The Saudi-UAE military coalition has admitted that their August 9th attack targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen was ‘unjustified.’ The strike was carried out on a school bus stationed at a market in Dayhan, Saada, a Houthi-controlled province. The strike killed a total of 51 people, 40 of them children aged 6 to 11 years. This attack is just one of many against the Houthis, a local Shiite rebel group that ascended to power in 2015.
The coalition claimed that the strike was based on intelligence that the bus was carrying Houthi leaders. But the coalition’s Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT) has since then admitted fault. “The Joint Team … is of the opinion that the coalition forces should initiate legal action to try and penalise those responsible for the mistakes, which caused collateral damage in the area,” says Mansour Ahmed al-Mounsour, a legal adviser to JIAT.
Some say that the coalition’s concession is to simply quell mounting outside pressure. The U.N.’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterrez called for an investigation into the conflict. The Human Rights Watch published a 90-page report highlighting the conflict’s atrocities and stating that JIAT fails to properly hold Saudi-UAE actions responsible. Hussain al-Bukhaiti, a pro-Houthi activist, says that the coalition’s statement was “not an apology,” and that it comes only in response to the heavy media coverage. Georgetown University’s Sama’a al-Hamdani states that “the Saudis had to agree to hold themselves accountable to international standards of law.” Further, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher interprets the statement as an admission of faulty intelligence, not that of any moral wrongdoing.
But the moral questions surrounding the Yemeni conflict are abound. The Yemeni conflict started around 2015, when the Houthis ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi from Saada, Yemen’s capital (they largely opposed [1] his executive extension of his own power in office and [2] his oil trade policies). The Saudi-UAE coalition (with, among others, an interest in Yemen’s role within the international oil industry) has subsequently worked to put Hadi back in power: but this has meant 16,000+ air raids, almost a third of which has hit civilians. Attacks have targeted weddings and hospitals, water plants, and electricity plants. And the Houthis have been accused of shelling civilian areas and allowing snipers to target non-combatants. Around 10,000 people have been killed, but “the death toll is likely to be higher.” Save the Children estimates that an average of 130 children die every day from extreme hunger and disease, that of which has been brought on by the conflict. The U.N. suggests “all sides” may be responsible for war crimes; and Kamel Jendoubi of the U.N. states that “A confidential list of these individuals will be presented today to the [UN] High Commissioner.”
Still, UAE officials defend operations. The UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, stated that “the coalition is fulfilling its role in reclaiming the Yemeni state and securing the future of the region from Iranian interference.” Indeed, this conflict does not simply concern the Houthis and the joint coalition. Iran, the U.S., and the U.K. also have a stake in the conflict. Iran has been suspected of backing the Houthis with weapons shipments (Tehran denies). In the August 9th attack, the Saudi-UAE coalition used a 227 kg laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed Martin. Saudi Arabia is both the U.S.’s and the U.K.’s number 1 weapons customer: since 2009, the U.S. has offered 115B in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia; and the U.K. successfully made 4.5B pound from weapons sales in the first two years of bombings in Yemen.
Members of U.S. Congress have called for a closer look at U.S. involvement in Yemen, for worry that U.S. military personnel might have to answer for war crimes under the War Crimes Act. U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said that the U.S.’s support of the coalition was under ongoing review and not “unconditional.” He states, “Our conduct there is to try to keep the human cost of innocents being killed accidentally to the absolute minimum. That is our goal where we engage with the coalition. Our goal is to reduce this tragedy and to get it to the UN brokered table as quickly as possible.”
Still, thousands of innocent Yemeni lives have been, and continue to be, lost. This conflict has religious, political, and economic motivations, which happen obscure the real human costs. The Group Eminent Experts on Yemen’s Charles Garraway states, “despite the severity of the situation we continue to see a complete disregard for the people in Yemen.” “This conflict has reached its peak with no apparent sight of light at the end of the tunnel. It is indeed a forgotten crisis.” If Yemen is to see the light at the end of the tunnel, active, objective and ethical scrutiny of all involved parties must occur.
