60 Minutes Story on Yemen

waltky · Nov 19, 2017

"We're on the brink of famine. If we don't receive the monies that we need in the next few months, I would say 125,000 little girls and boys will die."...

When food is used as a weapon
19 Nov.`17 - How Yemen's civil war has brought 7 million people, many of them children, to the brink of starvation

This month Saudi Arabia tightened a stranglehold on the neighboring country of Yemen and 7 million people face starvation. The Saudi blockade is an escalation in Yemen's civil war. The United Nations says the war has now become a "man-made catastrophe." You've seen very little of this because the Saudis prevent reporters from reaching the war zone. Recently, we were ordered off a ship headed to Yemen. Days later the Saudis gave us permission to fly there but, after our equipment was loaded and our boarding passes issued, the Saudis closed the airspace so the plane couldn't take off. Even so, we have managed to get pictures out of Yemen to show you what the Saudi government does not want you to see. This will be hard to watch, but 27 million people in Yemen pray you will not turn away.

Hungry children cry. But there are no tears at the limits of starvation. Wasting bodies cannot afford them. This is the Al Sabeen Hospital in the Yemeni city of Sana'a. Ibtisam is two and a half. She weighs 15 pounds. Haifa is seven. She weighs 11 pounds. The images, and stories from the hospital, were sent to us by people that we hired inside Yemen. One child dies every ten minutes in the country according to the U.N.. David Beasley runs the World Food Programme, the U.N.'s emergency first responder to prevent famine.

David Beasley: It's just desperation and death. It is as bad as it gets. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie this bad.

Scott Pelley: We were headed into Yemen with the World Food Programme, the Saudis gave us permission to come, and then when we arrived they wouldn't let us into the country. What do you think they didn't want us to see?

David Beasley: I don't understand why they won't allow the world to see what's taking place. Because I think if the world sees the tragedy of this human sufferin', number one, the world will step up and provide the support financially for innocent children to eat. But when you get on the ground and see what I see, you see is chaos, is starvation, is hunger, and it's unnecessary conflict strictly man-made. All parties involved in this conflict have their hands guilty, the hands are dirty. All parties.

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dairyair · Nov 19, 2017

Saudi Arabia, the home of Terrorism. Our ally. Go figure.

waltky · Nov 27, 2017

Yemen Worst Place on Earth to Be a Child...

UNICEF: Yemen Worst Place on Earth to Be a Child
November 26, 2017 — UNICEF's Middle East director is calling Yemen one of the worst places on Earth to be a child and urging all involved in the fighting to let humanitarian aid keep coming in.

Geert Cappelaere told reporters in Amman, Jordan, Sunday that UNICEF was able to get nearly 2 million doses of vaccines delivered to Sana'a airport Saturday, but that such success should not be a "one-off." Cappelaere said far more supplies are needed and that ships carrying food, chlorine tables for drinking water, and treatments for diarrhea and cholera are on their way to the port of Hodeida. "More than 11 million Yemeni children are today in acute need of humanitarian assistance. That's almost every single Yemeni boy and girl," Cappelaere said. "To all parties and all those with a heart for children, please take your responsibility now."

Workers unload an aid shipment from a plane at Sana'a airport, Yemen

He was talking about the responsibility for all those involved in Yemen to stop fighting and stop what he calls the war on children. "Today we estimate that every 10 minutes, a child in Yemen is dying from preventable diseases," he said.

The Saudi-led coalition trying to drive out Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from Sana'a promised last week to ease a blockade of the airport and Hodeida. It shut down the facilities almost three weeks ago in response to a Houthi missile attack near the airport in Riyadh. The Saudis intercepted the missile. Saudi Arabia blames the missile launch on Iran. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

https://www.voanews.com/a/unicef-yemen-vaccine/4137238.html
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Margot2 · Nov 27, 2017

If we don't receive the monies that we need in the next few months, I would say 125,000 little girls and boys will die."...

waltky · Nov 28, 2017

Comparison to Saudi/Yemen blockade...

