Foreign Affairs: Saudi Arabia’s Economic War Against Yemen Resulted in Quarter of Million Deaths
The American magazine, “Foreign Affairs,” said, Wednesday, that the war in Yemen has resulted in a quarter of a million deaths and billions of dollars in economic damage, leading some to dub it the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis.
It continued: The Saudi-led blockade has exposed more than half of the Yemeni population to the risk of starvation and infectious diseases on a large scale, as Saudi Arabia has sought, through a long history, to control the Yemeni economy and political institutions and subjugate them for more than three decades. And Riyadh recently began to end work visas of tens of thousands of Yemeni migrant workers, forcing them to return to a war-torn country amid an ongoing humanitarian crisis.
And the magazine explained in the report that Saudi Arabia’s decision to expel Yemeni workers is part of a long pattern. Since the establishment of the modern Saudi state during the 1930s, successive monarchs have feared the threat that a united, prosperous and democratic Yemen might pose to their rule, especially after the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990.
The “Foreign Affairs” pointed out that the Saudi-led decision to exclude Yemen from the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council, has deepened the economic collapse of Yemen.
The magazine stressed the need for Saudi Arabia to stop its military incursion into Yemen, and to assist in political and economic support, as Riyadh failed to impede Yemeni development, and succeeded in waging a costly military war. So, according to report writer Asher Urkaby, it is best for the kingdom to integrate Yemen into the regional economy and create legal pathways for its citizens to work in Saudi Arabia again
Fears of Authoritarian Family Regimes
The magazine continued by saying that the Saudis’ fears after Yemeni unity reached their climax, in a region ruled by authoritarian regimes and families. Saudi Arabia sought to weaken the nascent Yemeni state by hampering it economically.
The report indicated that the new economic policy of Saudi Arabia caused the deportation of nearly 400,000 Yemenis, while the remittances of nearly two million Yemeni residents amounted to $2.3 billion annually, which represents 61% of the total remittances of Yemen sent from abroad, for a country with a total output with an annual domestic budget of $20 billion, that money plays a big role, and losing that cash flow would be devastating for a country already in a state of economic and political collapse.