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Saudis seek to turn Yemen into client state: Analyst

Thursday, 03 August 2017 7:49 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 03 August 2017 7:50 AM ]

Yemenis walk past a building, housing branches of the Finance Ministry and Central Bank that was heavily damaged in an airstrike by the Saudis, in the northern province of Sa’ada, on July 24, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Saudi Arabia has been leading a brutal military campaign against Yemen for more than two years. The campaign, which lacks any international mandate and has faced global outrage, has claimed the lives of more than 12,000 people, most of them civilians.

Press TV has talked to Catherine Shakdam, director of Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, as well as Jihad Mouracadeh, political commentator and Middle East expert, to discuss the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.

Shakdam believes Saudi Arabia is committing a genocide in Yemen because it is systematically targeting civilian infrastructures, adding that it has caused a “dramatic humanitarian crisis” in the impoverished Arab country.

The analyst also noted the only solution to the situation in Yemen is for Saudi Arabia and its coalition to stop their military aggression. However, she said, Riyadh does not want to stop the war because it seeks to “annex” Yemen and turn it into a “client state.”

Shakdam further stated the Yemenis have a right to their political future and that Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the United Kingdom should not have a say in it.

She also maintained that the US has already given a “carte blanche” to Riyadh by basically signing a very lucrative weapons deal with the kingdom, arguing that Washington only wants to make more money and does not care about the Yemeni people.

“What they [the Americans] are trying to do is basic war capitalism … It is not about democracy, it is not about human rights, it is not about the will of Riyadh to try to impose a certain religious reality, what you have here is a desire to actually remap the Middle East altogether and the Saudis have convinced the Americans that right now they are the ones to do it and they are the ones to carry the agenda,” she said.

The analyst concluded by saying that the Saudis should be very careful because they are running out of money and political capital, asserting that they are going to be held accountable for all the war crimes, human rights violations, horrible acts and policies that they have carried out in the region.

Meanwhile, Jihad Mouracadeh, the other panelist on the program, opined that there should be a way to resolve the war in Yemen, otherwise the casualties and the human suffering will continue.

The analyst said he believed it is the forces loyal to Yemen's former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi who are fighting the Houthi Ansarullah fighters, not Saudi Arabia, adding that Riyadh is only helping them take over power.

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