... Patrick Cockburn: Wie der Jemenkrieg schöngeredet wird – Kinder nach dem Luftangriff auf Bus – Mädchen im Jemen gestorben – Vertriebene leben von Brotkrumen und Blättern – Beendet die US-Unterstützung für den saudischen Krieg im Jemen jetzt – Gespenster und die maskierten Medien – und mehr
November 2, 2018: How Yemen war became a stalemate and world’s worst humanitarian crisis – All those who want the war to continue – A ceasefire in Yemen? – Patrick Cockburn on whitewashing the Yemen war – Children after School bus air raid – Yemeni girl died – Displaced living on bread crumbs and leaves – End US support for Saudi war in Yemen now – Spooks and the masked media – and more
Dieses Jemenkrieg-Mosaik besteht aus zwei Teilen. Der zweite Teil hier:
This Yemen War Mosaic is divided in two parts. Part Two here:
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-mosaik-476B-yemen-war-mosaic-476B
Schwerpunkte / Key aspects
(Kursiv: in Teil 2 / in italics: in part 2)
Klassifizierung / Classification
Für wen das Thema ganz neu ist / Who is new to the subject
cp1 Am wichtigsten / Most important
cp1b Am wichtigsten: Kampf um Hodeidah / Most important: Hodeidah battle
cp2 Allgemein / General
cp3 Humanitäre Lage / Humanitarian situation
cp4 Flüchtlinge / Refugees
cp5 Nordjemen und Huthis / Northern Yemen and Houthis
cp6 Südjemen und Hadi-Regierung / Southern Yemen and Hadi-government
cp7 UNO und Friedensgespräche / UN and peace talks
cp8 Saudi-Arabien / Saudi Arabia
cp8a Jamal Khashoggi
cp9 USA
cp10 Großbritannien / Great Britain
cp11 Deutschland / Germany
cp12 Andere Länder / Other countries
cp13a Waffenhandel / Arms Trade
cp13b Mercenaries / Söldner
cp13c Wirtschaft / Economy
cp15 Propaganda
cp16 Saudische Luftangriffe / Saudi air raids
cp17 Kriegsereignisse / Theater of War
cp18 Sonstiges / Other
Klassifizierung / Classification
***
**
*
(Kein Stern / No star)
? = Keine Einschatzung / No rating
A = Aktuell / Current news
B = Hintergrund / Background
C = Chronik / Chronicle
D = Details
E = Wirtschaft / Economy
H = Humanitäre Fragen / Humanitarian questions
K = Krieg / War
P = Politik / Politics
pH = Pro-Houthi
pS = Pro-Saudi
T = Terrorismus / Terrorism
Für wen das Thema ganz neu ist / Who is new to the subject
Einführende Artikel u. Überblicke für alle, die mit den Ereignissen im Jemen noch nicht vertraut sind, hier:
Yemen War: Introductory articles, overviews, for those who are still unfamiliar with the Yemen war here:
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-einfuehrende-artikel-u-ueberblicke
Neue Artikel / New articles
Look at first article in cp1
cp1 Am wichtigsten / Most important
(** B H K P)
HOW THE WAR IN YEMEN BECAME A BLOODY STALEMATE — AND THE WORST HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN THE WORLD
Saudi Arabia thought a bombing campaign would quickly crush its enemies in Yemen. But three years later, the Houthis refuse to give up, even as 14 million people face starvation.
The Houthis, who are named for their founding family, have lost much of the southern territory they once ruled, but in most ways the war has made them stronger. Battle has sharpened their skills and hardened their resolve. It appears to have deepened their hold over a population that is weary of revolt and desperate for order of any kind. Some families, I was told, keep donation boxes with the words “In the Path of God” printed on them; everyone, young and old, contributes what cash they can to the war effort. Just before I arrived, members of a northern tribe not far from Sana, the capital city, packed up several hundred vehicles with grapes, vegetables, sheep, calves, cash and weapons. The convoy drove some 170 miles, across mountains and deserts — at constant risk of Saudi airstrikes — to support Houthi fighters on the front line near the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah.
It is tempting to see a certain poetic justice in the Houthis’ vengeful rage against Saudi Arabia. Their movement was born, three decades ago, largely as a reaction to Riyadh’s reckless promotion of its own intolerant strain of Salafi Islam in the Houthi heartland of northwestern Yemen. Since then, the Saudis — with the help of Yemen’s former ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh — have done all they could to corrupt or compromise every political force strong enough to pose a threat. The Houthis are a result: a band of fearless insurgents who know how to fight but little else. They claim a divine mandate, and they have tortured, killed and imprisoned their critics, rights groups say, just as their predecessors did. They have recruited child soldiers, used starvation as a weapon and have allowed no dissenting views to be aired in the media. They have little will or capacity to run a modern state, and at times have seemed unwilling or unable to negotiate for peace. But this, too, is partly a measure of Saudi Arabia’s fatal arrogance toward its neighbor, a long-term policy of keeping Yemen weak and divided.
That policy may now be bringing the Saudis’ worst fears to life. Houthi officials say they have studied the Viet Cong’s tactics, and routinely refer to the war as the quagmire that will bring down the House of Saud. “We expect this war to be very long,” I was told by the de facto Houthi foreign minister, Hussain al-Ezzi. “It is a war of bone-breaking — they break us or we break them.”
Soon after the first round of bombs began falling in Yemen in late March 2015, a svelte, meek-looking man stepped up to a lectern in Washington. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia launched military operations in Yemen,” said Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador. For most Americans, the Saudis’ choice of Washington as the place to announce their first major war in decades held little meaning. In Yemen, people mentioned it all the time. They saw it as a deliberate signaling of sinister complicity between America and its Saudi client, or even of some larger imperialist design. Jubeir emphasized in his speech that the kingdom had consulted “very closely and very intensely with many of our allies and partners around the world, and in particular the United States,” which was providing intelligence, targeting assistance and logistics.
The truth was somewhat different. The Obama administration agreed to support what the Saudis called Operation Decisive Storm with considerable reluctance, seeing it as an unwinnable proxy war against Iran. One former administration official told me the decision was partly a measure of tensions with Riyadh over the pending Iran nuclear deal, which the Saudis viewed as a potentially dangerous act of appeasement. Refusing to back the Saudi adventure could have damaged an important relationship, the official said. The risks of supporting it seemed acceptable, at least at first. But the Houthi forces proved unexpectedly resilient. Within weeks, Pentagon officials began complaining about the clumsiness of the Saudi bombers and the absence of any clear war strategy. John Kerry, Obama’s secretary of state, tried and failed to negotiate a truce.
The coalition’s blockade on Yemen, which began as soon as the war started, frequently bars or delays shipments of food and essential medical supplies. This might amount to a war crime, human rights groups say. I spoke recently to a Yemeni importer I have known for years, who complained bitterly about persistent and needless Saudi obstruction of wheat shipments.He saw these as deliberate and vindictive acts that have only worsened hunger in a desperate population. At the same time, Yemen’s currency has lost most of its value, and food prices have surged. The Saudis also block all commercial flights from Sana, making it extremely difficult for Yemenis with serious illnesses to get out of the country or receive the treatment they need.
The combined effect of the war and these artificial shortages is visible at hospitals all over the country. Outside the front doors of Jumhuriya Hospital, in Sa’ada, I walked past a dozen skeletal bodies sprawled on cots or on the ground. The hospital had no room for these sick and wounded people. Most of the province’s health clinics have been demolished by bombs. Inside the building, the smell hit me first: a reek of old food, sweat, urine and medicine. On the second floor, passing an open door, I looked in and glimpsed a brown puddle of vomit. Even the walls were smeared with grime. Everywhere, women in head-to-toe black clutched infants. One of them spoke to me in a faint voice: Her baby, 20 months old, was being treated for malnutrition. All four of her children were malnourished, but this one was the youngest and in the most danger. “There is bombing near our house — we cannot get food,” she said. “We eat potatoes.” A staff member told me that most of the mothers were themselves suffering from malnutrition and could not provide milk for their newborns. Some families were reduced to eating leaves, he said. – by Robert F. Worth (with many impressive photos)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/31/magazine/yemen-war-saudi-arabia.html
Comment: MUST READ MUST READ MUST READ. Wow this really is a great read and shows the power of reporting from inside Yemen's war. If more reporters were allowed into Yemen we would get a much better idea of the suffering there. Well done to the New York Times, who have been amazing in the last few weeks.
https://www.facebook.com/judith.brown.794628/posts/10157118418033641
and
(** B H K P)
The Destruction of Yemen
The New York Times Magazine has published an extensive and excellent report on the war on Yemen and the background to it. Here the reporter, Robert Worth, recounts the effects of the Saudi coalition blockade and bombing campaign.
The horrifying conditions in Yemen are the product of deliberate policy choices made by the Saudi coalition and their Western patrons. Countless innocent children have been deprived of basic necessities for years, and many tens of thousands of them have perished as a result, because of a disgraceful effort to starve the country into submission. Now up to 14 million people are on the brink of starvation. That is greater than the population of the Los Angeles metro area, and it accounts for half of the population of Yemen. That many people are at serious risk of dying from hunger because the Saudis and Emiratis won’t give up on a war that has achieved nothing and can’t be won. The U.S. has provided unconditional support for that war until now. We can hope that is starting to change, but it probably won’t change unless Congress votes to cut off all support for the coalition. Our government’s involvement in this war is deeply shameful and indefensible, and it should have come to an end long ago.
The possibility of massive loss of life in Yemen has overshadowed the reality that the war’s long-term negative effects on the health and development of entire generations of Yemenis are going to be devastating no matter what else happens. We can’t yet know the full extent of the disaster that has engulfed Yemen, but the people are going to be living with the consequences of this nightmare for decades to come.
Thousands and thousands of airstrikes have likely exposed civilians to toxic substances, and the population will be living with the aftereffects of these attacks for many years. The governments responsible for wrecking and starving Yemen ought to be required to make reparations and rebuild what they destroyed. Many millions of innocent people may die if conditions do not dramatically improve, and those that survive will have to live with a wrecked and poisoned country that was destroyed for nothing – by Daniel Larison
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-destruction-of-yemen/
(*** B K P)
All Those Who Want the War in Yemen To Continue
Regardless of the failure of Geneva 2018, what are the prospects for peace in Yemen? The short answer is that they are very slim. First and foremost, peace is achieved between mutually hostile parties through a process of compromises which result in each side achieving some aims and not others. Such a process can only succeed when both sides believe that they have more to gain from peace than from fighting. The Yemeni conflicting parties have not yet reached this stage: both sides believe that they have more to gain by continuing the fight than by ending it. Let us start with them.
THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF THE HOUTHISTS
Militarily, the past three years have seen limited losses for the Huthis on the “borders” of their area and they are likely to lose Hodeida and the Red Sea coast in coming months, but they are far from being defeated. Control in the core Zaydi densely populated highlands is unlikely to be eroded for years to come. Their military skills are improving, and the war economy is ensuring a steady supply of weapons and ammunition, supplemented by small items of imported advanced technology, most likely from Iran. At this stage, however, further expansion is out of the question and the best they can achieve is to maintain their position.
Hence, for the Huthis, now is a good time to talk, before a war of attrition seriously weakens them. Some Huthi leaders appear to share this view and have in recent months shown signs of flexibility manifested, among others, in direct discussions between Huthi leader Abdul Malik al Huthi and Special Envoy Griffiths. However, the assassination of Saleh Al-Sammad, president of the Sana’a based government, in April 2018 suggests that this view may not be shared by all Huthi leaders.
LITTLE REASON TO WANT PEACE
The position of Hadi’s “internationally recognised government” (IRG) is extremely different. Lacking any control or governance structures anywhere in the country, it is entirely dependent on Saudi and Emirati support. Supposedly responsible for more than 70% of the country’s territory, officially described as “liberated,” this represents at best 30% of its population. Most significantly, none of this area is actually administered by Hadi’s government, including the temporary capital Aden. The IRG’s only negotiating asset is its international recognition; for Hadi personally, he is named in UN Security Council Resolution 2216 as the “legitimate president.”
Although corruption is by no means their exclusive prerogative, members of his government and entourage are said to be accumulating wealth and receiving large hard currency salaries while failing to administer anything and standing by as the Yemeni riyal collapses, it fell by 30% in a few days last month at a time when 1.2 million government staff have now remained without their modest salaries for more than two years. These are among the reasons why this “government” is universally despised by Yemenis. Peace would almost certainly put an end to Hadi’s position as president and to the income streams of many of his associates. Hence this group is not particularly interested in a peace agreement.
The various forces which provide security in the ’liberated’ areas range from groups of Salafis in most southern governorates (“security belt” or “elite forces” depending on the location). Fully supported with equipment, training and salaries by the United Arab Emirates, they also have little incentive to want peace which would most likely end their financing streams and return them to semi-unemployment as agriculturalists or full unemployment in the towns, let alone the loss of the “machismo” status and influence intrinsic to their current positions.
AMBITIONS AND THE FAILURE OF THE COALITION
The other direct participants, relevant for a peace agreement are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who lead the coalition. Both have long-term ambitions in Yemen, discussed further below, ambitions which are increasingly in competition and have reached the point of conflict in some areas, adding a further complication to the overall situation. The UAE has more than once expressed its wish to see the war end, the current Saudi regime has done no such thing. Surprisingly, after three and a half years of expensive military involvement (estimated to cost Saudi Arabia USD 3–4 billion a month) and when the regime is trying to introduce large scale expensive reforms internally, it would be logical for Saudi Arabia to want to end this war which affects its international reputation as well as raising questions about the regime’s competence.
Instead, based on “fake news” of ongoing victories, the regime acts as if it can win despite reality: first and foremost this war, which was supposed to be a walkover completed in a matter of a few weeks, is now into its 44th month, with significant daily Huthis incursions into 3 border Saudi provinces,.
t is also worth wondering to what extent UAE and Saudi leaders believe their propaganda’s vastly overstated importance of Iranian involvement on the side of the Huthis. Accusing Iran of active involvement certainly helps to explain coalition failure to defeat a small group of ill-equipped mountain tribesmen who, unlike their forces, have not benefited from decades of western training, let alone the most expensive and sophisticated weaponry in the world.
A CONFLICT THAT PAYS OFF GREATLY
Beyond the official protagonists other forces have no interest in peace, namely the profiteers of the war economy, smugglers across borders, military fronts and sea routes. They range from senior leaders/wholesalers who collect large amounts to small operators manning checkpoints who simply want to feed their families, and everything in between. These types are found throughout the country and may be officially “aligned” with one political side or the other. They smuggle/trade everything from basic necessities, including fuel and food, consumer goods as well as weapons.
Weapons dealers are found nationally and internationally and clearly the most direct beneficiaries of the war. The main arms dealing countries bear a significant responsibility for keeping the protagonists in weapons of all sorts, and they are obviously led by the US, UK and France. Smaller scale arms smugglers and traders include Yemenis on all sides.
The failure of the new UN Special Envoy to bring together the warring parties in Geneva last month has been discussed. However, it is worth noting that the main constraint to UNsuccessful intervention is UNSC 2216 which, as mentioned above, both endorses Hadi’s position as president and effectively demands Huthi surrender. With the UK as “pen holder” on the Yemeni file at the Security Council, prospects for its replacement are remote, as long as UK foreign policy is dominated by its prioritisation of retaining the goodwill of the Gulf Cooperation Council states. The desperate humanitarian situation3 demands that others take the initiative to introduce a realistic resolution which could form the basis for real negotiations thus allowing the UN to play a meaningful role.
