Khartoum — Independent members of the Sudanese parliament have called on President Omar Al Bashir to withdraw the country's forces fighting in Yemen.

In a statement on Sunday, the independent MPs' Alliance for Change condemned the presence of Sudanese army and militia troops in Yemen, in support of Saudi forces fighting the Houthi rebels in the country.

"Dispatching Sudanese army soldiers and members of the Rapid Support Forces [Sudan's main militia] is an unconstitutional measure, and carried out without having been remitted to the Parliament," the statement says.

"Sudan should not interfere in the affairs of other countries," Abulgasim Burtom, chairman of the Alliance for Change told Radio Dabanga.

"The Interim Constitution of Sudan is clear: The President of the Republic has no right to decide to send an army [to fight] abroad," he explained.

"Furthermore, Khartoum should opt for balanced relations with other countries that serve the interests of Sudan."

Burtom as well called on the government "to appropriately compensate the families of the troops who died and were wounded in Yemen.

Military campaign

In March 2015, Sudan joined the military operation led by Saudi Arabia on the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The decision to participate in the Saudi military campaign against the Shiite Yemeni militants was based on "the historical close ties" between Sudan and Saudi Arabia, and "the danger that threatens all of the region and Saudi Arabia specifically", Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Karti told Sudan News Agency (SUNA) at the time.

Analysts said that Sudan's involvement in Yemen showed a shift of allegiances from Shiite Iran toward the Sunni Gulf Arab countries, which could bring economic rewards.

Since the operation in Yemen began, El Riyadh pledged fresh investments in Sudan's agricultural sector. In July and August 2015, the Central Bank of Sudan reportedly received a total of $1 billion from Saudi Arabia. According to Khartoum, the economic assistance was not linked to its military support.

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Troops killed

There have been demands from within Sudan and abroad to withdraw Sudanese troops from the war in Yemen, especially following reports that on 10 April three senior Sudanese officers and dozens of soldiers were killed during a battle in northern Yemen. Dozens of soldiers were wounded.

Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour, confirmed after meeting with ambassadors of the Arab coalition countries in Yemen (Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt), continued participation in the coalition forces and support of the efforts to restore stability in Yemen.

Minister of Defence Ali Salim told MPs that "This is not the first time for the Sudanese forces to participate in a war outside the country. He justified the participation as "natural".

In September 2017, Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo ('Hemeti'), commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, admitted that hundreds of Sudanese forces died in Yemen: "We effectively participated in the Yemeni war, we captured many towns, though we lost 412 soldiers including 14 officers."</s>A group of Sudanese lawmakers has urged President Omar al-Bashir to withdraw the country’s troops from a Saudi Arabian-led coalition waging war on Yemen.

The Alliance for Change, which comprises independent members of the Sudanese parliament, condemned as “unconstitutional” Sudan’s participation in the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen, Radio Dabanga reported Monday.

“Dispatching Sudanese army soldiers and members of the Rapid Support Forces is an unconstitutional measure, and carried out without having been remitted to the parliament,” the lawmakers said in a statement on Sunday.

“Sudan should not interfere in the affairs of other countries,” Abulgasim Burtom, the chairman of the Alliance for Change, said. “The Interim Constitution of Sudan is clear: The president of the Republic has no right to decide to send an army [to fight] abroad.”

Burtom stressed that Sudan “should opt for balanced relations with other countries that serve the interests of Sudan.”

He also called on the government “to appropriately compensate the families of the troops who died and were wounded in Yemen.”

The Saudi-led war was launched in March 2015 to reinstate a former regime that had been loyal to Riyadh. The Saudi-led coalition has failed to achieve that goal despite its disproportionately superior military power and has gotten bogged down in has been dubbed Saudi Arabia’s Vietnam.

The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured during the past three years. Famine and cholera have also spread.

Domestic voices in Sudan have long urged a withdrawal from the Saudi-led coalition but those calls gained momentum after three senior Sudanese officers and scores of soldiers were killed during a battle in northern Yemen on April 10.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has on several occasions stressed Sudan’s intention to continue participation in the war on Yemen. However, Sudan’s Akhbar el-Youm newspaper quoted informed sources as saying that there is a strong trend among the leaders of the state to withdraw Sudanese forces from Yemen amid mounted pressure.

