On July 8, the representative of the Ansar Allah armed forces, Brigade General Yahya Saree, during a regular briefing on the current situation in Yemen, accused the United States of supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia and its regional allies and providing political cover for their acts of aggression. Specifically, he noted: “In recent days, Yemeni armed forces have discovered large quantities of US-made ammunition at the cleared positions of Saudi mercenaries in the provinces of Ma’rib and el-Beida. The weaponry had the USAID logo on it.” Yahya Saree directly accused US special services of illegally supplying weapons to Yemen disguised as humanitarian aid, with the intent of “wreaking havoc on the Yemeni people.” He believes that this incident unequivocally reveals Washington’s true motives and intentions in Yemen, denoting that the United States bears full responsibility for the war unleashed by Saudi Arabia against Yemen.
News of Washington’s inflammatory role in igniting armed conflicts in the Middle East and sponsoring terrorists has been published repeatedly by various media outlets after extensive journalistic investigations.
As for Washington’s weapons supply to Yemen and various terrorist groups, a fairly detailed investigation of this issue with documented evidence of such actions was recently published by Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, who claims that Washington, under the cover of various programs, has transported at least 3 million rockets and mortar shells from the Balkans to the Middle East. Back in 2017, in Croatia, American special forces deployed a classified US task force called Smoking Gun, operating under the authority of the US SOCOM (US Special Operations Command), which Washington uses to arm Yemen and Syria under the guise of other programs. US firms like Sierra Four Industries, Orbital ATK, Global Ordnance and UDC are all involved in procuring weaponry.
A close look at screenshots of the propaganda video with weapons used by terrorists, which ISIL (banned in the Russian Federation – ed.) confirmed the delivery routes of these weapons.
In transporting weapons, the United States enlists the services of several companies, including the Silk Way Airlines Azerbaijani state air carrier, US companies like Atlas Air and Kalitta Air, which are large contractors for the Pentagon with government contracts for the transportation of dangerous goods. They supply weapons that clearly fail to meet US standards, which means that they are not used by the military. The largest supplier of non-standard weapons to the US Army is Alliant Techsystems Operations-USA, with contracts totaling about $ 500 million. Over the past three years, US companies have been awarded $ 1 billion worth in contracts under the US government’s non-standard weapons program, according to the federal contract registry. This international arms supply network was never discontinued and continues to this day.
Don’t forget that the history of the conflict in Yemen dates back to 2004, when an anti-government uprising broke out in the country, instigated by Hussein al-Husi, after which the Houthi movement was named. In that same year rebels stood up against the US-Yemeni alliance. In 2016, over 500 documents from the US Embassy in Yemen were released on WikiLeaks, which indicate that Washington supplied weapons to the Yemeni authorities for several years before the outbreak of armed conflict in the area between Shiite Houthi rebels and the government. The Yemeni Dossier includes documented evidence that the United States had armed, trained, and financed Yemeni forces before the war started. The documents, in particular, testify to supplying various weapons, as well as proposing exercising control over the maritime border. According to information published by the media, as early as 2007, Washington, within the framework of various Ministry of Defense and the State Department initiatives, has provided military assistance to Yemen amounting to more than 500 million dollars. The Pentagon and the CIA have provided additional assistance through covert programs, for which reason it is unclear how much assistance Yemen received overall.
Weapons produced in Western countries have been widely used in Saudi-controlled military operations in Yemen, including civilian quarters, according to secret French military documents released by a group of journalists in France.
The US media has also looked into the facts of supplying American-made weapons to groups associated with Al-Qaeda (banned in Russia – ed.) in Yemen. As the journalistic investigation revealed, the supply of weapons to Yemeni Islamist militants, who did not sever ties with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (banned in Russia – ed.), were “the price of buying their loyalty”, as well as a way to “keep the complex political and military landscape in Yemen under control”, thus attracting them to their side in the fight against the local Houthi rebels, supported by Iran. The US military command in the region was completely aware of these so-called “deals”, and it indirectly supported its Arab allies, refraining, in particular, from drone strikes on the Yemeni terrorists leaving their positions. The Associated Press, which became aware of the details on the Saudi coalition’s actions in Yemen and the attitude of the United States towards them in the course of its own investigation, had previously published such revelatory material on its pages.
Washington’s involvement in the Saudi-led war with Yemen has already cost the lives of thousands of civilians and ruined the country. This places the bulk of the responsibility for the horrendous circumstances in Yemen on the US. This makes it vital for the international community and the United Nations to prevent further disruption in an already volatile region by taking swift action to end unnecessary bloodshed in Yemen through a peace treaty and an immediate end of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including deals done by the United States.
Valery Kulikov, expert political scientist, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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