Squabble over Khashoggi Murder

Down With U.S./Saudi War on Yemen!

More than three and a half years of unrelenting war by Saudi Arabia aided by the U.S., British and French imperialists have turned Yemen into a slaughterhouse and the world’s most horrific scene of mass starvation and disease. Along with a bombing campaign, a naval blockade enforced with the help of U.S. warships has largely sealed off aid to Yemen, worsening the human toll in a country heavily reliant on food, fuel and other imports. An estimated 56,000 people have been killed while some 14 million—half the country’s population—teeter on the brink of starvation. With the collapse of health care and basic sanitation, including clean water, one of the largest cholera outbreaks in history has raged uncontrollably. At least one million people have contracted the disease; more than 2,500 have died from it. According to UNICEF, a child dies in Yemen every ten minutes due to malnutrition and disease.

In March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition launched the bombing campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen with key support provided by the Obama administration, including precision weaponry, in-flight fueling of warplanes and satellite intel. The assault began after the Houthi movement, which is based on the Zaidi Shia minority, seized control of the capital, Sana’a, and other parts of the country. As expectations in Riyadh and Washington of early victory proved hollow, the coalition increasingly massacred civilians and sought to destroy the economy.

To starve the Houthis into submission, airstrikes have been aimed at food production and transportation facilities. Roads, bridges, electric grids, seaports, airports and water supply facilities have been destroyed. Helicopters and warships have blasted hundreds of fishing boats in the Red Sea, killing more than 150 fishermen. Thousands have died in precision airstrikes against civilian targets: homes, weddings, funerals, marketplaces, hospitals and schools, including one for the blind. Scores of cars and buses have been bombed. Forty-four children and ten adults died in one attack on a school bus.

Prior to 2015, Marxists took no side in the conflict between the Houthis and their tribal and religious rivals. However, from the start of the U.S.-backed Saudi war, workers in the U.S. and internationally have had a side: with the Houthis and their allies against the Saudi-led coalition and its proxies. This position does not lessen our Marxist political opposition to all forms of religious reaction and bourgeois nationalism. But we stress that it is U.S. imperialism that is the enemy of working people throughout the world. A setback for the Saudi-led coalition would redound not only against this deeply reactionary, theocratic state but also against U.S. imperialist designs in the region. (read on)