The US may be aiding war crimes in Yemen

The unrelenting bloodshed in Syria has managed to get even worse with the fall of the rebel stronghold of Aleppo, where months of airstrikes by Syrian and Russian warplanes have killed enormous numbers of civilians and reduced much of the city to rubble.

Syria, though, isn’t the only place in the Middle East where a civil war marked by indiscriminate bombing is exacting an enormous and rapidly growing human toll: Just hundreds of miles away from the front lines of Aleppo, the impoverished country of Yemen is being devastated by a months-long military campaign led by Saudi Arabia that has left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation.

There’s another notable thing about Yemen, which makes its near-total lack of media attention all the more jarring: Washington is giving direct military support to the Saudi campaign, including providing aerial refueling of the Saudi warplanes that have hit schools, hospitals, and other civilian targets across the country. That’s raising serious questions about whether the US is complicit in potential Saudi war crimes.

The fight in Yemen pits the Saudi-led coalition — which also includes aircraft from the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf powers — against Houthi rebels backed by Iran. The Houthis ousted the US- and Saudi-backed Yemeni government of Abdrabbuh Mansur al-Hadi last year. Saudi Arabia, which sees Houthis as proxies of Iran, its biggest regional rival, responded with a military campaign called Decisive Storm that’s designed to oust the Houthis and return Hadi to power.

It’s not going as planned. The Saudi-led coalition has killed large numbers of Houthi fighters but has also suffered significant civilian casualties of its own. More than 20 months later, the Houthis are still in control of much of the country, including the capital of Sana’a. The fighting shows no signs of stopping.

Neither, unfortunately, does the rising human cost of the war. According to the United Nations and other outside monitors, the fighting has killed 10,000 and left 370,000 children malnourished and 10,000 more dead of preventable disease. Nearly 3 million Yemenis have been pushed out of their homes.

The US has condemned the civilian death toll and urged the Saudis to exert more restraint. Washington also plays no role in helping determine which targets the Saudis bomb. Still, there is no question that American support — the US has flown more than 1,600 refueling missions, or roughly two a day, as of late November — has made it easier for Saudi Arabia to bomb the country, and that it has directly contributed to Yemen’s suffering.

The video above explains just how bad things have gotten in Yemen — and how complicit Washington may be.