There’s a Disaster much Worse than Texas. But no one Talks about It

Jonathan Freedland, Guardian

In this story America is not the victim. Along with Britain, it is on the side of the perpetrator – helping to cause the world’s worst humanitarian crisis 

 Red Crescent workers at the site of an air raid in the Arhab area near Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, last week. Photograph: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

A quick quiz. No Googling, no conferring, but off the top of your head: what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian disaster? If you nominated storm Harvey and the flooding of Houston, Texas, then don’t be too hard on yourself. Media coverage of that disaster has been intense, and the pictures dramatic. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this supposedly once-in-a-thousand-years calamity – now happening with alarming frequency, thanks to climate change – was the most devastating event on the planet.

As it happens, Harvey has killed an estimated 44 Texans and forced some 32,000 into shelters since it struck, a week ago. That is a catastrophe for every one of those individuals, of course. Still, those figures look small alongside the havoc wreaked by flooding across southern Asia during the very same period. In the past few days, more than 1,200 people have been killed, and the lives of some 40 million others turned upside down, by torrential rain in northern India, southern Nepal, northern Bangladesh and southern Pakistan.

That there is a disparity in the global attention paid to these two natural disasters is hardly a novelty. It’s as old as the news itself, expressed in one, perhaps apocryphal Fleet Street maxim like a law of physics: “One dead in Putney equals 10 dead in Paris equals 100 dead in Turkey equals 1,000 dead in India equals 10,000 dead in China.”

Most of this amounts to a pretty basic form of racism to which, lord knows, the media are far from immune. Perhaps Eurocentrism would be more accurate. But whatever term you favour, it surely represents the most fundamental form of discrimination one can imagine: deeming the lives of one group of people to be worth less than those of another – worth less coverage, less attention, less sympathy, less sorrow.

Still, blaming the media is the easy option here. It allows everyone else to assume that, left to their own devices, they would be perfectly equitable in their distribution of empathy. But many western consumers of news would be more truthful if they admitted that images of a submerged US city do indeed strike them with greater force than images of a drowning Nepalese one, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps because the American city looks more like their own, or at least more familiar, thanks to films and television. Or simply because havoc in the US is more surprising than natural disaster in, say, India or Bangladesh – developing nations where extreme suffering and regular beatings from the elements have come to seem like part of the terrain.

A tiger killed by floods in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam. Photograph: Uttam Saikia/AP

The media deserve to be attacked for the discrimination they have shown this week. But if those attacks are predicated on a presumption that were it not for all those wicked editors, the audiences they serve would be full of universal fraternity and undifferentiated, boundless compassion, then they are built on shaky foundations.

But I’ve not yet given an answer to my quiz question. Full marks if you put your hand up to say … Yemen. In July the UN determined that it was “the world’s largest humanitarian crisis”. If you think it’s hard to get westerners interested in flood victims in Nepal, just try talking about Yemen.

The scale of the suffering in the Arab world’s poorest country is clear. Since it became the site of a proxy war in March 2015, 10,000 people have been killed, with 7 million made homeless. The UN is especially anxious about cholera, which has already killed 2,000 people and infected more than 540,000. It threatens to become an epidemic. That’s no surprise, given that sewage plants have been among the infrastructure bombed from the sky. The Saudi-led coalition has kept Sana’a airport closed, which means food and medicines cannot get in and the sick cannot get out for treatment. Pictures of gaunt children, listless babies and starving mothers recall the worst of Africa’s famines – but this disaster is entirely human-made.

Nor is this a remote story utterly unconnected to us. On the contrary, the Saudi government is armed to the hilt with weapons supplied by the UK and the US: £3.3bn worth of British firepower in the first year of this vicious war alone. And yet Yemen has barely registered in the western consciousness, let alone stirred the western conscience.

Of course, there are all the usual factors explaining public indifference to horrible events far, far away. But there is one that is relatively new. Before 2003, whenever word came of some distant catastrophe that posed no threat to our own safety, a discussion soon followed on what “we” should do about it. The two sides would take up their positions: the “something must be done” brigade pitted against those who argued that, however awful things were, it was none of our business and we would only make matters worse. Sometimes the latter camp would prevail – think of Douglas Hurd and mid-1990s Bosnia; sometimes, the former: witness Tony Blair and Kosovo.

After Iraq, that changed. Thanks to the invasion, as well as the bloodshed and mayhem in Afghanistan and Libya, the argument is now settled – and the non-interventionists won. The test case is Syria, where Bashar al-Assad has killed hundreds of thousands of his own people – more than Saddam ever did – and yet has been allowed to retain his throne untroubled by outside challenge.

Hundreds of thousands? I think you may be exaggerating a little there. Many of those killed by Assad are not Syrian but ISIS or mercenary soldiers being paid by those conducting that proxy war - essentially Saudi Arabia and Iran.

If there has been little western public appetite for action to shield Syria’s people from their dictator, there’s less to protect the people of Yemen. There’s not much interest even in pressuring London and Washington to stop arming the Saudi regime that is responsible for the country’s torment, despite the warnings that Yemen risks becoming the next Syria: its soil soaked in blood, rendered fertile for the next generation of violent jihadists.

This is not the place to re-litigate all the old arguments for and against intervention. (In the Yemen case, there is already western intervention – on the side of those doing most of the killing.) But it is worth noting one consequence of this shift: it’s as if, now that we know that we will do nothing about these distant tragedies, we have lost interest in them altogether. If we are not going to act, then why bother knowing about them?

But we have acted in Syria in supporting rebel groups who are almost certainly even worse than the Assad regime. The consequence has been to prolong the civil war resulting in the deaths, suffering and relocation of far too many people. Had we stayed out of it, it would be over by now.

The result is that the children of Yemen are dying cruel deaths, while the rest of the world ignores them. They are not drowning in Texas or Mumbai. They are dying under a hot desert sun, killed by our allies – and by our inattention.

• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

For the most part I agree with Jonathon but for the comments above. However, he, like every other media person, has missed the REAL worst disaster going on in the world today. Yemen is a horrible state of affairs and a disgrace for mankind. But there's a disaster that happens to somewhere between 30 million and 300 million children every single month. It is child sex abuse and it gets worse with every coming month. And it's not just western media that is ignoring it, it is media all over the world. It is the worst atrocity mankind has every conceived and it just keeps getting worse.

Meet Hameed: 12yo Yemeni Boy is Battling Cholera after Having 23 Surgeries & Losing Arm

This is a disgraceful exercise in man's inhumanity

and just as disgraceful is the lack of concern of western countries

which just keep selling arms to the combatants as though the

blood of those children was not on their hands

May God have mercy on the beautiful people of Yemen

Arhab, Yemen

A 12-year-old Yemeni boy has undergone 23 surgical operations, including the amputation of his left arm, after falling victim to the war in his country that left him with terrible scars. He is now battling cholera.

Hameed has had a rough childhood. In 2014, the boy was electrocuted when a high-voltage cable fell from a transmission tower during armed clashes in Yemen’s Amran governorate. The shock was enormous, but the kid survived.

For the past several years, he has been in and out of the hospital with various health-related problems.

“Even a slight cough affects him badly. He’s very weak. His elbow has been damaged by frequent falls,” Hameed’s father, Faraj Al-Asadi, told RT.

“As you can see, his neck is injured as well. These tragedies come from war. The boy spent a month in intensive care before regaining consciousness. He’s undergone surgery many times and will need more operations. Look at all his injuries.”

Hameed, his face and body awash with heart-stopping scars, is also battling with repeated cholera infections.

More than half a million people in Yemen have been infected with cholera since the outbreak began in spring, the World Health Organization (WHO) said last week. 

"The total number of suspected cholera cases in Yemen this year hit the half a million mark, and nearly 2,000 people have died since the outbreak began to spread rapidly at the end of April," the WHO said in a statement. 

Yemen's cholera epidemic is currently the “largest in the world,” the WHO says. The disease has been spreading like wildfire due to worsening hygiene and sanitation conditions and disruptions to the water supply across the country. Local residents are cut off from clean water.

“Half of the people who are affected by the cholera are children, and a quarter of the people who have died from suspected cholera cases are children," Marie Claire Feghali, regional communications manager with Red Cross, told RT.

A few key reasons contributed to the deadly disease outbreak in Yemen.

“Everything in the country has collapsed. That includes the water system, the health system, it also includes the fact that there’s no garbage collection in the country. Cholera is a water-borne disease. When you don’t have garbage collection, when you don’t have proper treatment of the water, it’s a whole number of factors that cause this cholera outbreak to be as serious as it is and as it was.”

“The situation in Yemen in general is extremely bad. It’s a man-made situation. It’s due to the fact that there’s a war going on in the country and there are people, who are civilians, who are paying the highest price,” Feghali said.

Yemen's ongoing conflict and a “man-made” humanitarian catastrophe has “no end in sight,” the head of the UN Development Program (UNDP) in the war-torn country said in August, warning that nearly 7 million people are at risk of starvation.

Around 70 percent of Yemenis are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. Roughly 60 percent have no prospects of securing their next meal as nearly 7 million “are close to slipping into a state of famine,” Auke Lootsma, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Country Director said earlier this month. 

The Saudi-led coalition launched its aerial bombing campaign in support of the ousted Yemeni president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in March 2015. The campaign targets the remnants of the country’s military loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthi rebels. The casualties in the fighting have surpassed 10,000 dead and 40,000 injured by January 2017, according to the UN estimates, with civilians making up a large share of victims. The bombing failed to bring victory to the Saudi-backed side in the conflict, but devastated Yemeni cities and infrastructure.

"Since March 2015, OHCHR has documented 13,609 civilian casualties, including 5,021 killed and 8,588 injured. These numbers are based on the casualties individually verified by the UN human rights office in Yemen," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) spokesman Rupert Colville said in July. 

Colville, however, noted at the time that the “overall number” of civilians killed could be much higher and estimated it to be over 11,000.

Some two-third of the verified civilian deaths were caused by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, while the rest of the victims were killed by Houthi rebels and terrorist groups Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, Colville told Anadolu Agency. 

Leading humanitarian organizations have named the aerial bombing the main cause of civilian deaths in the country.

The Saudi-led coalition has struck civilian targets on numerous occasions, but acknowledged only few of the attacks, calling them “mistakes” caused by “bad intelligence.”

The military campaign is supported by a tight air and naval blockade on Yemen, backed by the US. The situation has effectively led to healthcare collapse, according to Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien.

A UN report, leaked last week, indicates that Riyadh-led coalition strikes have resulted in hundreds of Yemeni children being killed or maimed. The confidential draft was to be presented by the UN Secretary-General, but it was first seen and published by Reuters and Foreign Policy (FP) magazine. The report alleges, that Saudi forces and their Gulf allies were complicit in over half of the deaths and injuries of children in Yemen last year.

“The killing and maiming of children remained the most prevalent violation” of children’s rights in Yemen, the 41-page paper says, as cited by FP. “In the reporting period, attacks carried out by air were the cause of over half of all child casualties, with at least 349 children killed and 333 children injured,” the report added, urging that Riyadh and its allies be added to a black list of countries violating children's rights.

video 2:50

‘Entirely Preventable’: Aid Agencies Blame Saudi Arabia for Yemen Cholera Outbreak

‘Entirely preventable’: Aid agencies blame Yemen blockade, economic collapse for cholera outbreak

People infected with cholera lie on beds at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen May 14, 2017. © Abduljabbar Zeyad / Reuters

Leading international organizations including Red Cross and the UN have pointed to the Saudi-led blockade and bombing campaign over the past two years as central causes behind the cholera epidemic that has already taken over 180 lives.

Calling the situation “catastrophic,” Dominik Stillhart, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Director of Operations, told RT from Yemen that with 11,000 confirmed cases the hospitals he personally visited in the capital, Sana’a, were “really struggling to cope,” with “heartbreaking” scenes of people having to share beds, amid a never-ceasing inflow of new patients.

