Arron Merat on the part played by British state terrorism in the war on the people of Yemen.


Britain does not merely supply the bombs that fall on Yemen – it provides the personnel and expertise that keep the war going. But is the government breaking the law? 

For more than four years, a brutal Saudi air campaign has bombarded Yemen, killing tens of thousands, injuring hundreds of thousands and displacing millions – creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. And British weapons are doing much of the killing. Every day Yemen is hit by British bombs – dropped by British planes that are flown by British-trained pilots and maintained and prepared inside Saudi Arabia by thousands of British contractors.

The Saudi-led military coalition, which includes the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, has “targeted civilians … in a widespread and systematic manner”, according to the UN – dropping bombs on hospitals, schools, weddings, funerals and even camps for displaced people fleeing the bombing.

Saudi Arabia has in effect contracted out vital parts of its war against Yemen’s Houthi movement to the US and the UK. Britain does not merely supply weapons for this war: it provides the personnel and expertise required to keep the war going. The British government has deployed RAF personnel to work as engineers, and to train Saudi pilots and targeteers – while an even larger role is played by BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest arms company, which the government has subcontracted to provide weapons, maintenance and engineers inside Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudi bosses absolutely depend on BAE Systems,” John Deverell, a former MoD mandarin and defence attache to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, told me. “They couldn’t do it without us.” A BAE employee recently put it more plainly to Channel 4’s Dispatches: “If we weren’t there, in seven to 14 days there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky.”

Continue reading @ The Guardian.


'The Saudis Couldn’t Do It Without Us’: The UK’s True Role In Yemen’s Deadly War

Arron Merat on the part played by British state terrorism in the war on the people of Yemen.


Britain does not merely supply the bombs that fall on Yemen – it provides the personnel and expertise that keep the war going. But is the government breaking the law? 

For more than four years, a brutal Saudi air campaign has bombarded Yemen, killing tens of thousands, injuring hundreds of thousands and displacing millions – creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. And British weapons are doing much of the killing. Every day Yemen is hit by British bombs – dropped by British planes that are flown by British-trained pilots and maintained and prepared inside Saudi Arabia by thousands of British contractors.

The Saudi-led military coalition, which includes the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, has “targeted civilians … in a widespread and systematic manner”, according to the UN – dropping bombs on hospitals, schools, weddings, funerals and even camps for displaced people fleeing the bombing.

Saudi Arabia has in effect contracted out vital parts of its war against Yemen’s Houthi movement to the US and the UK. Britain does not merely supply weapons for this war: it provides the personnel and expertise required to keep the war going. The British government has deployed RAF personnel to work as engineers, and to train Saudi pilots and targeteers – while an even larger role is played by BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest arms company, which the government has subcontracted to provide weapons, maintenance and engineers inside Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudi bosses absolutely depend on BAE Systems,” John Deverell, a former MoD mandarin and defence attache to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, told me. “They couldn’t do it without us.” A BAE employee recently put it more plainly to Channel 4’s Dispatches: “If we weren’t there, in seven to 14 days there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky.”

Continue reading @ The Guardian.


5 comments:

  1. Brilliant article. I had imagined the British as a sort of Grima Wormgtongues in MBS ear. They are much worse.

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  2. Saudi Arabia, like the Israeli garrison, is a vassal of the British Crown. The war against Yemen is conducted and waged entirely under the auspices of MI6. Saudi Arabia is not and never has been an independent country. The reach of the Crown extends also to the US, which it exploits and manipulates through the so-called ‘special relationship’. The British Empire did not come to an end; it merely adapted itself to the ‘new order’ in the aftermath of the Second World War. The IMF and World Bank are its key tools of leverage to uphold its power over the Global South; the corruption and blackmail of its political class its weapon of choice in the more sophisticated economies. This world will not know peace while that empire stands. God be with the Yemeni.

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  3. You mean like Tony Blair illegally selling arms to Indonesia which were used against civilians in East Timor?

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  4. Sean

    The real scandal is Britain's dependence on arms exports to and oil imports from an absolutist petro-dollar state which far from being a vassal of the British Crown is an aggrandising regional power which exports Wahhabi Islamism the ideology of Al-Queda and ISIS which it also funds.

    Rather than the US being subservient to the Crown; it is surely the other way round as throughout much of the Cold War and the post 9/11 War on Terror, the UK was very much the junior partner in thde 'special relationship'

    Again the UK is a junior partner to the US in the IMF and World Bank.

    There is no British Empire in its totality anymore just physical remnants in dodgy tax havens in the Caribbean and awkward historical legacies such as the Windrush scandal.

    No matter what one may say about Israel, it is an independent regional power not a vassal of the Crown.

    The war in the Yemen is a regional proxy war between Saudi and its Sunni Muslim allies and Shia Iran like other Middle Eastern conflicts. You ascribe too much power to a declining power.

    Conspiratorial rubbish if I may be candid.

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  5. Britain was and remains the primary force behind Wahhabism and its ‘royal’ elite — born in a barrel of oil for the purposes of neocolonialism. It also commands the petrodollar, a command it strengthened to heights anew upon the Volcker Shock, which was deliberately engineered to reassert Britain’s leading (though hidden) role within the ‘special relationship’, which had been pushed back against at Suez.

    Finance imperialism is empire, Barry, and it is not ‘candid’ to assert to the contrary. The state is an entity that exists behind the veneer of democratic institutions and systems. State power is mostly removed from political control and accountability, whether it be in Britain, the United States or wherever. It serves not people but standing power. This is not a conspiracy but political reality and anyone who imagines democracy to be a real thing, to be candid, can only be deluded.

    A cursory look at sacred cow and doyen of the Washington establishment, Allen Dulles, and who he was — a confirmed agent of British Intelligence Section 6 — gives an insight into the true nature of the special relationship and for whom it works. The position and influence of Dulles within the power system cannot be underestimated, and he is only one such individual. The American republic has yet to fully free itself. Indeed I wonder can any of us ever be truly free while these systems remain in place (we can’t, of course).

    ReplyDelete