The war on Yemen is quite possibly the most cowardly war ever fought with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates attempting to partition the country between themselves. Their soldiers are a coalition of paid mercenaries from 20 countries with a limited eagerness for martyrdom, which explains why they need the military technology of the Anglo-American powers to protect them on the battlefield.
“Internal Defence Department documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) and from parliamentary hearings reveal since the beginning of 2016, Canberra has granted at least 37 export permits for military-related items to the United Arab Emirates, and 20 to Saudi Arabia.”
From an investigative report carried out by ABC journalists Dylan Welch, Kyle Taylor, Dan Oakes, and Rebecca Trigger.
That includes a $410 million deal with Electro Optic Systems who admit to having sold “high-end systems designed to allow our forces to engage numerically superior enemy forces”, which the ABC reported in the following terms:
EOS say they cannot “confirm or deny” that the UAE was the end user, but if that’s the case then how can they confidently claim their “equipment has no role in Yemen”?
What is the UAE doing in Yemen? Alongside Saudi Arabia they are attempting to partition the country so that the north is ruled by a pro Saudi dictator, while the south becomes a protectorate of the UAE. Despite starving ten million Yemenis, they still cannot manage to make the country kneel, instead they’re being pushed back by fierce nationalists with leaders who are starving themselves.
The Saudis claim to be fighting on behalf of the “officially recognised” government of Yemen, while the UAE are backing southern secessionism, however the only fighting forces both Gulf dictatorships have on the ground are dominated by Al Qaeda, and Islamic State factions numbering around 20-30 thousand.
The Ansarullah movement (i.e. “Houthi rebels”) by contrast, based in the capital Sana’a, is the largest indigenous Yemeni fighting force inside the country, the only side in this conflict that does not ally with a foreign state on Yemeni soil, seeking only to hold the state together, alongside any Yemeni political faction that agrees on throwing off foreign occupiers, i.e. the Saudis, Emiratis, and their Anglo-American allies, including Australia.
The Saudis and the British wanted at one point to divide Yemen among themselves after WW1 ended the Ottoman empire’s control over the north, but both were defeated by Yemeni national movements, Arab nationalist in the North, and Communist in the South.
South Yemen gained its independence from Britain in 1967, and today it’s being reoccupied, not by Britain, but by it’s Gulf allies. Retired Australian Major General Mike Hindmarsh has been a security advisor to the UAE since 2009, and before that, he was in charge of commanding the occupation of Iraq.
Today, “almost 100 military veterans and former Federal Police” have been “training UAE National Security Forces”. According to one of these mercenaries, Peter Butson who worked for the Emiratis from 2012 to 2017, about half the foreign military contractors they hired are Australian.
Today, the UAE have inherited Britain’s old geopolitical orientation, which is why they currently occupy the Shabwa province, which declared independence from Yemen just over two weeks ago, and also contains “Yemen’s largest natural gas reserves and is home to the port of Balha natural gas refinery”.
In a speech delivered in January by Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne, “these weapons systems are going into the hands of people we want them to go into the hands of”, that is, into the hands of the Saudis & Emiratis, whose allies on the ground in Yemen include al-Qaeda militia.
Imagine the outcry if Australian Muslims were caught selling weapons to “Islamic extremists” abroad? I’ve always maintained the combined efforts of every Aussie jihadi does not come close to the consequences of Australia’s dealings with Saudi Arabia, the godfather of terrorism in the Middle East.