Patrick Buchanan: The US-Saudi Starvation Blockade
November 27, 2017 | Our aim is to "starve the whole population — men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound — into submission," said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill.

He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians. Yet when we went to war in 1917, a U.S. admiral told British Prime Minister Lloyd George, "You will find that it will take us only two months to become as great criminals as you are." After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, however, the starvation blockade was not lifted until Germany capitulated to all Allied demands in the Treaty of Versailles.

As late as March 1919, four months after the Germans laid down their arms, Churchill arose in Parliament to exult, "We are enforcing the blockade with rigor, and Germany is very near starvation." So grave were conditions in Germany that Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer protested to Lloyd George in Paris that morale among his troops on the Rhine was sinking from seeing "hordes of skinny and bloated children pawing over the offal from British cantonments." The starvation blockade was a war crime and a crime against humanity. But the horrors of the Second World War made people forget this milestone on the Western road to barbarism.

A comparable crime is being committed today against the poorest people in the Arab world — and with the complicity of the United States.

Saudi Arabia, which attacked and invaded Yemen in 2015 after Houthi rebels dumped over a pro-Saudi regime in Sanaa and overran much of the country, has imposed a land, sea and air blockade, after the Houthis fired a missile at Riyadh this month that was shot down. The Saudis say it was an Iranian missile, fired with the aid of Hezbollah, and an "act of war" against the kingdom. The Houthis admit to firing the missile, but all three deny Iran and Hezbollah had any role. Whatever the facts of the attack, what the Saudis, with U.S. support, are doing today with this total blockade of that impoverished country appears to be both inhumane and indefensible.

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Margot2 · Nov 28, 2017

Churchill was an outspoken. advocate of gassing Kurds and Arabs in Iraq in 1920.. Aurthur Harris of the RAF was the hero of the hour.

waltky · Nov 28, 2017

Aid Begins To Filter Back Into Yemen, As Saudi-Led Blockade Eases...

Aid Begins To Filter Back Into Yemen, As Saudi-Led Blockade Eases
November 27, 2017 • Badly needed shipments of food and vaccines have arrived at some Yemeni air- and seaports, which have been closed for about three weeks by the Saudis in retaliation for an attempted missile strike.

Roughly three weeks into a blockade by a Saudi-led coalition, Yemeni ports of entry are beginning to see some desperately needed shipments of food and humanitarian aid. A container ship stocked with 25,000 tons of wheat docked at the Red Sea port of Saleef on Monday — just one day after a ship carrying 5,500 tons of flour arrived at Hodeidah, another port held by the Houthi rebels whom the Saudis have been seeking to dislodge from Yemen.

A ship carrying food aid docks at the port of the Yemeni coastal city of Hodeidah on Sunday.

And the "first plane landed in Sanaa [on Saturday morning] with humanitarian aid workers," World Food Programme regional spokeswoman Abeer Etefa told Reuters. Among this weekend's shipments were 1.9 million vaccines, according to UNICEF — a crucial influx for a country ravaged by more than 900,000 suspected cases of cholera. UNICEF says those supplies are enough to vaccinate some 600,000 children. Yet disease isn't the only danger. Earlier this month, Save the Children estimated that Yemen, which has been riven for years by civil war and a Saudi-led airstrike campaign, "would expect to see about 50,000 malnourished children under the age of five die from hunger or disease this year."

And that staggering number was calculated even before the Saudis implemented the blockade in retaliation for an attempted Houthi missile strike on a Riyadh airport. The Houthis, backed by predominantly Shiite Iran, have been fighting Yemen's internationally recognized government, which has been supported by the Sunni leaders in Saudi Arabia. "With this blockade it's very difficult to get supplies, and it's very difficult to deliver those supplies to the health facilities or the clinics to people in need mainly because also there is no fuel," Rasha Muhrez, Save The Children's director of operations in Yemen, told Here & Now earlier this month. "If this blockade continues, then the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate, and unfortunately, we would be unable to save these people in need."

