Yemen’s destruction is one cost of the US-Saudi alliance

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/03/06/yemen-destruction-one-cost-saudi-alliance/NqkxsFjsr4ypZeWPjujisN/story.html



A man walked on the rubble of an electronics warehouse store after a Saudi-led air strike destroyed it in Yemen's capital Sanaa Feb. 14, 2016.

Yemen’s destruction is one cost of the US-Saudi alliance
By Stephen Seche
March 06, 2016

Blink twice, and Yemen’s all-but-forgotten war — news of which is buried under grim headlines about Syria and terrorism and Middle East migrants — will be into its second year. On March 26, 2015, a coalition of Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia began an air campaign designed to restore Yemen’s legitimate government and force a Shia rebel group known as the Houthis to relinquish its hold on an alarmingly large swath of Yemen’s national territory it had seized by force.

Nearly a year later, the Saudi airstrikes continue, wreaking havoc on Yemen’s already fragile infrastructure and traumatizing its civilian population. According to the United Nations, nearly 3,000 civilians have died in the conflict. A UN panel recently accused the Saudis of attacking civilians and civilian facilities and cited 119 sorties as having violated international law. In response, the Saudis announced the formation of an independent team of experts to investigate the charges, although they said nothing about exercising greater caution in their targeting. The UN’s top humanitarian official last week accused all the factions fighting in the country of attacking civilian areas.

If you think none of this affects you or the United States, think again. In December 2009, the so-called underwear bomber tried unsuccessfully to detonate explosives stitched into his shorts as the plane he was aboard approached Detroit — that young man had been dispatched by the Yemen-based Al Qaeda franchise, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. Fast forward to October 2010, when authorities in the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates intercepted toner cartridges packed with explosives aboard a US-bound aircraft, another AQAP operation.

Unfortunately, AQAP is thriving these days, while the Saudi-led coalition focuses exclusively on defeating the Houthis, who the government in Riyadh argues are nothing more than the tip of the Iranian spear in the Arabian Peninsula, which must be blunted. Meanwhile, AQAP conducts attacks against Yemeni targets, seizes and controls territory, and presumably continues to plan more external attacks with seeming impunity, the occasional US drone strike notwithstanding.