New report details deliberate targeting of food supplies by US-UK-backed coalition bombing Yemen

Source: World Peace Foundation

New Report Documents “Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War”

Report by Martha Mundy distributed by the World Peace Foundation documents patterns of Coalition targeting of civilian, agricultural and fishing sites.

Boston, MA – October 9, 2018 – The World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School (Tufts University) has published a report by Professor Martha Mundy, “The Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War,” that provides comprehensive analysis of patterns of targeting civilian, agricultural and fishing sites by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the on-going Yemen war. The Coalition is backing the internationally recognized government of Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, in the war against the “Houthi rebels” – the “Salvation/Rescue Government” of Ansarallah and its allies based in Sana’a. The war has brought Yemen to the brink of famine, with an estimated 22 million people in need of food aid.

The report presents data collected by several organizations within Yemen: the civil society organization, the Yemen Data Project, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MAI), and the Ministry of Fish Wealth (MFW). Together, the data detail the overall levels of targeting civilian, military and unknown sites (2015 – 2018); the systematic targeting of agricultural areas including the character of the site, and the frequency and timeline of targeting (2015 – 2016). The Report also documents the killing of fishermen along the Yemeni Red Sea coast, destruction of boats and infrastructure required to support small-scale fishing (2015 – 2017) that otherwise could provide life-saving food for a civilian population on the brink of famine.

“The increased risk of famine globally today, after decades of decline, is a result of the pursuit of military objectives and political priorities without any regard to human suffering,” said Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. “Today, starvation is being inflicted on people in South Sudan, northern Nigeria, Syria, and Yemen . Yemen poses a particularly acute challenge for the United States and United Kingdom, who are key allies of Saudi Arabia, which leads the Coalition, and supporters of a war effort that systematically and repeatedly flouts international law, destroys the national economy and devastates the civilian population.”

“If one places the damage to the resources of food producers (farmers, herders, and fishers) alongside the targeting of food processing, storage and transport in urban areas and the wider economic war,” Martha Mundy explains, “there is strong evidence that Coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in the areas under the control of Sanaʿaʾ.”