The report also revealed that the Sudanese troops fighting in Yemen have not received their salaries from Riyadh.</s>KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan is assessing its participation in Saudi-led military operations in Yemen, its defense minister said on Wednesday, amid growing discontent in parliament over high costs and the deaths of dozens of Sudanese soldiers.

Sudan has at least 3,000 ground troops and several fighter jets fighting in Yemen as part of the Saudi-led alliance. Dozens of Sudanese soldiers have been killed on key coastal battlefronts, local and Yemeni media have reported, while Khartoum is struggling with a severe hard-currency shortage.

“We are conducting studies and assessments these days about the participation of Sudanese forces in Yemen,” Defence Minister Ali Salem told parliament.

“This involves various sides, the negatives and positives of the participation, and then we will take a decision that will benefit the country and its stability.”

He said the armed forces command was preparing a study on Sudan’s role in the coalition and would complete it soon.

Sudan sent troops to Yemen with the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in the civil war in 2015 against Iran-aligned Houthis who had captured most of the main populated areas of the country and forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile.

Sudan’s foreign currency crunch arose from decades of U.S. sanctions. Khartoum has been expecting financial support from wealthy Gulf Arab states involved in the coalition but few funds have trickled into the sprawling country of 40 million people.

Sudanese parliamentarian Hassan Othman Rizq, who has spearheaded a campaign for withdrawing forces from Yemen, told Reuters the decision to dispatch troops there was illegal because lawmakers had not approved it.

“Sudanese troops are stationed on hot battlefronts, and thus they are sustaining higher losses,” Rizq said.

“Sudan had not benefited economically from the participation, unlike (other) countries that did not send troops but are getting financial support,” he added, alluding to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

There was no immediate comment from the Saudis and UAE.</s>He is Saleh al-Sammad, who served as the acting president in Houthi-controlled areas and the head of the group's Supreme Political Council.

The strike was carried out Thursday in eastern Hodeida province by a "US-Saudi" warplane, the council said.

The announcement was made on Al-Masirah TV and the Yemen News Agency a day after airstrikes struck a wedding party in northwestern Yemen, killing nearly three dozen people and wounding several more.

The council declared three days of mourning for Sammad's death and selected Mahdi Mohammed Mashat as its head.

The Yemen war began in early 2015, when Houthi rebels drove the US-backed government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. Saudi-led coalition airstrikes are behind 61% of all civilian casualties in Yemen's war, according to the UN human rights office. Indiscriminate shelling and sniper fire by Houthi rebels in heavily populated areas accounted for most of the remaining dead and wounded, a UN statement added. Earlier this month, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dubbed Yemen's war the world's worst humanitarian crisis , with more than 22 million people -- three quarters of the population -- in desperate need of aid and protection. Sunday night, at least 33 people were killed and 41 wounded after airstrikes hit a wedding party in northwest Yemen. Two missiles hit the celebration in the town of Hajja several minutes apart, eyewitnesses and officials told CNN. At least 17 women and children were killed in the strikes, according to official sources. Yemen's Houthi officials say the strikes first hit the men's gathering of the wedding before hitting the women's section nearby. A young boy clings to his unconscious father's body after the airstrikes. "Due to many casualties from the coalition-led wedding attacks, field hospitals were made near the site of the attacks giving injured civilians medical treatment in order to save lives," said a spokesperson for the Houthi-held Health Ministry, Abdul Hakim Alkhulani. "Tens have been killed and the final toll for victims is still not clear. The United Nations have proven that it has no influence to force coalition forces to end massacres against civilians," Alkhulani added. In retaliation for the strikes, the Houthi rebels fired two missiles at a Saudi oil port, a senior official at the Houthi-controlled defense ministry told CNN. The missiles were intercepted over Jazan, a coastal city in southern Saudi Arabia, around 4:26 p.m. (9:26 a.m. ET), coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al Maliki told CNN. The Saudi-led coalition which has been fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels said it was investigating the strikes on the wedding party. "We take this report very seriously and it will be fully investigated as all reports of this nature are. Whilst this is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further," al Maliki said. The strikes wounded 32 children, according to the head of the Al-Jimhori hospital in Hajja, Mohammed AlSomali. Graphic news footage of the airstrike's aftermath showed injured people wheeled into a hospital. We sell them the planes and the bombs. We provide intel and help them select the targets. We refuel their planes mid attack. 