The USA, the UK, France and other western states policy in Yemen have in the past been primarily concerned with the sale of expensive weapons and counterterrorism – by Helen Lackner
https://orientxxi.info/magazine/all-those-who-want-the-war-in-yemen-to-continue,2714
(** B K P)
A Yemen Ceasefire? Believe It When You See It
While Pompeo and Mattis talk tough, the Saudis are readying for another offensive designed to starve civilians.
In an October 30 press release issued by the State Department, the Trump administration called “on all parties to support UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in Yemen.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis—both of whom have long defended the Yemen war—are now calling for a ceasefire within 30 days.
Yet these exhortations are meaningless without real pressure on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are poised to launch yet another offensive on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.
Meanwhile, as a tragic result of this horrible war, millions of Yemenis face starvation in what is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Incompetent Saudi forces, the mercenary-dependent Emirati allies, and their proxies cannot defeat the Houthis. So the plan is to starve them out. Taking the port of Hodeidah, through which as much as 70 percent of Yemen’s food is imported, is key to this strategy. If the Saudi-led coalition seizes Hodeidah—which remains doubtful—they can choke off food and supplies to the Houthi-controlled northern highlands where most of the Yemeni population resides. The hope is that there will then be an uprising against the Houthis.
The first stage of this strategy—a modern variation on siege warfare—has already been carried out. For more than three years, Saudi jets, which are dependent on U.S. midair refueling, have targeted and destroyed Yemen’s once productive farms and water wells.
The Saudis and Emiratis are really in Yemen because of its resources and its strategic position alongside the Bab al-Mandeb, a shipping choke point. Both countries are attempting, and largely failing, to implement a kind of neo-colonial policy. They are trying to carve Yemen into spheres of influence where they can rule through pliant proxies.
Ironically, for a fraction of the cost of the war, the Saudis could have bought off much of the Houthi leadership and allied tribal leaders. In turn, they could have received guarantees about Iranian influence. Before the rise of Saudi Arabia’s young and woefully inept ruler, Mohammad bin Salman, patronage formed the backbone of Saudi Arabia’s policy in Yemen.
When asked if the tribal alliances that the Houthis rely on for support were in any danger of unraveling, Brandt explained, “no, I do not think so. What one must understand is that according to tribal customs and traditions there is no possibility for them to accept the military conquest and occupation of their territories: tribal territory is sacrosanct. The inviolability of their territory is why the highland tribes will defend their territories to the death, and any violation of their areas by external forces, or even foreigners, will only reinforce their resistance.”
So far the Houthis’ alliances with both their tribal allies and parts of what was the Yemeni army remain intact. In many respects, it is the war, the presence of outside forces, and the threat of a takeover by foreign powers—even if only by their proxies—that gives the Houthis what legitimacy they have. In many parts of highland Yemen, the Houthis are deeply unpopular. As their power has grown, they have become oppressive, corrupt, and authoritarian.
Saudi Arabia and its backers could pursue meaningful negotiations that would provide the guarantees regarding Iranian influence that they desire. More from Brandt:
…all signals from Sanaa indicate that the Houthis’ leadership is interested in a negotiated peace.
Prince Muhammad bin Salman is determined to fight a war that may doom millions to a slow death by starvation. And this is likely the goal. As Brandt explains, “the only possibility of a military conquest of highland Yemen would be to starve Yemen for years to come. This is a classic siege tactic applied today to a whole population. The Houthis and their local allies are preparing for very hard times to come.” – by Michael Horton
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-yemen-ceasefire-believe-it-when-you-see-it/
(** B H K P)
Film: Catastrophic Death Toll in US-Saudi War on Yemen Has Been Grossly Downplayed
The UN and corporate media have for years claimed only 10,000 Yemenis were killed in the US/UK-backed Saudi/UAE war. But Yemen's actual death toll is 70,000 to 80,000. Patrick Cockburn on the whitewashing of the catastrophic war
Mainstream corporate media outlets have largely ignored or glossed over this catastrophic war since it began in March 2015, despite the fact that the U.S. and British governments have played key roles supporting the relentless Saudi bombing campaign. And even when media outlets have acknowledged the war, they have frequently downplayed and whitewashed just how criminal the assault has been.
One of the most repeated myths that has been endlessly rehashed in the past few years is the claim that only 10,000 Yemenis have been killed from the violence in this war. After 21 months, virtually all major media outlets are still repeating the same death toll, that 10,000 Yemenis have died, which is a figure from January 2017 from the United Nations. Still, in October 2018, this 10,000 death figure is still being repeated by the Associated Press, Agence France Presse, and the New York Times, among other outlets. And this absurd reporting has shown how Yemen’s death toll has been grossly downplayed for years.
Well, a new report in the British newspaper The Independent dispels this 10,000 death toll myth once and for all. In a new piece, titled The Yemen War Death Toll Is Five Times Higher Than We Think, veteran reporter Patrick Cockburn reports that at least 56,000 civilians and combatants were killed in Yemen in the 21 months between January 2016 and October 2018. It’s less than two years. Virtually all of those killed were Yemenis, along with a smaller number of mercenaries hired by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
This figure, this staggering figure of 56,000 dead, is based on the research of scholar Andrea Carboni, who is part of the group the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, ACLED. This researcher said he suspects the total number of people killed in fighting since the start of the U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen is actually between 70,000 and 80,000 dead. Between 70,000 and 80,000 dead, which would be seven to eight times higher than what most media outlets are reporting. And this number of deaths is actually increasing by more than 2,000 per month. As fighting is intensifying, specifically at the port of Hodeida- this is a major Yemeni port city that has been under attack by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And this is still a conservative estimate, because when figures differ this researcher has always erred on the side of using lower estimates. Moreover, this figure does not even include deaths from malnutrition or diseases such as cholera, and Yemen has been suffering from one of the worst cholera epidemics in recorded history.
So joining us to discuss this is the author of this shocking report that is extremely important, as it shows how dozens and dozens of media outlets have been repeating false information on the war in Yemen for two years now. The author, Patrick Cockburn, is an award-winning journalist and a longtime Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent. Patrick is also the author of several books, including most recently The Age of jihad.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Yes. You know, it’s been difficult for a long time to prove how many Yemenis were being killed because of difficulty of access, because the Saudis and their allies kept job playing down how many casualties there were. Finally we have figures which are very credible, that are based on multiple sources; from local reports, primarily. There’s quite an active media, local media in Yemen. Local reports in the Yemeni media about how many people are being killed in each incident. And this group ACLED, which is based in Sussex University in the UK, has been assiduously collecting this information, checking it very rigorously, and has finally published it.
So you know, I think it will be, it should be, difficult in the future for people to stick to this very old figure of 10,000 dead which, as you said, is two years old. I can’t think of any other war where you had, first of all, such an enormous underestimate, and second, people have been happy to go along with a figure which is almost two years old, and wasn’t that great to begin with. It was probably an underestimate. Probably come from health facilities. A lot of people never make it to the surviving health facilities in Yemen.
BEN NORTON: Yeah, and I actually want to walk through some of this misleading reporting here, Patrick. And then I want to get your take. So back in January 2017, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, reported that 10,000 Yemeni civilians had been killed and 40,000 more Yemenis had been injured. This is January 2017. The war began in March 2015. So this is nearly two years into the war. And they said 10,000 civilians have been killed. Since January 2017, this figure it has stayed the same despite the fact that there have been thousands of U.S. and UK-backed Saudi airstrikes targeting schools, homes, even most recently vegetable markets in which more than a dozen civilians were killed. And in August Saudi Arabia bombed a bus full of children, killing over 50 civilians. So not only has the 10,000 figure not been updated, but in fact, some sources have actually decreased the 10,000 figure, as if Yemenis somehow returned from the dead.
So in August 2018, 19 months after UN OCHA reported that 10,000 Yemeni civilians had been killed, instead most recently the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights claimed that 6,600 Yemeni civilians had been killed, and 10,500 had been injured. So somehow the number of civilian deaths decreased by 4,000. And those were the confirmed deaths. I mean, of course it’s- there’s a reason that it went down. It’s because those are the specific names they had. But it shows that the reporting on this has been so bad that actually the number has not only stayed stagnant, it has actually decreased over time. Can you respond to that?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Yeah. It is astonishing, and it is an indication of how coldly reported the war in Yemen has been. You know, you compare it with any other war in the region, certainly with Iraq, with Syria, you know, great international attention to civilian casualties in, certainly in Syria. Yet really very little interest in how many people are being killed in, in Yemen.
Now, you know, there is some sign that this is changing over the last few weeks in reaction to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the general discrediting of Saudi Arabia. But I wonder, once the Khashoggi affair begins to be forgotten, whether that Yemen will fall off the media map again. It hasn’t been even- it hasn’t been too difficult to work out over the last couple of years that the fighting was getting more intense, rather than less. And there is an important point to be made here, that there have been reports in the last couple of days that 10,000 troops backed by or supplied by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are massing around the port of Hodeidah, this is the last lifeline into Yemen, with the intention of attacking it. So already we’ve seen, you know, the casualties before December last year were generally under 2000 dead a month. Now every month over 2000 and going up. So this new escalation will mean that even more Yemenis will be dying in the conflict.
https://therealnews.com/stories/catastrophic-death-toll-in-us-saudi-war-on-yemen-has-been-grossly-downplayed = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ14A1yKjZ4
Remark: On this subject, also https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/yemen-war-death-toll-saudi-arabia-allies-how-many-killed-responsibility-a8603326.html
(** B H K)
Carrying bloodstained backpacks, Yemeni children return to class
The absence of 42 boys who were killed in a Saudi-led attack on a school bus weighs heavily on young survivors.
In the summer, a Saudi air raid decimated a school bus carrying a group of boys, some as young as six, as they went on a field trip to Yemen's northern city of Saada.
Images of children covered in blood being dragged from the twisted wreckage triggered global outrage, and reignited the debate over the safeguards Saudi Arabia, along with its military partner, the United Arab Emirates, employ in their fight against Houthirebels.
As they returned to school on Sunday, some of the surviving children carried blue UNICEF rucksacks, some were still stained with blood from that horrific day.
Hassan Hanash, a 12-year-old boy, was visibly haunted by the August 9 attack.
He was near the back of the bus when a US-made missile landed metres away, lifting the vehicle off the ground and flinging it into a nearby shop.
Although most of his physical injuries have healed, the emotional trauma is palpable.
"I still don't know why the aircraft attacked us," he told Al Jazeera, his face gaunt.
A total of 51 people, including 40 children, were killed in the attack, which the Saudi-UAE alliance had initially declared a "legitimate target".
"Anyone who says we were a legitimate target is a liar," an angry Hassan told Al Jazeera.
"We didn't fire a ballistic missile," he said, pointing to his small, frail leg which was wounded in the attack and continues to affect his mobility.
"Attacking children is the lowest any party in this conflict [can] do," said Meritxell Relano, UNICEF's resident representative in Yemen.
"There is no justification whatsoever to attack children. Unfortunately, this has become a common feature of the conflict."
Zaid al-Humran's son Osama was among those killed on August 9.
He had filmed the children on the bus prior to the attack and said were it not for the recording, the massacre would have gone unreported like several other crimes in the more than three-year-war.
"Without it, people would have believed [the Saudi narrative] that they were [the ones responsible for firing the] missile launchers," he told Al Jazeera.
Lingering trauma
Despite the school's many shortcomings owing to its limited resources, teacher al-Ojeri said it was one of the few places in Dahyan which provided routine, with classes offering a brief respite from the horrors of war.
But now as term begins again, several students are unable to shake off their lingering trauma.
"When I see my [new] teacher standing in front of me, I'm reminded of those teachers who were killed in the assault," said Ahmad, Hassan Hanash's 14-year-old brother.
An image of Ahmad after the attack, showing him soaked in blood, highlighted the devastation being unleashed in Yemen.
"I keep remembering when I was at the hospital and seeing all that blood and chaos around me," he said.
Attempting to put on a brave face, the child added that he would not allow the attack to deprive him of an education, referring to several pupils who had chosen not to return to school.
"By God, I will remain steadfast," he said.
But with the Yemen Data Project reporting more than 101 air raids on Saada province last month alone, and one attack striking a school, Ahmad's future, like countless other Yemenis looks bleak – by Naseh Shaker & Faisal Edroos
(** A H)
Yemen Girl Who Turned World’s Eyes to Famine Is Dead
A haunted look in the eyes of Amal Hussain, an emaciated 7-year-old lying silently on a hospital bed in northern Yemen, seemed to sum up the dire circumstances of her war-torn country.
A searing portrait of the starving girl published in The New York Times last week drew an impassioned response from readers. They expressed heartbreak. They offered money for her family. They wrote in to ask if she was getting better.
On Thursday, Amal’s family said she had died at a ragged refugee camp four miles from the hospital.
“My heart is broken,” said her mother, Mariam Ali, who wept during a phone interview. “Amal was always smiling. Now I’m worried for my other children.”
On a trip to Yemen to see the toll the war has taken, we found Amal at a health centre in Aslam, 145 kilometres northwest of the capital, Sanaa. She was lying on a bed with her mother. Nurses fed her every two hours with milk, but she was vomiting regularly and suffering from diarrhea.
Dr. Mekkia Mahdi, the doctor in charge, sat by her bed, stroking her hair. She tugged on the flaccid skin of Amal’s stick-like arms. “Look,” she said. “No meat. Only bones.”
Amal’s mother was also sick, recovering from a bout of dengue fever that she had most likely contracted from mosquitoes that breed in stagnant water in their camp.
Saudi air strikes had forced Amal’s family to flee their home in the mountains three years ago. The family was originally from Saada, a province on the border with Saudi Arabia that has borne the brunt of at least 18,000 Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen since 2015.
Amal was discharged from the hospital in Aslam last week, still sick. But doctors needed to make room for new patients, Mahdi said. “This was a displaced child who suffered from disease and displacement,” she said. “We have many more cases like her.”
The family took Amal back home, to a hut fashioned from straw and plastic sheeting at a camp where relief agencies do provide some help, including sugar and rice. But it was not enough to save Amal.
Her condition deteriorated, with frequent bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, her mother said. On Oct. 26, three days after she was discharged from the hospital, she died.
Mahdi had urged Amal’s mother to take the child to a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Abs, about 15 miles away.
But the family was broke. Fuel prices have risen about 50 per cent in the past year, part of a broader economic collapse, and that has pushed even short, potentially life-saving journeys beyond the reach of many families.
“I had no money to take her to the hospital,” Ali said. “So I took her home.” – by Declan Walsh (with photo)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/world/middleeast/yemen-starvation-amal-hussain.html = https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-amal-hussain-yemeni-girl-who-turned-worlds-eyes-to-famine-has-died/
https://www.newsweek.com/who-amal-hussain-yemen-child-famous-photo-died-saudi-arabia-war-1197928
Comment: I mean..??? What did everybody expect.This is what's happening to millions of yemenis.Keep tuned and you will hear of this evreyday Or DO something to stop it. Stop your government involvement in supporting the saudi coalition and help in the unjust war and siege against #Yemen
https://twitter.com/Maddllock2/status/1058125329309593600
(** B H)
AP PHOTOS: Yemen’s displaced live on bread crumbs, leaves
Yahia Hussein has already lost a 5-month-old son who wasted away and died as they fled their village in northern Yemen. Now living in a camp for the displaced, he is running out of ways to feed his other four children.
