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Will Congress Finally Stop U.S. Support for Saudi’s War in Yemen?

Peace activists have been urging Sen. Bernie Sanders to bring the Yemen War Powers resolution to a floor vote for many months. He is now saying he will do so as soon as this week, the Intercept reports.s-Frantz asked Ned Price, one of the panelists and the spokesperson for the State Department, how he, as a fellow gay man, justifies upholding the U.S.-Saudi alliance. Saudi Arabia is well known for its policies that punish homosexuality with death, violate women’s rights, and starve children in Yemen.

ISAAC EVANS-FRANTZ, isaac@actioncorps.org, @theactioncorps

    Isaac Evans-Frantz is with Action Corps, which has focused on Yemen and has helped lead a series of protests on the issue. Most recently, they focused on Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

    The group signed a letter along with 105 other organizations recently in support of the Sanders legislation: “March 26th, 2022, marked the start of the eighth year of the Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen, which has helped cause the deaths of nearly half a million people and pushed millions more to the edge of starvation. With continued U.S. military support, Saudi Arabia escalated its campaign of collective punishment on the people of Yemen in recent months, making the start of 2022 one of the deadliest time periods of the war.”

    [Note: In 2018 the ACLU voiced objections to a precursor of Sander’s legislation: “The Fatal Flaws in a Congressional Resolution to End U.S. Support for the Saudi-Led Yemen War.” This legislation had passed the Congress during the Trump administration, but was vetoed. It is only now being voted on again.]

    Recently, during the Victory Institute’s International LGBTQ Leaders Conference closing panel, Isaac Evan

   Price didn’t respond specifically to any of the policies, and did not mention the Saudi war in Yemen, but said that we need to keep the Saudis engaged to influence their behavior but not give them a blank check and a “bear hug” like the last administration. Evans-Frantz responded: “So, fist pumps, not bear hugs?” — a reference to Biden’s fistbump with Saudi monarch Mohammed bin Salman.

   Last week, a U.S. judge dismissed a case against the Saudi crown prince over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini,  David Zupan,

CommonDreams reports in Sanders Unveils Resolution to End U.S. Support for ‘Catastrophic’ Saudi-Led War in Yemen“: “Congress abdicated its constitutional powers and failed to prevent our country from involving itself in this crisis,” ‘said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a lead co-sponsor with Sen. Patrick Leahy.’

“The resolution is sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — and, according to the trio, it is already backed by a bipartisan group of over 100 House members.

“‘We must put an end to the unauthorized and unconstitutional involvement of U.S. armed forces in the catastrophic Saudi-led war in Yemen and Congress must take back its authority over war,’ Sanders said in a statement, detailing the dire conditions in the region.

“‘More than 85,000 children in Yemen have already starved and millions more are facing imminent famine and death,’ he pointed out. ‘More than 70 percent of Yemen’s population currently rely on humanitarian food assistance and the U.N. has warned the death toll could climb to 1.3 million people by 2030.’

“‘This war has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis today and it is past time to end U.S. complicity in those horrors,’ Sanders declared. ‘Let us pass this resolution, so we can focus on diplomacy to end this war.’

“While a cease-fire in Yemen has held over the past few months, peace advocates and progressive lawmakers have continued to call for an end to U.S. support for the yearslong war.”

KATHY KELLY, kathy.vcnv@gmail.com, @voiceinwild

Kelly, a peace activist and author, co-coordinates the Ban Killer Drones campaign and is board president of World Beyond War. She recently wrote for The Progressive: “It seems that [Biden’s] trip will not include Yemen, though if this were truly a ‘sensitive’ visit, he would be stopping at one of Yemen’s many beleaguered refugee camps. There he could listen to people displaced by war, some of whom are shell-shocked from years of bombardment. He could hear the stories of bereaved parents and orphaned children, and then express true remorse for the complicity of the United States in the brutal aerial attacks and starvation blockade imposed on Yemen for the past eight years.

“From the vantage point of a Yemeni refugee camp, Biden could insist that no country, including his own, has a right to invade another land and attempt to bomb its people into submission. He could uphold the value of the newly extended truce between the region’s warring parties, allowing Yemenis a breather from the tortuous years of war, and then urge ceasefires and settlements to resolve all militarized disputes, including Russia’s war in Ukraine. He could beg for a new way forward, seeking political will, universally, for disarmament and a peaceful, multipolar world.

 “More than 150,000 people have been killed in the war in Yemen, 14,500 of whom were civilians. But the death toll from militarily imposed poverty has been immeasurably higher. The war has caused one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, creating an unprecedented level of hunger in Yemen, where millions of people face severe hardship.

“Some 17.4 million Yemenis are food insecure; by December 2022, the projected number of hungry people will likely rise to nineteen million. The rate of child malnutrition is one of the highest in the world, and nutrition continues to deteriorate.”

AISHA JUMAAN, MD, aisha@yemenfoundation.org, @AishaJumaan
 Dr. Jumaan is president of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. She just co-wrote the piece “Corporate Media Fail to Cover War in Yemen Due to U.S. Support for Saudi Arabia.” 

    She writes: “News outlets in the United States give prime coverage to the war in Ukraine but mostly ignore the devastating war that the U.S. has supported since March 2015 between a Saudi-led coalition that includes the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Houthis in Yemen. As a result, most of the U.S. public is unaware of the war’s catastrophic impact on the Yemeni population: according to the United Nations, around 400,000 people have died and 16.2 million are at the brink of starvation.

    “The causes of this devastation include a Saudi-led bombing campaign that targets infrastructure, food sources and health services, as well as coercive measures, including a blockade, directed at destroying Yemen’s economy. The UN has called the situation in Yemen the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.”

    “Recently, the Houthis have retaliated against the Saudi-led coalition by launching transborder attacks into Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Most of those attacks have been deflected with the help of U.S. weapons. The Saudi/UAE airstrikes, missile attacks and strangling blockades regularly overwhelm the relatively ineffective weapons and military power of the Houthis. Yet, the U.S. media confer a disproportionate amount of media coverage and sympathy to Saudi/UAE aggression.

“What’s important to realize — and what the news media fail to discuss — is that the U.S. is complicit in causing this crisis. The U.S. is the main supplier of weapons to Saudi Arabia. According to the Brookings Institution, 73 percent of Saudi arms imports come from the U.S. In fact, 24 percent of U.S. weapons exports go to Saudi Arabia.”

A just-published piece in Forbes, “Time to End the Forgotten War in Yemen,” states: “The scenes of carnage in Ukraine have sparked anger and concerted action against the Russian invasion of that country, now in its eighth week. But there is another conflict, now in its eighth year, that has resulted in the deaths of nearly half a million people and driven millions more to the brink of starvation — the war in Yemen. And unlike the war in Ukraine, where Washington faces daunting obstacles in attempting to end Russian atrocities, the United States has considerable leverage in bringing the Yemen conflict to an end, and soon.

“The current war in Yemen began with the March 2015 Saudi/UAE-led intervention aimed at defeating the indigenous Houthi movement and restoring the prior regime to power. The Saudi leadership, led by then defense minister and current Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, promised a short war. Instead, the intervention has sparked the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with non-combatants suffering the vast bulk of the casualties due to Saudi air strikes and a smothering air and sea blockade that has reduced imports of fuel and humanitarian aid that are essential to run hospitals and provide essential provisions to Yemenis.”

AISHA JUMAAN, MD, aisha@yemenfoundation.org, @AishaJumaan
Dr. Jumaan is president of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation and is quoted in the Forbes piece. She is in transit for the next day but is generally available for interviews.

JEHAN HAKIM, yemenialliancecommittee@gmail.com, @jehan_hakim
Hakim is chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee.

The two groups — along with 70 others — have signed a letter to Congress: “Congress must reassert its Article I war powers, terminate U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war and blockade, and do everything it can to support the Yemen truce. Our organizations look forward to the introduction of the Yemen War Powers Resolution. We urge all members of Congress to say ‘no’ to Saudi Arabia’s war of aggression by fully ending all U.S. support for a conflict that has caused such immense bloodshed and human suffering. …

    “In Yemen today, roughly 20.7 million people are in need of humanitarian aid for survival, with up to 19 million Yemenis acutely food insecure.  A new report indicates that 2.2 million children under the age of five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition over the course of 2022 and could perish without urgent treatment.”

    Jumaan told Forbes: “The fragile truce between the Saudi-led coalition and Ansar Allah [the Houthis] is a golden opportunity for the Biden administration to push for an end to Saudi Arabia’s brutal war and war crimes against the Yemeni people.”

  She added: “The War Powers Resolution is essential to make clear that the United States won’t militarily support more Saudi airstrikes on Yemeni civilians. By supporting Reps. Jayapal and DeFazio’s Yemen War Powers Resolution, Congress can do its part to keep Saudi Arabia and its allies negotiating in good faith and bring this devastating conflict to an end.”

    Jumaan and Hakim also note that the Saudi government of Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud has recently pushed aside the Yemini group it was backing, see recent piece in the Wall Street Journal: “Saudi Arabia Pushed Yemen’s Elected President to Step Aside, Saudi and Yemeni Officials Say.”

    Hakim notes that the U.S. government has been protecting the Saudis from scrutiny and criticism for their devastation of Yemen at the United Nations. The U.S. ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, recently addressed the situation in Yemen by lauding alleged relief efforts by the Saudi regime — and blaming Putin for Yemeni food shortages because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine “even though Yemen has been in crisis for years due to the blockade.”

WILLIAM HARTUNG, whartung@internationalpolicy.org
    Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy.

    In his recent piece for Forbes — “The Biden Administration’s Missile Sale to Saudi Arabia Is Offensive, and Must Be Stopped” — he writes: “The Biden administration’s decision to sell $650 million in air-to-air missiles and related equipment to Saudi Arabia is a violation of President Biden’s pledge to treat Saudi Arabia as a ‘pariah’ and to end the sale of weapons that can be used in its brutal war in Yemen, a conflict in which nearly a quarter of a million people have died since it was initiated in March 2015.

    “To their credit, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have introduced a joint resolution of disapproval to stop the sale.”

    A vote is expected next week.

    On Thursday, the Center for International Policy released a report by Hartung: “Arming Repression: U.S. Military Support for Saudi Arabia from Trump to Biden.” [PDF]

    Says Hartung: “Without U.S. arms, maintenance, and spare parts, the Saudi military would not be able prosecute its brutal war in Yemen. It’s hard to overstate the degree to which the Saudi military relies on U.S. support. It’s time for the Biden administration to cut off this support as a way to change Saudi conduct and relieve the suffering of the Yemeni people caused by Saudi actions.

    “Saudi Arabia has used U.S. bombs to target and kill thousands of civilians in Yemen, and to enforce its blockade there by carrying out actions like bombing the runway of Yemen’s main airport in Sana’a.”

AISHA JUMAAN, aisha@yemenfoundation.org, @AishaJumaan
Jumaan is president of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. She said today: “On Monday, I learned that the Biden administration continues to support Saudi aggression on the people of Yemen.”

Jumaan cited a little-reported recent quote from Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby: “The United States continues to provide maintenance support to Saudi Arabia’s Air Force given the critical role it plays in Saudi air defense and our longstanding security partnership.”

She added: “This is extremely disturbing because the U.S. acts like it regards its envoy Tim Lenderking as a mediator in the Saudi-led war on Yemen. But the U.S. government is not an impartial mediator.

“The Biden administration needs to delink the blockade from the political negotiations. We should NOT use the Yemeni population, who are being starved, as hostages to gain concessions from warring parties. Blockade on all points of entry to Yemen MUST be lifted. Aid alone can not support a population of 30 million.

“UN Security Council Resolution 2216 is one sided, written by the Saudis with the support of the U.S., UK and France. It calls for Houthi surrender. The U.S. should support efforts to revise it, if we are to realize fair and just peace negotiations.

“The Saudis and the UAE and all Western powers that support them need to pay reparation to the Yemeni people.

“The U.S. government is more concerned about saving face for [Saudi monarch] MBS than they are about the 400,000+ starving Yemeni children.

“Yemeni have a rich history of conflict resolution and negotiations, we need all foreign interference out.”

Friends Committee on National Legislation, Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, Demand Progress, and Just Foreign Policy have teamed up with actor and humanitarian Mark Ruffalo and the creators of the 2021 Oscar-nominated film “HUNGER WARD,” to urge President Biden to convince Saudi Arabia to immediately lift its “inhumane blockade of Yemen.” Their letter to the administration is excerpted below.

Meanwhile, a group of activists are continuing their hunger strike to stop U.S. backing of Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

IMAN SALEH and MONICA ISACC, yemeniliberationmovement@gmail.com, @liberateyemen
Saleh and Isacc are with the Yemeni Liberation Movement. Members of the group began a hunger strike on Monday, March 29 to protest U.S. government support for the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen.

HASSAN EL-TAYYAB, hassan@fcnl.org, @HassanElTayyab
El-Tayyab is the FCNL’s legislative manager for Middle East policy. He said today: “The U.S.-backed Saudi blockade on Yemen is a key driver of the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.”
See the letter the coalition of groups just sent to the Biden administration and news release. The letter states: “We are deeply concerned that prior to the CNN report, no U.S. official in the new administration had explicitly publicly acknowledged the six-year-old, Saudi-imposed blockade — much less criticized it. U.S. special envoy for Yemen, Tim Lenderking, declined to adequately respond to [CNN reporter Nima] Elbagir’s on-the-ground reporting and direct questions, referring to Yemen’s hunger crisis simply as ‘complex,’ while denying evidence of the blockade shown in CNN’s report, and, per Elbagir’s account, falsely claiming that ‘food continues to flow through Hodeidah unimpeded.’
“Elbagir concluded: ‘How is [peace] possible when you are not acknowledging the full impact of that U.S.-backed Saudi embargo on the people of Yemen?’ According to the UN, 400,000 children under the age of five could perish from hunger this year without urgent action. For years, the Saudi blockade has been a leading driver of Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe. The recent fuel shortages triggered by the blockade are quickly accelerating major reductions in access to affordable food, clean water, electricity, and basic movement across Yemen. The blockade also threatens to shut down, within weeks, the hospitals reliant on power generators to tend to victims of famine, while making even emergency travel to hospitals prohibitively expensive for Yemeni families, condemning untold numbers of children to certain death at home.”

IMAN SALEH and MONICA ISACC, yemeniliberationmovement@gmail.com, @liberateyemen
Saleh and Isacc are with the Yemeni Liberation Movement which is having a news conference Saturday, April 3rd at 1 p.m. ET at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

    Members of the group began a hunger strike on Monday, March 29 to protest U.S. government support for the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen. The group is also leading a nationwide fast for Yemen on Monday.

    The hunger strikers and their supporters, largely from Detroit, are “demanding an end to any U.S. support for the blockade — including military, intelligence, diplomatic, or other support — and call for President Biden to use all diplomatic tools to pressure Saudi Arabian dictator Mohammed bin Salman to end it.”

The group notes that despite Biden’s pledge to the contrary, Al-Jazeera reported in March that “the U.S. military is reported to be increasing its assistance to the Saudis, claiming such help is defensive and not offensive.”

The group adds: “Calls for an immediate end to the blockade have become widespread after CNN aired a groundbreaking report on March 10.”
According to a joint statement by four leading United Nations agencies in February: “Nearly 2.3 million children under the age of five in Yemen are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021, four United Nations agencies warned today. Of these, 400,000 are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition and could die if they do not receive urgent treatment.”

Congress has begun debating a military spending bill of more than $730 billion. See Politico‘s breakdown of amendments.

DAVE LINDORFF, dlindorff at gmail.com, @davidlindorff
Lindorff is founder of the independent collectively-run journalists’ news site ThisCantBeHappening.net. He wrote “Exclusive: The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Scandal Exposed,” a Nation magazine cover story. Earlier this year Lindorff won the “Izzy” award for outstanding independent journalism from the Park Center for Independent Media for “uncovering the opaqueness of Pentagon accounts and bloated military budgets.”

DAVID SEGAL, david at demandprogress.org, @DemandProgress
Segal is executive director of Demand Progress, which just joined with more than 40 groups in a letter “Urging House Leadership NDAA Amendment 339 to Defund U.S. Participation in Yemen War.”

Segal said of the Saudi-led war in Yemen: “Congress has another opportunity to show that it will not stand idly by as the Trump administration acts with impunity — and disregards the war-making authority that the founders vested in the legislative branch — as he facilitates the slaughter of tens of thousands of people, in the name of American allegiance to one of the most vicious regimes on the face of the planet.”

The Senate just passed a bill invoking the War Powers Resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen by a vote of 54-46.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the bill’s sponsors just tweeted: “This is historic. For the first time in 45 years, Congress is one step closer to withdrawing U.S. forces from an unauthorized war. We must end the war in Yemen.” See video.

JEHAN HAKIM, hakimjehan at gmail.com
Hakim is chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee [see on Facebook], a leading grassroots group on the issue.

HASSAN EL-TAYYAB, eltayyab at justforeignpolicy.org, @justfp
El-Tayyab is co-director of Just Foreign Policy, a leading national group on the issue. The group helped organize a letter on the bill signed by over 70 major groups, stating: “The war in Yemen has helped create the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, according to the UN, with roughly 12 million people at risk of famine. Aid agencies have described Yemen as the worst place in the world to be a child — the conflict has claimed the lives of at least 85,000 children under the age of five from hunger and disease. More than 1 million people have been infected with cholera, with an alarming 10,000 new cases each week. All of the parties have demonstrated a near-total indifference to the welfare of Yemeni civilians. In one particularly harmful example of this, the Saudi-led coalition has imposed a de-facto blockade on Yemen and impeded the flow of food, fuel, and medicine, pushing prices of essential goods out of reach for millions of Yemenis.”

See prior Institute for Public Accuracy news releases on the issue.

The bill is titled: “A joint resolution to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.”

Note: The ACLU has voiced serious legal objections to exceptions contained in the legislation since the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force is still in effect.