‘Saudi aid to Yemen – camouflage to conceal war crimes’

Saudi Arabia tries to play a public relations game to mitigate the growing international chorus of criticism against its war crimes in Yemen, and placate the real backers in Washington, says the director of the anti-war ANSWER Coalition, Brian Becker.

The humanitarian disaster in war-torn Yemen is verging on a “famine of Biblical proportions,” according to veteran aid expert and the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland. 

“I am shocked to my bones by what I have seen and heard here in war- and hunger- stricken Yemen. The world is letting some seven million men, women and children slowly but surely, be engulfed by unprecedented famine. It is not a drought that is at fault. This preventable catastrophe is man-made from A to Z,” he said. 

It's been estimated more than 10,000 people have been killed since the start of the Saudi incursion. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has given hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the country. Just in April, the Kingdom donated $150 million to humanitarian efforts in Yemen.

The director of the anti-war ANSWER Coalition, Brian Becker told RT that “what we are observing in Yemen is perhaps one of the greatest untold stories of human sufferings and catastrophe in the world right now.”

Becker said the situation is a consequence of the US-financed Saudi bombing campaign.

“It is nothing short of a mini-Holocaust, a nightmare that plays itself out each and every day. What the Saudis are doing has been understood to be and labeled as war crimes and crimes against humanity by the UN,” he continued.

However, the US continually increases its military funding, he noted.

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“And unfortunately what we are witnessing is a decided shift and even more pronounced shift on the part of the US government under Donald Trump to support the Saudi war in Yemen. It is a terrible tragedy; it is nothing short of a war crime,” he added.

“You can’t have a greater irony than that: Saudi Arabia, the Saudi royal family, it is a familial dictatorship that has its regional ambitions, very tightly connected to both the US government and I would also say to the Israeli government, is destroying Yemen and has destroyed a great part of Yemen and its civilian infrastructure and the lives of people. And then for the Saudis to turn around and offer philanthropy and charity,” said Becker.

“It is proof positive that diplomacy under these circumstances, charity under these circumstances, is nothing short of prudery, in other words, it is a lie, it is a mask, it is a camouflage trying to conceal what the Saudis are actually doing to the people in Yemen,” he told RT.

According to Becker, Saudi Arabia “is playing a very carefully orchestrated calibrated media campaign.”

“What the Saudis are trying to do is to play a public relations game to mitigate the growing international chorus of criticism against their war crimes and crimes against humanity and at the same time placate the real backers who are in Washington,” said Becker.