The Obama administration on Wednesday hailed its support of authoritarian Persian Gulf monarchies who are currently conducting what has been described as a criminal military campaign in Yemen.
Anne Patterson, head of the State Department’s Bureau Of Near Eastern Affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that White House policies have led to a noticeable improvement in ties between the United States and the controversial oil-rich Middle Eastern kingdoms.
“I think relations with our Gulf allies have improved quite dramatically due to the work on the Camp David Summit and our security guarantees and trying to reassure them of our permanent commitment to their security,” Patterson told the committee chair, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).
President Obama held the meeting in May to assuage regional allies after signing the nuclear deal with Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council. The symposium was attended by officials from Gulf Cooperation Council member states–Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain.
The summit also came weeks after the GCC countries (except Oman), led by Saudi Arabia , started conducting military operations in Yemen. The coalition acted to target rebellious Houthi forces—Shia militants with ties to ex-Yemeni President and US War on Terror ally Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the Iranian government.
In March, the US said it would offer the coalition logistical and intelligence support, but that it did not want an “open-ended military campaign.”
Patterson’s remarks came about 36 hours after some Obama administration officials expressed some regret about supporting the military action. Officials told Politico they believe Washington’s role could lead to accusations “of abetting war crimes in a bombing campaign that could ultimately strengthen Islamist militants.”
“Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes in Yemen, conducted with US assistance, are alleged to have killed at least 1,500 civilians,” the paper noted.
According to recent UN estimates, about 5,000 Yemenis have been killed since March, when the Saudi campaign started; about half the deaths have been civilian. The UN believes that the majority of dead civilians in the conflict were killed by the actions of the US-backed Saudi coalition.
UN Chief Ban Ki Moon on Tuesday lambasted the Saudi alliance for hitting a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital earlier in the week in rebel-held territory. The attack, somewhat reminiscent of the Oct. 3 US strike on an MSF facility in Kunduz, Afghanistan, wounded seven medical workers.
The Saudis said on Wednesday that MSF gave them the wrong coordinates of the facility. The charity responded on Twitter saying it had given Riyadh the “proper” location two days before the attack.
In response to another question from Corker about administration policy, Patterson noted that the administration isn’t as concerned about human rights as it was before.
“I think there was perhaps an overly optimistic impression that we could focus on democracy promotion and economic growth in places like Egypt, and North Africa and even in the Levant,” Patterson said. “That has proven to be exceedingly difficult, so over the past three years our focus has really changed to the counterterrorism initiative, which was always a high priority.”
“I would say that we have evolved,” she added.
Previously in the hearing, when laying out the administration’s top concerns about the Middle East, Patterson had listed “counterterrorism policy” as “our first priority.”
“The second is human rights and democracy and economic growth,” she said.
