows that nothing…
Blue plaque at BAE Systems office, London.Photo: London Caat
With DSEI looming large on the horizon, London Campaign Against Arms Trade took an interested group of people around some of the weapons producers that are likely to exhibit at the East London arms fair in September.
On 6 July, visits were paid to the London offices of BAE Systems, Boeing, G4S, Lockheed Martin and Rolls Royce, as well as Buckingham Palace (due to the support the royals have provided in securing arms deals…
On 10 July, street art collective Protest Stencil withdrew from a Science Museum exhibition after finding that the top sponsor of the ‘Top Secret’ event was the arms manufacturer Raytheon.
Protest Stencil protested against the ‘artwashing’ of an arms company ‘whose missile fragments are found at massacre sites in Yemen’.
The Saudi-led coalition has used Raytheon’s Paveway II bombs against civilians in Yemen.
Paveway II fragments were found after attacks on: a water…
I attended the BAE Systems AGM because I wanted to provide a voice for Arabian people. The absolute monarch does not represent the people in Arabia. The house of Saud tries to kidnap our voices. BAE has fallen for the propaganda and presents the regime as a liberating force. I attended so that I could tell the board and shareholders about what is really happening to my people and land.
I am sure the BAE AGM will be happy not to have that voice which reminds them of the dirty job they…
As PN went to press, there was still a flicker of hope that the partial ceasefire would be strengthened in and around the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, which handles 70 percent of Yemen’s imports.
The war in Yemen moved towards a ceasefire in December, in part because Saudi Arabia came under pressure from the US government, which itself was under pressure from US senators.
It wasn’t enough that the US and Britain had become two of the most important supporters and…
