By Mohammad Ghaderi

Riyadh paddle in Yemen swamp

March 5, 2018 - 9:18

TEHRAN - Saudi Arabia, facing setbacks in the Yemen War, is struggling to get out of Yemen.

The Saudi-led coalition attacked Yemen in 2015 and since then it has destroyed much of Yemen's infrastructure, a country that has always been one of the Arab world's poorest states.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has recently reported that 15 million Yemenis have no access to clean water, with over 20 million in need of aid. The humanitarian institution also said in a tweet that pumping drinking water into nine cities stopped during the past year due to lack of fuel to run the pumps. It added that the halt in pumping caused a crisis and made about 90 percent of the residents of these cities bereft of necessities.

In August 2017, Yemen’s national blood bank sent out an urgent appeal to “anyone who would listen” as it was facing threat of closure and many of the country’s hospitals were running out of supplies.

The National Blood Transfusion Centre director, Dr Adnan al-Hakimi in a statement appealed to all humanitarian organizations in the international community and all financial donors to support the center, “as our medical supplies have nearly run out.”

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states launched an air campaign aimed at restoring the Hadi government in Yemen. The Saudi excuse for the war was to bring “legitimacy” back to the Yemen while from the get-go they bombarded the infrastructure of the country and defenseless Yemenis. The Saudi Arabia-led military coalition

The Saudi-led coalition, receiving logistical and intelligence support from the U.S., UK and France, has launched numerous strikes on Yemen’s hospitals, schools, universities, shopping centers, farm lands, beaches, fishing boats, bridges, strategic communication routes, power plants, water networks and other infrastructure. In these attacks, civilians were directly targeted, and the world has remained mostly silent.

According to Yemen human rights report, the war on Yemen has so far claimed over 13,000 lives, many of whom are women and children, and left millions displaced.  
Although the Saudi officials have claimed the attacks have only been on Yemen’s military bases, but this is patently false.
Today, the ongoing assault on Yemen has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, a crippling cholera outbreak, and a shortage of food. Yemen is near collapse.
According to UN's aid chief, the country is facing the world's worst humanitarian disaster in half a century. “People in war-torn Yemen are facing a situation that looks like the Apocalypse”, the UN's humanitarian chief told Al Jazeera in December 2017.

Disappointed with the outcome of the war on Yemen, Riyadh toughened the living conditions for Yemenis through intensifying brutal attacks and imposing more crippling economic sanctions.

Some analysts believe that Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz is determined to end the war but wants to hide his war crimes, human rights abuses and the bloodshed against innocent civilians.

To that end, Riyadh has allegedly found “salvation” from the swamp of war in Yemen in the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and through the buying more US arms.

But it remains to be seen what Washington will do, going forward given the failure of Riyadh to “win” the war.