There is a U.S. imprint on every civilian death in Yemen. https://t.co/8YaseJpVdn — Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) April 23, 2018 A US senator condemned American involvement in Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen. In response to a report on the wedding party deaths, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on Twitter: "We sell them the planes and the bombs. We provide intel and help them select the targets. We refuel their planes mid-attack."</s>Nicholas Niarchos comments on the recent assassination of a top Houthi leader by a Saudi coalition airstrike:

On Twitter, members of the Saudi royal family celebrated Sammad’s killing and touted it as a success for the country’s crown prince and de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, who recently toured Washington and Los Angeles to curry support from the Trump Administration. But the effect of the strike might be to push the Houthis further from the negotiating table. Sammad’s replacement, Mahdi al-Mashat, a politician in his thirties, has demanded all-out war with Saudi Arabia. Peter Salisbury, a senior analyst at Chatham House, said that the strike would reduce the interest of the group’s over-all leader, Abdelmalik al-Houthi, in peace talks [bold mine-DL]. “What it does do is take someone who thought dealmaking was a way of ending the war and replace him with someone more bellicose,” Salisbury told me. “You get into a position where all the voices that Abdulmalik hears are all the hard-liners, the people who are benefitting the most from the war.”

Making their enemy more intransigent and hard-line wouldn’t make sense if the Saudis genuinely wished to bring the war on Yemen to an end soon, but they evidently have no intention of ending the war. The Saudis have just ensured that the war will drag on and intensify, and they can add this assassination to the long list of their terrible decisions regarding Yemen. Decapitation strikes frequently don’t have the effect that their proponents think they will have. Ellen Laipson explains how it can produce the opposite result:

That thinking, however, doesn’t always work. It can strengthen the resolve of the fighters to continue their struggle, conveying to their followers that the government still does not accept them as equals, and that peace talks are stacked against the legitimate rights and interests of the rebels. Or it can cause such disarray and chaos among the rebels that a new leadership vacuum is created, making a peace strategy all but impossible.

The Saudi coalition hasn’t achieved any of its stated goals in Yemen over the last three years, and 2018 doesn’t seem any more promising for them. A negotiated compromise that allows the coalition to halt its war and cut their losses is the best option for them, but their leaders are too arrogant or blinkered to see it. The Saudis and their allies don’t know what they’re doing in Yemen, they never have, and the U.S. has been absolutely wrong to support them in their war. For the sake of the people of Yemen, it is imperative that the U.S. ends its support for the war and press the coalition governments to recognize that they can’t win.</s>The only thing worse than the general Western neglect of the war on Yemen is the use of pro-Saudi talking points to describe it. Irina Tsukerman does just this when she misleadingly writes about “Iran’s war in Yemen”:

It was the Houthis, not the Saudis, who first imposed a humanitarian blockade against Yemen. They then used humanitarian-aid shipments to their own population as a disguise for smuggled weapons, which ultimately led to many deaths from starvation. The Saudis were forced to impose their own naval blockade as a defensive measure to counter ballistic-missile strikes and increased attacks on coalition [forces] on the ground—yet the Houthis have succeeded in painting the kingdom as the villain.

This passage is full of false and misleading statements. The Houthis are responsible for impeding aid deliveries in territory they control, but they have neither the means nor the inclination to blockade their own country. The accusation is self-refuting and an obvious lie. The sea and air blockade of the country was imposed by the coalition at the outset of the Saudi-led intervention. The blockade is the principal cause of the country’s humanitarian crisis, and the responsibility for it rests entirely with the Saudi-led coalition and its Western backers.

The coalition was not “forced” to do this, but chose to do it from the beginning of their war. The coalition blockade predates any missile attacks on Saudi Arabia and was not imposed because of them, so that is another lie. It’s true that the tightening of the blockade last fall came in response to Houthi missile attacks that were themselves retaliation for the relentless bombing of Yemeni cities, but the blockade had already been in place for more than two and half years at that point. The coalition could hardly have tightened the blockade that didn’t already exist.

