The U.S. Is Prolonging an Unwinnable War in Yemen by Mohamad Bazzi - Defense One
In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week, President Donald Trump signaled to Saudi Arabia that he would avoid criticizing its destabilizing actions in the Middle East. Instead, he blamed only Iran, the kingdom’s regional rival, for funding “havoc and slaughter.” Trump praised Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for pledging billions in aid and “pursuing multiple avenues to ending Yemen’s horrible, horrific civil war.” He failed to mention that Yemen’s current conflict escalated dramatically in early 2015, when Saudi Arabia led a coalition of Arab countries to intervene in the war.
That war has long since devolved into a humanitarian catastrophe. The United Nations stopped counting its civilian death toll two years ago, when it hit 10,000. An independent estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which tracks conflicts worldwide, found that nearly 50,000 people, including combatants, died between January 2016 and July 2018. The war has also left more than 22 million people—75 percent of the population of Yemen, already one of the poorest countries in the world—in need of humanitarian aid…