Saudi Arabia and its regional allies, mainly the United Arab Emirates, entered the Yemeni government’s war against the Houthi rebels in 2015, and began a wide-ranging aerial bombing campaign involving more than 150 airstrikes on civilian targets in Yemen. The United Nations calls the situation in Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, as it is estimated that the war with Yemen has killed more than 230,000 people as a result of the fighting or its indirect consequences, such as hunger and outbreaks of disease. The war has pushed the impoverished Yemen to the brink of famine. During this nearly decade-long war, both the U.S. and Canada fournished weapons, including F-15S/SA planes and Canadian-made light armoured vehicles (LAVs), artillery systems, and heavy machine guns.
In 2021, the Biden administration in 2021 announced an end to U.S. military support for “offensive operations” carried out by the Saudi-led coalition and suspended some munition sales. However, aircraft maintenance contracts fulfilled by both the U.S. military and U.S. companies to coalition squadrons carrying out offensive missions have continued. Canada’s military exports to Saudi Arabia actually increased in 2021, making the Saudi kingdom Canada’s top export destination for such goods after the U.S. — 64 percent of the total value of non-US military exports that year. In 2020, a review was undertaken by the Canadian government of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, which concluded there was “no substantial risk” such transfers of military goods were “used to commit or facilitate violations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law, or gender-based violence”. However, Amnesty International and Project Ploughshares have declared that the Canadian government’s review misinterpreted, or ignored, key pillars of the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty, an international agreement signed by Canada regulating the international trade in conventional arms. Contrary to what the federal government has said, they believe that Canada continues to ignore its international obligations to the Arms Trade Treaty. On the other hand, the U.S., under Donald Trump, dropped out of the Arms Trade Treaty in 2019 for obvious misplaced domestic reasons.
Despite the fact that both countries have supported the kingdom, there have recently been signs of discontent with Saudi actions in Yemen and human rights violations by the Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in 2018 by the Saudis did not help. Nevertheless, we now have a planned trip by President Biden to Saudi Arabia to discuss increasing their production of oil, thereby helping his administration to lower gasoline prices in the U.S. Although the U.S. helped diplomatically to arrange for a truce in the conflict between the Houthi in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the horrendous damage was already done in both civilian casualties and infrastructure, including homes, hospitals and communication towers in Yemen. Since 2015, human rights groups investigating the airstrikes on Yemen have identified more than 300 that violated or appeared to violate international law. Even as early as March 2015, Internal State Department documents noted that U.S. officials worried that coalition airstrikes may have violated the rules of war.
While the world is paying close attention to possible war crimes by the Russians in Ukraine, countries such as the U.S. and Canada have been probably aided, through the provision of weapons to the Saudis and their allies, similar atrocities in Yemen. In addition, within the kingdom of Saudi Arabia there are a number of alleged human rights issues, including the imprisonment of political activists. However, these concerns have not been enough for the U.S. and Canada to cease their military support to the country. One has to believe it’s more about the oil than it’s about the revenue from exports of military weapons and maintenance contracts. Alas, there are no comparable bans on the export of oil from the region compared to existing European, U.S. and Canadian bans on the import of oil and gas from Russia. Despite unresolved diplomatic disputes between the Saudis and both our countries, access to oil reserves unfortunately continues to drive our immediate foreign policies in the region.
FROLITICKS 