The coalition imposed the blockade in 2015 ostensibly to prevent weapons smuggling, but in practice it has delayed and diverted many ships bringing in food and medicine even after they had been found to have no weapons on board. Blocking commercial goods and humanitarian aid hasn’t prevented weapons smuggling into Yemen, but it has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. More than eight million Yemenis are on the brink of famine because of the Saudi coalition’s cruel collective punishment that has nothing to do with their own defense.

It is exceptionally dishonest to label the conflict “Iran’s war” when Iranian involvement has been and remains negligible for the last three years. Tsukerman asserts that “Tehran is building a naval base in Yemen,” but that is also false. When an Iranian officer suggested the idea of such a base back in 2016, the Houthis publicly rejected it in the strongest terms:

A leader of Yemen’s Houthis and a member of the group’s delegation to the talks in Kuwait, Mehdi Mashat, on Sunday has slammed the Iranian Chief of Staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri over remarks published Sunday about Iran’s desire to establish naval bases in Yemen and Syria. “This creature should read the history of Yemen before he talks, because I am sure that if he knew that Yemen throughout history has been a cemetery for invaders, he would not have said a word”, Mashat said in a post on his official Facebook page.

So much for the notion that Iran controls Yemen.

It is the Saudis, Emiratis, and other coalition governments that intervened directly over three years ago, and it is their forces and proxies that occupy portions of Yemen to this day. Their planes are the ones that bomb Yemeni cities on daily basis with U.S. assistance, and it is their navies that strangle the country with their blockade. This is not Iranian “disinformation,” but a description of what has been happening to Yemen for over three years. These are well-documented facts attested by countless reports from news agencies, humanitarian organizations, human rights groups, and the U.N. Making excuses for Saudi coalition crimes and shouting “Iran!” as a diversion can’t change any of that.</s>Hajja, which is located in northwestern Yemen, is under the control of Houthi rebels.

At least 17 of the 33 people killed in the airstrikes that hit the wedding celebrations were women and children, according to official sources.

A family of five were killed in a separate strike in the same province, according to Alkhulani.

A young boy clings to his unconscious father's body after the airstrikes that hit a wedding celebration. The Saudi-led coalition, which has conducted a three-year military campaign against the Houthis, has not commented on the strike on the gas station. But spokesman Col. Turki al-Maliki said the coalition was investigating reports that its jets targeted a wedding on Sunday. Al-Maliki said in a statement that coalition forces follow international rules of engagement, "primarily the assumption that every person in Yemen is a civilian until proven otherwise." Houthi rebels retaliated for the recent airstrikes by firing two missiles at a Saudi oil port on Monday, a senior official at the Houthi-controlled defense ministry told CNN. The missiles were intercepted over the coastal city of Jazan, according to the coalition. The Hajja attacks come days after coalition airstrikes killed the Houthi rebels' top political leader Saleh al-Sammad. He was killed on Thursday in the al-Hodeidah region, Houthi-controlled media outlets said Monday. Saleh al-Sammad, who headed the Huthis' political wing, was killed on Thursday, according to Houthi-controlled media outlets. The Yemen war began in early 2015, when Houthi rebels drove the US-backed government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. Saudi-led coalition airstrikes are behind 61% of all civilian casualties in Yemen's war, according to the United Nations human rights office. Indiscriminate shelling and sniper fire by Houthi rebels in heavily populated areas accounted for most of the remaining dead and wounded, a UN statement added. Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dubbed Yemen's war the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22 million people -- three quarters of the population -- in desperate need of aid and protection.</s>In an impoverished, remote mountain village in northwest Yemen, the wedding celebration was still going strong when the first airstrike hit around 11 p.m. on April 22. The Saudi attacks killed the bride first death toll to “at least 33 people.” The nearest hospital was miles away in Hajjah. The only two cars in the village were knocked out by the bombing. The first casualties reaching the hospital arrived by donkey after midnight. The hospital, one of 13 in Yemen run by MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders), had two ambulances that drove back and forth well into daylight bringing in the wounded sometimes six at a time. MSF reported receiving 63 casualties, none armed, none in uniform:

This was yet another American-sponsored war crime. The US has committed war crimes of this sort all on its own since 2009 in Pakistan (and subsequently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere). The US president surely knew such attacks are war crimes under international law as well as US law, but who was going to hold him accountable (any more than anyone has held his predecessor or successor accountable)?

