British Newspaper: Yemen’s Children are Dying Under Siege

“With Christmas and new year centred around children, how many of us have given a thought over the holiday season to the children of Yemen and how much of the general public knows of Britain’s role in their suffering,” the British newspaper Morning Star said.

While Yemen has long been impoverished, the military intervention by the Saudi-led coalition in March 2015 against the Yemen’s, massively intensified the death and destruction.

In 2018 Save the Children reported that “an estimated 85,000 children under five may have died from extreme hunger” since April 2015. By the end of 2021, the UN Development Programme estimated the number of direct and indirect deaths due to the war was 377,000.

“Of the total deaths, 259,000  nearly 70 per cent of total conflict-attributable deaths  are children younger than five years old,” the report noted.

Shamefully, alongside the US, Britain has played and continues to play a crucial role in fuelling the conflict, and therefore bears significant responsibility for the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.

For once, a Tory politician was telling the truth. In September the Campaign Against Arms Trade estimated that since March 2015 the British government has licensed at least £23 billion of arms to the Saudi-led coalition.

“Every day Yemen is hit by British bombs — dropped by British planes that are flown by British-trained pilots and maintained and prepared inside Saudi Arabia by thousands of British contractors,” Arron Merat noted in the Guardian in 2019.

Appearing in the Channel 4 documentary Britain’s Hidden War the same year, a former Saudi air force officer explained Saudi Arabia “can’t keep the [British-made] Typhoon [aircraft] in the air without the British. The pilots they can’t fly it without maintenance and without the logistics.”

We also know British military personnel are based in the command and control centre for Saudi airstrikes and have access to target lists.

According to a 2019 Daily Mail report, British Special Boat Service soldiers are on the ground in Yemen, operating as Forward Air Controllers, requesting air support from the Royal Saud Air Force. On the world stage, Britain provides diplomatic cover for Saudi Arabia’s ongoing slaughter.

Some former Conservative Cabinet ministers, notably Andrew Mitchell, say Britain has been protecting Saudi Arabia from criticism there,” the Guardian reported in 2018.

The reality is that Washington and London could have stopped the Saudis’ war any time they liked.

The problem is polling conducted by YouGov in 2017 found just 49 per cent of Britons were aware of the war in Yemen — something that should mortify everybody who works in the mainstream media.

Frustratingly, the rare times the war is reported on, Britain’s role is often omitted. Of course, some wars and victims are more newsworthy than others. Indeed, an analysis of the scale and quality of media coverage given to the Russian attack on Ukraine compared to the Saudi-led attack on Yemen would make an illuminating PhD research project.

In terms of solidarity from Britons, Ukraine has been very lucky, with supportive street demonstrations, people flying Ukrainian flags from their homes and on their Twitter profiles, record-breaking donations to humanitarian organisations working to help Ukrainians, and warmly welcoming Ukrainian refugees.

With last year’s temporary ceasefire in Yemen having now lapsed, what we now need to do is expand our sympathy and outrage to include those in Yemen, especially Yemeni children, whose lives are being destroyed by Britain’s abhorrent foreign policy.