US President Joe Biden last week announced plans to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s “offensive work” in war-torn Yemen, including a halt sale of relevant weapons to the government in Riyadh.
The move marked a significant shift in Washington’s approach to the conflict and renewed pressure to reach a diplomatic solution to the years-long war, which led to what the United Nations calls the humanitarian crisis. worst in the world.
But since the news on Thursday, Biden’s administration has not released much information on what support Saudi-Arabia-led coalition forces in Yemen are expected to end – or how -differentiates it from other U.S. aid and arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
“The United States will provide spare parts, armaments, armaments, technical support, all sorts of things to the Saudi military, which will enable its offensive operations,” said Bruce Riedel, senior one at the Brookings Institution, near Al Jazeera.
“So if the Saudis continue to use the Royal Saudi Air Force to bomb targets in Yemen, apparently, under this teaching, that aid and support should be stopped.”
The US began providing “logistical and intelligence support” to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen in March 2015, shortly after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched an armed attack in support of the Abd-Rabbu President Mansour Hadi, who was taken over by the Houthi rebels.
Such support included the creation of a US-Saudi “design cell” to coordinate military and intelligence support, technical support for U.S.-purchased air fleets, and initially, air refueling of Saudi aircraft.
The fighting, riots imposed by Riyadh, and Saudi air strikes have imposed a bloody tax on Yemenis, with thousands of civilians killed and a humanitarian catastrophe pushing 13.5 million people to with hunger. Both the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels are accused of committing war crimes.
But since the start of the war, Saudi Arabia has remained the largest importer of U.S. arms in the world, with major imports rising 130 percent from 2015 to 2019, compared to the previous five-year period that, according to the Stockholm International Peace Study Institute.
During the same period, 73 percent of Saudi Arabia’s arms imports came from the U.S.
Houthi detention center was destroyed by Saudi Arabia-led coalition airstrikes, killing at least 60 people and injuring several dozen in the Damar region in September 2019 [File: Hani Mohammed/TAP Photo]
The U.S. Department of Defense said Friday that U.S. intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition, which was largely linked to airstrikes, would cease.
Biden’s administration will go through an “inter-agency process” to determine what constitutes “offensive” support for the coalition, as well as evaluating individual arms sales, Defense said State Department Ned Price at a press conference that same day.
But Riedel said many questions remain, including an urgent one related to easing the humanitarian crisis in Yemen: Will the news include a halt to information or any other support for Riyadh obstruction of the countryside?
The embargo, first imposed in 2015, closed land, air and seaports to Yemen, but has been reduced from time to time amid criticism of its humanitarian crisis. carried out. “As long as the trade embargo is in place, millions of Yemenis will be at risk,” Riedel said.
“[Is the US] going to support the Saudi navy to continue that? Are we going to give them information about ships from Iran to the Houthis? “
US long-term support
Biden’s move is very strong from support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen that began under its vice-president, President Barack Obama, and expanded under its former President, President Donald Trump.
Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said U.S. support for the Saudi-Arabia-led coalition in Yemen was “Obama’s way to trade for Iran [nuclear] contract “, reached in July 2015.” That was the original mistake, “said Landis.
In 2015, the Obama administration was largely silent as Riyadh was strongly opposed to a Dutch-led effort to investigate human rights in Yemen. The U.S. also did not step up when Riyadh threatened to withdraw DA money if the group did not remove him from a list of child rights violations for what it did in Yemen in 2016.
At the end of his term, the Obama administration briefly suspended some arms contracts to Riyadh after a Saudi air strike on a funeral in Sanaa that killed 140 people in October 2016.
But U.S. support for the Saudi campaign increased in Yemen under Trump, who was a strong ally of Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in particular. When he took office, Trump announced plans to increase training for the Saudi air force.
Trump also authorized $ 27.4bn in U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia in his first three years in office, the May 2020 Security Support Monitor report found. “The Trump administration has looked at two key deals for directed bombs with precision to Saudi Arabia of the kind used in his brutal war in Yemen, as well as an upgrade of his U.S.-delivered F-15 aircraft that are the bulwark of the Saudi war air in Yemen, ”the report said.
In 2018, amid international pressure to end the war, Defense Secretary James Mattis said the U.S. would no longer refuel aviation for Saudi flights – after Saudi Arabia to say that they had developed their own capacity and no longer needed Washington. help.
Trump continued to stand with Saudi Arabia in 2019, undermining a resolution issued by the House of Representatives and the Senate calling for a halt to U.S. support for the coalition. led by Saudi Arabia.
As of June 2020, the Trump administration reported to Congress that the U.S. military was “continuing to provide limited military advice and intelligence, logistics, and other support to regional forces fighting the Houthis in Yemen”. .
What weapons are ‘offensive’?
The Biden administration has already stopped waiting for Trump’s arms sale to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, calling for the move to be re-evaluated as “normal” by a new administration. However, two forthcoming contracts for GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs and missiles with detailed instructions, are expected to be finalized under the announcement.
More arms contracts are likely to be part of an “ongoing compromise” as the U.S. works toward a larger diplomatic effort to end the conflict in Yemen, Landis said.
That effort includes the appointment of Tim Lenderking as Biden’s new administrative ambassador to Yemen and plans to build the US designation of the Houthi movement as a “foreign terrorist group”, which has been accused of supporting put on Yemenis.
“So many of these weapons are fungible,” Landis said. “They could be for defense or crime.”
He said the Biden administration will engage in a “fine match” as it seeks to pressure Saudi Arabia not to drive the country towards further austerity in Yemen or into the arms of Russia and China.
That means Biden could mature without a more permanent ban on arms sales.
“A lot of it is going to be optics,” he said. “There will be a lot of fog and mirrors, and a lot of head fares with Biden administration.”
‘Don’t take the foot off the gas’
At the same time, work continues for populist groups that have urged the U.S. to suspend support for Saudi-led forces in Yemen, said Hassan el- Tayyab, Middle East policy lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL).
El-Tayyab said the Biden administration’s news is a good first step, but that campaigners are urging the U.S. to end all forms of support for the coalition.
“This means [ending] intel division for Saudi-led coalition strikes and spare parts movements that keep warplanes in the air. It means [ending] focused on logical support and assistance and maintenance, ”he told Al Jazeera.
Malnourished Hassan Merzam Muhammad is lying on a bed at his family’s cottage in the Abs district of Hajjah district, Yemen in November 2020 [File: Eissa Alragehi/Reuters]
El-Tayyab said “offensive weapons” must also be clearly defined, and said he wants to ensure that weapons such as Reaper drones and F-35s agreed to be sold by the Trump administration to the UAE are taken into any ban.
“I’m not a full pessimist here. I welcome the news, “he told Al Jazeera. “But I’m just trying to be vigilant and not take the leg off the gas under the pressure of application. Because we don’t know what’s going to happen. “