But the easing of the blockade has appeared to offer reason for hope, however glimmering. Monday's shipment at Saleef alone will help "feed more than 1.8 million people for one month," Etefa said in a tweet announcing the arrival.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...r-back-into-yemen-as-saudi-led-blockade-eases
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waltky · Nov 30, 2017

Dey need drinkable water in Yemen...

ICRC buys fuel to supply Yemen with clean water
Nov. 29, 2017 -- The International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday it is buying 750,000 liters of diesel fuel to provide clean water to cities in Yemen affected by a blockade enforced by a Saudi-led coalition.

Robert Mardini, the regional director for the ICRC, called the move an "exceptional stop-gap measure." "We're buying and supplying 750,000 litres of fuel so as to provide clean water to 1 million people in Hodeidah & Taiz for one month," he tweeted. "ICRC not supposed to do this."

Some fuel stocks in the area are only available on the black market and their prices have soared, the BBC reported. The lack of fuel has created vast shortages of other essential needs, such as food, water and medicine. "Nothing is getting into Yemen. And time is running out," the ICRC tweeted on Nov. 18.

Yemenis collect drinking water from a donated water pipe in Sanaa, Yemen, on November 18. On Wednesday, the Red Cross announced it will buy fuel to provide clean water to Yemenis affected by the Saudi-enforced blockade.

The Saudi-led coalition, which includes several Arab states and receives military and logistical support from the United States, has been fighting the Houthi rebels since 2015. During that time, essential supplies, which were already scarce in the world's poorest country that relies on imports for 90 percent of its needs, became hard to find. And a blockade enforced three weeks ago has worsened the situation.

On Saturday, aid workers arrived in Yemen for the first time since the beginning of the blockade. "The needs are huge and there is much more to do for #YemenChildren," UNICEF tweeted. Nawal Mazahem, an English teacher, told the BBC earlier this month the blockade has been a "siege on people's livelihoods." "The suffering has been going on for a long time, and now it's worse," she said.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-.../?utm_source=sec&utm_campaign=sl&utm_medium=5
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waltky · Mar 22, 2018

How Global Politics Created Yemen's Humanitarian Disaster...

How Global Politics Made Yemen's Humanitarian Disaster
March 22, 2018 • The war in Yemen is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Reporters were recently given access to a part of the war zone, a conflict that has become a bloody battleground.

The war in Yemen is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Largely started as an internal fight between rebels and their government, it's now a much more bloody battleground in the regional rivalry between Iran — which backs the rebels — and Saudi Arabia, which backs the government. An NPR team spent weeks working to get a picture of the war, which has often taken place beyond public view. NPR traveled with the Saudi military into Yemen, interviewed people in rebel-controlled zones, and then traveled to Djibouti, in East Africa, a destination for Yemeni refugees. What emerged were the stories of people like Ola Ali Salim.

Salim is a citizen of Yemen, now a refugee. She had one daughter with her husband, who supported the family by driving a motorcycle, carrying one or two passengers at a time on the back of the seat. Last year her husband was driving around the capital city, Sana'a, when it erupted in violence. A former president was trying to switch sides in the civil war and was killed. Sana'a was also being bombed by a Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels. Amid explosions and gunfire, Salim simply stopped hearing from her spouse. "He never called. We don't know any news of him, so the only explanation is that he's dead," she told NPR. "They didn't find the body." It was only her latest loss. In a separate incident, three of her cousins were killed in what she believed to be an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition – the only side in the battle with an air force.

In December, she packed a few belongings and traveled to the coast, hiding her grief beneath the black head covering, or niqab, which Yemeni women are expected to wear. She brought along her 12-year-old daughter. They boarded a small boat that bobbed across the Gulf of Aden in the middle of the night. They arrived in the African country of Djibouti, where NPR interviewed her. Djibouti can have something of the feel of the movie Casablanca — a former French African colony, which serves as a way station or last refuge for the desperate. But there was nothing romantic about Salim's flight. She lives in a United Nations refugee camp in a tent with a floor of desert sand. She was within sight of the water, and nearly within sight of the country where she lost her husband. The war that displaced Salim has a U.S. connection, which was on exhibit in Washington this week. Saudi Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman visited the White House and got a warm welcome from President Trump, who showed pictures of U.S. military hardware sold to Saudi Arabia.

