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The Humanitarian Disaster in Yemen Continues

The war on Yemen keeps going, and the country's humanitarian crisis continues to worsen.
yemen - desert

The war on Yemen keeps going, and the country’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. The WHO reports that almost half of the country’s medical facilities have been forced to shut down due to lack of resources and the ongoing conflict. More than 1.5 million people have been displaced by the war, and the death toll is now over 4,000. Over twenty million people remain in urgent need of humanitarian aid, and Save the Children estimates that twelve million of those are at serious risk of starvation. The Saudi-led blockade continues to starve the country’s civilian population of essential food, fuel, and medicine, and the U.S. continues to back its reckless client in its disastrous war.

Making matters worse, the Red Cross announced that it was suspending its operations in Aden after gunmen attacked their office there. The Saudi-led coalition has made some gains in southern Yemen in recent weeks now that it has been willing to deploy its own ground forces, but this has unsurprisingly paved the way for gains by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP):

Although forces loyal to Hadi’s exiled government in Saudi Arabia retook Aden from the Houthis last month, al Qaeda militants deployed in a western district of Aden on Saturday.

The report makes it sound as if there is some contradiction here, but there isn’t. The Saudi-led, U.S.-backed war on Yemen has been empowering AQAP for months, and these gains in Aden are just the most recent benefits that jihadists have received from Riyadh’s appalling campaign. Earlier in the summer, Saudi-backed forces were making common cause with AQAP, so the Saudis clearly don’t care that their unnecessary war is strengthening AQAP’s position in Yemen.

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