Jobless, he has no way to afford food, and he says he hasn’t received international aid for several months. His wife gives their children moldy bread crumbs mixed with water and salt. Some days she feeds them a paste made of boiled leaves from a vine called “halas.”
“We left everything behind. We walked for hours on foot, carrying nothing, not even one rial, no food or water,” he told The Associated Press at the camp in the northern province of Hajjah.
They are among millions of Yemenis who lost everything — homes, jobs, loved ones — in nearly four years of civil war. The conflict has pushed the country of 29 million people to the brink of famine. At least 8 million have no food other than what aid agencies provide.
The figure is likely to rise to 11.5 million as more people become unable to afford food because the worsening economic crisis caused by the war, U.N. agencies warn. The currency is crumbling in value, sending prices soaring.
The humanitarian disaster has come as the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition since 2015 has waged a relentless campaign of airstrikes and imposed a blockade, aiming to uproot Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who took over northern and central Yemen.
Hussein and his family had to flee their border village of al-Shada because of non-stop strikes and shelling. As they fled, the 5-month-old died in his mother’s arms. Hussein is not sure if it was from dehydration or malnutrition.
For the past four months, they have lived in a shack made of sticks, blankets and plastic sheets in a camp in Aslam district near the city of Abs.
The 46-year-old Hussein once grew grapes and pomegranates and thrived off trade in markets across the border in Saudi Arabia. He lost his livelihood, sold all his goats but one and cut down on meals to one a day.
The numbers of displaced are only growing – by Hani Mohammed (with photos)
https://apnews.com/3d671c76c82244f08c1895bc8243c32f = https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yemens-displaced-struggle-to-survive-on-leaves-moldy-bread-crumbs/
(** B K P)
Don’t wait 30 more days: End American support for the pointless civil war in Yemen now
Mattis missed the opportunity, however, to call for an immediate end of U.S. support for the war.
It’s worth asking how and why the U.S. got involved in the Yemen civil war in the first place. The trouble began on March 25, 2015 when the Obama administration issued a press release announcing public support for the Saudi war against Yemen.
Even minimal analysis of the strategic situation plainly reveals that whatever issues may exist between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, there is no threat to American national security as a result of the civil war brewing there. Plainly stated, there is no rationale justifying our continued support in that brutal war and it should end immediately.
In fact, had Obama not committed the United States to the war in 2015, it is entirely possible the sides may have come to a negotiated settlement long ago. Our substantial support has succeeded only in preventing the war from ending and perversely prolonging the suffering of the many innocent civilians.
As was so strongly exposed with the revelation that the most senior Saudi state officials brutally murdered Washington Post opinion writer Jamal Khashoggi, our values and those of Saudi Arabia do not align. Though it should have happened long ago, we should take this opportunity to reset our relations with Riyad — recognizing they are an autocratic regime — and let our national interests govern the relationship moving forward.
Sometimes American policymakers have to face a conundrum in balancing our interests and values in a complex world. In this case, there is no tension, as it is neither in America’s interests nor representative of our values to support Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen.
The problems in Yemen are political in nature and thus cannot be solved with military means. Already, the Saudi armed forces have proven to be incapable of militarily defeating their opponents. More fighting will merely increase the suffering.
If Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are serious about forcing a ceasefire in 30 days, the most effective tool at their disposal is to withdraw our military support. Put simply, it is not in America’s interest to pick sides in every violent conflict in the Middle East. We must be laser-focused with regards to our interests abroad — eliminating direct terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland.
When it makes sense, we can support humanitarian efforts and add diplomatic weight to help competing sides reach agreement. But we simply cannot continue trying to force a military solution to every political problem. It hasn’t worked in two decades and it will not work now.
America does not need to try and be the referee of the Middle East and force sides to the negotiating table in the Yemen civil war. The best thing we can do for peace is to immediately withdraw our military support and encourage the sides to find a political solution – BY LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
My comment: Yes!!! Yes!!! Yes!!! This is by a former US officer. Finally, an US arma member not taking for granted American exceptionalism, the US role of world's policeman, US interests all over the world and the necessitity to have the whole world in US grip.
(** B P)
Spooks and the Masked Media
To point out the media’s sickening hypocrisy (Greek hypokrites, stage actor) is, in one way, quite easy and facile, but in another quite difficult because of the powerful hypnotic hold people’s “trusted” media have on them. To even suggest that people’s favorite mainstream media are doing the work of the secret state feels so insulting to people’s intelligence with its suggestion of gullibility that many recoil in anger at the possibility.
A common retort is that it is absurd to suggest that The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, etc. are just disseminating propaganda from behind a mask of objectivity. And it is that small word “just” that reveals the falsity of the reply. For obviously these media organizations report truthfully on certain matters. For if they didn’t, their lies would not work. But when it comes to crucial matters of foreign or domestic policy – matters that involve the controlling interests of the elites – lies and deceptions are the rule.
Like parents with children, the masked media magicians play the good cop/bad cop game with great success. Obama was a god; Trump, the devil. Trump is a savior; Obama, a destroyer. This charade is so obvious that it’s not. But that’s how the play is played. At the moment, all eyes are on Trump, who commands center stage. And those obsessively transfixed eyes are staring out of the heads of people of all political persuasions, those that love and those that loathe the man and all he stands for. And who has created this obsession but none other than our friends in the corporate media, the same people who gave us Obama-mania.
Meanwhile, back stage…it’s a wonderful life.
There’s Saudi Arabia and the recent news about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi war on Yemen. You may rightly wonder what that is all about.
And you might remember and be wondering about the poisoning, allegedly by Russia, of those Russian nationals Sergei Scripal and his daughter Yulia, who have been kept in total isolation by the British authorities for eight months.
Do you wonder about where the war against Syria went? Has it just gone to sleep until after November’s election? Is that what wars do, take naps?
Do you wonder obsessively about the upcoming mid-term election and all those “former” CIA folks running for office? “Crucial” elections, the media tell us. The state of the country is riding on them, right? Or is it the world?
As you no doubt do know, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other corporate media are outraged by the killing of Khashoggi and now by the Saudis’ war on Yemen. Does their outrage make you wonder how outrage works?
Here from seven years ago:
The extent of America’s war in Yemen has been among the Obama administration’s most closely guarded secrets, as officials worried that news of unilateral American operations could undermine Mr. Saleh’s tenuous grip on power.
That was the NY Times’ Mark Mazzetti on June 8, 2011, two-and-a-half years into the Obama administration.
This is Mark Mazzetti for October 20, 2018, “Saudis’ Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider”:
In one conversation viewed by The Times, dozens of leaders [Saudi] decided to mute critics of Saudi Arabia’s military attacks on Yemen by reporting the messages to Twitter as “sensitive.
The article goes on to describe how the formerly Saudi good guys are getting bad and doing Russian-like stuff like trolling and “swarming and stifling critics on Twitter” in a propaganda and public relations campaign. Boy, isn’t it shocking and a cause for wonder? What they wouldn’t do!
And then there’s the Times’ emotional story from October 20, 2018 by Declan Walsh with photos and video from Tyler Hicks – “This is the Front Line of Saudi Arabia’s Invisible War” – that says:
“The Khashoggi crisis has called attention to a largely overlooked Saudi-led war in Yemen. On a rare trip to the front line, we found Yemenis fighting and dying in a war that has gone nowhere.”
“Largely overlooked” – by whom? “Gone nowhere” – and where was it supposed to go?
Now what’s happening, Mr. Reader? Has the worm turned? Do you wonder? It’s hard to remember to forget or forget to remember, isn’t it?
Would this article – U.S. stepping up weapons shipments to aid Saudi air campaign over Yemen – from April, 7, 2015 make you wonder what’s happening now?
It begins:
“The United States appears to be slowly but steadily deepening its involvement in the war in Yemen.”
So many things “appear” and disappear, it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
Yes, the American stage is populated with so many spooky masked media characters, you’d think they were out to scare and trick us, rather than treat us well.
I’m afraid that’s what’s happening in Wonderland, Mr. Jones – by Edward Curtin
https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/31/spooks-and-the-masked-media/
cp1b Am wichtigsten: Kampf um Hodeidah / Most important: Hodeidah battle
(* A K)
Saudische Koalition beginnt neue Offensive im Jemen
Ungeachtet amerikanischer Appelle hat die von Saudi-Arabien geführte Koalition im Jemen eine neue Offensive zur Eroberung der wichtigen Hafenstadt Hodeida begonnen. Das berichtet der Fernsehsender Al-Arabiya
(* A K)
Clashes in Hodeidah
In the port of Hodeidah, fighting broke out early on Friday in a southern district, residents and military sources said.
The coalition had massed thousands of troops near the city on Wednesday, in a move to pressure the Iran-aligned Houthis to return to U.N.-sponsored peace talks.
The sources in Hodeidah said fighting was heard in areas near the airport and the university, and Apache helicopters were spotted in the sky.
Forces loyal to the Saudi-backed government have said coalition strikes were intensified on Thursday night on Houthi bases near the eastern entrance to the port city, which is a gateway to the capital, and in its southern part.
and
(* A P)
Fierce battles between forces backed by Saudi-led coalition and the #Houthis have been going on for hours in the southern and eastern outlets of the Red Sea port city of #Hodiedah, with huge blasts being heard and air strikes.
https://twitter.com/mohammedalqadhi/status/1058290706429698048
(A K pH)
6 Saudi-led airstrikes targetr Hodeidah
The US-backed Saudi-led coalition warplanes waged on Thursday six airstrikes on Hodeidah province over last hours, a local official told Saba.
The six airstrikes attacked Kilo 16 district, the official said.
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news513098.htm
(A K pH)
Children Wounded in aggression coalition’s shelling in western coast
Two children were injured on Thursday in coalition-backed militiamen bombing on Hodeidah province, a local official told Saba.
The militia’s artillery targeted citizens in Tuhayta district
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news513102.htm
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3541&cat_id=1
(A H K)
UNICEF Regional Director Stresses The Need to Avoid Conflicts in Hodeidah Port
The acting governor of Hodeidah, Mohamed Ayyash Quhaim, and UNICEF Regional Director in the Middle East, Dr. Gert Kapillar, briefed the council on Thursday on the work of the port of Hodeidah and a number of its service facilities. The Executive Chairman of the Foundation, Captain Mohammed Abu Bakr bin Ishaq pointed out that the port of Hodeidah despite the aggression and the siege imposed by the US-Saudi aggression and the continues raids is working normally in the reception and unloading ships loaded with food aid and other all the day. He pointed out that the ports are complying with the International Security System for Ports (ISPS) indicating that the vessels going to Hodeidah and Salif ports are subject to United Nations supervision procedures (UNVIM).
The Regional Director of UNICEF in the Middle East praised the great efforts made by the officials, employees and workers of the Ports Foundation and their humanitarian duty despite the difficulties and the magnitude of the challenges and risks. He pointed to the importance of the role played by the port and the need to avoid any conflicts or dictates as a vital outlet for the provision of basic materials for the people.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3538&cat_id=1
(A K pH)
Aggression mercenaries in the West Coast targeting citizens in the attack with mortar shells, injuring two children who were directly assisted to hospital Zabid (photos)
https://twitter.com/A7medJa7af/status/1057995980589674497
https://twitter.com/A7medJa7af/status/1057995874712911873
(* B H K)
Film: Please retweet this; An outcry from Yemen about the truth regarding Yemeni port city of #Hodeidah. If the Saudis take this city, the lives of millions would be endangered, as the Saudis would have the ability to cut off vital food aid & supplies.
https://twitter.com/agerhusmedia/status/1057797453183942659
(* A K)
Saudi-led coalition masses troops near Yemen's Hodeidah as pressure mounts to end war
The Saudi-led coalition has massed thousands of troops near Yemen’s main port city of Hodeidah, local military sources said on Wednesday, in a move to pressure Iranian-aligned Houthi insurgents to return to U.N.-sponsored peace talks.
“Thousands of Yemeni soldiers trained by the coalition have been sent to the outskirts of Hodeidah in addition to modern weaponry including armored vehicles and tanks... in preparation for a big operation in coming days,” said one source.
Residents told Reuters the Houthis had also deployed forces in the center of Hodeidah city, at the port and in southern neighborhoods in anticipation of an onslaught.
Peter Salisbury, senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said he did not doubt a build-up of coalition forces was taking place but he was skeptical about the numbers.
“I’m sure there has been a troop surge, but I find the 30,000 figure quite hard to believe,” he said.
(A K pH)
Yemeni Air Defenses Down Saudi Reconnaissance Plane In Yemen’s West Coast
http://www.newnewss.net/yemeni-air-defenses-down-saudi-reconnaissance-plane-in-yemens-west-coast/
cp2 Allgemein / General
(* A K P)
Interactive Map of Yemen War
(B K P)
Größte Katastrophe der Gegenwart
Mein Kommentar: Seicht.
(B H K)
Film: Alexander Stenzel, ARD Kairo, zur Lage im Jemen
https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-466451.html
(* B H K)
Film: Bürgerkrieg im Jemen: UN warnen vor Hungersnot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1IuOdEDhEk
(B H K)
Film: "Größte humanitäre Katastrophe der Welt": der Krieg im Jemen
https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-466543.html
(B K P)
Gibt es jetzt Hoffnung für das arabische Land?
Millionen Jemeniten leiden seit Jahren unter Krieg und Hunger. Die USA fordern nun ein Ende der Kämpfe – und bringen damit Saudi-Arabien in Bedrängnis.
Mein Kommentar: Seicht.
(* B K P)
Audio: Episode #075: Crown Control (feat. Bruce Riedel)
Winding down our recent coverage of Saudi Arabia, Phil and Cooper speak with Al-Monitor columnist Bruce Riedel at the Brookings Institution to get his insight on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the state of the US-Saudi relationship, their involvement in the Yemen Civil War and palace intrigue.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/podcasts/2018/10/episode-075-crown-control-feat-bruce-riedel.html
(* B K P)
Film: Whitney Webb Interview - The Ignored Yemen Genocide: "18.4 Million People Are Starving To Death"
Joining me today is Whitney Webb of Mint Press News, someone I greatly respect and who has done extensive work exposing the true nature of was has been dubbed "The Forgotten War" and that is the US-backed invasion of Yemen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiiV5cRgcKU
(* B P)
Of all Yemeni governorates, #Taiz contains the most landmines planted by #Houthi militia. Of the 906 civilians killed in 17 governorates, 208 were from Taiz, and of 417 injured, 328 were from Taiz
https://twitter.com/BelqeesRights/status/1058087782818680834
(* B K P)
Yemen Talks Impossible without Accountability
The US and a number of other western states are renewing calls for a ceasefire in Yemen and a return to UN-backed peace talks aimed at ending the three-and-half-year war, but such efforts are destined to failure when they are disingenuous right from the start.
The administration of Donald Trump said on Wednesday the climate was right to resume peace talks, following similar comments from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis this week.