US complicity in committing war crimes almost daily in Yemen began in March 2015 when the president, without a murmur from a supine Congress, gave the green light to a Saudi-led coalition of mostly Sunni Arab states to wage a genocidal bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels (predominantly Shi’ite Zaidis) who had ruled Yemen for 1,000 years until 1962. In 2014, the Houthis had overthrown the duly-appointed, internationally-imposed “legitimate” government. Americans’ hands have run red with innocent Yemeni blood ever since. (Not that US media often mention US involvement, as the CNN report on this deadly wedding illustrates: “A coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been fighting Iranian Houthi rebels in Yemen for more than two years” — actually three. And the Houthis are Yemeni, not Iranian, as the official propaganda would love you to believe.)

As with the desecrated wedding described above, the Saudis, with US blessing and extensive tactical support, like to commit their war crimes especially against weddings and funerals (as the CIA was fond of doing in Pakistan). This is state-sponsored terrorism. The states sponsoring it include the US, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and their allies in Yemen. Weddings and funerals offer large gatherings of innocent people who are defenseless. It doesn’t take a smart bomb to see the value of a soft target like that. When the rescue workers and other first responders show up, a second strike kills more innocent, defenseless people. This is a standard terrorist tactic with fiendish efficiency. In terror jargon it’s called the double-tap.

Image on the right: A Royal Saudi Air Force F-15, February 28, 2011. (Source: Sgt. Erica Knight)

That same weekend, US-Saudi strikes also killed a family of five and 20 civilians riding in a bus. The US-Saudi air war on the undefended country (Yemen has no air force and limited air defenses) has displaced millions of people in a country of 25 million that was already the poorest in the region when the Saudis attacked. The relentless bombing of civilians (including the use of cluster bombs) has led to severe hunger, approaching famine conditions; a severe shortage of medical supplies and a massive cholera outbreak; and destruction of infrastructure and the near-elimination of clean water. Describing conditions in Yemen, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said:

This is what genocide looks like. But to blur that perception, the Saudis and the UAE have given the UN nearly $1 billion in humanitarian aid, to ameliorate the humanitarian disaster they created, even as they continue bombing without a pause. This picture has prompted Guterres to say that “peace is possible” in Yemen, but “there are still many obstacles to overcome.”

One such obstacle would be the Saudi claim on April 21 that the Yemeni rebels had seized 19 oil tankers off the coast and had held them hostage for more than 26 days. That was a lie. It was not a credible lie, coming after 25 days of silence during the alleged hostage crisis. It was a lie based on nonsense, since the Saudi naval blockade had allowed the oil tankers into the port of Hodeidah to deliver fuel to the rebel-held area. A commercial shipping traffic website soon located all the “hostage” ships and learned that they were anchored awaiting off-loading. On April 26, Public Radio International exposed the Saudi lie.

On November 13, 2017, the US House of Representatives passed a lengthy resolution (H.Res.599) “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives with respect to United States policy towards Yemen, and for other purposes” on a bipartisan vote of 366-30 (with 36 not voting). The resolution expresses basic clichés of US policy, with all their varied levels of inaccuracy, dishonesty, and wishful thinking. The general tone of the document is that it’s all Iran’s fault the US-Saudi offensive is killing Yemenis en masse (no evidence offered). Most to the point, the House acknowledges that the US has no legal authorization for the use of force in Yemen (while omitting specific reference to US participation in the bombing, naval blockade, drone strikes, or other military actions). Having identified the illegality of US involvement in a genocidal war, the House resolution does nothing about it other than to ask all the parties to play nice.

In March 2018, Senate Joint Resolution 54 raised some real issues without actually proposing any solution. The resolution defined itself as a choice:

In a largely party-line vote on March 20, the Senate Republicans voted 55-44 to table the resolution without discussing it or changing the course of carnage and US arms sales.

The Yemen peace process is still a hope more than a reality. The US and the Saudi coalition have shown no willingness to negotiate in good faith, but it’s not clear that anyone else has either. The Houthis control most of western Yemen and roughly 80% of the population. Houthi senior leader Saleh al-Sammad, considered a moderate, was open to negotiation. On April 19, a US-Saudi airstrike assassinated him.

