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Rick Noack
A foreign affairs reporter on Europe and international security
A day after President Trump backed the Saudi Crown Prince after accusations that he would have ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a leading charity issued an alarming report that raises more worrisome questions about Saudi practices.
More than 85,000 children may have died of hunger since Saudi Arabia intervened in the war in Yemen three years ago, according to Save the Children, a British charity.
"Dozens of children are dying in bombs and bullets, it's totally preventable," said Tamer Kirolos, national director of Save the Children in Yemen.
According to the NGO, with few hospitals still operational, the human toll of the conflict can not be fully apprehended by relying on official figures.
Instead, the charity used historical mortality rates and UN data on Yemeni malnutrition to estimate that more than 25,000 children, or 20-30% of all children with malnutrition acute, have died every year since April 2015. The estimates, according to the NGO, could still be lower than the actual number of deaths.
"Children who die in this way suffer tremendously from the slowing down of their vital organs, which eventually stop. Their immune system is so weak that they are more prone to infections, some too fragile to even cry, "said Kirolos, Save the Children's representative.
"Parents must see their dying children, unable to do anything," he said.
According to the United Nations, half of the Yemeni population suffers from famine.
The United States remained silent for a long time on the war, even when Saudi Arabia imposed a blockade on its borders with Yemen last November. Since then, human rights groups have struggled to provide food and clean water to some of the most malnourished areas in the country. About 90 percent of the country is considered desert or arid and the Yemeni government relied heavily on pre-conflict food imports.
What began as a rebellion by the country's predominantly Shiite Huthi rebels during the Arab Spring has turned into a more intense confrontation between Saudi Arabia and its rival, Iran, which supports the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia has received support from eight other Arab countries opposed to Iran's influence. US officials have long claimed that Iran's involvement made resolution of the conflict impossible, but criticisms of the assessment escalated as conflict became the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world.
Western countries have taken care not to disgrace the wealthy Saudi leaders who want to invest, nor the national human rights defenders. Germany, for example, has reduced its arms sales to Saudi Arabia and is committed to stopping them completely, but has quietly approved new sales earlier this year. (These sales have been halted since the murder of columnist Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor).
In the United States, Trump placed Saudi investment and weapons purchases first, even as members of his administration put pressure on the Saudis to end the Yemeni conflict. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both promised in October that the war would end. The United States exports more weapons to Saudi Arabia than any other country.
"It is time to end this conflict, replace it with a compromise and allow the Yemeni people to heal through peace and reconstruction," said Pompeo.
Earlier this month, the administration stepped up its pressure by ending its practice of refueling the Saudi coalition aircraft involved in the conflict. Critics have said that the Saudi army used these planes to drop bombs on non-military targets, killing thousands of civilians.
The Saudi-led coalition also appears to be aware of growing resistance from the international community and has conveyed arguments to its supporters in its favor. This week, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced $ 500 million in aid to Yemen.
But the bombing continued, according to Save the Children. "In recent weeks, hundreds of air strikes have occurred in and around Hodeidah, endangering the lives of approximately 150,000 children still stranded in the city," said the NGO representative. Kirolos.
Hodeidah is one of Yemen's main port cities and has long been the gateway to the north of the country. As fighting continues in the country, NGOs have had to travel to the southern port of Aden, where it takes another two weeks to reach the northern part of the country, where the majority of the population lives.
While Save the Children was preparing to release its devastating report on Tuesday, Trump tackled the same problem. Ignoring the evidence that the Saudi-led coalition has also escalated the conflict, Trump wrote that Iran was rather "responsible for a bloody war by proxy".
"Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians agreed to leave," Trump said.
Iran is allied with the Houthi rebels and has been accused of providing them with weapons, including ballistic missiles, but Iranian troops are not present on the ground in Yemen.
On Wednesday morning, the US president had already passed, when he had tweeted about the supposed role of Saudi Arabia in lowering oil prices.
"Thanks to Saudi Arabia, but let's go further down," he wrote.
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