Some might believe the US call is an encouraging step towards a political solution and an end to the suffering of the Yemeni people, but is this enough? How could we make sure this is genuine effort to end the suffering of millions of poor and incarcerated Yemenis, and not an effort to rescue the Saudis who are struggling to get out of the Yemen quagmire. The answer is obvious.
The question is what about accountability and justice for all those families that were destroyed by the indiscriminate air strikes? And what about accountability for the US-backed, Saudi-led war crimes as well as the destruction of a nation?
Lest we forget, the US and British governments have already admitted that they are training the Saudi Air Force despite global accusations and condemnations that they are carrying out atrocities in Yemen. Besides providing intelligence and targeting assistance, the United Kingdom and the United States have also sold tens of billions of dollars in arms to the country, an autocratic regime with one of the worst human rights records in the world.
Despite the accusations of war crimes, the US, the UK and several other Western governments continue to defend selling arms to Riyadh and training its pilots, insisting close ties keep the West safe.
Worse still, British and American forces are helping the Saudi Air Force in order to 'improve their targeting processes' – and, therefore, their compliance with international law. This is while the targeting courses have failed to improve the Saudis’ targeting processes, much less support International Humanitarian Law compliance.
Any doubters should go through numerous reports published by Amnesty International, UN Human Rights Council and many other international aid groups which have documented the humanitarian costs of the Saudi-led, Western-backed airstrikes. They say these targeting skills and weapons, including cluster munitions banned in most countries, have been used indiscriminately against civilian targets, including markets, weddings, hospitals, and UN schools.
It is indeed shameful that the US government is trying to hide the truth by calling for a ceasefire now after more than three years of failed regime change campaign.
Many Western governments have been directly involved in this humanitarian catastrophe from day one, and they should all be held to account when this grisly episode is over.
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13970810000636
(* B K)
Mindestens 56.000 Tote im Jemen-Krieg
Es sind nicht 10.000 Tote, wie ständig als fester Bestandteil jeder Meldung zum Krieg im Jemen behauptet wird, sondern mindestens 56.000, wie das Team des Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) ermittelt hat.
Quelle der Organisation sind hauptsächlich Berichte in den jemenitischen Medien und "in geringerem Ausmaß" aus internationalen Medien. Offenbar hat man die Toten, die nach einem Kampf am Boden oder nach Luftangriffen gemeldet wurden, zusammengezählt, wie es der Bericht des seit vielen Jahren tätigen britischen Kriegsberichterstatter Patrick Cockburn im Independentverstehen lässt.
Bei Acled würde man, wie Cockburn im Gespräch mit dem für die Recherchen zuständigen Analysten Andrea Carboni erfahren hat, die Glaubwürdigkeit "sorgsam prüfen und konservativ vorgehen". Bei widersprüchlichen Angaben werde die niedrigere Zahl verwendet. Allerdings berücksichtige man eher die Angaben der Opfer als die derjenigen, die für den Angriff verantwortlich sind.
Die stets gemeldete Zahl der 10.000 Opfer stamme von einem ungenannten UN-Vertreter, der sie 2017 gemacht habe und sich dabei auf eine Statistik des jemenitischen Gesundheitsministeriums bezogen habe. Dabei sei es geblieben. Es handle sich dabei lediglich um zivile Tote, das Gesundheitsministerium sei nicht in einem Zustand, der verlässliche Zahlen liefern könne und die Zahl sei veraltet; der Krieg tobt seither weiter.
Für die beiden von den USA, Großbritannien und Frankreich unterstützen Kriegsführer Saudi-Arabien und die Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate hat die viel zu niedrig angesetzte Zahl einen willkommenen Effekt, weil sie das wahre Ausmaß der Angriffe versteckt.
Ohnehin sind bei den bisher gezählten 56.829 Toten nicht diejenigen berücksichtigt, die aufgrund der den Krieg begleitenden Maßnahmen - die willentlich herbeigeführte Versorgungsnot -, sterben, weil sie durch Mangelernährung zu schwach sind, um sich gegen Krankheiten zu wehren.
Politische Reaktionen: Pentagon stellt ein Ultimatum
Auch Frankreich schlägt neue Töne an
In der französischen Tageszeitung Le Monde dominierte der Jemen heute bis Mittag den Webauftritt. Neben Berichten zur humanitären Katastrophe wurde auf einen veränderten Ton der französischen Regierung aufmerksam gemacht. Berichtet wurde, dass Verteidigungsministerin Florence Parly nun deutlich gemacht habe, dass der Militäreinsatz, den Saudi-Arabien mit seiner Koalition im Jemen gegen die Houthis führe, "ausweglos" sei und es dringend an der Zeit sei, dass er beendet würde.
Ob das im Haus Saud zum Umdenken führt? Ob der Druck tatsächlich zu Veränderungen führt, die für die jemenitische Bevölkerung eine deutliche Verbesserung der Situation bedeutet?
Für Zweifel daran gibt es viele Gründe. Einmal weil die Interessen Saudi-Arabiens und seiner Verbündeten, wie zuletzt Georg Meggle an dieser Stelle ausführte (Der wahre Grund des Jemen-Kriegs?), am Jemen enorm sind - es gibt Hinweise auf riesige Erdölvorkommen.
Zum anderen, weil auch ansonsten die geschäftlichen Verbindungen, zum Beispiel der Waffenhandel mit Saudi-Arabien, so beschaffen sind, dass man dem Partner nicht wirklich in Parade fahren will. Wie die geschäftlichen Rücksichten aussehen, demonstrierten kürzlich Macron wie auch Putin.
Ein wichtige Rolle, um mit Saudi-Arabien vorsichtig umzugehen, spielt die Front gegen Iran, die ja auch beim Jemenkrieg ein ganz wichtiger Faktor ist. Am 4. November wird, wie es der "Countdown" auf der Homepage des US-Außenministeriums ankündigt, die nächste Runde schwerwiegender Sanktionen gegen Iran eröffnet. Der Druck auf Saudi-Arabien verhält sich dazu relativ. Man kann mit gutem Grund annehmen, dass er an der Oberfläche bleibt.
Die PR-Maschine
Mit Oberfläche ist die Wahrnehmung in der Öffentlichkeit gemeint. Es kommt ganz darauf an, wie Saudi-Arabien nun ein "Einlenken" im Jemen-Krieg verkauft. Dass das Haus Saudi mit seinem Medienimperium nicht nur über gute "Sendeanstalten für gut kalibrierte Botschaften" verfügt, ist nur ein Teil der gut geölten PR-Maschinerie, mit der die absoluten Herrscher arbeiten können.
Dazu kommen Think Tanks in Washington, die wiederum auch Einfluss auf europäische Wahrnehmungen haben, wie es das idyllische Bild des "Reformprinzen Mohammed Bin Salman" auch in französischen und deutschen Medien vorführte.
Nicht zuletzt wird mit viel Geld viel Druck gemacht, wie es ein Guardian-Bericht offenlegt. Dort wird dargelegt, wie Vertreter des Königreichs auf die UN-Organisation OCHA einwirkten, um die "humanitären Großtaten" Saudi-Arabiens im Jemen herauszustellen. – von Thomas Pany
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Mindestens-56-000-Tote-im-Jemen-Krieg-4208252.html
und aus den Kommentaren:
schlimmer noch
Die stets gemeldete Zahl der 10.000 Opfer stamme von einem ungenannten UN-Vertreter, der sie 2017 gemacht habe und sich dabei auf eine Statistik des jemenitischen Gesundheitsministeriums bezogen habe.
Diese Aussage ist sehr unpräzis, das erweist eine 30-Sekunden-Recherche per Google.
Die Zahl der Todesopfer im Jemen ist auf rund 10.000 gestiegen. Das sagte der UNO-Koordinator für humanitäre Hilfe in dem Bürgerkriegsland, Jamie McGoldrick, am Dienstag in Sanaa.
Dies ein Zitat aus Die Presse, vom 30.08. 2016(diepresse.com/home/politik/aussenpolitik/5077286/Schon-10000-Tote-im-Buergerkrieg-im-Jemen)
Wir werden also seit über zwei Jahren mit der immer selben Zahl beliefert
Der Jemen Krieg hat bisher über 200.000 Tote gefordert, berichtet Bernhard bei MoA (Moon Of Alabama):
Dies entspricht auch meiner Einschätzung aufgrund jahrelang gesammelter Informationen. Die SA/US-Kriegskoalition flog bis 2017/Juli im Jemen über 90.000 Bomber-Angriffe, bei denen über 421,000 Häuser zerstört wurden. Verschiedene NGOs berichteten von über 50.000 getöteten, nein, ermordeten Kindern im selben Jahr (2017), über 60.000 ermordete Kindern ein Jahr zuvor (2016) - so berichtete Reuters. Verbunden mit der größten Cholera-Epidemie weltweit sagt einem der Menschenverstand, dass die Opferzahlen im Jemen weit jenseits von 200.000 Toten liegen müssen.
> https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/essay-yemen-s-destruction-a-global-catastrophe-20640
Durchgesickertes UN-Memo enthüllt: Saudi-Arabien zahlte für westliche Propaganda
Riad hat dafür fast eine Milliarde Dollar zur Verfügung gestellt, um diese Bemühungen zu finanzieren. Das Dokument nennt 930 Millionen Dollar, die den Hilfsgruppen zur Verfügung gestellt wurden. So waren die fast 1 Milliarde Dollar im Wesentlichen ein Schweigegeld und ausdrücklich an “die Höhe der positiven Werbung für Saudi-Arabien” gebunden!
Aber jetzt, mit der Veröffentlichung dieses brisanten Dokuments, wird bestätigt, dass sich sogar die UNO zur Propagandamarionette der Saudis neben den bereits willigen Mainstream-Medien gemacht hat. Wie die Journalistin und Nahost-Expertin Sharmine Narwani betont, zeigen die durchgesickerte Dokumente im Wesentlichen “dass die UNO sich kaufen lässt“,um Kriegsverbrechen der VAE zu verdecken und diese gar zu Unterstützen.
Mein Kommentar: Die Zahl von 10.000 stammt sogar schon von 2016. – Allein die Zahl der an vermeidbaren Krankheiten gestorbenen Kinder beträgt über 50.000 pro Jahr. Es wird nicht reichen, wenn man die Hälfte davon dem Krieg, und hier vor allem den Auswirkungen der saudischen Blockade und des saudischen Luftkrieges, zurechnet.
(* B K P)
Der vergessene Krieg im Jemen: "Die saudischen Militärs gehören vor ein internationales Tribunal"
Vor allem die Bombardements durch die saudi-arabische Luftwaffe seien für die Opfer verantwortlich, sagt Achim Schlott vom Vorstand der Deutsch-Jemenitischen Gesellschaft in Frankfurt.
Er spricht von "Kriegsverbrechen, die überwiegend von den saudischen Kräften begangen werden" und von "bis zu 50.000 Toten". Seine Schlussfolgerung: Die saudischen Militärs "gehören eigentlich vor ein internationales Tribunal."
Das Land könne sich schon lange nicht mehr selbst versorgen, ein rasantes Bevölkerungswachstum in den letzten Jahrzehnten habe die Lage verschärft.
Boykott und Hafenblockaden der Saudis sorgen nun nicht nur dafür, dass kaum mehr Lebensmittel ins Land kommen – auch die Wasserversorgung wird immer prekärer, weil der Treibstoff für die Pumpen ausbleibt.
Entkommen können die Jemeniten dem Krieg in ihrem zerrütteten Land nur schwer. Über den Golf von Aden nach Somalia zu gelangen, ist nicht einfach, die riesigen Wüsten des Landes zu durchqueren nahezu unmöglich.
Und die Grenze nach Saudi-Arabien ist praktisch unpassierbar: Sie sei, sagt Potthast, schon vor dem arabischen Frühling und dem Beginn der Unruhen im Jemen "mit modernster technischer Ausrüstung gesichert worden" – nicht zuletzt mit deutscher Hilfe.
Weil es fluchtwillige Jemeniten bis nach Europa erst recht nicht schaffen, stößt der mörderische Konflikt hierzulande bisher auf wenig Interesse: "Daran kann nicht einmal die größte Cholera-Epidemie der Geschichte viel ändern", klagt der Islamwissenschaftler Potthast.
Der wachsende Machtanspruch des saudischen Kronprinzen Mohammed bin Salman verschärft offenbar die ohnehin komplizierte Lage in der Region.
Michael Bauer sieht einen "dramatischen Wandel" in der Außenpolitik Saudi-Arabiens durch den Einfluss Salmans. Das Land sei früher bestrebt gewesen – "oftmals vergeblich, manchmal aber auch mit Erfolg" –, die Konflikte in der Region "auszubalancieren".
Jetzt aber werde Saudi-Arabien zunehmend selbst aktiv und versuche insbesondere, der Ausweitung des iranischen Einflusses entgegenzuwirken. Bauers Befürchtung: "Der strategische Planungsprozess hält mit dieser Neuorientierung nicht Schritt."
Anders ausgedrückt: Mohammed bin Salman handelt unüberlegt. "Wenn die saudischen Aktionen scheitern", meint Bauer, "gibt es keinen Plan B."
Für den Jemen kommt deshalb derzeit nur eine Lösung in Frage, bei der der machtbewusste saudische Kronprinz nicht als Verlierer dastehen würde.
Die Folgen dieser saudischen Politik seien im Jemen "besonders dramatisch", so Bauer, weil der Krieg mit so enorm hohen Opfern unter der Zivilbevölkerung verbunden sei.
(* A B H P)
CARE zu Jemen-Krieg: Jeder Tag ohne Waffenstillstand ist ein Tag zu viel
Eine Situation, in der jeder Tag ohne Waffenstillstand ein Tag zu viel ist, meint im Gespräch mit Vatican News Karl-Otto Zentel, der Generalsekretär des humanitären Hilfswerkes Care. Er ist gerade von einer Reise in den Jemen zurückgekehrt. Wir haben ihn gefragt, was er von dem politischen Vorstoß der Vereinigten Staaten hält.
Karl-Otto Zentel: „Ich finde, das ist eine ausgesprochen erfreuliche Entwicklung, die eigentlich schon viel früher hätte erfolgen sollen. Mich wundert der lange Zeitraum, der gegeben wird, denn die Situation im Jemen erlaubt eigentlich keine 30 Tage Zeit mehr, und, was in diesen Forderungen fehlt - zumindest, soweit ich es aus den Medien entnehmen kann – die Vorgabe für freien und ungehinderten humanitären Zugang, die Lieferung von humanitären Hilfsgütern, die Öffnung der Häfen auch für konventionelle Güter wie Grundnahrungsmittel, die die Menschen dringend zum Überleben brauchen. Das muss dringend miteinander verknüpft werden, dann passt das Ganze zusammen.“
Vatican News: Wie kommt es, dass ausgerechnet jetzt die USA diesen Waffenstillstand fordern und die Rückkehr an den Verhandlungstisch?