The Trump administration is equally useless in any search for peace in Yemen. The president is enthralled by the scale of arms purchases by the Saudis and their allies, with no apparent interest in how the Pentagon helps use those weapons mostly against civilians.

A US citizen named Nageeb al-Omari has attempted to bring his 11-year-old daughter Shaima to the US for medical care. She was born with cerebral palsy, but the US-Saudi bombing has made her care all but impossible there. There is no US embassy in Yemen. Shaima’s father took her to Djibouti, where she continued deteriorating rapidly. Despite the US anti-Muslim travel ban, the daughter qualifies for the exemptions that would allow her into the US. Even though her father is a US citizen, US State Department officials would not grant her a visa, a waiver, or, most likely, a chance to live. The family has returned to Idlib in Yemen to await the next random act of cruelty from a rogue state that is the world’s greatest purveyor of terrorism.

Why should they expect any better treatment than Iraqi Christians in Michigan who voted for the president and now face deportation?

This article was originally published on Reader Supported News.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theater, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.</s>Government forces have reportedly made gains against Houthi rebels in their stronghold in the northern province of Saada, according to an official army website on Tuesday.

Army forces captured eight military sites in Saada after deadly clashes with Houthi rebels, the “September Net” website said, quoting a military source.

The source said several rebels had been killed and injured in the clashes, but without elaborating.

There was no comment from the Houthi group on the claim.

Saada is the main stronghold of the Shia Houthi group, which overran much of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, in 2015, forcing the internationally-recognized government to flee to Saudi Arabia.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and its Sunni-Arab allies -- who accuse the Houthis of serving as an Iranian proxy -- launched a massive military campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi gains.</s>When Global Affairs Canada announced another aid package to war-torn Yemen in January, it boasted that Ottawa had given a total of $65 million to help ease what the United Nations has called “the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time.” What Justin Trudeau’s government did not mention in its news release is that since 2015, Canada has also approved more than $284 million in exports of Canadian weapons and military goods to the countries bombing Yemen. “It’s a bit like helping pay for somebody’s crutches after you’ve helped break their legs,” said Cesar Jaramillo, executive director of Project Ploughshares, a research and advocacy organization that studies Canada’s arms trade. Jaramillo calls Canada’s position “blatantly contradictory,” saying the government can’t claim to be a champion of human rights while arming the world’s worst offenders. “The problem is Canada also wants the sweet multibillion-dollar deals, so it cuts corners on human rights.” The Canadian government is the seller in some of these transactions. In others, they broker and approve deals for Canadian companies. Government officials could not say whether weapons exported from Canada have been used in Yemen.

Cancelling these multibillion-dollar deals would mean losing jobs. A $14.8-billion sale of Canadian-made armoured combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia — negotiated by the Conservative government in 2014 but given final approval by the Liberals — will reportedly provide work for about 3,000 people for 14 years in southern Ontario, where manufacturer General Dynamics Land Systems–Canada is a major employer. Canada’s arms trade in the Middle East goes beyond the Saudi deal. Since the beginning of the war in Yemen, which is now entering its fourth year, Canada has also made millions selling guided missiles to Bahrain, which has crushed political dissent at home while aiding Saudi efforts abroad, and has exported an assortment of weapons and military equipment to the United Arab Emirates, which human rights organizations have criticized for numerous abuses within its own borders and in Yemen. “Canada remains deeply concerned by the conflict in Yemen,” a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland wrote in a statement to the Star. He added the government pays “careful attention” to the potential for Canadian weapons to be used in the war, but he did not explain how or provide any specifics.

