[Peace-discuss] Fwd: From Iraq to Jeju Island to the Yemen Famine: two articles by Kathy Kelly

[C G Estabrook]

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Voices for Creative Nonviolence <info at vcnv.org>
> Subject: From Iraq to Jeju Island to the Yemen Famine: two articles by Kathy Kelly
> Date: December 5, 2018 at 11:15:46 AM CST
> To: <galliher at uiuc.edu>
> Reply-To: Voices for Creative Nonviolence <info at vcnv.org>
> 
> 
> We continue to demand an immediate end to all war on Yemen.  Below are two recent articles by Kathy Kelly. We hope they may be useful to you in your outreach and witness. 
> 
> The Long, Brutal U.S. War on Children in the Middle East 
> November 29, 2018
> (first published on the website of The Progressive <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=64e5413ba8&e=f71aaef777> magazine)
> 
> On November 28, sixty-three U.S. Senators voted <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=f4350fba23&e=f71aaef777> in favor of holding a floor debate on a resolution calling for an end to direct U.S. Armed Forces involvement in the Saudi-UAE coalition-led war on Yemen. Describing the vote as a rebuke to Saudi Arabia and the Trump Administration, AP reported <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=bc546d73ae&e=f71aaef777> on Senate dissatisfaction over the administration’s response to Saudi Arabia’s brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi last month. Just before the Senate vote, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=5f0746c99e&e=f71aaef777> current objections to U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia “Capitol Hill caterwauling and media pile-on.”
> 
> The “caterwaul” on Capitol Hill reflects years of determined effort by grassroots groups to end U.S. involvement in war on Yemen, fed by mounting international outrage at the last three years of war that have caused the deaths of an estimated 85,000 <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=b389da167c&e=f71aaef777> Yemeni children under age five.
> 
> When children waste away to literally nothing while fourteen million people endure <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=a5e4a306c3&e=f71aaef777>conflict-driven famine, a hue and cry—yes, a caterwaul —most certainly should be raised, worldwide.
> 
> How might we understand what it would mean in the United States for fourteen million people in our country to starve? You would have to combine the populations of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and imagine these cities empty of all but the painfully and slowly dying, to get a glimpse into the suffering in Yemen, where one of every two persons faces <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=aafebf49b3&e=f71aaef777> starvation.
> 
> Antiwar activists have persistently challenged elected representatives to acknowledge and end the horrible consequences of modern warfare in Yemen where entire neighborhoods have been bombed, displacing millions of people; daily aerial attacks have directly targeted Yemen’s infrastructure, preventing delivery of food, safe water, fuel, and funds. The war crushes people through aerial bombing and on-the-ground fighting as well as an insidious economic war.
> 
> Yemenis are strangled <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=da42d14c59&e=f71aaef777> by import restrictions and blockades, causing non-payment of government salaries, inflation, job losses, and declining or disappearing incomes. Even when food is available, ordinary Yemenis cannot afford it.
> 
> Starvation is being used as a weapon of war—by Saudi Arabia, by the United Arab Emirates, and by the superpower patrons including the United States that arm and manipulate both countries.
> 
> During the thirteen years of economic sanctions against Iraq— those years between the Gulf War and the devastating U.S.-led “Shock and Awe” war that followed—I joined U.S. and U.K. activists traveling to Iraq in public defiance of the economic sanctions.
> 
> We aimed to resist U.S.- and U.K.-driven policies that weakened the Iraqi regime’s opposition more than they weakened Saddam Hussein. Ostensibly democratic leaders were ready to achieve their aims by brutally sacrificing children under age five. The children died first by the hundreds, then by the thousands and eventually <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=2ab5096e18&e=f71aaef777> by the hundreds of thousands. Sitting in a Baghdad pediatric ward, I heard a delegation member, a young nurse from the U.K., begin to absorb the cruelty inflicted on mothers and children.
> 
> “I think I understand,” murmured Martin Thomas, “It’s a death row for infants.” Children gasped their last breaths while their parents suffered a pile-up of anguish, wave after wave. We should remain haunted by those children’s short lives.
> 
> Iraq's children died amid an eerie and menacing silence on the part of mainstream media and most elected U.S. officials. No caterwauling was heard on Capitol Hill.
> 
> But, worldwide, people began to know that children were paying the price of abysmally failed policies, and millions of people opposed the 2003 Shock and Awe war.
> 
> Still the abusive and greedy policies continue. The U.S. and its allies built up permanent warfare states to secure consistent exploitation of resources outside their own territories.
> 
> During and after the Arab Spring, numerous Yemenis resisted <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=c29dc88ef6&e=f71aaef777> dangerously unfair austerity measures that the Gulf Cooperation Council and the U.S. insisted they must accept. Professor Isa Blumi <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=b21bb76049&e=f71aaef777>, who notes that generations of Yemeni fighters have refused to acquiesce to foreign invasion and intervention, presents evidence that Saudi Arabia and the UAE now orchestrate war on Yemen to advance their own financial interests.
> 
> In the case of Saudi Arabia, Blumi states that although Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman wants to author an IPO (Initial Public Offering), for the Saudi state oil company, Aramco, no major investors would likely participate. Investment firms know the Saudis pay cash for their imports, including billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry, because they are depleting resources within their own territory. This, in part, explains the desperate efforts to take over Yemen’s offshore oil reserves and other strategic assets.