„Das können wir nur mutmaßen. Es ist ja in letzter Zeit mehr und mehr Aufmerksamkeit auf das Verhalten von Saudi-Arabien gelegt worden, das hat vielleicht Nachdenken ausgelöst. Eigentlich wäre es wichtig gewesen, dass der Jemen und die Situation dort schon viel früher zu einer internationalen politischen Reaktion geführt hätten. So sehr ich mich freue, dass nun eine solche Forderung kommt, umso mehr bedauere ich es, dass es erst jetzt kommt und dass es anscheinend aktuelle Ereignisse benötigt hat, um das auszulösen und dass die Menschen so lange alleine gelassen wurden von der internationalen Gemeinschaft.“
„Die Forderungen der USA beziehen sich ja vor allem auf einen Waffenstillstand. Die Friedensgespräche stehen da erst einmal in weiter Ferne. Es ist also der erste wichtige sofortige Schritt, um Voraussetzungen dafür zu schaffen, dass Hilfe geleistet werden kann für die Menschen, die vom Hungertod betroffen sind. Wir müssen auch realisieren, es sterben bereits jeden Tag Menschen im Jemen, gerade Kinder, an Unterernährung an Hunger und jeder Tag, den das länger dauert, bis der Waffenstillstand in Kraft tritt und sich die Zugangswege öffnen in das Land, wird weitere Menschenleben kosten. Deshalb ist wirklich jeder Tag ein Tag zu viel.“
https://www.vaticannews.va/de/welt/news/2018-10/usa-jemen-krieg-opfer-konflikt-care-hilfswerk.html
(B H K P)
Film: 14 Million People On Brink Of Starvation In Yemen | All In | MSNBC
14 million people are on the brink of starvation in Yemen, but the U.S. can avert disaster if it stops supporting the Saudi war atrocities in Yemen.
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/14-million-people-on-brink-of-starvation-in-yemen-1358665283787?v=railb& = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9SdWoxe5ys
(* B H)
Audio: Photographing the Starving Children of Yemen's War
New York Times staff photographer Tyler Hicks has made three trips to war-torn Yemen. What he found there in his most recent was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. Children wasting away to nothing, starving to death before his eyes, caught in the economic warfare being waged on millions of Yemenis.
The New York Times’ Declan Walsh has done extensive recent reporting on the situation in Yemen, sharing vivid details of the desperate state of millions of civilians in Yemen, now on the brink of famine, and this week he gave us the latest on the situation on the ground.
Accompanying Walsh's reporting are devastating portraits of the children and babies starving to death in the North of the country, and the bloody reality of conflict at a field hospital in the South.
Tyler Hicks is the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist behind those images, which may be helping to turn the worlds attention to the escalating humanitarian disaster in Yemen at last. He shares his experience with The Takeaway.
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/photographing-starving-children-yemens-war
(B K P)
Well, humanitarian suffering and killings of civilians in #Yemen should not be blamed on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman alone. Besides being a partner in these crimes, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed is also planning to drown the south in terrorism and chaos.
https://twitter.com/FuadRajeh/status/1057828230374277121
(* B P)
Slavoj Žižek: Until the rich world thinks 'one world,' migration will intensify
The "rich" world urgently needs to address the reasons behind mass migration, rather than its symptoms. And understand we live in one world.
capitalism's global reach is grounded in the way it introduces a radical class division across the entire globe, separating those protected by the sphere from those outside its cover. The flow of refugees is a momentary reminder of the violent world outside our Cupola, a world which, for us, insiders, appears mostly on TV reports about distant violent countries, not as part of our reality but encroaching on it.
Thus, our ethical-political duty is not just to become aware of the reality outside our Cupola, but to fully assume our co-responsibility for the horrors outside our Cupola. The hypocrisy of the reactions to the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi provides a nice example of how this Cupola works. In a broader sense, he was one of us, well located within the Cupola, so we are shocked and outraged.
But our care is ridiculously displaced care: the true scandal that the Istanbul murder caused a much greater scandal than Yemen where Saudi Arabia is destroying an entire country. In (probably) ordering the murder, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) forgot the lesson of Stalin: if you kill one person, you are a criminal; if you kill thousands, you are a hero. So MBS should have gone on killing thousands in Yemen.
So, back to our Leninist question: what is to be done? The first and (sadly) predominant reaction is the one of protective self-enclosure: the world out there is in a mess, let's protect ourselves by all kinds of walls.
Fukuyamaist liberal-democratic universalism failed because of its own immanent limitations and inconsistencies, and populism is the symptom of this failure, its Huntington's disease.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/442485-migrants-poverty-rich-zizek/
(* B K P)
Civilian Loss-of-Life and Suffering Should Offend Sensibilities in the West
The United States and its NATO partners should hold their heads in shame, because their military support and weapons sales to Saudi Arabia have only exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
Sadly, the warmongers still seem unfazed by civilian suffering in Yemen, saying that ending their arms sales to Saudi Arabia won't help. They have even made it clear that they won’t stop their support and weapons sales amid the probe into the journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s grisly murder inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2.
This is while international rights groups like UN Human Rights Council, Oxfam, UNICEF and Amnesty International keep calling for the Western governments to end arms sales, to stop training Saudi pilots, and to avoid being a war party to the illegal war and hence complicit in Saudi war crimes in the poorest country in the Middle East.
Lest they forget, they have cozied up to a regime that dismembers its own civilians in consulates of NATO allies, aids and abets terror groups like ISIL and Al-Qaeda to swell death in the region, and spreads hatred across the globe through its extremist Wahhabi-Takfiri ideology.
On balance, the United States and its NATO partners are party to the unlawful conflict, they control flight paths, help Saudi warplanes target civilian objects, and are acting in breach of international law and international humanitarian law. They are responsible for civilian casualties that result from Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, including attacks on school buses, markets, medical centers, and ports. The deaths of thousands of men, women and children should alarm them – just as the way the murder of Khashoggi did the international community.
The time is now for the sound minds in the West to reevaluate their destructive roles in this human tragedy that has sparked outrage among human rights groups. It’s never too late to put an end to civilian casualties and other human suffering – including a starvation blockade the Saudi regime has erected to stop the flow of humanitarian assistance.
It’s never too late for the United Nations to renew its call for a ceasefire in Yemen and demand all warring parties immediately come to the negotiating table for a peaceful solution. There is no other way to solve this pointless humanitarian catastrophe.
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13970809001015
(* B K P)
Washington pushes Saudis and Emirates for Yemeni ‘peace’
Washington appeals for an end of the fighting and the beginning of negotiations. The US press "discovers" the tragedy in the country, children reduced to skin and bone. The Khashoggi case and the responsibilities of bin Salman in Yemen. Houthi rebels: the solution to the crisis remains "inter-Yemeni" if "free from foreign interference".
The wall of silence surrounding the slaughter in Yemen has finally collapsed Yemen. Washington has spoken through the Secretary of State and the Minister of Defense: "The parties in conflict have 30 days to end the fighting and sit around the negotiating table".
The Sana'a government says it is ready to restart peace talks with the Houthi Shiite rebels, in the context of growing international pressure for the end of the conflict. "Yemen - reads a statement released yesterday - is ready to immediately launch negotiations [of peace]", responding to a UN appeal in this regard.
In the meantime, after almost four years, even the US newspapers have finally "discovered" the tragedy: the New York Times recently published a shocking photographic reportage of the Yemeni victims, especially children, reduced to skin and bone. The war is being called "one of the most inhumane tragedies since the Second World War".
Paris and London have welcomed the positive change in attitude but no comment has yet come from the two countries that triggered the war: The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, both of which are allies of the USA, Britain and France.
Since the very first day of their military intervention in Yemen, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have enjoyed the support of the United States with Intelligence, satellite images, logistic help and more; perhaps even with military experts on the field and in air raids. A conviction so rooted in the Ansar Allah, that every missile launch in the direction of Saudi Arabia or the Emirates comes with the cry of "Death to America".
The "Khashoggi affair", with all that has emerged, has served to draw attention to another crime committed against humanity and always under the direct guidance of the heir to the throne Mohammad bin Salman (Mbs), in Riyadh defined architect and architect of the war in Yemen.
(* B K P)
Khashoggi murder may be tipping point in Yemen's agony
International reaction to the killing has weakened the Saudi crown prince
Joining the dots between the death of a Saudi journalist in Istanbul and the possibility of a ceasefire in Yemen may once have seemed a stretch, but no longer.
Claims of the complicity of the autocratic Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, has weakened the chief architect of the war in Yemen and opened a new space for diplomats in which to operate.
That space may have been widened further by the surprise call on Tuesday by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for a 30-day cessation of hostilities.
The UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has been touring the US, France and UK, against the backdrop of the unfolding drama of the murder and cannot be blind to its impact on western opinion and Saudi self-confidence. David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, told the BBC there was “a common link of the abuse of power” in the individual fate of Khashoggi and the millions of lives at stake in Yemen, which the UN has warned is sliding towards what could become one of the worst famines in living memory after three years of Saudi airstrikes.
It may seem illogical or frustrating both for those who have campaigned for three years against the Saudi prosecution of the war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, and equally for those that have argued Saudi Arabia is defending a legitimate UN-backed government in Yemen.
But history is full of individual moments that prove to be tipping points
Information on the killing as yet undivulged to the public, but available to other capitals, is clearly making the Saudi royal court squirm.
One path to saving Prince Mohammed, the main Saudi ambition at this point, is to make other concessions, of which the west primarily wants three.
The first is for him to share power within the court
The second is to force him to reconsider Saudi Arabia’s unending boycott of Qatar,
The third is to try to close the war in Yemen that the west repeatedly tells Riyadh it cannot militarily win, at least without horrific casualties and an intolerable famine that could leave as many as 14 million people, half the population, dependent on aid to survive.
As the search for Khashoggi’s body continues many will hope that an end to the starvation in Yemen may yet be his greatest legacy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/31/khashoggi-may-be-tipping-point-in-yemens-agony
and
(* A B K P)
The unintended consequences of Jamal Khashoggi's killing
Has the Trump administration had a sudden attack of humanitarianism? Perhaps it was struck by warnings of nationwide famine in Yemen? Or did it move to call for a ceasefire in southern Arabia out of a sudden concern for its tattered citizens?
Nope.
But no matter how cynical the tardy call for a quick peace may be, it's likely to be welcomed by both sides in an unwinnable war.
Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have fired a double-barreled salvo of demands for a peace in Yemen because the war -- which the US has backed there -- is now seen by DC as toxic.
Many Republicans and Democrats in Congress are bitter that the Trump administration has, until recently, been blind to the atrocious war that has torn apart an already fragmented Yemen.
Whatever the outcome of the midterm elections in the US next week, the Trump administration will still have to face an ever-tougher line -- from both parts of the legislature -- on continued support for the Saudi-led coalition, which is waging war against Iranian-backed Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen.
This line will inevitably harden following the alleged murder of Jamal Khashoggi
His death is unrelated to the war in the Yemen. But it's being felt as a straw that has broken the back of the most hardened supporters of the Kingdom.
So Pompeo put out a statement calling on all sides to reach a ceasefire.
But he too cared to make sure that the Saudis, who are backed by the West including the US, UK and France, don't have to make the first move.
That falls to the Iranian-backed Houthis. Once they've stopped their drone and missile attacks. "Subsequently, Coalition air strikes must cease in all populated areas in Yemen," Pompeo said.
The Saudis and their main Gulf allies in Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, appeared to have been caught on the hop by the sudden American passion for peace.
Eighteen hours after the Mattis and Pompeo statements, they were still scrabbling for a response.
They may feel peeved that they've been blindsided.
But as with their Houthi enemy, there is likely to be a sense of relief.
The Saudi-led coalition's campaign to take Hodeidah has run into the sand. Troops from anti-Houthi militia including Sudanese fighters have been held up on the outskirts of the port city around the airport for weeks.
So both sides may find the US calls for a ceasefire convenient and allow a degree of face-saving as neither can be accused of suing for peace themselves.
A positive, if unintended, consequence of the murder of a Saudi journalist who, ironically, has criticized his government's campaign in Yemen.
and also https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12152869
and
(* A P)
After Years of Tireless Demands to End Carnage, Anti-War and Relief Groups Cautiously Welcome US Call for Yemen Ceasefire
After years-long efforts by human rights groups and lawmakers to end U.S. backing of the Saudis' war in Yemen, the Trump administration follows the Koch brothers' lead in calling for a ceasefire
The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which currently has 800 humanitarian workers in Yemen combating the famine and health crises that have taken hold there since the war began in 2015, called Pompeo and Mattis's remarks "the most significant breakthrough" in the effort to stop the violence.
"It is a very welcome recognition that current policy is failing and needs urgently to be changed to focus on a diplomatic solution," said David Miliband, president of the IRC.
Journalist Samuel Oakford of Airwars also called Pompeo's remarks indicative of a major shift—but pointed out that the Secretary of State was careful not to suggest that the Saudis, with the help of the U.S., bear responsibility for Yemenis' suffering.
My comment: there should be not too much optimism, I think. Just the best idea would be that the Trump administration now estimates bad PR higher than an opportunity to sell even more weapons a longer lasting war would present. Might-be they even just try to deflect Congress from successfully passing a bill which would stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
(* B P)
Triumph des Bösen
Im Jemen findet ein Völkermord statt — und die Welt schaut weg.
Dass es einen internationalen Aufschrei wegen der Ermordung eines Journalisten gab, nicht aber wegen des Völkermordes an den Jemeniten, ist schon schlimm genug, findet Paul Craig Roberts. Dass nun aber weiter Waffenhandel mit Saudi-Arabien getrieben wird, zeigt einmal mehr, dass die Profitgier endgültig über die Moral gesiegt hat.
Der Mord an Jamal Kashoggi in der saudi-arabischen Botschaft in der Türkei ist beispiellos in seiner Unverfrorenheit. Die Reaktion Washingtons und der kanadischen Regierung besteht darin, Saudi-Arabien mehr Waffen zu verkaufen – Waffen, die von den Saudis benutzt werden, um die jemenitische Bevölkerung auszulöschen. Die russische Antwort ist – wenn es sich hier nicht um Fake-News handelt –, den Saudis das S-400-Flugabwehrsystem zu verkaufen.
Daraus kann man die Schlussfolgerung ziehen, dass Profite durch Waffenverkäufe wichtiger sind, als Mord und Völkermord zu verhindern.
Es ist schwer zu verstehen, warum die westlichen Medien und westliche Politiker den Iran, Syrien, Venezuela, Nordkorea, China und Russland derart dämonisieren. Nicht diese dämonisierten Länder bringen Menschen in ihren Botschaften um, führen Angriffskriege – nach den Kriterien der Nürnberger Prozesse sind dies Kriegsverbrechen – und verhängen Embargos auf Lebensmittel und medizinische Versorgungsgüter gegen eine Bevölkerung, die bombardiert wird. Diese Verbrechen werden von Saudi-Arabien, Israel, den USA und ihren NATO-Vasallen begangen.
Offenbar zählen die Jemeniten genauso wenig wie die Palästinenser. Ihre Abschlachtung verursacht keinen moralischen Aufschrei im Westen.
Putin mag Washington gegenüber Gleiches mit Gleichem vergelten, wenn er sich an Washingtons Rüstungskunden heranmacht, aber die Entscheidung, den Saudis das S-400 zu verkaufen, ist ein strategischer Patzer.
Sogar noch unmoralischer und unverantwortlicher ist Trumps Rückzug aus dem INF-Vertrag.
