AI
Saturday, October 27, 2018 5:20:38 AM
The Tragedy of Saudi Arabia’s War
"ForReal: Citizen Trump was right about the Saudis; President Trump, not so much"
Amal Hussain, 7, is wasting away from hunger. The Saudi-led war in Yemen has pushed millions to the brink of starvation.
Written by Declan Walsh
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
Oct. 26, 2018
[...]
The Saudis point out that they, along with the United Arab Emirates, are among the most generous donors to Yemen’s humanitarian relief effort. Last spring, the two allies pledged $1 billion in aid to Yemen. In January, Saudi Arabia deposited $2 billion in Yemen’s central bank to prop up its currency.
But those efforts have been overshadowed by the coalition’s attacks on Yemen’s economy, including the denial of salaries to civil servants, a partial blockade that has driven up food prices, and the printing of vast amounts of bank notes, which caused the currency to plunge.
And the offensive to capture Hudaydah, which started in June, has endangered the main lifeline for imports to northern Yemen, displaced 570,000 people and edged many more closer to starvation.
A famine here, Mr. Lowcock warned, would be “much bigger than anything any professional in this field has seen during their working lives.”
[...]
[...]
In 2016, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government transferred the operations of the central bank from the Houthi-controlled capital, Sana, to the southern city of Aden. The bank, whose policies are dictated by Saudi Arabia, a senior Western official said, started printing vast amounts of new money — at least 600 billion riyals, according to one bank official. The new money caused an inflationary spiral that eroded the value of any savings people had.
The bank also stopped paying salaries to civil servants in Houthi-controlled areas, where 80 percent of Yemenis live. With the government as the largest employer, hundreds of thousands of families in the north suddenly had no income.
At the Sabeen hospital in Sana, Dr. Huda Rajumi treats the country’s most severely malnourished children. But her own family is suffering, too, as she falls out of Yemen’s vanishing middle class.
In the past year, she has received only a single month’s salary. Her husband, a retired soldier, is no longer getting his pension, and Dr. Rajumi has started to skimp on everyday pleasures, like fruit, meat and taxi rides, to make ends meet.
“We get by because people help each other out,” she said. “But it’s getting hard.”
Economic warfare takes other forms, too. In a recent paper, Martha Mundy, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, analyzed coalition airstrikes in Yemen, finding that their attacks on bridges, factories, fishing boats and even fields suggested that they aimed to destroy food production and distribution in Houthi-controlled areas.
[...]
The Saudi coalition is not solely to blame for Yemen’s food crisis.
In Houthi-held areas, aid workers say, commanders level illegal taxes at checkpoints and frequently try to divert international relief aid to the families of soldiers, or to line their own pockets.
At the United Nations on Tuesday, Mr. Lowcock, the humanitarian official, said that aid workers in Yemen faced obstacles including delayed visas, retracted work permits and interference in the work — problems, officials said privately, that were greatest in Houthi-held areas.
Despite the harrowing scenes of suffering in the north, some Yemenis are getting rich. Upmarket parts of Sana are enjoying a mini real estate boom, partly fueled by Yemeni migrants returned from Saudi Arabia, but also by newly enriched Houthi officials.
Local residents say they have seen Houthi officials from modest backgrounds driving around the city in Lexus four-wheel drives, or shopping in luxury stores, trailed by armed gunmen, to buy suits and perfumes.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-war-yemen.html
"ForReal: Citizen Trump was right about the Saudis; President Trump, not so much"
Amal Hussain, 7, is wasting away from hunger. The Saudi-led war in Yemen has pushed millions to the brink of starvation.
Written by Declan Walsh
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
Oct. 26, 2018
[...]
The Saudis point out that they, along with the United Arab Emirates, are among the most generous donors to Yemen’s humanitarian relief effort. Last spring, the two allies pledged $1 billion in aid to Yemen. In January, Saudi Arabia deposited $2 billion in Yemen’s central bank to prop up its currency.
But those efforts have been overshadowed by the coalition’s attacks on Yemen’s economy, including the denial of salaries to civil servants, a partial blockade that has driven up food prices, and the printing of vast amounts of bank notes, which caused the currency to plunge.
And the offensive to capture Hudaydah, which started in June, has endangered the main lifeline for imports to northern Yemen, displaced 570,000 people and edged many more closer to starvation.
A famine here, Mr. Lowcock warned, would be “much bigger than anything any professional in this field has seen during their working lives.”
[...]
[...]
In 2016, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government transferred the operations of the central bank from the Houthi-controlled capital, Sana, to the southern city of Aden. The bank, whose policies are dictated by Saudi Arabia, a senior Western official said, started printing vast amounts of new money — at least 600 billion riyals, according to one bank official. The new money caused an inflationary spiral that eroded the value of any savings people had.
The bank also stopped paying salaries to civil servants in Houthi-controlled areas, where 80 percent of Yemenis live. With the government as the largest employer, hundreds of thousands of families in the north suddenly had no income.
At the Sabeen hospital in Sana, Dr. Huda Rajumi treats the country’s most severely malnourished children. But her own family is suffering, too, as she falls out of Yemen’s vanishing middle class.
In the past year, she has received only a single month’s salary. Her husband, a retired soldier, is no longer getting his pension, and Dr. Rajumi has started to skimp on everyday pleasures, like fruit, meat and taxi rides, to make ends meet.
“We get by because people help each other out,” she said. “But it’s getting hard.”
Economic warfare takes other forms, too. In a recent paper, Martha Mundy, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, analyzed coalition airstrikes in Yemen, finding that their attacks on bridges, factories, fishing boats and even fields suggested that they aimed to destroy food production and distribution in Houthi-controlled areas.
[...]
The Saudi coalition is not solely to blame for Yemen’s food crisis.
In Houthi-held areas, aid workers say, commanders level illegal taxes at checkpoints and frequently try to divert international relief aid to the families of soldiers, or to line their own pockets.
At the United Nations on Tuesday, Mr. Lowcock, the humanitarian official, said that aid workers in Yemen faced obstacles including delayed visas, retracted work permits and interference in the work — problems, officials said privately, that were greatest in Houthi-held areas.
Despite the harrowing scenes of suffering in the north, some Yemenis are getting rich. Upmarket parts of Sana are enjoying a mini real estate boom, partly fueled by Yemeni migrants returned from Saudi Arabia, but also by newly enriched Houthi officials.
Local residents say they have seen Houthi officials from modest backgrounds driving around the city in Lexus four-wheel drives, or shopping in luxury stores, trailed by armed gunmen, to buy suits and perfumes.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-war-yemen.html
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
Discover What Traders Are Watching
Explore small cap ideas before they hit the headlines.
