Yemen update 1/10/2016.. Desperation in the House of Saud
Saudi Arabia pounds Yemen with cluster bombs again
MSF hospital bombed in Yemen: 5 killed, Doctors Without Borders operations director confirms
ENGLISH NEWS IN YEMEN 10 1 2016
Media Quiet as Saudi-led Coalition Bombs Center For The Blind In Yemen
You’d hardly know it from the media, but a U.S.-backed coalition is pummeling the poorest Middle Eastern country
By Ben Norton
January 09, 2016 “Information Clearing House” – “Salon ” – Centers for the blind can now be added to the list of civilian areas bombed by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen — along with wedding halls, hospitals, residential neighborhoods and humanitarian aid warehouses.
The U.S.-backed coalition bombed the al-Noor Center for Care and Rehabilitation of the Blind in Yemen’s capital city Sanaa on Tuesday morning, U.N. officials confirmed to VICE News. The Saudi-led coalition also hit Yemen’s chamber of commerce and a wedding hall.
Fighting broke out in Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, in March. A coalition of Middle Eastern nations and militants loyal to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, led by Saudi Arabia and armed by the U.S., is combating Houthi rebels and militants loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Human rights organizations have accused the coalition of war crimes for targeting civilian areas.
In March, the Western-supported coalition attacked a Yemeni refugee camp, killing roughly 40 people and injuring 200 more.
The coalition then bombed an Oxfam warehouse full of life-saving humanitarian aid in April.
In September, Saudi Arabia bombed a wedding in Yemen, killing 131 civilians, including 80 women.
The next month, the coalition attacked another Yemeni wedding, killing at least 47 civilians and injuring 35 more.
The coalition subsequently bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen in October, just weeks after the U.S. destroyed a hospital in Kunduz, Yemen.
In December, the coalition bombed a second Doctors Without Borders medical facility in Yemen.
Around 2,800 civilians have been killed in Yemen since the start of the war in March, according to the U.N. Another 5,300 have been wounded. At least 81 civilians were killed and 109 injured in Yemen in the month of December alone.
The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for approximately two-thirds of civilian deaths, the U.N. says. Coalition airstrikes killed at least 62 civilians in December, whereas Houthi rebels reportedly killed 11.
The U.N. has condemned the coalition for using widely banned cluster munitions in Yemen. These internationally banned weapons were provided to Saudi Arabia by the U.S. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, blasted the coalition for using the indiscriminate weapons, saying Saudi Arabia is “repeatedly using indiscriminate forms of warfare.”
A quiet, and misleading media
Despite statements by rights groups, much of the U.S. media has been actively ignoring the ongoing war. And, even when outlets do report on it, coverage is often overtly biased.
Reuters published a piece about the bombing of the center for the blind, euphemistically titled “Yemen war intensifies amid mounting regional tension.”
The first line of the piece calls the Yemeni rebels “Iran-allied Houthi forces,” yet the extent to which they are backed by Iran is contested, and likely greatly exaggerated.
Award-winning investigative reporter Gareth Porter has challenged media reports of Iran ties, arguing they are not based on evidence. Porter says “false stories of Iran armed the Houthis were used to justify war in Yemen.”
Only in the third line of its article does Reuters report that “the air raids hit a care center for the blind and Yemen’s chamber of commerce headquarters.”
Newsweek reprinted the Reuters article with the equally euphemistic headline “Yemen War Heats Back Up After Relative Lull.”
The European press has devoted a little more attention to the U.K.-backed war, but even then its coverage also leaves a lot to be desired.
Britain’s The Independent ran an article on Jan. 4 that calls the brutal Saudi-led, Western-backed war “Yemen’s sectarian civil war,” implying it is about sectarianism and religion, not empire.
The piece claimed the war “has largely escaped Western media attention,” by which it actually meant the war has largely been ignored by Western media outlets.
Most glaring of all, The Independent did not mention once in the piece that this is a Western-backed war, in which the Saudi-led coalition is being actively armed by the U.S.
The article gave a heartwarming platform to a Yemeni artist, but, in the process, tried to humanize the war by depoliticizing it. Ben Norton
Arab League accuses Tehran of endangering the region in emergency meeting
Fear And Loathing in the House of Saud
Desperation does not even begin to describe the current plight of the House of Saud.
By Pepe Escobar
Riyadh was fully aware the beheading of respected Saudi Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr was a deliberate provocation bound to elicit a rash Iranian response.
The Saudis calculated they could get away with it; after all they employ the best American PR machine petrodollars can buy, and are viscerally defended by the usual gaggle of nasty US neo-cons.
In a post-Orwellian world “order” where war is peace and “moderate” jihadis get a free pass, a House of Saud oil hacienda cum beheading paradise — devoid of all civilized norms of political mediation and civil society participation — heads the UN Commission on Human Rights and fattens the US industrial-military complex to the tune of billions of dollars while merrily exporting demented Wahhabi/Salafi-jihadism from MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) to Europe and from the Caucasus to East Asia.
