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The Humanitarian Disaster in Yemen

The Saudi-led attack is directly contributing to the ruin of Yemen.

The Financial Times reports on the humanitarian disaster that the war in Yemen is creating:

Even before a Saudi-led coalition began pounding the country to halt the advance of Houthi rebels, about 60 per cent of Yemen depended on humanitarian aid that has now slowed or halted. “We had a humanitarian crisis and fragile state before this happened … If this continues, we’re looking at a humanitarian disaster,” said Grant Pritchard, head of advocacy in Yemen for the aid agency Oxfam. “People will struggle to survive.”

Residents in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, are queueing in long fuel lines and hoarding food as prices for basic necessities rise. Fuel shortages are particularly worrisome, aid workers say, because Yemen’s water supply is highly dependent on diesel-fuelled pumps.

As awful as the civilian casualties from the Saudi-led campaign are, these disruptions of aid and supplies will hurt the entire civilian population and wreak havoc on the country’s fragile economy. These are the effects of war that are very often overlooked or forgotten, especially when the people suffering are deemed to be on the “wrong” side of some international rivalry. The Saudis’ war is making an already extremely poor country much worse off:

Ahmed Shammakh, a Yemeni economist, said that the conflict is plunging the country – already one of the poorest in the Middle East – deeper into poverty.

“There’s no doubt that this war has gravely affected Yemenis,” Shammakh said. “Even though food and other products are available, the average Yemeni can no longer afford to buy most things. Add to that the fact that many families are now displaced. It’s making poverty and unemployment rise drastically.”

The Saudi-led attack is directly contributing to the ruin of Yemen, the greater immiseration of its people, and it is creating even more instability that will plague the Saudis and Yemen’s other neighbors in the years to come. All of this is happening so that Riyadh and its partners can fight against a grossly exaggerated threat of a pro-Iranian government in Sanaa. Perversely, the longer the campaign goes on, the more likely the fear of Yemen falling into Iran’s orbit will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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