Die Billigung saudischer Verbrechen und die westliche Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber Washingtons Ausscheiden aus dem INF-Vertrag lassen uns schlussfolgern, dass Moralität gegenüber materiellen Interessen den Kürzeren zieht. Wir können daraus auch schließen, dass das Böse die Herrschaft über das Gute erlangt hat – mit der Folge, dass Habgier und Rechtlosigkeit die Zerstörung der Wahrheit, der Völker und des Lebens auf dieser Erde vorantreiben werden – von Paul Craig Roberts
https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/triumph-des-bosen und Audio: https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/der-triumph-des-bosen/read
and English original: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/10/24/the-triumph-of-evil/
cp3 Humanitäre Lage / Humanitarian situation
Siehe / Look at cp1
(A H)
Based on @monarelief's online fundraising campaign our team delivered today urgent food aid baskets to some families in the capital Sana'a. Please continue supporting our humanitarian work in #Yemen to help more families (photos)
https://twitter.com/monareliefye/status/1058099038476734470
(B H)
US Agency for International Development: Yemen: Food Assistance Fact Sheet - September 30, 2018
In FY 2018, USAID’s Office of Food for Peace (FFP) contributed more than $368 million to UN agencies and non-governmental organization (NGO) implementing partners to provide emergency food assistance, including U.S.-sourced wheat, peas and vegetable oil, locally- and regionally-procured food and food vouchers, for Yemen’s most vulnerable populations.
FFP contributions in FY 2018 included more than $327 million to support UN partners in Yemen, including the UN World Food Program (WFP). WFP aims to reach approximately 8 million of Yemen’s most severely food-insecure individuals monthly with in-kind food assistance and food vouchers countrywide.
FFP support also provides therapeutic nutritional products to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for the treatment of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Yemen
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-food-assistance-fact-sheet-september-30-2018
(* B H)
IRC: Little girl braves cancer amid the war in Yemen
Yousra is suffering from cancer in her left eye. Her mother, Hayat Ali, had to bring her nearly 175 miles from their home in the port city of Hodeidah to the country’s capital Sana’a to get the diagnosis. Yousra then underwent a week of chemotherapy at Sana’a’s Al-Jumhuri Hospital, paid for by a local charity.
But Hayat, 20, soon ran out of funds and could no longer continue Yousra’s treatment. The little girl’s condition has now worsened and there are fears that the cancer may reach her brain. Hayat told a BBC reporter last week that Yousra lives in agony. “If they told me they could do an operation to give her my eye, I would do it,” she said.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 35,000 people have cancer in Yemen, with about 11,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Yousra’s only hope of survival is to undergo surgery abroad. The International Rescue Committee, which has been providing care for Yousra and her siblings at one of our nutrition centers, is securing further scans and diagnostics to help coordinate potential treatment outside of Yemen, but Hayat is unable to afford airfare or the costly procedure.
“I have been trying for three years to find someone to treat her,” she said. “I’m looking for anyone who can help.”
Yousra is one of the many children with serious illnesses in Yemen who are struggling to get the medical treatment they need. The country’s health system is in tatters: Hundreds of hospitals and healthcare facilities have been destroyed or damaged in the war, leaving half the country without access to even basic health care.
Hayat is also extremely worried about two of her other children, who are malnourished. She takes them to the IRC-supported health facility in Sana’a to be weighed and measured and receive treatment. There has been an alarming rise in malnutrition cases in Yemen, especially among children under five. Prices have skyrocketed during the war, and with a collapsed economy people cannot afford enough food for their families.
The IRC has 800 aid workers in Yemen who are tirelessly delivering vital aid to thousands of people like Yousra and her family. Learn more about the IRC’s work and how you can help (photos)
https://www.rescue.org/article/little-girl-braves-cancer-amid-war-yemen?
(* B H)
Yemen famine, the worst in recent history, manmade, by Dr. Luay Shabaneh, UNFPA’s Director for the Arab region
The famine looming over Yemen may be the worst in the world’s recent history, and may put an estimated 2 million malnourished pregnant and lactating women at increased risk of death.
Lack of food, displacement, poor nutrition, disease outbreaks and eroding healthcare have heavily affected the health and well-being of 1.1 million malnourished pregnant and lactating women, causing numerous cases of premature or low-birth weight babies, severe postpartum bleeding, and extremely life threatening labor processes.
Nearly half of the health facilities no longer function in Yemen, including those providing reproductive health services that are supposed to diagnose and treat these women.
Working with limited funding, UNFPA’s support to 184 health facilities that offer reproductive health services may stop if additional resources do not become available.
(* B H)
Sieben Millionen Kinder von Hungersnot im Jemen bedroht
Mehr als sieben Millionen Kinder drohen nach Angaben des UN-Kinderhilfswerks UNICEF im Bürgerkriegsland Jemen zu verhungern. Über die Hälfte der 14 Millionen von einer Hungersnot bedrohten Menschen in dem verarmten Land seien Kinder, sagte Unicef-Regionaldirektor Geert Cappelaere der Nachrichtenagentur AFP am Mittwoch. Bereits heute seien 1,8 Millionen Kinder akuter Unterernährung ausgesetzt und 400.000 Kinder von schwerer akuter Unterernährung betroffen. Den seit mehr als drei Jahren andauernden Krieg im Jemen zu beenden ist laut Cappelaere "nicht genug". Das Land benötige danach einen umfassenden Wiederaufbau. Der Krieg verstärke lediglich die ohnehin schon schlimme Situation nach Jahren der Unterentwicklung.
https://derstandard.at/2000090479301/Unicef-Sieben-Millionen-Kinder-in-Jemen-von-Hungersnot-bedroht
(* B H)
Over 7 million Yemeni children face food insecurity: UN
Over seven million children face food insecurity in Yemen and ending the country's war will not save all of them, the UN children's agency said.
"Today, 1.8 million children under the age of five are facing acute malnutrition, and 400,000 are affected by severe acute malnutrition," said Geert Cappelaere, regional director of UNICEF.
On October 23, the UN said around 14 million people -- half the population -- in Yemen are facing "pre-famine conditions".
When asked by AFP how many of these people are children, Cappelaere told AFP late on Wednesday "more than half".
UNICEF later clarified that over seven million children face food insecurity, rather than the immediate threat of famine.
"In the last couple of years, we see the number of severely acute malnourished children stabilising", Cappelaere said.
But "ending the war is not enough," he added, referring to a more than three year conflict that pits the government supported by a Saudi-led military coalition against Huthi rebels.
"What we need is to stop the war and (to create) a government mechanism that puts at the centre the people and children.
"The war is exacerbating the situation that was already bad before because of years of underdevelopment" in the Arab world's poorest nation, Cappelaere said.
(A H)
Pictures here taken before and after food aid being distributed to 550 vulnerable families in Aslam area of Hajjeh in northern #Yemen Please donate and share here. Rememer every penny counts
https://twitter.com/monareliefye/status/1057746106774421519
cp4 Flüchtlinge / Refugees
Siehe / Look at cp1
cp5 Nordjemen und Huthis / Northern Yemen and Houthis
(A P)
Houthis Warn General People’s Congress against Commemorating Saleh’s Death
The Iran-backed Houthi militias issued a strong warning to the General People’s Congress (GPC) in Sanaa against holding any event to commemorate the death of its leader, former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
GPC sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that head of the Houthis’ ruling council Mahdi al-Mshat summoned some two days ago a number of party leaderships to warn them against taking any “reckless” steps as the anniversary of Saleh’s assassination draws near.
(A P)
The first contact of the Yemeni Minister of Defence with his family of captivity
Three years and seven months, the fate of Yemen's defense minister, Maj. Gen. Mahmoud al-Subbaihi, remained uncertain before the Sultanate of Oman announced an agreement with the al-Houthi group allowing the captive minister to make his first contact with his family.
The first contact served as a reassurance to the family and supporters of the Subbaihi who fought against the Houthis as they progressed towards the southern city of Aden, and then captured the brother of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi Nasser Mansour and General Faisal Rajab in an ambush by Houthis on March 25, March 2015 in al-Husseini district in the province to Lahajj north of Aden.
This happened and the minister was only five months old since assuming his duties when he was appointed to the Government of Khaled Bahah to succeed former defense Minister Mohamed Nasser Ahmed.
The Amman-led mediation opened promises from the Houthis to release al- Subbaihi, the highest-ever government military official since the war broke out, and the group was very secretive about his fate and the fate of his companions, as well as the political fate of the Islah party Mohamed Qahtan.
(A P)
#Houthi militia gunmen have kidnapped the #photojournalist Hamed Al-Qa'ood from the heart of the capital #Sanaa today's afternoon (Wednesday). His uncle said he was abducted by gunmen onboard of 2 pickup trucks, blaming those responsible for his safety (photo)
https://twitter.com/RepYemenEnglish/status/1057673750035025921
(* A P)
This is chief Mufti in Houthi-run regions. He is saying "Bani Hashim are descendants of prophet Mohamed, and the noblest people who have the right to rule wherever on the earth.."! After we restore state, I will launch a campaign to prosecute such a retard along with his prophet!
https://twitter.com/FuadRajeh/status/1057870547558821889
referring to
There are religious teachings that have been removed from the curricula forcibly fifty years ago and put things to confuse the minds of the sons of Islam.
Bani Hashim are the house of Ashraf the creatures and his grandchildren and the state wherever they are in the land of God and must be guided them from their land has lost God and His Messenger and angered them has angered God and His Messenger.
Be a description with the guidance
https://twitter.com/_shamsaldin/status/1057352126966521856
cp6 Südjemen und Hadi-Regierung / Southern Yemen and Hadi-government
(A P)
Yemen calls UN organizations to move offices to Aden
Yemen government has called UN and other international organizations to move its offices to Aden, pointing out that their stay in Sana’a resulted in shortcomings of their performance.
In a meeting with the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen Lisa Grande, Prime Minister Ma’een Abdul-Malik affirmed that the organization would be able to work freely from Aden and deliver their assistances to all Yemenis.
https://www.alsahwa-yemen.net/en/p-24929
My comment: By this, he Hadi government wants to increase its “legitimacy” as the UN organizations then would be at his capital city. – But, at Aden security is bad. – And, if the Un wants to help the 70 % of the Yemeni polulation who live in Houthi-held areas, simply Sanaa is the right place.
(A T)
Al-Dhale.. An officer survives an assassination attempt, killed and wounded in the ranks of his escorts
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160384
statement by Islah Party https://www.alsahwa-yemen.net/en/p-24935
(A P)
A demonstration in Taiz calls for 35 armored brigade to release a groom and 45 marginalised
Dozens of marginalized people staged a demonstration Thursday in the south-western city of Taiz to demand the release of their children held in the prisons of the 35 Armored Brigade, including a groom who celebrated his marriage last Tuesday.
According to AL-Masdar online, the demonstrators demanded the local authority in Taiz, by pressing the 35 armored brigade to release the groom Muheeb Naji Shaqdari and some 45 marginalized, who were also detained with him.
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160430
Remark: “Marginalized”: Minority of people with darker skin, discriminated in Yemeni society.
(A P)
Here some articles showing how the separatists’ Southern Transitional Council more and more is playing the role of a government.
With Attendance of Secretary General of the Council and Chairman of the National Assembly, President Al-Zubaidi Opens the Headquarters of the National Assembly in Aden
Negotiation Delegate of the Southern Transitional Council Ends Consultative Meetings with UN Envoy Mr. Martin Griffith
Al-Zubaidi Welcomes Al-Gaber in Aden and Appreciates the Great Saudi Support to the Country
Chairman of the Southern National Assembly Meets Coordinative Commission of the Anti-Drugs Public Campaign
and criticizes the Hadi government:
(A P)
Al-Gaadi Denounces Forcing Public Employees to Mobilize to Aden Airport to welcome the Yemeni Government Return
and self-praising:
(A P)
Al-Zubaidi: The Council’s Call for Dialogue with all Southern Political Components Stems from Deep Belief that Homeland is for All.
Al-Zubaidi said: “Since the day of establishing the council and the assembly, we were very careful so that these and other national southern organizations should represent the ideal image of our political work nationally and internationally and reflect the expectations of our southern people. What is achieved today is the fruit of accumulated stages of our southern struggle since 1994 till now when we worked under conditions that were even more difficult than today’s. here we are taking a new step towards the upcoming stage”.
(A P)
Reports from south Yemen: a prisoner on Thursday committed suicide inside the UAE-run Bier Ahmed Prison where detainee abuses, including sexual abuses, have been rife.
https://twitter.com/FuadRajeh/status/1057968920219529216
(* B P)
Russia key if quiet player in southern Yemen
Russia’s concern about southern Yemen, evident in these official statements and a wide array of Russian-sponsored informal mediation initiatives in the region, can be explained by Moscow’s historic connection to the region and its ambitions on the Red Sea. During the Cold War, the former state of South Yemen was the Soviet Union’s strongest ally in the Arab world and the site of major Soviet military installations in Aden and Socotra
From a strategic standpoint, Russia’s willingness to insert itself as a stakeholder in southern Yemen is inextricably linked to its desire to join the inter-state competition for access to the Red Sea. In recent months, Russia has conducted negotiations with senior policy-makers in the Horn of Africa to enhance its economic and military presence in the region. These diplomatic overtures have resulted in serious discussions about the creation of a Russian naval base in Somaliland and a Sept. 1 agreement to establish a logistics center in Eritrea.
If Russia establishes these facilities, a military installation in southern Yemen would be a desirable strategic asset as it would link Moscow’s presence on the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.
To enhance southern Yemen’s stability, Russia has taken an active role in combating threats to southern Yemen’s economy and ensure the security of its shipping lanes. Since September 2017, Russia has facilitated the transfer of hard currency from the Central Bank of Yemen to southern Yemen to ensure that Yemeni government-aligned civil servants and military personnel are adequately paid. Yemen’s Ambassador to Russia Ahmed al-Wahishi praised the policy during a recent interview.
Russia has also acted as an informal arbiter between moderate supporters of southern Yemeni autonomy and the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The Russian government has engaged in dialogue with Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) leader Abdulrahman al-Saqqaf, a coalition partner of Hadi, and the former prime minister of South Yemen, Haidar Abu Bakr al-Attas, to encourage the politicians to continue pushing for expanded South Yemeni representation within legal frameworks.
Russian officials have also attempted to encourage moderates within the Southern Movement to lay down their arms and defend the rights of southern Yemenis through a multilateral intra-Yemeni peace settlement.
Despite these fruitful diplomatic overtures, Russia faces significant obstacles in its quest to install itself as an indispensable stakeholder in southern Yemen.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/10/russia-southern-yemen-dealings.html
and
(A P)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated the need to develop a national dialogue for Yemen under UN auspices in a November 1 statement on the 90th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and Yemen. Hadi’s Foreign Minister, Khalid al Yamani, expressed appreciation for Russia’s support to the Hadi government and emphasized Yemen’s aspirations for a more active Russian role in “ending the al Houthi coup.”[4]
(B P)
Yemeni volunteers come together to bring Aden streets back to life
Pot holes and sand fortifications still line city roads
A group of young men and women in Aden governorate are volunteering their time to clear the city streets of rubble and debris left by years of war.
In March 2015 Iran-backed Houthi rebels entered the southern port city in an attempt to push forward with their expansion plan. Four months later they were driven out of the city.
But the damage was extensive. Massive potholes caused by airstrikes line the streets while indiscriminate mortar and rocket attacks by Houthi fighters caused extensive damage to civilian property. Sand fortifications used by the local resistance to keep the rebels at bay can still be found throughout Aden.
