Tag Archives: Saud Arabia

Politics, Regional

US President Biden ends support for Saudi’s Yemen war in foreign policy shift

Maravi Post Reporter

President Joe Biden announced an end to United States support for Saudi-led military offensive operations in Yemen, indicating that the new administration is planning a more active US role in efforts to end the country’s civil war.

“This war has to end. And to underscore our commitment, we’re ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales,” the US president said in a speech at the State Department.

“At the same time,” he said on Thursday, “Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, UAV (drone) strikes and other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries. We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.”

Saudi Arabia welcomed Biden’s remarks, particularly his commitment to the country’s defence and addressing threats against it.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud welcomed cooperating with the Biden administration to solve issues in the region, without commenting on its decision to end support for Saudi Arabia’s war efforts in Yemen.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia welcomes the United States’ commitment, expressed in President Biden’s speech today, to cooperate with the Kingdom in defending its security and territory,” the foreign minister said on Twitter.

Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman reiterated the same sentiment in a series of tweets late on Thursday. “As we have for over seven decades, we look forward to working with our friends in the US on addressing these challenges,” he said.

The ending of US support for the offensive will not affect any US operations against the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, group, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

Biden also announced the choice of Timothy Lenderking as special envoy to Yemen, a move also welcomed by Saudi Arabia’s deputy foreign minister.

Lenderking has extensive experience dealing with Yemen and the Gulf. He has been the deputy assistant secretary of state for Gulf affairs and served in the US embassy in Riyadh.

The Yemen reversal is one of a series of changes Biden laid out on Thursday that he said would be part of a course correction for US foreign policy. It comes after former President Donald Trump – and some Republican and Democratic administrations before his – often aided authoritarian leaders abroad in the name of stability.

The announcement on Yemen fulfills a campaign pledge. But it also shows Biden putting the spotlight on a major humanitarian crisis that the United States has helped aggravate. The reversing of policy also comes as a rebuke to Saudi Arabia, a global oil giant and US strategic partner.

Sullivan on Thursday reiterated Biden’s pledge, made during the 2020 presidential campaign, that he would curtail US support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen, including ending arms agreements.

“It extends to the types of offensive operations that have perpetuated a civil war in Yemen that has led to a humanitarian crisis,” Sullivan said. “The types of examples of that include two arms sales of precision-guided munitions that the president has halted that were moving forward at the end of the last administration.”

Sullivan added that the US has spoken with senior officials in Saudi Arabia and its ally the United Arab Emirates as part of “a policy of no surprises with these types of actions so they understand that this is happening and they understand our reasoning and rationale for it.”

Many Yemen activists celebrated the Biden administration’s decision as a potential end to the war, but some analysts warned that the foreign policy shift’s implementation on the ground remains to be seen.

“Ending US support won’t automatically mean an end to the war, at all. There is a really fine balance to be struck here, in finding a way to end the war that armed, political factions, local groups and civil society can buy into. Not easy at all,” Peter Salisbury, senior Yemen analyst at Crisis Group, said on Twitter.

Yemen’s civil war pits the internationally recognised government against the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement. The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, including large numbers of civilians, and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

A Saudi-led coalition intervened in March 2015 on the side of the government and enjoyed the backing of the Trump administration, with the war increasingly seen as a proxy conflict between the US and Iran.

But the mounting civilian death toll and growing humanitarian calamity – the United Nations estimates that 80 percent of Yemen’s 24 million people are in need – fuelled bipartisan demands for an end to US support for Riyadh.

Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2021 published in January that the parties to Yemen’s armed conflict continued to violate the laws of war in 2020, including committing new war crimes.

HRW reported that the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as Houthi forces, launched mortars, rockets, and missiles into heavily populated areas.

“The coalition also carried out more airstrikes that violated the laws of war, attacking civilians and civilian structures, and using munitions purchased from the United States, France, Canada, and other countries,” HRW said.

In 2020, the United Nations Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen called for the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Yemen to the International Criminal Court, and for the creation of an international accountability mechanism.

Source: Aljazeera

Law and order, Politics

US Department of Justice to probe Trump campaign ‘infiltration’

Maravi Post Reporter

(BBC)- The US Department of Justice will investigate whether FBI agents spied on President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign for “inappropriate purposes”.

In a tweet, Mr Trump said he wanted to know whether his predecessor’s administration ordered such a move .

The call comes after US media reports suggesting the FBI had an informant meeting campaign aides.

US Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein said action would be taken if any infiltration was found.

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Mr Rosenstein said in a statement.

What is the scope of the investigation?
There is already an investigation into all aspects relating to Mr Trump’s campaign for the 2016 election and whether Russia tried to influence the outcome.

Mr Trump’s latest demand came amid a series of tweets on Sunday denouncing a “witch hunt” that, he said, had found no collusion by his campaign with Russia.

This refers to the ongoing investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 US election, whether there was any collusion between the Kremlin and Mr Trump’s election campaign and whether the president tried unlawfully to obstruct the inquiry.

Mr Trump has constantly attacked the inquiry.

Mr Trump first made the accusation that the FBI had sent a spy into his campaign team on Friday.

“It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a ‘hot’ Fake News story,” Mr Trump tweeted, adding: “If true – all time biggest political scandal!”

The New York Times followed with an article that suggested there was, indeed, an FBI informant – whose identity it did not reveal – who had been sent to speak to campaign aides but only after the FBI had received reports of “suspicious contacts linked to Russia”.

The informant – an American academic working in the UK – had made contact with George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.
The Washington Post reported a similar account.

What’s likely to happen next?

Law enforcement officials have refused to provide evidence to Congressional leaders over the issue.

They have argued that doing so would put the informant’s life – or that of his contacts – in danger.

Mr Trump could order the US Department of Justice – which has oversight over the FBI – to release the documents.

Robert Mueller appears to be expanding the scope of his probe, and Donald Trump isn’t happy about it at all.

A New York Times article that seems to have prompted the president’s Sunday tweet-storm: reports that the special counsel team is looking at attempts by Middle Eastern nationals, including citizens of Saudi Arabia and Israel, to offer assistance to the 2016 Trump campaign. Such foreign involvement in the US electoral process would be illegal.
After denouncing the New York Times, the president lashed out at Democrats and turned his Twitter guns on his own justice department.

The president has tweeted similar official-sounding directives before with little follow-up action. If the president is serious, however, it could constitute an unprecedented attempt to influence a justice department investigatory process that has been insulated from presidential meddling since the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration.

The president clearly believes the intelligence community is conspiring against him. In his mind they are bedevilling his friends and going easy on his enemies . He wants it the other way around.

What is the informant’s connection to Mueller?

According to the Washington Post, the informant has been aiding the Russia investigation since before Mr Mueller’s appointment a year ago. The FBI opened the inquiry in the middle of the election campaign in July 2016.

But it remains unclear how the informant first came by the information that led to his meetings with Mr Papadopoulos and Mr Page – and his wider role as an FBI informant.

As for Mr Mueller, the former FBI head has so far charged 19 people. Mr Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the timing of meetings with alleged go-betweens for Russia.

But Mr Trump and his supporters have multiplied their attacks on the special counsel’s work.

Without providing any evidence on Sunday, Mr Trump demanded a stop to the inquiry – that he said was nearing $20m in costs and was composed of 13 “angry and heavily conflicted Democrats”. Mr Mueller is a Republican.