On his visit to the kingdom on Saturday, the first stop on his first
international trip, he will no doubt hear a lot from his [Persian] Gulf
counterparts about the Yemen conflict, and the "threats posed by Iranian" and al
Qaeda influence there. But he is likely to hear far less about a different but
equally serious threat to the country: famine. Reckless Saudi military policy
has pushed Yemen to the brink of humanitarian collapse, and the kingdom is
asking for more U.S. military support. If the U.S. doubles down on the Saudi
approach, it will likely consign several million people to starvation.
It is not going well for the Saudis. Two years in, their coalition and the
opposition alliance have largely fought each other to a stalemate. Intense Saudi
airstrikes are pounding the country into dust, but to little strategic effect.
Multiple rounds of U.N.-brokered negotiations have collapsed, as neither side
has proved ready to acknowledge that it cannot achieve its goals on the
battlefield. Shifting U.S. policy toward military escalation — as the Trump
administration is reportedly considering — would have dire humanitarian
consequences.
As the conflict drags on with no end in sight, the only clear winners have been
hunger and death. Yemen was one of the most food-insecure and water-scarce
countries in the world well before this latest conflict. Adding a brutal war to
the mix is pushing the country into catastrophe. The behavior of the Saudi
coalition gets a lot more press: It has bombed humanitarian warehouses, medical
clinics, schools, bridges along key humanitarian aid routes, commercial food and
water facilities, water infrastructure, and several of the ports used for
humanitarian imports. And despite U.S. pressure, the Saudis have shown little
concern for the civilian impact of their operations, even to the point of
famously bombing a widely attended funeral in Sanaa, killing more than 100
people.
The results for Yemen’s people are all too predictable. Amidst a crowded field
of global crises, Yemen takes the prize for the largest food security crisis in
the world, with 14 million people food insecure (roughly half the population)
and as many as two million in pre-famine conditions. Recent U.N. surveys have
found that half the country’s population is borrowing money to cover basic food
needs — an untenable situation when food prices are rising and economic
livelihoods are collapsing. Malnutrition has reached critical levels and has
spiked by a third in just the past year. The World Health Organization has
warned that the war has left Yemen’s health system close to collapse, with only
45 percent of facilities fully functional and drug availability declining by 70
percent. And degraded water systems have left humanitarians struggling to
contain a resurgent cholera outbreak that is spreading beyond control.
This is a classic pre-famine pattern. Widespread inability to afford sufficient
food erodes a population’s health and increases vulnerability to disease.
Malnutrition programs and degraded health services prove unable to keep up. And
disease outbreaks begin killing off a weakened population, starting with the
elderly and very young. The kindling for a major famine in Yemen is squarely in
place, awaiting only a spark.
Trump’s visit to Riyadh may provide the spark. With the conflict at a stalemate
and neither side in a mood to bargain, the Saudi coalition is seeking a wildcard
to change the military equation. It wants to retake the Houthi-held port city of
Hudaydah, and it want U.S. support.
The president and his team should not take the bait. Further military and
economic pressure would be unlikely to alter the basic political equation for
the Houthis, even if the United States were to substantially ramp up military
support. But it would inevitably extract a brutal toll on the civilian
population.
The Saudis have tried in numerous ways since 2015 to ramp up pressure on the
Houthis and bring them to a more conciliatory bargaining position. None have
delivered. Each time they have sought U.S. support, and each time the United
States has wisely urged restraint rather than escalation. The coalition attacked
and retook Aden in 2015, making arguments that closely echo the current
rationale for attacking Hudaydah. The city’s capture made little strategic
difference in the conflict. But it did destabilize security in Aden and place a
military frontline between the city’s port and the rest of the country,
effectively blocking the flow of commercial and humanitarian goods. Other
coalition actions — the offensive in Marib in 2015, the persistent interference
with basic commercial imports (which moderated after President Barack Obama
personally urged the Saudi king to lift it), the disastrous move of the Yemeni
central bank from Houthi-controlled Sanaa to coalition-held Aden — have been
justified on similar grounds. So far there is little evidence that these moves
have changed the Houthi’s fundamental military or economic calculus — but they
have done substantial damage to the humanitarian and economic situation.
An offensive on Hudaydah would fit this pattern, but with dramatically higher
costs. U.S. support for the operation would not likely change the overall
military balance, but would almost certainly tip the country squarely into
famine — a famine that would then have U.S. fingerprints on it. Yemen is reliant
on imports for 90 percent of its staple foods, and nearly three-quarters of
those imports flow through Hudaydah. This lifeline is the only thing currently
holding Yemen back from a full-fledged famine. An offensive on the town would
fully sever these supplies in the immediate term and create, as in Aden, an
impassable front line between the port and the country’s vulnerable population.
A catastrophic famine would soon follow.
This conflict will be resolved not on the battlefield but at the negotiating
table — and U.S. policy should aim to amplify pressure on the parties to cut a
deal (rather than making huge weapons sales to one side). The United States has
until now served as an important, albeit imperfect, restraint on coalition
military actions that could tip the country into famine. Abandoning this policy
would consign millions of Yemenis to likely starvation, all to support a Saudi
military push that will not bring the country appreciably closer to peace. Trump
and his advisors should tell the Saudis that they do not want a famine on their
conscience — and neither should Riyadh.
Source: alalam