US has not deeply probed its own part in Yemen ‘rights abuses’; Report

According to a congressional watchdog report, the Trump and Biden administrations’ commitment to tracking humanitarian law violations in Yemen has not been thoroughly explored. A Government Accountability Office investigation, which analyzed US weapons supplies to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, also cast considerable doubt on one of Joe Biden’s first foreign policy announcements as president, when he proclaimed that the US would no longer back Saudi offensive operations in Yemen.

At the time, in February 2021, the action was considered an attempt to demonstrate to the world that the US would no longer be an uncritical ally to its Gulf friends. However, the GAO determined that the Biden administration’s decision to classify weaponry as offensive or defensive was mostly useless. When questioned by the GAO on how they distinguished between defensive and offensive equipment, state department officials ‘could not give a description for defensive in nature.’ According to the GAO report, ‘State officials stated they examine the dangers posed to Saudi Arabia’s borders and infrastructure when choosing which weapons are ‘offensive’ and which are ‘defensive.’ A request for comment from the White House National Security Council was not immediately returned.

The research examines roughly $60 billion in US weapons supplies to the Saudi-led coalition from 2015 to 2021, the second time a watchdog has sought to assess the US’s own guilt in contributing to violations of humanitarian laws in Yemen. A state department inspector general found the government failed to take efforts to minimize civilian deaths in August 2020. According to the GAO, both the State Department and the Department of Defense made ‘some efforts’ to comprehend civilian suffering and the use of US-origin weaponry in Yemen. However, it discovered no evidence that the State Department had ever examined any accusations that US technology delivered to Saudi Arabia and the UAE was ever utilized for terrorist purposes.

The worrying findings come just days after the White House revealed that Biden will visit Riyadh next month in an effort to encourage the country to raise its oil supply and relieve consumer pricing pressure. Human rights groups who have backed Biden’s plan to try to personally alienate Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, have termed the travel a ‘betrayal’ of Biden’s campaign vow to make Saudi a pariah state. According to the UN, the Saudi-led war in Yemen is one of the world’s greatest humanitarian disasters, impacting an estimated 21 million people. According to the GAO, the US DoD made some steps to instruct Saudi officials to reduce civilian losses and follow international humanitarian law.  But the DoD has never ‘fully measured’ the extent to which its advising and training have helped to facilitate ‘civilian harm reduction’ in Yemen.

The GAO also stated that the State Department informed it that authorities could not locate three so-called ‘country team’ evaluations to the UAE, which would have provided important information regarding how the US has reviewed weapons sales requests. According to the study, the evaluations must also cover the ‘potential for abuse of the defense products in issue’ and whether ‘further training or assistance, if any, is required to limit the risk that the receiver would unwittingly cause civilian injury during operations’.  GAO sought the evaluations in September and was told this month that they had been identified and would be supplied to GAO once clearance was granted.