Hundreds of Thousands Likely Perished from War in Yemen
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
Since US-orchestrated/Saudi-led terror-bombing and blockade of Yemen began in March 2015, Western and other media continue claiming only 10,000 Yemenis perished.
It’s a fabricated claim to downplay what’s largely a forgotten war, little reported about it, nearly none on US major media television.
It’s Obama’s war, now Trump’s in cahoots with the Saudis and UAE, despotic regimes contemptuous of human and civil rights, allied with Washington’s war OF terror in the Middle East – committing countless numbers of Nuremberg-level crimes in one country after another, Yemenis harmed most of all.
On Monday, the UK-owned, controlled, and operated BBC reported “at least 10,000 people…killed in the (Yemeni) conflict.”
Though technically correct by prefacing 10,000 killed with saying “at least,” that number likely perished in the first few months of war – ongoing for 84 months with no prospect for resolution.
US-supported/Saudi-led terror-bombing continues massacring mostly Yemeni civilians daily, the BBC and other Western media largely silent about it.
The US and UK are the largest Saudi arms suppliers. Sales and profits matter more than human life and rule of law principles.
An earlier UNICEF report said at least one Yemeni child under age-five dies every 10 minutes from starvation alone.
Annualized that’s 52,560 deaths – plus countless numbers of older children and adults perishing from starvation, untreated diseases, and overall deprivation, along with deaths from Saudi/UAE terror-bombing.
Civilian deaths alone from the above factors likely number in the hundreds of thousands, increasing exponentially daily.
US imperial rage is mainly responsible, the Saudis and UAE in cahoots with its dark forces for their own self-interest – the horrendous human toll of no consequence, including by Western media largely ignoring it.
According to UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Lise Grande, around half of the country’s 27 million population faces potential famine by yearend.
“(M)any of us felt as we went into the 21st century that it was unthinkable that we could see a famine like we saw in Ethiopia, that we saw in Bengal,” and elsewhere, she said, adding:
“Many of us had the confidence that would never happen again, and yet the reality is that in Yemen that is precisely what we are looking at.”
In September, Save the Children said blockade could “cause starvation on an unprecedented scale.” Hundreds of thousands of children alone face starvation, millions more Yemenis at risk if the key Hodeidah port is blockaded.
Children’s International CEO Helle Thorning-Schmidt said “(m)illions of children don’t know when or if their next meal will come. In one hospital I visited in north Yemen, the babies were too weak to cry, their bodies exhausted by hunger.”
“This war risks killing an entire generation of Yemen’s children who face multiple threats, from bombs to hunger to preventable diseases like cholera.”
The world community is doing little to end the conflict. Washington, Britain, their key NATO partners, and Israel want it continued.
According to a Yemen Data Project report, thousands of airstrikes since March 2015 targeted hospitals, schools, mosques, residential areas, electric power plants, water treatment facilities, marketplaces, and other non-military-related sites – responsible for countless tens of thousands of civilian casualties, unreported or under-reported by Western media.
Last May, the UN warned that 10 million Yemenis faced possible starvation by yearend if endless war and blockade of the country continues.
A holocaust is happening in plain sight with scant world community and Western media attention.
How many hundreds of thousands or millions of Yemeni deaths will it take for them to notice – and for world leaders to act?
Following Nazi Germany’s conquest of Poland, the state ceased to exist. Will Yemen’s fate be the same if war continues endlessly?
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
