A Saudi-led coalition has killed civilians with U.S. weapons, but the State Department and the Pentagon have fallen short on tracking the deaths, U.S. investigators found.
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A Saudi-led airstrike hit a prison in Yemen in January and killed at least 70 people, according to Houthi officials and international aid groups.
WASHINGTON — The State Department and the Defense Department have failed to assess civilian casualties caused by a Saudi-led coalition in the catastrophic war in Yemen and the use of American-made weapons in the killings, according to an internal government report.
The report from the Government Accountability Office focuses on attacks in recent years by a Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Houthi rebels for control of Yemen. The alliance has carried out deadly strikes using combat jets and munitions that have been supplied and maintained largely by American companies with the approval of the State Department and the Pentagon.
The report spans the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, covering the period from 2015, when the war against the Houthis began, to 2021. It is the second major report by a U.S. agency that lays out government shortcomings in preventing civilian casualties in Yemen. In August 2020, the State Department inspector general issued a report that said the department had failed to take proper measures to reduce civilian deaths.
The new report comes as President Biden is making plans to visit Saudi Arabia this summer. Mr. Biden aims to rebuild ties with the kingdom and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite vowing earlier to make the nation a “pariah” for its human rights atrocities, including the mass killings in Yemen and the murder of a journalist who was a U.S. resident.
U.S. officials spoke about the report on the condition of anonymity because the Government Accountability Office has not released it publicly yet. A version labeled “sensitive but unclassified” has circulated in executive and legislative offices. The report is required by Congress as a result of budget legislation.
The website of the accountability office lists a document on its “restricted reports” page that has the title “Yemen: State and D.O.D. Need Better Information on Civilian Impacts of U.S. Military Support to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.” The publication date is April 27, 2022. The page says the reports cannot be released publicly because the executive branch has determined they contain classified information or “controlled unclassified information.”
The State Department has been in discussions with the accountability office to get parts of the report put into a classified section, officials say. The agency also wants some lines redacted.
The Government Accountability Office expects to receive clearance from the State Department and the Pentagon to release a public version this month, said Sarah Kaczmarek, a spokesperson for the office.
Several officials said they were worried the State Department could hide important findings from the public through that process. In the case of the 2020 report that addressed civilian casualties, the State Department legal office under Mike Pompeo, the previous secretary of state, pressured the department’s inspector general to put major findings into a classified annex. That section had heavy redactions that even members of Congress could not read.
Antony J. Blinken, the current secretary of state, has not declassified any parts of that report.
A State Department press officer said the agency did not have a comment on the new report because it was pending public release. The Pentagon also declined to comment.
State Department and Pentagon officials said the United States consistently puts high-level pressure on Saudi Arabia to avoid civilian casualties and regularly sends teams to train the Saudis on investigating episodes.
The officials also pointed to a United Nations report that said 2021 was the third year in a row that civilian casualties from airstrikes had decreased — 185 of 2,500 civilian deaths were caused by strikes. However, the report said civilian deaths from airstrikes surged at the end of last year. The total civilian toll includes victims of Houthi violence.
Officials said the main finding in the new report was that the State Department and the Pentagon have failed to collect sufficient data and evidence on civilian casualties or monitor the use of American-made weapons.
A Pentagon official said U.S. agencies rely on open-source intelligence to assess the deaths and do not have military personnel in Yemen who can go to sites of attacks.
The New York Times published a series of articles last year that revealed the civilian toll of U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and the government’s failure to investigate civilian casualties.
In Yemen, civilian casualties from the Saudi-led airstrikes were highest in the early years of the war. They began rising again a half-year ago, but have declined during a cease-fire that began in early April and was extended last Thursday.
The strikes have hit hospitals, schools, buses and a funeral hall, among other sites. On Jan. 21, an airstrike on a prison run by the Houthis killed at least 70 people and injured dozens of others, according to Houthi officials and international aid groups.
More than 150,000 people have been killed in the war, including nearly 15,000 civilians, according to an estimate by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. The conflict has resulted in what the United Nations has called the worst man-made humanitarian crisis.
Understand the War in Yemen
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A divided country. A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting in Yemen against the Houthis, a Shiite Muslim rebel group that dominates in northern parts of the country, for years. Here’s what to know about the conflict:
The origins. The conflict has its roots in the country’s Arab Spring uprising, which forced then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down in 2012. Mr. Saleh then decided to join forces with the Houthi rebels, which had been growing in strength.
Hostilities begin. In 2014, the Houthis, supported by sections of the military loyal to Mr. Saleh, stormed Sana, the capital of Yemen, and forced then-President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition including the United Arab Emirates began bombing the country in 2015 in response.
A proxy war? The conflict has been a source of friction between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran in their battle for influence in the Middle East. The Saudis have accused Iran of supporting the rebels. Iran has denied the claim, though the rebels have used Iranian-made weapons.
The U.S. role. The United States has backed the Saudi-led coalition from the start of the conflict. President Biden announced the U.S. would end its support, but his administration has continued selling it weapons. In January, the U.S. military intervened to help the U.A.E. thwart a missile attack by the rebels.
Enduring crisis. Yemen remains divided between the Houthis, who control the north and Sana, and the Saudi-backed government in the south. As military operations drag on, the country has become the site of what aid groups say is one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
A truce. On April 1, the United Nations said that the two warring sides had accepted a two-month truce. President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi also announced his abdication, another sign that his Saudi backers may be looking for a path out of the bloodshed.
In February 2021, Mr. Biden said in a speech at the State Department that he would end all American support for “offensive operations” in Yemen, including “relevant arms sales.” He and other American officials have not said publicly what that entails. For now, new sales of air-to-ground projectiles have been suspended, officials say.
The Washington Post recently published an investigative report on how a substantial number of air raids in Yemen have been carried out by jets developed, maintained and sold by U.S. companies and by pilots trained by the U.S. military.
“It’s hard to say definitively that the U.S. is not supporting the offensive campaign there,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, a Middle East expert at the Burkle Center for International Relations at the University of California at Los Angeles. “That remains a concern.”
“A lot of ammunition, supplies, things in the pipeline are still continuing,” she added.
Bombs made by Raytheon have been among the deadliest weapons used by the Saudi-led coalition in the airstrikes that have killed civilians. The State Department approved the sales of the munitions, which puts agency officials at risk of prosecution for war crimes, according to an internal legal memo from 2016.
In 2016, after an airstrike at a funeral hall killed more than 100 people and injured hundreds of others, the Obama administration blocked the sale by Raytheon of about 16,000 guided munitions kits to Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration restarted the sales as it strengthened ties to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, another leading power in the war.
The conflict is widely considered a quagmire for Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, who aimed to quickly oust the Houthis after they seized Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, in 2014.
ImagePrince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2021.Credit…Saudi Royal Palace, via Associated Press
Mr. Biden has made promises of ending U.S. involvement in the war since his 2020 presidential campaign. And he has denounced Saudi Arabia for the 2018 murder by Saudi agents of Jamal Khashoggi, a Virginia resident who wrote columns for The Washington Post. In February 2021, the Biden administration released a U.S. intelligence report that said Prince Mohammed had approved the assassination.
But last week, U.S. officials said Mr. Biden would travel to oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Mr. Biden is trying to bring down energy prices as the United States and its partner nations boycott Russian oil to punish President Vladimir V. Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Biden’s planned trip carries political risks. Democrats and some Republicans in Congress have condemned Prince Mohammed for the killing of Mr. Khashoggi and the Yemen war. The Biden administration is trying to wring concessions from Saudi Arabia in order to make the trip look palatable, U.S. officials say. The issues being discussed include the Yemen war.
Michael LaForgia contributed reporting from New York.
Source: nytimes.com
