President Joe Biden on Thursday announced an end to US support for a grueling five-year Saudi-led military offensive in Yemen that has deepened human suffering in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Biden sees the United States “playing a more active and involved role” in ending the war through diplomacy, Sullivan said at a White House briefing before Biden would speak at the State Department.
Thursday’s action, fulfilling a campaign promise, would not affect US operations against Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or the AQAP group, Sullivan said.
Yemen, the biblical kingdom of Sheba, has one of the world’s oldest constantly occupied cities – the more than 2,000-year-old Sana’a – along with mud-brick skyscrapers and hauntingly beautiful landscapes of steep, arid mountains. But decades of mismanagement in Yemen have exacerbated factional divisions and stalled development, and years of conflict have now resulted in the intervention of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, which officials say have increasingly supported the Yemeni Houthi faction of hunters.
In 2015, the Obama administration authorized Saudi Arabia to lead a cross-border air campaign against the Houthi rebels, who had taken Sanaa and other territory and sporadically launched missiles into Saudi Arabia.
US assistance to Saudi Arabia’s command and control center was to minimize civilian casualties in air strikes. But Saudi-led strikes have since killed countless Yemeni civilians, including schoolboys on a bus and fishermen in their boats. Survivors show fragments showing that the bombs are American-made.
The Saudi Arabia-led campaign, mainly linking the United Arab Emirates, another Gulf country, has only “perpetuated a civil war in Yemen” and “led to a humanitarian crisis,” Sullivan said. US officials have already notified senior officials of those two countries to explain the reason for the withdrawal of aid, he said.
The stalled war has failed to dislodge the Houthis and is helping to deepen hunger and poverty. International law experts say that both the Gulf states and the Houthis have committed serious violations of rights.
The weeks-old Biden government has made it clear that shifting its stance on the war in Yemen and to Saudi Arabia over the Yemen offensive and other rights violations was a priority. Other measures included the suspension of some arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and an evaluation of the Trump administration’s classification of the Houthis as a terrorist group. Critics say the designation impedes the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemenis.
Biden will also announce Timothy Lenderking’s choice as special envoy for Yemen as soon as he speaks at the State Department on Thursday afternoon. A person familiar with the matter confirmed the selection and spoke on condition of anonymity prior to the announcement. The Gulf-based newspaper The National was the first to report the choice.
Lenderking was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the agency’s Middle East division. As a foreign service member, he has served in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
While the Biden government is withdrawing support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen, the government also says it wants to help the kingdom strengthen its defenses against further attacks from Houthis or outside opponents. The insurance is seen as part of an effort to convince Saudi Arabia and other fighters to end the conflict in general.