The Star calculated Canada’s arms exports since 2015 to all of the countries in the Saudi coalition involved in Yemen’s war, as disclosed in Global Affairs’ annual report on Canadian exports of military goods. The bulk of the trade is with Saudi Arabia, to which Canada sold more than $240 million worth of weapons and other military goods in 2015 and 2016 — mostly combat vehicles, but also guns, training gear, bombs, rockets or missiles, drones and unspecified chemical or biological agents, which could include riot control agents. “Canadians need to better understand the fact that we are an arms-trading nation,” said Alex Neve, Canada’s secretary general for Amnesty International. Yemen quietly slips away, much like its starving children Opinion | Burman: Instead of helping Yemen's kids, we bloody our hands The reports cover only exports in the first two years of the Saudi-led bombardment, because last year’s exports will not be disclosed until this summer. The numbers are also incomplete. They do not include Canadian weapons diverted to the Middle East through another country. The United States and United Kingdom are also arming Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, but they, and Canada, are increasingly isolated in their position. The European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in 2016 calling on all member states to enforce an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia for its role in Yemen. The Netherlands was first to take up the call. Finland and Norway have since stopped selling weapons to the United Arab Emirates. Earlier this year, Germany declared an end to arms sales to all parties involved in Yemen’s war. Trudeau’s government has suggested no such ban, despite expressing “deep concern” over reports of Saudi abuses. Ottawa’s official position is that it will stop the export of military goods if there is a “reasonable risk” of human rights abuses. What that has meant, in practice, is that even when a country has a demonstrably poor record on human rights, unless there is definitive evidence Canadian weapons were used to commit human rights abuses, Canada is open to their business. Neve questions why the government needs proof of a “smoking tank” before taking action. “People think Canada is only on the hook, Canada is only responsible, if something bad has happened,” he said. “Arms control is all about preventing it happening in the first place.”

The true tally of Canada’s arms sales to the Middle East is possibly much higher than the export statistics suggest. Canada does not disclose any sales to its largest buyer of military goods, the U.S., which account for at least half of Canada’s weapons exports. The U.S., in turn, sells nearly half of its weapons to countries in the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia. So it’s impossible to know how many Canadian weapons or weapon components, if any, the U.S. has sold or donated to the Saudi coalition. Meanwhile, an American army commander admitted last month to a U.S. Senate committee that they don’t know how their weapons are used in Yemen. Anthony Fenton, an academic who follows Canada’s arms exports to the Middle East, uses local reports and photos posted to social media to track the use of Canadian weapons in Yemen. Many of the images come from the military itself — what Fenton calls “Saudi selfies” — and appear to show Canadian equipment being used by the Saudis or Emirates on Yemen’s border or within its towns. Though they are difficult to verify, the sheer number of sightings posted by civilians or players on all sides of the conflict provide a damning body of evidence, according to Fenton. “There is not a shred of doubt Canadian equipment is being used in Yemen,” he said. “We track this on a daily basis and there hasn’t been a week since this war began that there hasn’t been some sighting of Canadian goods being used.” A Canadian manufacturer that wants to sell weapons to a foreign country other than the U.S. requires an export permit from Global Affairs Canada, which says it “strives to ensure” Canadian exports of weapons and other military goods “do not undermine peace, security or stability in any region of the world or within any country.” Government bureaucrats assess permits on a case-by-case basis and are supposed to block sales to countries whose governments have a “persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens, unless it can be demonstrated that there is no reasonable risk that the goods might be used against the civilian population.” Freeland’s spokesperson said if the government had evidence a Canadian-exported weapon was being deployed other than for its “authorized end use,” Freeland would cancel future export permits associated with the sale. But how does Ottawa monitor weapons once they’re in the hands of another country? Global Affairs did not answer. Fenton said he didn’t think Canadian officials did “much of anything” to monitor Canadian weapons after they’re sold. “What could they do? They’d have to have personnel embedded with the military with a notepad. The point is they shouldn’t be sold in the first place,” he said.

