The Yemeni civil war and the death of Jamal Khashoggi

In September 2014 Houthi rebels stormed Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, forcing President Mansour Hadi and his government into exile.  This was the beginning of a bloody civil war, which continues to rage on four years later. After the Shiite and allegedly Iranian-backed Houthi takeover of Sanaa, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition of Sunni Arab states to support the exiled government. The coalition began launching indiscriminate airstrikes into Yemen in March, 2015. Saudi Arabia co-opted the civil conflict within Yemen, creating a proxy war with Iran, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Yemeni lives.  Pushing millions to the brink of starvation, the ongoing conflict in Yemen is being called the worst humanitarian crisis in recent history. Save the Children has estimated that throughout 2018, 130 children have died each day. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 13 million people in Yemen live under conditions of famine, and that over two million Yemenis have been internally displaced. Last year alone the civilian death toll was estimated at over 10,000.The Saudi-led coalition continues to block food, medicine, and other humanitarian aid from entering the country. But why has this civil war and humanitarian crisis only gained widespread Western media attention now?

After the murder of exiled Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul on October 2nd, the actions of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen have gained increasing media attention. This attention has increased international pressure on Western countries that support the Saudi regime. In particular, criticism spiked after the New York Times published an article with striking images of starving children, victims of coalition airstrikes, and the abject poverty of the Yemeni people.

British Labour MP Lloyd Russel-Moyle has been quoted recently saying that the United Kingdom is “a party to this war”, recognizing the fact that the Saudi-led coalition purchases weapons from the US, Britain and France to launch airstrikes into Yemen. Recently, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been criticized by international human rights organizations for defending a current arms deal with Saudi Arabia. He cited that backing out of the arms deal would cost “billions” and that “Canada’s word needs to mean something.” This criticism of Prime Minister Trudeau has become prevalent in the mainstream Western media only after the death of Jamal Khashoggi.

Why did it take the murder of a Saudi journalist in Turkey to bring attention to the horrors of Yemen? In an interview with the Washington Post, Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University, said that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi has “thrown open the doors of doubt to the entire Saudi version of the war in Yemen.” A case in point: it was only after Khashoggi’s death that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged for the resumption of ceasefire talks between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels.

The Saudi version of events states that targets for airstrikes are carefully chosen, that rising civilian death counts reported by the UN are exaggerated, and that the coalition is not interfering with humanitarian aid. However, Saudi Arabia has made providing humanitarian aid to Yemen increasingly difficult. For example, the state has pressured the UN and international aid groups to remove staff from rebel controlled areas. The pressure to remove staff came between the bombings of Doctors Without Borders-operated hospitals in October 2015 and August 2016. Additionally, the Saudi coalition has blockaded Yemen, preventing food, medicine and fuel from entering the country.

In August 2018, a Saudi coalition airstrike killed over 40 school children on a bus. At present, Saudi Arabia itself is the only body investigating civilian deaths caused by airstrikes. While individual airstrikes such as this have gained mainstream media attention, the motives and actions of the Saudi-led coalition have not been widely scrutinized until the murder of Khashoggi, nor have the actions of the US, UK, France or Canada in continuing to sell arms to the coalition.

The death of Jamal Khashoggi provided the impetus to question the Saudi government’s actions more widely and to hold them accountable for their actions. The fact that the Saudi government changed its story after the Khashoggi killing, initially claiming his death had nothing to do with them and then admitting he died in a “fist fight” at the embassy, has made it increasingly difficult for the Western world to ignore the role of Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen.