About 28 million people live in Texas. Imagine a population the size of Austin has cholera, and one the size of Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso, Arlington, and Corpus Christi faces the imminent threat of famine. Add Plano, Laredo, and each of the 167 cities down the line between Lubbock and Kilgore (pop. 14,836), and that’s how many lack access to adequate nutrition. Now substitute “Yemen” for “Texas” and strike the word “imagine.”
That’s just the start to describing what many global officials call the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” a grim description in light of rampant hunger in Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan. International politics set Yemen apart: Already beset by agricultural and economic disadvantages, seven years of social upheaval and three years of civil war have attracted foreign military involvement. One side of the conflict is the Saudi-aligned government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, which controls vast but sparse inland territory and a large southern city, Aden. The other is the Iranian-backed Houthi insurgency, which drove Hadi from the capital of Sanaa in early 2015 and holds the major population centers near the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia intervened on behalf of Hadi nearly from the start, including airstrikes. Wanting to thwart Iranian ambition, the United States acknowledged in March 2015 it was providing the Saudis logistical and intelligence support—the beginning of a relationship Congress said was unauthorized in a resounding, albeit non-binding vote last November.
But the strategic alliance has produced a moral dilemma for the Americans, as well. Non-governmental organizations and media have documented Saudi Arabia’s de facto naval blockade of Yemen since 2015, which it contends is necessary to prevent smuggling of Iranian arms to the Houthis. (The rebuttal: Why would Iran go through the front door like that? The U.N. already operates a clearance and port inspection program, and provides monthly updates of its work.) The Saudis’ activity has humanitarian consequences: Yemen imports more than 90 percent of its food, according to the United Nations, and requires fuel for generators that power water treatment and hospitals—facilities of outsize significance amid outbreaks of cholera and war. Even when some ships haven’t been turned away—21 of them arrived at the crucial port of Hodeidah in the first eight months of last year, per Reuters, an 83-percent drop from 2014—delaying supplies costs lives. According to the U.N., one Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes.
After the Houthis fired a missile at Riyadh’s international airport in November 2017, the Saudis tightened their restrictions, blocking shipments, including aid, to all ports. International bodies and human rights groups roundly condemned the severe reaction, and Saudi Arabia removed some obstacles within a few weeks. But the most noteworthy response came from President Trump, who hadn’t spoken publicly about the humanitarian disaster.
“I have directed officials in my administration to call the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to request that they completely allow food, fuel, water, and medicine to reach the Yemeni people who desperately need it,” he said in a statement on Dec. 6. “This must be done for humanitarian reasons immediately.” Two weeks later, the Saudis announced they would suspend their blockade of Hodeidah for 30 days, allowing the delivery of four U.S.-funded cranes to help increase the port’s offloading capacity. Trump was “fired up” about the situation in discussion with British prime minister Teresa May, CNN reported.
So was Indiana senator Todd Young—and he had been for a while. Throughout 2017, the Foreign Relations Committee member placed Yemen at the forefront of his work overseeing international development policy for the subcommittee he chairs. He and a bipartisan group of senators formally asked the Saudi government in April to refrain from impeding aid and bombing the places where it’s delivered. When his concerns weren’t satisfied by June, he voted against an arms deal with the Saudis. He stalled the confirmation of a State Department legal adviser nominated in September, Jennifer Newstead, as he formally questioned her position on the legality of the Saudis’ behavior in formal correspondence between October and November. He pressed her about an American statute blocking foreign assistance to a country the president is aware “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance” (in this case, the four cranes). Young would point out in a letter to the president the next month that Trump acknowledged such an interruption in his Dec. 6 statement. Newstead answered Young’s inquiry to his satisfaction, and he lifted his hold, as Foreign Policy reported.
The thrust is that Young is dealing in more than just diplomatic niceties—or, as he put it to me Friday, is providing “leverage to our own government to try and ensure that this starvation blockade is lifted.” The hawkish Indiana Republican is trying to balance strategic and humanitarian necessities in his approach to the Saudis. “I don’t think we have any choice but to try and arrest Iranian expansionism,” he says, as it relates to U.S. support of Saudi objectives in Yemen—which has lessened but continued amid escalating attacks and casualties. But that doesn’t mean the United States shouldn’t punish Saudi misbehavior.
“Because of our shared interests with the Saudis—making sure Iran stays in a box to the extent they can, and refrain from terrorist activities throughout the Middle East and beyond—I would expect that we’ll continue to work together on those. But at the same time, let’s be clear: We also have some leverage, vis a vis the Saudis,” he says. “They’re trying to diversify their own economy. We can be quite helpful in that regard . . . and there are other ways that we partner with the Saudi leadership, and help enhance their credibility within that region and beyond. And our motivation to help on all of those fronts could absolutely diminish to the extent that the Saudis continue to ignore this administration’s concerns, which I share, about the denial of life-saving assistance to the Yemeni population, in what I think is an ill-considered and ham-fisted effort to advance their military aims.”
That effort purportedly is at low tide right now, after the Saudis announced they would suspend their blockade of Hodeidah. But it’s not as if they’re being held accountable in real time. Reporting in Yemen is notoriously difficult; 60 Minutes said one of its crews was ordered off a ship bound for there, then was granted permission to fly into the country, and ultimately was unable to travel because the Saudis closed the airspace. A lone report from an RT Middle East team last weekend said the Hodeidah port remained empty, quoting a port official. (After this story was published, Young’s office told THE WEEKLY STANDARD it rejected the RT report, citing direct and detailed information from USAID and the U.N. showing that ships have been unloading food and fuel at Hodeidah.) The U.N.’s humanitarian office stated there had been “progress” along the Red Sea in the last month. A State Department official told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that there’s been an increase of humanitarian and commercial goods into Yemen the last few weeks, without specifying where.
“We welcome this development as an important step in raising import levels to address the vast needs in the country, where more than 22 million people require humanitarian assistance,” the official said. That’s 22 million, or almost 80 percent of the state of Texas.
