Yemeni patience with Saudis has a limit 

January 3, 2023 - 22:38

TEHRAN- Saudi forces have been shelling border regions in Yemen, killing a number of civilians as Sana'a warns its patience is running thin.

The Yemeni health ministry has condemned the latest violations of a very fragile truce that was supposed to end the eight-year war in the country. 

Senior officials in the Yemeni capital have accused the United States of seeking to prolong the war, saying that Washington is using Riyadh as a proxy to topple the Sana'a government. 

In the latest attack, Saudi shelling in Yemen's Saada province on the border with Saudi Arabia killed a number of civilians and injured several others. 

This is while human rights groups and NGOs are calling for the formation of an international committee to probe both Saudi and U.S. crimes. 

Monitoring groups say that since the initial UN-brokered truce in April last year, more than 3,000 Yemenis have died. 

An Omani delegation has been trying to revive the truce since its uneasy pause back in early October 2022.

But Yemeni officials say there have been regular acts of aggression by the Saudis since then, in particular, the northern border province of Saada. Local residents have reported hearing the sound of regular shelling from across the border.

There are also landmines, unexploded armaments, and cluster bombs that are scattered around this border region. Many residents there, especially children? are dying after picking them up, thinking they are toys, but they soon explode. This has been a common theme last year despite the announcement of a ceasefire. 

The same scenario has also been reported in the Western Yemeni province of Hodaydah.

Reports emerging from Hodaydah this week also say spy drones have been hovering above the seaport area. An indication of intelligence gathering for a potential attack by Saudi Arabia. Over the years, Yemeni officials have reported surveillance drones in the skies for around a week, followed by an act of aggression.

During the 2022 truce period, monitoring groups say roughly 3,000 Yemenis have been killed. This includes 102 children and 27 women. There were also 2,500 innocent Yemenis that sustained injuries during this time frame. Thousands of homes and dozens of communication stations were also targeted in addition to the damage to other infrastructure. 

Despite the truce, the Saudis appear to be violating the terms on a regular basis. 

The Saudi-led, U.S., backed coalition is also maintaining the all-out blockade of Yemen, preventing vital fuel tankers from entering the country to alleviate the suffering of the people. All the indications so far are that these acts of aggression will continue in 2023. 

Yemenis say that the United States is encouraging Riyadh to increase attacks on its southern neighbor. The leader of the popular revolution Abdul Malik al-Houthi has pointed out that Yemen is at war with the U.S. and Washington is just using the Saudis as a proxy to help the Americans overthrow the Sana’a government.

This is in line with the U.S. foreign policy that seeks military escalation across the globe to further increase the profits of the American military-industrial complex.

Washington has sold Riyadh hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons since the war on Yemen erupted in March 2015. It has also provided logistical and intelligence support as well as training Saudi warplane pilots, among many other measures of support.

This makes the U.S. directly complicit in the war, and it is one of the reasons why Yemen says it is Washington waging the war against their country.

The U.S. via the Saudis also cannot afford to lose Yemen as one of its proxies because of the country's very strategic location next to the Red Sea which is one of the world’s most valuable trade routes, and the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a chokepoint determining entry and exit to that route.

Washington will go to any length to keep this war from ending until Yemen's sovereignty is lost, despite the nearly eight years of war crimes and genocide that have been committed in the country. 

The bombing of hospitals, schools, and residential areas are all war crimes, which the U.S. and the Saudis must be held accountable for at the international tribunal in the Hague.

But, the two allies are continuing their program of cruelty in order to achieve their geopolitical goals. 

Add to this the seizure of Yemeni oil tankers that have worsened what is already the world's largest humanitarian crisis. 

These vessels have already been inspected by the United Nations to make sure only humanitarian supplies are being delivered to Yemen, yet Saudi Arabia continues to seize them.

This indicates that Washington doesn't only have a problem with the Sana'a government, its real issue is with the Yemeni people, and it appears the U.S. has no problem seeing innocent Yemenis suffer even further.

The reason America has an issue with the ordinary civilian Yemeni population is that they have flooded the streets in different cities as a clear sign of support for the revolution.

This is a revolution that has a foreign policy agenda to even help the Palestinian cause despite the difficult situation in which they are enduring.

On international Quds day, a sea of Yemenis have been turning out over the past years in solidarity with Palestine and have pledged to stand firm with the Palestinians.

This is another difficult challenge that the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel share and have in common. 

Whilst the strategic patience of Yemenis in the face of the Saudi truce violations has shown prudence, Sana'a has warned that this also has a time limit. 

The Yemeni armed forces say they have their fingers on the trigger.

It was the country's indigenously made missiles and drones that were fired at targets deep inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including Saudi state oil Aramco facilities that forced Riyadh to enter into a truce with Yemen in the first place.

Since then, Yemeni armed forces are reported to have been working day and night to further improve their military capabilities. 

It may not be long before the era of strategic patience is over, and Yemeni retaliatory operations resume. 

Saudi Arabia and the U.S. waged a war on Yemen in March 2015 to reinstall the former government of President Hadi which had forged close ties with Riyadh. 

Since then, and in a sign of desperation, Saudi Arabia has sidelined Hadi and replaced his former government with another one.

Over the past eight years, as a result of almost daily bombing raids by the Saudis, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have been killed, many of them women and children. 

The evidence on the ground shows the humanitarian crisis, as a result of the blockade of Yemen, has been a deliberate attempt to turn the Yemeni people against the revolutionary leaders.

But even this has not proven successful, as Yemen seeks to maintain its newly found sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity after decades of Saudi rule.

This is the same Saudi rule that made Yemen the poorest country in West Asia.

And this low poverty level (with corruption rife) was present even before the war kicked off.
 

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