Today both Houthi sleeper cells and Yemen's Al Qaeda franchise - Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - pose a security threat in the southern governorate - but this hasn't deterred the area's youth from kick-starting their own reconstruction project.
The campaign, launched in October by young volunteers, receives donations from private individuals.
Two weeks ago, in Aden's districts of Al Mansoura and Al Sheikh Othman, a group of young Yemenis could be seen removing rubble from the roads, fastening electricity wires to the utility poles and painting the pavements.
"The government is in exile, it doesn't care about the worsening situation in the city," said Motea Moqbel. "The winter is at our doorsteps, if we keep waiting for the government, the city will become a nest for mosquitoes which transfer diseases like Malaria and Dengue Fever as well as Cholera," Mr Moqbel said, his enthusiasm dampened by a sense of disillusion in the government.
My comment: This shows the failure of the Hadi government – and of the Emirati occupational forces in Southern Yemen as well.
cp8 Saudi-Arabien / Saudi Arabia
(** B H P)
Why is no one protecting Saudi Arabia's child brides?
The support of the Saudi monarchy and its apologists in the west means the barbaric practice of child marriage is unchallenged
Atgaa, 10, and her sister Reemya, 8, are about to be married to men in their 60s. Atgaa will be her husband's fourth wife. Their wedding celebrations are scheduled for this week and will take place in the town of Fayaadah Abban in Qasim, Saudi Arabia.
The girls are getting married because their financially struggling father needs the money that their dowries will provide: young girls of this age can fetch as much as $40,000 each.
Many readers might be shocked at this news. How can it be legal? The answer is that Saudi Arabia has no minimum age for marriage, and it is perfectly legal to marry even an hour-old child.
Three Saudi ministries share the blame for allowing and facilitating child marriages. The health ministry is tasked with conducting genetic tests for couples considering marriage. Saudi law requires potential brides and grooms to provide certificates of genetic testing before marriages can officially proceed.
The justice ministry regulates the marriage process and issues licences. And the interior ministry registers families and documents the relationships between family members. It is also the most powerful government agency; it has authority over all other ministries and can direct their activities at will.
As with many pernicious practices, child marriage would not exist without tacit support and approval from the country's leadership. Far from condemning child marriage, the Saudi monarchy itself has a long history of marrying very young girls.
Sarah, who is now a brilliant Saudi doctor, told me she was barely 12 when the late prince Sultan proposed to her after seeing her walking at a military base where she had lived with her father. Luckily, her father had the wits to claim that she was chronically ill, at which point the proposal was swiftly rescinded.
Camel festivals, held at his time of the year in Saudi Arabia, witness the practice called akheth ("taking") in which girls aged 14 to 16 are "gifted" to the usually elderly members of the monarchy for a few days or weeks. This practice, reminiscent of the infamous droit du seigneurin medieval Europe, is maintained to this day with the monarchy's protection.
Saudi Arabia has probably the highest number of child marriages in the Middle East and yet there has been almost no international outrage or objection directed at the practice. I have personally sent two letters to Ann Veneman, the director of United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), regarding the Saudi practice and asking her to make her views on the issue public, as she did with Yemen.
Instead, Unicef lauded Saudi efforts to protect child rights and even honoured Prince Naif, whose interior ministry is one of the departments overseeing child marriages. So no wonder the Saudi monarchy feels confident that such a practice can continue – by Ali AlAhmed
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/08/saudi-arabia-child-brides-marriage
(A P)
Saudi Arabia hosts rare visit of U.S. evangelical Christian figures
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a rare meeting with American evangelical Christians on Thursday, as the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom seeks to open up more to the world and repair an image of religious intolerance.
The delegation was led by communications strategist Joel Rosenberg and included former U.S. congresswoman Michele Bachmann, according to an emailed statement by the group, as well as heads of American evangelical organizations, some with ties to Israel.
“It was a historic moment for the Saudi Crown Prince to openly welcome Evangelical Christian leaders to the Palace. We were encouraged by the candor of the two-hour conversation with him today,” the statement said.
photos: https://twitter.com/AliAlAhmed_en/status/1058057624061665280
(* A P)
Senior Saudi prince returns home amid Khashoggi murder crisis
A senior Saudi Arabian prince who recently appeared to criticize the king and crown prince has returned to Riyadh, in what some sources close to the royal family say is a sign it wants to form a united front amid its worst political crisis in a generation.
Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, a younger brother of King Salman and uncle of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, arrived on Tuesday after 2-1/2 months abroad, three sources said, as the kingdom deals with the fallout from the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
A senior Arab diplomat said Prince Ahmed had sought reassurances for safe passage from the king before traveling, and a Saudi with royal ties said it appears they had been given.
“I think there must have been some pre-understanding. There have been messages going back and forth, and when things were sorted out he decided to come back,” said the Saudi source.
Saudi authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Prince Ahmed’s return and the reasons behind it.
Since September, Saudi watchers have wondered when or whether Prince Ahmed would return home, after online footage surfaced in which he appeared to deflect criticism of the royal family by singling out the king and crown prince.
He was one of only three people on the Allegiance Council, comprising the ruling family’s senior members, who opposed the ousting of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince in favor of Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017, two Saudi sources told Reuters at the time.
The king’s apparent approval of Prince Ahmed’s return is a further sign that the 82-year-old monarch is taking a more hands-on role in Saudi policy since Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul at the beginning of October.
and
(* A P)
Pressure Mounts on Saudi Crown Prince
After months of absence in London, senior Saudi royal Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz arrived Tuesday in Riyadh, prompting conjecture among Saudi expatriates that older members of the Gulf kingdom’s ruling family are ready to assert themselves in the wake of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Some London-based Saudi expatriates with ties to the royal family say the septuagenarian Ahmad, who was the Gulf kingdom’s heir apparent until his brother, King Salman, altered the line of succession, may press for convening a family council to discuss how to control the fallout from Khashoggi’s murder.
They say Ahmad is likely to lead an effort to curtail the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely referred to as MBS, and argue for the appointment of a senior royal to act as a "guardian" for the crown prince.
“The fact that Prince Ahmad has returned now says a lot; other princes are keeping away from turbulent developments,” a Saudi expatriate who knows the prince told VOA. He added, “Draw your own conclusions.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/pressure-mounts-on-saudi-crown-prince/4636868.html
(* B P)
The Fall of the House of Saud?
The first cracks are appearing
For the Saudis, whose hold on their Kingdom was casually assumed up until a few weeks ago, don’t exactly look like a model of stability. And that has always been their appeal as the anchor of the US military presence in the region. Yet now the formerly formidable regime of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is exposed as a house of cards, with rumors of a coup and several senior princes jockeying for position.
Of course, the successful coup plotter would require Washington’s on-the-downlow imprimatur, and ultimately a green light from the White House.
What this all boils down to is that a seismic shift in our Middle Eastern policy is in the works, one that would have happened regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. The Saudi system is corrupt to its very core, and is inherently unstable: the efforts of the despotic Crown Prince to “reform” the Kingdom by instituting a reign of terror represent the first audible death rattle of the Saudi monstrosity.
The question that US policy makers have hardly ever verbalized in public – what comes after the monarchy? – may confront the Trump administration sooner rather than later. Which is why I have no doubt that the US would throw the Crown Prince to the wolves in a New York minute if they thought it would save the dynasty.
https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2018/10/31/the-fall-of-the-house-of-saud/
(* A P)
Khashoggi murder outcry threatens U.S.-Saudi ties, Saudi prince says
The outcry in the United States demonizing Saudi Arabia over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul threatens U.S.-Saudi strategic ties, the former Saudi intelligence minister warned on Wednesday.
“We value our strategic relationship with the United States and hope to sustain it. We hope the United States reciprocates in kind,” royal family member Prince Turki bin Faisal al Saud said in an address to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, a non-profit advocacy organization.
Turki, to whom Khashoggi once served as an adviser, has also served as an ambassador to London and Washington. His speech denouncing what he called “the demonization of Saudi Arabia” clearly carried Riyadh’s imprimatur, as he heads an Islamic research center named after his father, the late King Faisal.
Recalling that more than 70 years of U.S.-Saudi ties survived previous crises, Turki said, “Nowadays, this relationship is once again threatened.”
“The tragic and unjustified” slaying of Khashoggi “is the theme of today’s onslaught and demonization of Saudi Arabia in the same fashion as the previous crises. The intensity and gleefulness of it is equally unfair,” he said. “Subjecting our relationship to this issue is not healthy at all.”
Turki reiterated that the kingdom is committed to bringing to justice those responsible for Khashoggi’s murder “and whoever else failed to uphold the law.”
The U.S.-Saudi relationship “is too big to fail,” Turki said.
My comment: “The U.S.-Saudi relationship “is too big to fail,””. Whow. We learned this “too big to fail” from the banks.
(* A P)
Here’s How The Saudi Royal Family Is Quietly Playing Defense
Saudis and their allies are defusing tension over Jamal Khashoggi—protecting private conversations about reining in Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman.
But away from the spotlight, members of the Saudi ruling family and influential foreign governments are quietly debating the crown prince’s future ― especially whether he should remain the single most powerful player in a kingdom facing its biggest international crisis since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Three weeks after Khashoggi was murdered at a Saudi consulate in Turkey, the prince’s position as de facto ruler of the kingdom and his status as king-to-be seem secure.
Yet the idea that his influence needs to be curtailed in some way is gaining traction. Having held power for close to a century, the Al-Saud dynasty knows it has to do more than just sell oil and position itself as a bulwark against Western nemeses to survive. Their political savvy means they’re well aware that their powerful friends have been growing more and more frustrated by MBS’s policies. They see the headlines criticizing his U.S.-backed military campaign in Yemen, his domestic crackdowns that have spooked international investors and his fights with Qatar, Canada and Germany.
Regional figures are making clear they are worried about MBS but expect the system to self-correct. “A lot of people around the world would like to take the king seriously and hope that he will definitely punish all those involved regardless of their identity,” said Khalil Jahshan of the Arab Center think tank.
Though the Saudi royal family won’t allow the rest of the world to determine its choice of crown prince, they understand the expectation of a change. By taking face-saving measures that protect MBS’s standing ― like the king placing him in charge of a reorganization of Saudi intelligence or elder statesman Prince Turki Al Faisal telling the Washington Post the family and Saudi public are with MBS ― they have created an opening for a quiet adjustment that doesn’t seem dramatic or harsh.
(* A B P)
The Saudi royal court is notoriously opaque, but there have been signs of fresh intrigue in the past week. King Salman has reportedly rallied to the defense of his son and hand-picked successor, even as close allies have expressed their concern about his continued rule. “People who think there’s going to be any change in the succession are wrong,” Prince Turki al-Faisal told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius last week. Prince Turki said that the backlash to Khashoggi’s death had actually strengthened MBS’ position. But even before this past month, MBS had reportedly been concerned about threats from rivals. Western officials have suggested to the Post that he could accept an arrangement to share power with another royal to placate critics. One option for that role would be Khalid bin Faisal, the former mayor of Mecca and a son of King Faisal, who governed in the 1960s and 1970s. Another would be Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, King Salman’s brother, who has reportedly been floated by some members of the royal family for some sort of stewardship role. Prince Ahmed has been living in self-imposed exile in England since being passed over for the role of crown prince; in September, in a clip posted online, he made a rare public appearance to address to a crowd of protesters in London, saying that policies including the war in Yemen are the fault of the current Saudi leadership but not the royal family as a whole. On Tuesday, rumors were circulating online that Prince Ahmed had unexpectedly returned to Riyadh from London.
(A P)
Saudis release Filipina cleaners held after police raid on Halloween party
(A P)
Indonesia protests to Saudi over execution of maid convicted of murder
Indonesia has protested to Saudi Arabia over the execution of an Indonesian maid, convicted of murdering her employer who a workers’ rights group said was trying to rape her at the time.
(* A P)
Gefesselte Leichen gefunden
Der rätselhafte Tod der Saudi-Schwestern in New York
In New York treiben die Leichen zweier Schwestern ans Ufer des Hudson. Zuvor sollen die aus Saudi-Arabien stammenden Frauen Asyl in den USA beantragt haben. Gibt es einen Zusammenhang?
Was die Polizei rätseln lässt: Die Schwestern lebten in Fairfax im US-Staat Virginia, rund 360 Kilometer von New York entfernt. Waren sie von zuhause ausgerissen, wie sie es laut amerikanischen und arabischen Medien schon häufiger getan hatten? Die Frauen waren bekleidet und wiesen keine sichtbaren Spuren von Gewalt auf. Ihre Körper waren Gesicht an Gesicht aneinander gebunden. Hatten sich die Schwestern selbst das Leben genommen?
Die Polizei schloss Suizid nicht aus, hielt aber auch Mord für möglich. Die Mutter gab gegenüber Ermittlern wenige Tage vor dem Fund an, sie hätte einen Anruf der saudischen Botschaft in Washington erhalten. Die Familie sei aufgefordert worden, sofort die USA zu verlassen. Begründung: Die Schwestern hätten Washington um Asyl gebeten.
(* A P)
Authorities probing immigrant Saudi sisters’ mystery deaths
Police are investigating the mysterious deaths of two sisters from Saudi Arabia whose bodies, bound together with tape, washed up on New York City’s waterfront last week.
The sisters, Tala Farea, 16, and Rotana Farea, 22, were discovered Oct. 24 on a bank of the Hudson River, about 225 miles from Fairfax, Virginia, where they lived and were reported missing in August.
As of Tuesday, investigators still had not determined how they died. The sisters’ bodies were taped together and facing each other, but had no obvious signs of trauma, police said. They were both fully clothed.
Their mother told detectives the day before the bodies were discovered, she received a call from an official at the Saudi Arabian Embassy, ordering the family to leave the U.S. because her daughters had applied for political asylum, New York police said Tuesday.
https://apnews.com/094178ff98c34dfa89b372c963193757
and film: https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1058135346041536512
Comment: This sounds like another example of the far reach of Saudi Arabia. Every day more and more atrocities.
https://www.facebook.com/judith.brown.794628/posts/10157114434613641
(A P)
From Saudi Arabia an Opposition Politician Arrives in Yemen, The Army Spokesman Welcomes
The spokesman of the Army and Popular Committees, Brigadier Yahia Sare'e, welcomed an opposition politician from Saudi Arabia, leader of the Arab Liberation Movement, Dakhil bin Nasser Al-Qahtani, in Yemen. He pointed out that Yemen is open to all those who are subjected to injustice in Saudi Arabia and that Yemen supports any of their activitis as long as they are within the country's laws.
Al-Qahtani is a citizen of Saudi Arabia, a dissident officer and a former political prisoner. He was jailed because of his establishment of the Liberation of the Arabian Peninsula against the tyranny of the Al-Saud regime. Al-Qahtani asserts that the ruling Al-Saud family has been practicing political tyranny and security intimidation against citizens and Muslims all over the world since its domination of the Arabian Peninsula.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3540&cat_id=1
cp8a Jamal Khashoggi
(A P)
U.S. says Khashoggi remains should be located, returned to family
The remains of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi should be located and returned to his family for a burial as soon as possible, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters on Thursday.
My comment: Trump should ask his baby Salman.
(* B P)
Saudi crown prince described slain journalist as a dangerous Islamist in call with White House
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman described slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a dangerous Islamist days after his disappearance in a phone call with President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and national security adviser John Bolton, according to people familiar with the discussion.
