By Catherine Philp
Few ordinary Yemenis have heard the name “Jamal Khashoggi”.
A month after the journalist’s brutal killing at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in October, his name drew blanks from those living under Saudi bombardment in Yemen. Yet his murder marked a watershed moment for global disquiet over the mounting civilian toll of Saudi Arabia’s continuing war.
Since the killing, which American intelligence agencies concluded was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the US Congress has voted in favor of ending American military support for the conflict, although this does not include ending arms sales, which totaled $18 billion in 2017 alone. The crown prince, or MBS as he is widely known, is also the architect of the Saudi intervention in Yemen.
Several European administrations, including Germany and the Netherlands, have decided to end arms sales with Saudi Arabia, unlike the British government, which is this week fighting against a court challenge to the legality of weapons exports to Saudi Arabia.
Britain has licensed £4.7 billion of arms to the Saudis since 2015. The case will examine whether Britain is breaching its own policy banning the selling of weapons when there is a “clear risk” that they “might” be used in the kind of violations of international humanitarian law that the United Nations has said are taking place against Yemeni civilians.
Yet while international opprobrium mounts, there is little sign that Saudi Arabia is willing to give up on the war it launched four years ago. Washington and London, meanwhile, remain resistant to pulling the plug on their ally.
President Trump is set to veto the legislation ending American support for the war, despite bipartisan backing for Congress’s historic use of the War Powers Act. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, has defended British arms exports, arguing that they give the UK leverage over the Saudis which would otherwise be lost.
Mr Hunt has led a diplomatic effort to end the conflict, travelling to Stockholm to become the first western foreign minister to meet the Houthi revolutionaries … whom the Saudi-led coalition is seeking to oust.
On a trip to Aden last month, however, Mr Hunt warned that the deal struck in Stockholm could be dead within weeks without progress on the ground. Many of those who are following the process are skeptical of its chances.
“Diplomacy only works when the parties involved want it to work,” said Helen Lackner, a Yemen expert who advises British diplomats on the crisis. “And they don’t want it to work.”
Mustapha Noman, a former Yemeni deputy foreign minister close to the negotiations, remembers visiting Riyadh in 2015 at the behest of MBS soon after Saudi Arabia became involved in Yemen. He remembers the Saudi boasts that the war would be over in weeks. “It has taken longer than anyone anticipated, Saudi or Emirati,” he said.
Houthi revolutionaries … control the capital, Sana’a. The weak and former President Hadi fled. Saudi Arabia intervened as the head of a Sunni Arab coalition with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and others.
The justification was a UN resolution calling for Mr Hadi’s restoration but the kingdom’s motivation was perhaps to crush what they saw as Iranian influence on the Arabian Peninsula.
The decision to intervene was taken by MBS, who had just become defense minister but was yet to secure his position as the kingdom’s de facto ruler. “When MBS came to power, that was his legacy,” Mr Noman said. “He wanted to be the first defense minister who executes a war in the region and wins it.”
Four years on, there are doubts that the 33-year-old crown prince will settle for anything less than a total Houthi surrender. “If he stops the war now, without victory, that would raise questions about his capability. Why did we go if we did not win?” Mr Noman said. “For me, psychologically, this is the real obstacle why diplomacy will not get its way.”
As both the multilateral conflict and the diplomatic process rumble on, what began as a civil war between Yemenis is growing more complex by the day.
The Southern Transitional Council, a secessionist movement aligned with the Emiratis, is touring European capitals demanding a seat at the negotiating table.
Both the Emiratis and the Saudis have made on-the-ground alliances with unpalatable Islamist groups, who are fighting each other in places such as Taiz.
Civilian casualties caused by the coalition bombardment continue to mount. Seven children were among 13 people killed in Sana’a on Sunday when an airstrike hit a warehouse next to a school.
The British government won a 2017 case over arms export licenses to Saudi Arabia, with the court accepting arguments that Riyadh was conducting investigations into incidents involving civilian casualties and that Britain was assisting it to improve targeting.
Campaign Against Arms Trade, which launched this week’s appeal, says that developments since, including a damning UN investigation last August, undermine that argument. In February, a cross-party parliamentary committee agreed, finding Britain to be on “the wrong side of the law” by continuing to sanction the exports.
The Lords committee said ministers were not carrying out independent checks to see if British weapons were being used in breaches of international law and were instead relying on Saudi Arabia’s own flawed reports.
Many of those reports were presented by a senior MBS aide, Major General Ahmed al-Asiri, who was believed to have been sacked as deputy intelligence chief over his alleged involvement in Khashoggi’s murder.
Khashoggi’s killing will not feature in the legal case but his shadow looms over it. Four weeks after his murder, representatives from BAE, Britain’s largest defence company, met the international trade secretary Liam Fox, to discuss its implications for their arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
In its recent annual report, the company warned that the “prevailing geopolitical climate” had delayed a proposed deal for 48 Typhoon jets agreed between Britain and Saudi Arabia when MBS visited London last year. A verdict in this week’s case is expected by autumn, potentially derailing that deal entirely.
Source: The Times, Edited by Website Team
