Obama Signals Support for Widening War in Yemen: Stop on Arms to Egypt Lifted

The news out of Yemen is that the Saudis are indiscriminately bombing the civilian population (Kareem Fahim and Nick Cumming-Bruce, "Aid for Yemen Dwindles as Need Rises Amid Chaos"):

“The situation in Yemen is extremely alarming, with dozens of civilians killed over the past four days,” Mr. al-Hussein [United Nations’ human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein] said in a statement. “The country seems to be on the verge of total collapse.”

“The killing of so many innocent civilians is simply unacceptable,” he added.

Some hospitals have been bombed, as have private homes; schools; and civilian airports and power stations in the capital, Sana, and the cities of Saada and Al Hudaydah, the United Nations said, highlighting fears of the havoc that would result from a threatened ground invasion by Saudi forces and those of other nations.

Unicef said in a statement on Tuesday that at least 62 children had been killed in fighting in Yemen over the past week. Mr. al-Hussein said he was shocked by a Saudi airstrike Monday on Al Mazraq, a camp in the north for displaced Yemenis, which caused scores of civilian casualties.

The United Nations human rights office said its staff had confirmed that at least 19 people had been killed and 35 others wounded in that strike, but it noted that there were different accounts of the number of dead. The International Organization for Migration, which had workers in the camp, reported that 40 people had been killed.

Signalling his support for this terror bombing of a civilian population guilty of nothing other than residing in a country riven with strife, Obama removed the hold on high-tech military hardware bound for Egypt (Peter Baker, "Obama Removes Weapons Freeze Against Egypt"):

Mr. Obama’s move will release 12 F-16 fighter jets, 20 Harpoon missiles, and the shells and parts necessary to assemble up to 125 M1A1 Abrams tanks that Egypt had previously paid for but that have been held up since 2013. The F-16s are especially important to Egyptian leaders, who have bitterly raised the issue with their American counterparts at nearly every opportunity.

Intended or not, experts said Mr. Obama’s decision would be interpreted as an effort by Washington to bolster a fragile position in the region. “The U.S. is facing quite a few challenges, and it needs to shore up relations with allies,” said Steven Simon, a former Middle East adviser to Mr. Obama now affiliated with Dartmouth. “The assistance to Egypt was always predicated on its foreign policy, not its domestic policy. That was certainly the Egyptian understanding of it.”

But other experts and human rights advocates said Mr. Obama had effectively capitulated to Mr. Sisi, a former general who helped lead the military overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013 and then won the presidency in an election tainted by wide-scale arrests of opposition figures.  . . . 

“Unsurprisingly, in this case you see that national security priorities, broadly defined, trump virtually everything else,” said Sarah Margon, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “And that’s a very myopic, short-term approach to fighting terrorism. Human rights abuses are actually a very bad counterterrorism strategy.”

According to Human Rights Watch and an Egyptian group called the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the Egyptian authorities arrested more than 40,000 people after Mr. Sisi’s removal of Mr. Morsi and have never provided a full accounting of the detentions.

Sisi this past weekend announced the formation of a joint Arab military force and promised Egyptian ground troops for Yemen if they were needed.

Make no mistake. The United States is now fully committed to a "Sisi solution" for the Middle East, which is to say, a re-imposition of Saddam Hussein-like strongman rule throughout the region. No longer will there even be lip service for democracy and basic human rights. The Saudis and Israelis are calling the shots. One can pick up a change in the climate on the Gray Lady's editorial page. The rankest neocon hatred (Bolton and Prosor) is allowed the spotlight. This does not bode well for an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.

Yemen is the beginning of a war that will crack the Middle East wide open. Already the Iranians say they have broken the Saudi blockade, a clear statement that they will support the Houthis:

Some aid may have pierced the blockade. The state-run news media in Iran reported on Tuesday that the Iranians had airlifted humanitarian aid to Yemen, the first such delivery from Iran since the bombing campaign began.

The accounts did not specify precisely where the aid had been sent, or how the Iranians had evaded the blockade, but they said it included 19 tons of medical supplies and two tons of food donated by the Iranian Red Crescent.

A Saudi military spokesman blamed the Houthis on Tuesday for the growing number of casualties, accusing them of fighting from inside civilian areas and putting residents at risk.

That assertion came in response to a swelling chorus of criticism of the Saudi military, including from Amnesty International, which said in a statement that 14 people had been burned to death, including at least six civilians, in Saudi airstrikes early Tuesday against a Houthi checkpoint and fuel depots.

In its statement, Amnesty International accused the coalition of “turning a blind eye to civilian deaths and suffering caused by its military intervention.”

The fighting has forced hundreds of families to flee their homes, adding to the more than 334,000 people the United Nations’ refugee agency reported as displaced in the months of conflict before the recent surge in hostilities.

To escape the fighting, small numbers of Yemenis have started crossing the Red Sea to Somalia and Djibouti, said William Spindler, a spokesman for the refugee agency. “We are preparing for a larger influx,” he added.

The Gulf sheikhdoms are rotten to the core, commanding nothing but mercenaries, whether they be salafis or regular military. They have proven adept only at terrorizing civilians and collapsing paper armies like the one set up by the United States for Iraq. What is about to come in Yemen promises to be very different.

The U.S. needs to tread carefully. Whether the elites in control know it or not, the political system in the homeland commands very little support. There is a greater disconnect between government and the governed than at any time in my life. An expansive commitment to yet another battle front in the Middle East (e.g., Iran) will destroy the country.