Already the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen has seen its economy collapse under the Saudi coalition’s near-daily air raids, which have crippled the food supply and destroyed basic infrastructure. Starvation and disease are rampant, while hospitals have been targeted and most medical services are delivered by volunteers. Tawakkol Karman, like many Yemenis, feels abandoned by the rest of the world. Karman, the first Arab woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was once feted by the international community for her leadership during the Arab Spring protests, which forced out Yemen’s autocratic ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh, after three decades in power. “If I’m angry about something, or sad about something, it’s about the silence of the international community and their complicity,” Karman said in a phone interview. “Canada is giving from its right hand the humanitarian aid, and from the other, missiles.” Yemen’s conflict is a domestic power struggle — between supporters of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s exiled government and the Houthis, a Shiite rebel group — though it has also turned into an ugly proxy war for the region’s superpowers, pitting the Iranian-backed rebels against the Saudi coalition. The United Nations and human rights groups have documented abuses and potential war crimes on both sides of the conflict, including the deliberate targeting of civilians. The UN has not updated its death toll since 2016, when it reported that 10,000 people had been killed in the war, more than half of them civilians. The World Health Organization declared Yemen’s cholera epidemic the largest and fastest-spreading outbreak of the disease in modern history. Saudi Arabia’s naval blockade has devastated the country, leading to the starvation of many, mostly children. “It’s a crisis, but it’s happening in slow motion,” said Stephen Anderson, Yemen’s country director for the United Nations World Food Programme. He has witnessed “horrifying” scenes of Yemeni children suffering from advanced malnutrition, reduced to skin and bones. “It’s worse almost to see their families who stand there helpless. They’re struggling to try to keep their dignity, to keep their culture. There’s such a sadness and a resignation because they’re powerless to stop the conflict.” The Canadian government has cancelled or reviewed some arms sales because of human rights concerns. Earlier this year, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, a human rights pariah, cancelled a $300-million deal to buy 16 Canadian helicopters after Ottawa announced it was reviewing the deal. Global Affairs itself cancelled two arms exports to Thailand in 2016 over human rights concerns, according to its annual report. Details of the cancelled deals were not disclosed. Arms exports to Saudi Arabia were temporarily put on hold for several months last year, following reports in the Globe and Mail about footage that appeared to show Canadian-made combat vehicles used by Saudi government forces to suppress civilian demonstrations. In February, Freeland said an internal investigation found “no conclusive evidence” that Canadian-made vehicles were used. The government has not disclosed the report. Another deal considered problematic by arms control experts is Canada’s $2.2-million sale of 27 Maverick air-to-surface missiles to Bahrain, completed in 2016. (Canada also sold $1.3 million worth of military software to Bahrain that same year, but it’s unclear if the sales are related.) Canada agreed to sell Bahrain the missiles, declared surplus by the Canadian military, in 2014 when Stephen Harper was prime minister. The war in Yemen had yet to begin, but Bahrain’s dismal human rights record at home — particularly in the years following the Arab Spring — was well documented by rights groups. The missiles weren’t shipped until 2016, when Trudeau’s government signed off on the export permit. By that point, Bahrain’s air force was heavily involved in the Saudi-led air raids in Yemen. Ken Epps, a longtime arms trade researcher for Project Ploughshares, said Canada’s existing export controls should have prevented the deal because of the “high risk” they could be used to commit human rights violations. But a Global Affairs spokesperson told the Star a risk assessment conducted prior to the sale and shipment of the missiles raised “no such concerns.” The spokesperson did not answer if the Canadian government knows whether or not the missiles have been used. Freeland’s spokesperson said Bahrain is an ally in fighting terrorism in the region: “Canada and Bahrain collaborate closely to stop terrorism and piracy in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean.”

Sayed Ahmed AlWadaei, a human rights activist who was imprisoned and tortured by Bahraini authorities following the government’s crackdown during the Arab Spring, said there is no justification for selling weapons to Bahrain. “It sends the message that Canada is OK with human rights abuses,” said AlWadaei, who moved to the U.K. in 2012 and now works for the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy. He added that any country that sells arms to Bahrain is complicit in its abuses. “It’s a very simple equation: you either support a dictatorship with a terrible human rights record, or you stand up against them.” Bahrain’s U.S. Embassy, which is also responsible for Canada, did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this story. Global Affairs Canada refused to disclose the criteria it used in its risk assessment of the Bahrain missile sale. Freeland has said Canada can “do better” with regard to how it controls arms exports. She introduced legislation last year to make Canada a party to the Arms Trade Treaty, a United Nations initiative to better regulate the international arms trade. Under the proposed legislation, the government would be legally obligated to block exports where there is a “substantial risk” they could be used to commit human rights violations. Currently the risk assessments are only a consideration. But Canada will continue to keep secret its trade to the U.S., and critics say that loophole means the government will continue to have virtually no control over where Canadian weapons end up. It’s also unclear how the new law, if passed, would change how Canada assesses risk. When asked, for instance, if Canada would have sold missiles to Bahrain if it had already been a party to the Arms Trade Treaty, Freeland’s spokesperson did not answer the question.
Several independent MPs urge Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir to withdraw troops from Yemen where they are supporting a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels.