Patrick Cockburn wrote in October 2018 in The Independent newspaper of UK that one reason Saudi Arabia and its allies are able to avoid a public outcry over their intervention in the war in Yemen, is that the number of people killed in the fighting has been vastly understated. The figure is regularly reported as 10,000 dead in three-and-a-half years, a mysteriously low figure given the ferocity of the conflict.
Now a count by a non-partisan group has produced a study demonstrating 56,000 people have been killed in Yemen since early 2016. The number is increasing by more than 2,000 per month as fighting intensifies around the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. It does not include those dying of malnutrition, or diseases such as cholera.
"We estimate the number killed to be 56,000 civilians and combatants between January 2016 and October 2018," says Andrea Carboni, who researches Yemen for the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent group formerly associated with the University of Sussex that studies conflicts. He told me he expects a total of between 70,000 and 80,000 victims, when he completes research into the casualties, hitherto uncounted, who died between the start of the Saudi-led intervention in the Yemen civil war, in March 2015, and the end of that year.
Who are the Houthis?
David William Pear, a Senior Editor for OpEdNews, argues that there was a popular uprising led by the Houthi Movement in 2011 that deposed the 33-year dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh. The United Nations then facilitated negotiations for an interim government until national elections could be held. A nationwide referendum was held on the UN peace plan in 2012. Only one name was on the ballot for the interim president. It was the name of the US and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia backed Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Not surprisingly he got 100% of the votes cast. His term in office was 2 years.
Instead of helping to form a unity government and prepare for elections in 2014, Hadi went on an International Monetary Fund imposed austerity program and a rapid privatization program. He went on a spree of an unauthorized massive sell off of state-owned enterprises at fire sale prices. The purchasers were outside Gulf States and US buyers. In 2014 Hadi illegally extended his presidency for another year, saying he needed more time. He increased the austerity program on Yemenis and intensified the privatizations.
The Houthis in Yemen belong to the Zaydi Shia sect, which is similar to Sunni Islam. For centuries the Zaydi Shia and Sunnis have lived in peace and even pray together in Yemen's mosques. Simplistic Western propaganda has tried to fabricate that the war in Yemen is a Sunni vs. Shia war, with the Houthis being backed by Shia Iran.
The Zaydi Shia in Yemen are a very different sect of Shia than the Iran Twelvers. So, the US government dominated mainstream media never fails to repeat the propaganda that the Houthis are "Iran-backed". Iran is the imaginary boogeyman that the US has invented, David William Pear, concludes.
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