Local Editor

"Any military success in Syria will unravel because of the new territory Britain is helping to create for ["]ISI[L"] who have taken advantage of the instability and wide-spread civilian destruction caused by months of a Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen", according to senior Foreign Office lawyers and former diplomats, as The Independent newspaper said on Friday. 

"In echoes of the warnings issued to Tony Blair’s government ahead of the war in Iraq, advisers to the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, are increasingly questioning the legality and the consequences of a no-questions-asked policy of selling specialist missiles to Saudi Arabia", The Independent said. 

Since March, a Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States has bombed Yemen and imposed a blockade of its ports. Thousands of civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands injured by indiscriminate bombing. 

A former British ambassador in Yemen, Frances Guy, told The Independent: "The famine and the humanitarian situation is tragic. But we should be talking about Yemen in the context of security; asking where is the next place that "ISIL" will go after any success by the United States, France, and now the UK, in Syria. The answer is Yemen. "ISIL" are already strong there. Because of the instability in Yemen, we have already created the next space for "ISIL", for those displaced in Syria. This is where they will retire to".

Guy’s assessment directly challenges the assurance given to MPs earlier this week by the Prime Minister that air strikes against "ISIL" in Syria will "make us safer", according to The Independent. 

David Cameron told the Commons that Britain has to take military action against "ISIL" in its Syria heartland. A vote to extend the current bombing in Iraq to "ISIL" targets inside Syria is expected within a week. 

"However there has been little evaluation of the consequences of the bombing, how success will be measured, and whether "ISIL" "fighters" will simply move on to another unstable country, such as Yemen", The Independent wrote. 

Afzal Ashraf, a senior tutor at the defence think-tank, the Royal United Services Institute [RUSI] told The Independent that Cameron’s claim to have a "comprehensive approach" to the Syria crisis was suspect. He said: "All we have had is calls for more use of air power".

Ashraf said the blockade of Yemeni ports, the sealing of borders by Saudi security forces, and the humanitarian suffering of people in Yemen were all "fuel for the growth of already entrenched extremist movements."

He added: "This conflict has allowed Al Qaeda to capture territory in Yemen... That is unprecedented. It has also allowed "ISIL"’ local affiliate to grow in Yemen. While the Yemeni conflict will excellent for the UK’s flagging weapons-based economy, it will not be good for the UK’s security".

The Independent further said that Amnesty and other NGOs, including Human Rights Watch [HRW] say there is no doubt that UK and US munitions are being used in the Saudi-led bombing aggression in Yemen and that Britain is risking being charged with war crimes.

In July, Britain authorised the transfer of Paveway IV guided missiles from the RAF to Saudi Arabia. The MoD gave the green light for the UK and Saudi to switch of positions on an order book from the arms manufacturer, Raytheon UK. The contract, worth close to £200 million, secured hundreds of bombs for the Saudi air force for the next two years. The Raytheon precision missiles are used by both the RAF and their Saudi counterparts on fighter jets supplied by BAE-Systems by such as the Typhoon and Tornado.

The move ensured that the Saudis, who have been carrying out multiple daily bombing raids on targets inside Yemen over the past nine months, would not run out of these heavily used precision weapons.

The next United Nations [UN] humanitarian assessment of Yemen is expected to state that close to 5,000 civilians have been killed with close to 25,000 wounded since the beginning of the Saudi-led aggression in Yemen, The Independent further added.