A Democratic lawmaker called on the Obama administration to cut off assistance to Saudi Arabia amid the country’s ongoing bombing campaign in Yemen, saying “the United States is aiding and abetting what appears to be war crimes.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) took to social media on Sunday to decry the military initiative, amid renewed bombing by the Saudi-led coalition. Lieu made his comments on Facebook, while posting a Washington Post story, published Saturday, about the killing of 10 children by Saudi jets that had reportedly targeted a school.
“I have tried numerous times to work with the Administration to stop the United States from assisting Saudi Arabia in their indiscriminate killing of civilians in Yemen. But when Saudi Arabia continues to kill civilians, and in this case children, enough is enough,” Lieu stated.
“The indiscriminate civilian killings by Saudi Arabia look like war crimes to me,” he added, citing his experience as a military legal adviser. “The administration must stop enabling this madness now.”
Saudi officials claimed they had been targeting “a Shiite Houthi rebel training camp and that children were present there as recruits,” according to the Post.
Lieu’s appeal comes amid a broader push for scrutiny of the US-Saudi relationship.
Late last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) vowed to block a recent sale of $1.15 billion in tanks and armored vehicles to the Middle Eastern monarchy.
“Saudi Arabia is an unreliable ally with a poor human rights record,” Paul told Foreign Policy. “We should not rush to sell them advanced arms and promote an arms race in the Middle East.”
In April, Paul and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) proposed suspending the sale of air-to-surface bombs to Saudi Arabia, citing concerns about atrocities in Yemen.
“The more it drags on, the clearer it becomes that our military involvement on behalf of the Saudi-led coalition is prolonging human suffering in Yemen and aiding the very groups that are intent on attacking us,” Murphy said.
“As the humanitarian crisis continues to deteriorate, anti-American sentiment is spiraling as the local population blames the US for the thousands of civilian deaths resulting from the Saudis’ bombing campaign,” he added. “This will come back to haunt us.”
Saudi forces and their international partners started bombing Yemen in March 2015, in a campaign against Houthi rebels. The Shia insurgents had ousted the government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
The group is led, in part, by former Yemeni President and US ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was once so close with Wasshington, he allegedly kept a journalist in prison on behalf of President Obama.
The Saudis have claimed that the Houthis are proxies of the Iranian government, though many observers doubt how close Tehran and the militants are, in actuality. When the Saudi campaign was launched, the Obama administration nonetheless promised to help with logistics and intelligence support.
Factions in Yemen had agreed to a ceasefire in April that deteriorated last week.
The terms of the deal itself, however, didn’t stop the fighting entirely, with The Guardian noting that there were 272 civilian casualties in Yemen, between April and August.
Between February and August, the US Air Force reported a 61 percent increase in refueling missions flown in support of the Saudi bombing campaign.
Since the Saudi-led intervention was launched, there have been more than 3,700 civilian casualties in Yemen, according to the United Nations. The clear majority of these deaths were reportedly caused by Saudi airstrikes.