And yet major trouble looms. Erratic King Salman’s move of appointing his son, the supremely arrogant and supremely ignorant Prince Mohammad bin Salman to number two in the line of succession has been contested even among Wahhabi hardliners.
But don’t count on petrodollar-controlled Arab media to tell the story.
English-language TV network Al-Arabiyya, for instance, based in the Emirates, long financed by House of Saud members, and owned by the MBC conglomerate, was bought by none other than Prince Mohammad himself, who will also buy MBC.
With oil at less than $40 a barrel, largely thanks to Saudi Arabia’s oil war against both Iran and Russia, Riyadh’s conventional wars are taking a terrible toll. The budget has collapsed and the House of Saud has been forced to raise taxes.
The illegal war on Yemen, conducted with full US acquiescence, led by — who else — Prince Mohammad, and largely carried out by the proverbial band of mercenaries, has instead handsomely profited al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP), just as the war on Syria has profited mostly Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria.
Three months ago, Saudi ulemas called for a jihad not only against Damascus but also Tehran and Moscow without the “civilized” West batting an eyelid; after all the ulemas were savvy enough to milk the “Russian aggression” bandwagon, comparing the Russian intervention in Syria, agreed with Damascus, with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
US Think Tankland revels in spinning that the beheading provocation was a “signal” to Tehran that Riyadh will not tolerate Iranian influence among Shi’ites living in predominantly Sunni states. And yet Beltway cackle that Riyadh hoped to contain “domestic Shi’ite tensions” by beheading al-Nimr does not even qualify as a lousy propaganda script. To see why this is nonsense, let’s take a quick tour of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province.
All Eyes on Al Sharqiyya
Saudi Arabia is essentially a huge desert island. Even though the oil hacienda is bordered by the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Saudis don’t control what matters: the key channels of communication/energy exporting bottlenecks — the Bab el-Mandeb and the Straits of Hormuz, not to mention the Suez canal.
Enter US “protection” as structured in a Mafia-style “offer you can’t refuse” arrangement; we guarantee safe passage for the oil export flow through our naval patrols and you buy from us, non-stop, a festival of weapons and host our naval bases alongside other GCC minions. The “protection” used to be provided by the former British empire. So Saudi Arabia — as well as the GCC — remains essentially an Anglo-American satrapy.
Al Sharqiyya — the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia — holds only 4 million people, the overwhelming majority Shi’ites. And yet it produces no less than 80% of Saudi oil. The heart of the action is the provincial capital Al Qatif, where Nimr al-Nimr was born. We’re talking about the largest oil hub on the planet, consisting of 12 crisscrossed pipelines that connect to massive Gulf oil terminals such as Dhahran and Ras Tanura.
Enter the strategic importance of neighboring Bahrain. Historically, all the lands from Basra in southern Iraq to the peninsula of Musandam, in Oman — traditional trade posts between Europe and India — were known as Bahrain (“between two seas”).
Tehran could easily use neighboring Bahrain to infiltrate Al Sharqiyya, detach it from Riyadh’s control, and configure a “Greater Bahrain” allied with Iran. That’s the crux of the narrative peddled by petrodollar-controlled media, the proverbial Western “experts”, and incessantly parroted in the Beltway.
There’s no question Iranian hardliners cherish the possibility of a perpetual Bahraini thorn on Riyadh’s side. That would imply weaponizing a popular revolution in Al Sharqiyya. But the fact is not even Nimr al-Nimr was in favor of a secession of Al Sharqiyya.
And that’s also the view of the Rouhani administration in Tehran. Whether disgruntled youth across Al Sharqiyya will finally have had enough with the beheading of al-Nimr it’s another story; it may open a Pandora’s box that will not exactly displease the IRGC in Tehran.
But the heart of the matter is that Team Rouhani perfectly understands the developing Southwest Asia chapter of the New Great Game, featuring the re-emergence of Iran as a regional superpower; all of the House of Saud’s moves, from hopelessly inept to major strategic blunder, betray utter desperation with the end of the old order.
That spans everything from an unwinnable war (Yemen) to a blatant provocation (the beheading of al-Nimr) and a non sequitur such as the new Islamic 34-nation anti-terror coalition which most alleged members didn’t even know they were a part of.
The supreme House of Saud obsession rules, drenched in fear and loathing: the Iranian “threat”.
Riyadh, which is clueless on how to play geopolitical chess — or backgammon — will keep insisting on the oil war, as it cannot even contemplate a military confrontation with Tehran. And everything will be on hold, waiting for the next tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; will he/she be tempted to pivot back to Southwest Asia, and cling to the old order (not likely, as Washington relies on becoming independent from Saudi oil)? Or will the House of Saud be left to its own — puny — devices among the shark-infested waters of hardcore geopolitics?
Pepe Escobar
Source: http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.com/2016/01/yemen-update-1102016-desperation-in.html
