Local Editor
A majority of Americans oppose US support for the ongoing Saudi-led war in Yemen, with 58 percent of respondents in a recent survey wanting lawmakers to curtail or halt the supplying of arms for a conflict considered the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian disaster.
Only 13 percent of Americans say they want to lawmakers maintain or increase arms sales to the US allies in the conflict, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the survey conducted by the polling firm YouGov and commissioned by the relief group International Rescue Committee.
Among those holding an opinion, the survey found 75 percent of Americans oppose US involvement in the war.
But the survey also showed striking nationwide ignorance about a conflict that involves two major US partners but has been largely ignored by broadcast media in favor of near 24-hour coverage of President Donald Trump’s foibles.
The three-year-long conflict in Yemen has claimed tens of thousands of lives and brought the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of widespread famine as winter approaches, according to relief organizations. But of 1,000 people surveyed earlier this month, a third said they had never even heard of the Yemen war.
The conflict has lately become a focus of policymakers in the West. The 2 October murder of Jamal Khashoggi, at the hands Saudi agents tied to the office of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler has sparked a debate about Riyadh’s increasingly erratic leadership.
Prince Salman, as defence minister, launched a military campaign in Yemen in 2015 after.
Canada, Germany, Denmark, and Finland have already announced new restrictions on arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while the US, UK, and France have resisted such calls.
On Monday, a coalition of charities that include the International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, CARE, Save the Children, and the Norwegian Refugee Council issued a joint statement demanding an ceasefire, the reopening of ports to humanitarian and commercial goods, and a resumption of salaries to civil servants.
US Secretary of Defence James Mattis has called for a ceasefire in Yemen by the end of November ahead of peace talks in Sweden next month, and a number of US lawmakers have spoken out against American involvement in the conflict.
In general, the war at the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula has received scant coverage in the US press. Of those contacted in the YouGov survey, 58 percent said they did not know the US sells arms and provides intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition and 64 percent did not know about civilian casualties.
Nearly 30 percent said they had no opinion on the conflict one way or the other. Asked if US involvement in the Yemen war advanced American interests, 42 percent said they did not know.
The survey found 75 percent of Americans who hold an opinion, including a narrow majority of conservatives, oppose US involvement, 82 percent want Congress to restrict weapons transfers and more than half wanting an end to all arms sales.
Source: The Independent, Edited by Website Team