A globalized conflict

The U.S. has provided targeting information, equipment and aircraft refueling to the Saudi air campaign, which has been widely criticized for being indiscriminate and killing civilians in places like hospitals, funerals and homes. Several thousand civilians have been killed since 2015, when the Saudis got into the war. On Tuesday, the day the prince met Trump, the U.S. Senate defeated a resolution 55-44 that would have limited what the U.S. can do to support the Saudi war effort. The issue will likely come up again. While both sides – the Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition — have killed, detained or displaced civilians, much of the international focus has been on how the Saudi-led campaign escalated the violence. The Saudis, along with a coalition that includes the United Arab Emirates, argue that they are countering a dangerous rebel faction backed by Iran. They note that Houthis have fired missiles – allegedly Iranian-made – into Saudi territory.

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alexa · Mar 23, 2018

"The war in Yemen is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. " Indeed I have been reading for some time that it is worse than Syria but hardly gets any mention.

waltky · Apr 5, 2018

The Irony Of A $930 Million Donation To Help Yemen...

The Irony Of A $930 Million Donation To Help Yemen
April 4, 2018 - The U.N. has received one of the biggest donations for relief in aid history: $930 million to its Yemen Humanitarian Fund, which provides food, health care and other vital services for the conflict-ridden nation.

But there's an ethical concern. It's coming from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two countries that have helped fuel Yemen's conflict. "It's good news, but ironic that it's coming from big warring parties," says Paul Spiegel, a former senior official at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and a professor at Johns Hopkins University. "If they had given peace, [Yemen] wouldn't need their billion dollars." The funds from the two countries cover almost a third of the $2.96 billion required to implement the U.N.'s budget to help Yemen in 2018. An additional billion in funding was secured yesterday at a U.N. pledging conference in Geneva. The money will be disbursed to local and international aid groups in Yemen. Some in the aid sector welcome the money.

In a meeting in New York last week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his "deep gratitude" to Prince Mohamad Bin Salman Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's crown prince. But he went on to urge the Saudi government to protect civilians, abide by the rules of war and lift the blockade on Yemen's ports. Saudi Arabia and UAE are indeed players in Yemen's complicated civil war. The conflict began as an internal fight between rebels and Yemen's government, but escalated when Saudi Arabia intervened on behalf of Yemen's government to fight the Houthi rebels, who are backed by Iran.

Yemeni women carry blankets and lanterns distributed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Sanaa, Yemen.

Rights organizations like Human Rights Watch have criticized the Saudi-led military coalition, which includes the United Arab Emirates, for launching "indiscriminate and disproportionate" aerial and ground campaigns. The Saudi-led coalition has also enforced an on-again, off-again blockade to prevent aid and commercial goods from entering the country. It's for these reasons that some aid workers in Yemen say the U.N. should not accept the money. Nathanael Chouraqui is a lead Middle East researcher at Iguacu, a nonprofit that conducts research to profile charities in countries like Yemen. He has been speaking with local charity representatives about the donation.

Yahya Nasser, who works at a relief organization in Yemen, told Chouraqui, "We should not accept this money ... It's just an attempt to cover the crimes they are committing in Yemen." In her interview with Chouraqui, Amal Wahish, executive manager at Capable Youth Foundation, a small NGO in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, agrees. "This money should be rejected," she told Chouraqui. "It makes Saudi Arabia stronger — gives them a good image to the international community — and allows them to continue their work in Yemen." "The U.N. should make bigger efforts to stop the conflict," she adds. Nasser and Wahish confirmed their statements in an email to NPR. But there are differing opinions in Yemen.

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60 Minutes Story on Yemen

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