Stillhart said that that 160 hospitals and other medical facilities have been destroyed, predominantly as the result of bombing by the Saudi-led, Western-backed coalition of Sunni Muslim states that have been attempting to put out a Shia rebellion that began in spring 2015, “seriously weakening the health system.”

This is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran wants to spread its influence throughout the region but Saudi Arabia does not want an Iran-friendly, Shia government on its flank. 

It seem as if Muslims who can't find infidels to fight, will resort to fighting among themselves. "My brand of Islam is better than your brand of Islam; I kill you!" 

Except for Ireland, and Ireland is always an exception, you really don't see that kind of infighting among Christians. At least not in the last few hundred years. 

The ICRC second-in-command also blamed the Saudi-imposed aerial and naval blockade for leading to the famine and poverty that provided a breeding ground for the epidemic, which has resulted in a declaration of a state of emergency.

“There is a situation where people are not only affected by the direct consequences of conflict, but the economy has been seriously slowed down, because it is very costly to move goods across the country through the different frontlines. Then there is the aerial blockade, and it is difficult to move food into some of the seaports,” said Stillhart, who insisted that ICRC have “repeatedly called on the conflict participants” to allow full access for humanitarian supplies.

Stillhart estimated that over 17 million Yemenis – two-thirds of the population – require humanitarian assistance, and 10 million are in “acute need” of food aid.

The collapse of the economy has led to civil servants, including public sanitation workers, not being paid for eight months, which has meant that “garbage-laden water has been running through the streets of Sana’a when it rains,” creating the perfect conditions for a disease that has mostly been eliminated even in the developing world, says Sara Tesorieri, Advocacy and Policy Adviser for Norwegian Refugee Council in Yemen.

“Cholera is preventable. If you have the health systems and the response in place, you can control its spread, but the systems here have just been decimated. And the authorities don’t have the capacity that they had even four months ago to deal with this,” Tesorieri told RT from Sana’a.

Tesorieri said that international organizations are struggling to overcome the natural difficulties of working in a country that has been carved up by untidy frontlines, but hinted that there has been conscious resistance to allowing aid through – echoing previous expert concerns that civilian starvation and disease are being used as deliberate tactics.

“There is an issue of basically the strangulation of imports. That somewhat affects the aid situation, but more it just affects how great the needs are. Yemen imports 90 percent of its food, so any sort of obstruction of imports of any kind really puts the country at risk,” said Tesorieri. “We do encounter obstacles from authorities as well and we encounter obstacles simply because the fighting continues, and that makes it difficult to reach certain areas.”

“People are not able to buy water that’s pure,” Jamie McGoldrick, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, told RT. “We are just not able to see how we can turn this around quickly. And time is of the essence, because cholera does not wait for anybody.”

All three experts have accused leading international powers of failing to dedicate enough diplomatic and financial resources to ending the conflict, which remains finely balanced.

“We have less than 20 percent of our appeal funded, despite a pledging event two weeks ago in Geneva, where over $1.1 billion was pledged. We have not seen that money. And until we get that money, we cannot address the threat of famine later this year or more importantly we cannot address the current cholera outbreak,” McGoldrick said.

“All of this is entirely preventable,” Tesorieri said. “The deaths and suffering from cholera, the potential famine – these are the consequence of the conflict and the choices that the parties to the conflict and the parties that support them are making to continue this fighting, which is leading to a collapse of Yemen.”

Despite a top UN official calling Yemen “the worst humanitarian crisis since 1945,” and stated efforts by the organization to seek a ceasefire before Ramadan, which starts later this month, Stillhart warned the plight of the country will only deepen in the coming months.

“My biggest concern is that with no end in sight to the fighting, is that the situation will continue to deteriorate. It is absolutely crucial that the international community pays much more attention to the conflict and finds a resolution. In the absence of a resolution, it is key to respect international humanitarian law,” he told RT.