By: Michael D. Jacobsen
Staff writer at Fighting the Tyranny
Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. These are countries where we know the devastation and problems that war has brought. But would you be surprised to know that Yemen has been completely destroyed in a war that has raged for three years? In fact, Yemen has been called the worst humanitarian crisis in 2018 with over 8 million people who do not know where they will obtain their next meal. The death toll is staggering with reports of at least 50,000 children estimated to have been killed, just in 2017.
This has also been responsible for a devastating Cholera outbreak with an estimated 1 million people believed to have contracted the disease with at least 2,000 having died due to the disease. Cholera is spread when water comes into contact with waste from someone who already has the disease. From all accounts it is easily treatable with clean fluids. However the conditions are so bad that most areas do not have access to clean water, in fact the capital of Yemen, Sana’a has become the first capital city without clean water.
So why is this not headline news on any of the major TV news outlets?
The answer is simple, it is because Saudi Arabia, ally to the United States, and more importantly, major purchaser of American arms has been causing most of the destruction. Since they are major purchasers of American made weapons,we cannot afford to demonize them by showing the horror of their attacks. In fact Saudi Arabia has committed to purchasing 110 billion dollars worth of arms in the next 10 years. With a pending sale such as that, it is not hard to understand why we are hesitant to call out the Saudis for what they are doing.
The beginning of the civil war in Yemen happened in 2011 when the U.S. created Arab Spring protests forced the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down and hand over power to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. During the instability caused by this transition of power many problems arose. Most notably the rise of al-Quaeda separatists in the the south of the country and the growth of the Houdi movement whom are the Zaidi Shia muslim minority who opposed the former president for over 10 years,they managed to take over the northern province and in late 2014 and early 2015 took over the capital city of Sana’a. This along with help from forces that were loyal to the previous president helped the Houdi in an attempt to take control of the country in 2015.
This led to Saudi Arabia voicing fears that the rebels were being trained by Iran and were receiving military aid as well. This was grounds for Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Sunni Arab states to begin a bombing campaign to help restore President Hadi. This coalition is backed by logistical and intelligence support by the US, UK, and France.
Yet again the United States involves itself in a civil war it may have helped cause. Not only did we help create the Arab Spring uprisings but we are supplying the main country doing the bombing and giving them intelligence to tell them where to send their bombs. This is a proxy war and it is being used as an excuse for Saudi Arabia to play with its newly acquired weapons and we will not dare call them out for it because it will jeopardize billions in weapon contracts. Something that the military-industrial complex naturally does not want. The media mostly stays silent about this because they know if they reported to the American public exactly what was happening there would be outrage against the Saudis which would put future arms sales at risk.
There is most certainly collusion by the media and the military industrial complex to keep people ignorant of what is happening in Yemen. While researching this article I used many different questions to find more information, in all my queries I came across 2 articles from CNN regarding the Yemen crisis, that was it. No other major American news agency even wrote about it. We are kept ignorant, the bombs keep falling, and the weapons manufacturers keep making billions.
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