> 
> Recent polls indicate <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=148c1b61f0&e=f71aaef777> that most Americans don’t favor U.S. war on Yemen. Surely, our security is not enhanced if the U.S. continues to structure its foreign policy on fear, prejudice, greed, and overwhelming military force. The movements that pressured the U.S. Senate to reject current U.S. foreign policy regarding Saudi Arabia and its war on Yemen will continue raising voices. Collectively, we’ll work toward raising the lament, pressuring the media and civil society to insist that slaughtering children will never solve problems.
>  
> 
> Seeing Yemen from Jeju 
> December 4, 2018
> 
> Several days ago, I joined an unusual Skype call originated by young South Korean founders of “The Hope School.” Located on Jeju Island, the school aims to build a supportive community between island residents and newly arrived Yemenis who seek asylum <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=0da9e294e7&e=f71aaef777> in South Korea.
> 
> Jeju, a visa-free port, has been an entry point for close to 500 Yemenis who have traveled nearly 5000 miles in search of safety. Traumatized by consistent bombing, threats of imprisonment and torture, and the horrors of starvation, recent migrants to South Korea, including children, yearn for refuge.
> 
> Like many thousands of others who’ve fled Yemen, they miss their families, their neighborhoods, and the future they once might have imagined. But returning to Yemen now would be awfully dangerous for them.
> 
> Whether to welcome or reject Yemenis seeking asylum in South Korea has been a very difficult question for many who live on Jeju Island. Based in Gangjeong, a city long renowned for brave and tenacious peace activism, the founders of “The Hope School” want to show newly arrived Yemenis a respectful welcome <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=95b1539c57&e=f71aaef777> by creating settings in which young people from both countries can get to know one another and better understand each other’s history, culture and language.
> 
> They regularly gather for exchanges and lessons. Their curriculum suggests solving problems without relying on weapons, threats, and force. In the “Seeing Yemen from Jeju” seminar, I was asked to speak about grass roots efforts in the U.S. to stop the war in Yemen. I mentioned Voices has helped arrange demonstrations against war on Yemen in many U.S. cities and that, relative to other antiwar campaigns we’ve participated in, we’ve seen some willingness within the mainstream media to cover the suffering and starvation caused by the war on Yemen.
> 
> One Yemeni participant, himself a journalist, voiced exasperated frustration. Did I understand how trapped he and his companions are? In Yemen, Houthi fighters could persecute him. He could be bombed by Saudi and UAE warplanes; mercenary fighters, funded and organized by the Saudis or the UAE might attack him; he would be equally vulnerable to Special Operations forces organized by western countries, such as the U.S. or Australia. What’s more, his homeland is subject to exploitation by major powers greedily seeking to control its resources. “We are caught in a big game,” he said.
> 
> Another young man from Yemen said he envisions an army of Yemenis that would defend all people living there from all the groups now at war in Yemen.
> 
> Hearing this, I remembered how adamantly our young South Korean friends have opposed armed struggle and the militarization of their island. Through demonstrations, fasts, civil disobedience, imprisonments, walks, and intensive campaigns designed to build solidarity, they’ve struggled, for years, to resist the onslaughts of South Korean and U.S. militarism. They understand well how war and ensuing chaos divides people, leaving them ever more vulnerable to exploitation and plunder. And yet, they clearly want everyone in the school to have a voice, to be heard, and to experience respectful dialogue.
> 
> How do we, in the U.S., develop grass roots communities dedicated to both understand the complex realities Yemenis face and work to end U.S. participation in the war on Yemen? Actions taken by our young friends who organized “The Hope School” set a valuable example. Even so, we must urgently call on all the warring parties to enact immediate cease-fires, open all ports and roads so desperately needed distribution of food, medicine and fuel can take place, and help restore Yemen’s devastated infrastructure and economy.
> 
> In numerous U.S. locations, activists have displayed 40 backpacks to remember the forty children killed by a 500-pound Lockheed Martin missile that targeted their school bus on August 9, 2018.
> 
> In the days before August 9th, each child had received a UNICEF-issued blue backpack filled with vaccines and other valuable resources to help their families survive. When classes resumed some weeks ago, children who had survived the terrible bombing returned to school carrying bookbags still stained by spattered blood. Those children desperately need reparations in the form of practical care and generous “no-strings attached” investments to help them find a better future. They need “The Hope School” too.
> 
> Killing people, through war or starvation, never solves problems. I strongly believe this. And I believe heavily armed elites, intending to increase their personal wealth, have regularly and deliberately sown seeds of division in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Gaza and other lands wherein they desire to control precious resources. A divided Yemen would allow Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, their coalition partners, and the U.S. to exploit Yemen’s rich resources for their own benefit.
> 
> As wars rage on, every voice crying out in affliction should be heard. Following “The Hope School” seminar, I imagine we could all agree that an excruciatingly crucial voice wasn’t present in the room: that of a child, in Yemen, too hungry to cry.
> 
> Kathy Kelly (kathy at vcnv.org <mailto:kathy at vcnv.org>) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org <https://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=1c9b81257f&e=f71aaef777>)
> 
> Photos: 
> 1) Eleven-month old Wadah Askri Mesheel in a Yemen clinic, eight hours before his 2018 death from malnutrition. Taken by Tyler Hicks for the New York Times.
> 2) Yemenis in the bombed village of Hajar Aukaish scour rubble for belongings.  Taken by journalist Almigdad Mojalli for Voice of America, nine months before his own January 2015 death in a Saudi airstrike.  
> 
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