In the call, which occurred before the kingdom publicly acknowledged killing Khashoggi, the crown princeurged Kushner and Bolton to preserve the U.S.-Saudi alliance and said the journalist was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group long opposed by Bolton and other senior Trump officials.
The attempt to criticize Khashoggi in private stands in contrast to the Saudi government’s later public statements decrying the journalist’s death as a “terrible mistake” and a “terrible tragedy.”
“The incident that happened is very painful, for all Saudis,” the crown prince, the kingdom’s de facto leader, said during a panel discussion last week. “The incident is not justifiable.”
The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Khalid bin Salman, described Khashoggi last month as a “friend” who dedicated “a great portion of his life to serve his country.”
In a statement released to The Washington Post, Khashoggi’s family called the characterization of the columnist as dangerous Islamist inaccurate.
“Jamal Khashoggi was not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He denied such claims repeatedly over the past several years,” the family said. “Jamal Khashoggi was not a dangerous person in any way possible. To claim otherwise would be ridiculous.”
My comment: This is how Saudi propaganda always works: It changes quicker as you can imagine. It’s made up with fully invented tall stories – they take just a story which they think to be of greatest use in the moment. If the situation changes, a quite different story is told, and so on. And this is to be seen from the highest rank down to any second-class writer.
(B P)
Western hypocrisy: Khashoggi and Murtaja two deceased journalists but the world will only remember one
Yaser Murtaja was a Palestinian photojournalist who had gone to the Gaza fence with Israel to cover the second Friday of the Great Return March. He was killed by an IDF sniper on 7 April. There was modest coverage of his death coming on the second Friday of the Great Return March.
Reaction to their killings is in sharp contrast to the disappearance and then confirmed killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on 2 October, which has captured the world’s imagination.
(* B P)
Fake news network vs bots: the online war around Khashoggi killing
a fierce information war being waged online over the killing of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of the Saudi government last seen entering Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
Automated accounts known as bots have flooded social media in recent weeks, many of them promoting messages which support Saudi Arabia and are intended to cast doubt on allegations that the kingdom was involved in Khashoggi’s death.
But another effort has also sought to muddy the waters more broadly, using fake news websites and associated bots to sow confusion about developments inside the Saudi government.
Alawatanews.com is part of a network of at least 53 websites which, posing as authentic Arabic-language news outlets, have spread false information about the Saudi government and Khashoggi’s murder, a Reuters analysis shows.
Investigators at Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky said a review of host-server addresses and registration details showed the websites were operating as part of the same network. Many of them also have near-identical design layouts and web addresses, or have published the same or similar fake news reports.
After being published online, the false news articles were shared on Twitter by automated bot accounts — many of which repeatedly posted links to multiple sites from the network.
Twitter suspended the accounts shortly after receiving questions about them from Reuters.
Online, the journalist’s death has served to show how governments and people are increasingly able to manipulate information and social media to further their political agendas, said Lisa-Maria Neudert, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, a department of Oxford University.
“Setting up misinformation pages purporting to be real news, leveraging highly divisive and controversial current issues, and using fake accounts and personas to conceal the originators of attacks are somewhat of the ABCs of computational propaganda,” she said.
At the center of Saudi Arabia’s online efforts is Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the Crown Prince who was hired in the early 2000s to run an electronic media army tasked with protecting Saudi Arabia’s image, according to a source with ties to the royal court.
Opponents of the Saudi authorities have also been active online. Facebook and other companies identified a suspected Iranian influence operation in August which used a network of sham news sites and fake social media personas to spread disinformation, some of it targeted at Saudi Arabia. Iranian officials have dismissed the allegations as “ridiculous”.
Twitter said it has removed large numbers of accounts for breaching its terms of use over the last two weeks, many of them originating from the Gulf region.
“Targeted platform manipulation and coordinated spam are a violation of the Twitter Rules and we will continue to enforce our policies vigorously,” a Twitter spokesman said.
Reuters has found such bot accounts and influential Saudi users repeatedly posting hashtags on Twitter including “Qatari intelligence kills Khashoggi” and “Saudi Arabia the greatest,” although it found no evidence Qahtani or the Saudi government controlled or directed those accounts.
(** A P)
Turkey’s justice minister warns ‘no one can avoid responsibility’ for Khashoggi killing
Turkey’s justice minister warned Saudi officials Thursday that those responsible for Jamal Khashoggi’s death must be held responsible, amid growing frustration among Turkish officials over what they say is Saudi Arabia’s refusal to help investigate the journalist’s killing.
“No one can avoid responsibility. . . . It is not an issue that can be covered up,” Abdulhamit Gul told reporters in the Turkish capital, Ankara. “We expect the Saudi authorities to engage in close cooperation on this issue,” he said, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
His remarks came one day after Saudi Arabia’s chief prosecutor, Saud al-Mojeb, departed Istanbul after a three-day visit in which he held at least two meetings with his Turkish counterpart. That visit, Turkish officials said, has been a source of frustration for Turkish investigators probing the death of Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month.
Turkey’s public prosecutor, so exasperated by Mojeb’s refusal to answer questions, prepared a last-minute statement Wednesday detailing how Khashoggi was killed, officials said. This revealed for the first time that he was strangled almost immediately after he entered the consulate.
In the statement, the Turkish prosecutor, Irfan Fidan, said the Saudi visit produced “no concrete results.”
Turkey’s prosecutor asked his Saudi counterpart key questions about the murder “but did not receive a reply,” said Gul. “We expect these questions to be answered as soon as possible,” he said, adding that Turkey would “deepen” its investigation if Saudi officials failed to adequately respond.
Turkish officials had wanted the Saudi delegation to reveal the location of Khashoggi’s body, identify what Saudi officials said was a “local collaborator” who disposed of the remains and reveal who ordered the killing. At the very least, the Turkish official said, Fidan expected the Saudi prosecutor to provide statements from the suspects. Saudi authorities last month said they had arrested 18 people for their alleged involvement Khashoggi’s death.
But, the official said, the Saudi delegation “didn’t share anything that wasn’t already known.”
“This resistance to providing information, it makes it seem like they are trying to protect someone — someone they want kept out of the investigation,” he said.
What irked investigators most, according to the official, was Mojeb’s interest in accessing Khashoggi’s cellphones. “It seemed that they were looking for his contacts and who he spoke to,” the official said. “We are afraid that if this information is shared with Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi’s friends would be in danger.”
My comment: The Turks finally should publish the audio (and video?) recordings they claim to have. They quickly are losing credibility, as their newest assumptions of the murder contradict their former ones.
(A P)
Saudi prosecutor completes inspections in Turkey, heads to airport
Saud Al Mojeb carried out inspections at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed earlier this month, and held meetings with Turkey’s public prosecutor and Turkish intelligence officials.
and
(B P)
Saud-al Mojeb, the attorney general of Saudi Arabia is a hidden member of ISIS, who has already demanded beheading of human right activists in past, arising out a severe possibility that he suggested MBS for dismembering of #JamalKhashoggi.
https://twitter.com/doniagalvez/status/1057988562799464450
(* A P)
Prosecutor says Khashoggi was strangled and dismembered, but fate of body still a mystery
Turkey’s top prosecutor on Wednesday laid out the most detailed description yet of how the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed, saying Saudi agents strangled him almost immediately after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and then dismembered his body.
But the new information did not address the question that has bedeviled investigators and been the subject of furious speculation: What happened to Khashoggi’s remains?
A senior Turkish official said in an interview that Turkish authorities are pursuing a theory that Khashoggi’s dismembered body was destroyed in acid on the grounds of the Saudi Consulate or at the nearby residence of the Saudi consul general. Biological evidence discovered in the consulate garden supports the theory that Khashoggi’s body was disposed of close to where he was killed and dismembered, the official said.
“Khashoggi’s body was not in need of burying,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation.
While Saudi officials now acknowledge that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate on Oct. 2, all they have said about his body is that the assailants gave it to a “local collaborator” for disposal.
The senior Turkish official said Turkish investigators do not believe such a figure exists.
A second senior Turkish official said that Saudi Arabia’s top prosecutor, Saud al-Mojeb, who completed a three-day visit to Istanbul on Wednesday, did not provide the location of Khashoggi’s body or identify any “local collaborator.”
Since Mojeb arrived in Turkey on Monday, “Saudi officials seemed primarily interested in finding out what evidence the Turkish authorities had against the perpetrators,” the Turkish official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private law enforcement contacts. “We did not get the impression that they were keen on genuinely cooperating with the investigation.”
Turkish prosecutor Irfan Fidan issued his public description of the killing shortly after Mojeb left Istanbul, amid mounting Turkish complaints about a lack of Saudi cooperation.
My comment: Expecting anything else than “a lack of Saudi cooperation” would be naïve. – But, be honest, are the Turks kidding us? “strangled him almost immediately after he entered the Saudi Consulate”: you told us there was a discussion, he was called from Riad by phone, he was crying as he was dismembered alive, you claimed to have an audio recording as a proof, and now “strangled him almost immediately after he entered the Saudi Consulate”?????????????
Comment: You do not dissolve people in acid vats. Not even journalists.
https://twitter.com/BaFana3/status/1057934999398297600
(* A P)
Istanbul prosecutor says Khashoggi was suffocated in Saudi consulate
Istanbul’s chief prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was suffocated in a premeditated killing as soon as he entered Saudi Arabia’s consulate four weeks ago, and his body was then dismembered and disposed of.
In a statement issued after two days of talks with Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor Saud al-Mojeb, it also said no concrete results were reached in those meetings.
“Despite our well-intentioned efforts to reveal the truth, no concrete results have come out of those meetings,” the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said of the talks on Monday and Tuesday between Mojeb and Istanbul chief prosecutor Irfan Fidan.
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan, who has demanded more information from Saudi Arabia, said on Tuesday Fidan had asked Mojeb to disclose who sent a 15-strong team from Riyadh which is suspected of involvement in the killing.
The prosecutor’s statement said Fidan also repeated Ankara’s request for the 18 suspects to be extradited to face trial in Turkey, and asked Mojeb to disclose the identity of a “local cooperator” who, according to a Saudi official, disposed of Khashoggi’s body.
In a written response, Mojeb invited Fidan to Saudi Arabia to question the suspects and determine “the fate of the body” and establish whether the killing was premeditated, the Turkish prosecutor’s statement said.
It said Mojeb’s response also distanced Riyadh from the idea that a “local cooperator” had been involved, saying that Saudi authorities had not made an official statement to that effect.
My comment: So what?????? He was suffocated and dismembered when dead or he was dismembered alive, as Turkey has claimed before??? If the Turkish claims were documented by audi (and video) recordings, this should be clear. Why Turkey does not finally publish these recordings? – Asking the Saudis “to disclose who sent a 15-strong team from Riyadh which is suspected of involvement in the killing” is nonsense, as they will not seriously ask this question but simply intend to whitewash the figure(s) who really are responsible.
(* A P)
'He did the right thing': Hatice Cengiz remembers fiance Jamal Khashoggi
European governments and Trump should have taken more serious measures over the murder, Cengiz tells MEE in an interview
Cengiz described her first interaction with Khashoggi as “beautiful”, as the pair found common ground in their shared passion for the Middle East.
“When I first met him he was a mature, thoughtful, very compassionate, very emotional person who likes to help people," she said.
“We had lots of things in common, in our shared values and areas of interests. He has been a Middle East journalist who gave years and years of his life to it. I am a young researcher who is also interested in the Middle East and in research, and as a Muslim and as a Turk, I’m closely following what happens in the Middle East.”
Now, after turning down an invitation to visit the White House, Cengiz said she's critical of how US President Donald Trump and European leaders have reacted to the incident. She has also called for a “real investigation” to begin as soon as possible.
“European governments and Trump should have taken more serious measures and should have supported Turkey’s position in the case. We have a clear, serious crime. We have a premeditated crime in a consulate in a foreign country," she said.
(* A P)
Khashoggi fiancée: Trump should 'not pave the way for a cover-up'
Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi, has called upon US President Donald Trump to "help reveal the truth" about the Saudi journalist's killing.
"I am deeply grateful for the solidarity of people all over the world. I am, however, disappointed in the actions of the leadership in many countries, particularly in the US," Cengiz said Monday night at a memorial in London for the slain Washington Post columnist.
"President Trump should help reveal the truth and ensure justice be served. He should not pave the way for a cover-up of my fiancé's murder. Let's not let money taint our conscience and compromise our values," she added.
Her remarks came days after she rejected an invitation from Trump to visit the White House.
Cengiz described Khashoggi as a "martyr for a cause" and said she hoped his body would be returned soon so his loved ones could bury him.
"He is a martyr for the struggle for democracy and freedom in our part of the world. I want to bury the body of my beloved Jamal -- my martyr -- surrounded by the prayers of his friends and loved ones. I want to know: Where is his body?" she said.
"I believe that the Saudi regime knows where his body is ... I want justice to be served. Not only for those who murdered my beloved Jamal, but for those who organized it and gave the order for it."
https://us.cnn.com/2018/10/29/uk/jamal-khashoggi-fiance-intl/index.html
(* B P)
U.S. Takes Limited Action in Response to Khashoggi’s Murder
Still, the pressure to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its human rights violations is unprecedented. There are signs that Saudi officials are recognizing that their strategy of deliberately and obviously lying about Khashoggi’s disappearance has backfired. The Saudi government conceded last week that Khashoggi’s death was a planned operation after Turkish intelligence reportedly shared an audio recording of his murder with CIA Director Gina Haspel; Saudi officials maintain, though, that the operation was carried out without the authorization of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).
Though MBS stressed the importance of proceeding with his economic reforms at the conference last week, Khashoggi’s death has interfered with those plans. Bloomberg noted that most of the attendees of the Future Investment Initiative forum were Saudis, and that more Chinese and Russian investors were present this year while American and European businesses stayed home.
Some analysts have suggested that businesses dropped out of the conference for show and would be back to invest later, but others have noted that MBS’ reputation for impulsive and unpredictable policies had been deterring the investment he’s been courting long before Khashoggi disappeared. Michael Hirsh, writing in Foreign Policy, noted that foreign direct investment in Saudi Arabia declined by 80 percent from 2016 to 2017. “Khashoggi’s killing at the hands of Mohammed bin Salman’s security forces—which the Saudis are now confessing was premeditated—has only brought international attention to a problem that close observers of Saudi Arabia had been aware of for more than a year,” Hirsh wrote. “The crown prince was making bad decisions and scaring a lot of influential and wealthy people away.”
[A quite long overview of the newer events in the Khashoggi case and backgrounds, as had been reported already]
Nächster Teil / Following section:
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-mosaik-476B-yemen-war-mosaic-476B
Vorige / Previous:
Jemenkrieg-Mosaik 1-475 / Yemen War Mosaic 1-475:
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose oder / or http://poorworld.net/YemenWar.htm
Der saudische Luftkrieg im Bild / Saudi aerial war images:
(18 +, Nichts für Sensible!) / (18 +; Graphic!)
http://poorworld.net/YemenWar.htm
http://yemenwarcrimes.blogspot.de/
und alle Liste aller Luftangriffe / and list of all air raids:
Was ist Ihre Meinung?
Kommentare einblendenDiskutieren Sie mit.