President Joe Biden emphasized that the United States will no longer support Saudi Arabia's offensive operations in the Saudi-Yemen conflict.
Biden made this emphasis following the Biden administration's announcement regarding the reversal of a policy initially established by the Obama administration and continued by the Trump administration.
Amid the accusations of Saudi war crimes, Biden expressed that the war has to end during his first foreign policy address.
He also named a veteran diplomat, Tim Lenderking, as a special envoy for Yemen, in pursuing a diplomatic solution to the war.
According to NPR, the United Nations mentioned that the said policy reversal comes after years of Saudi-Yemen conflict that has left the country at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula as the world's worst humanitarian disaster.
The U.N. also mentioned that the initial internal power struggle rapidly turned into a proxy war between Iran and other Gulf states, which involved the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as they are fighting for dominance in the region.
In 2014, Houthi rebels captured the capital Sanaa, which led to the expulsion of Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi's unpopular administration to the south of Yemen.
Based on a report, the Houthi rebels, named after Zaidi Shia Houthis, the founder of the movement, are followers of a branch of Shiite Islam and receiving their weapons and support from Iran.
The coalition of Gulf States started their airstrike launches in 2015 and landed ground forces in August of that year after gaining the support of the U.S. and France and the U.K, France24 reported.
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The fighting has been outstanding for not less than five years, with periodic ceasefires.
Even the Yemeni forces fighting the Houthis have split into at least two factions, but Hadi has spent most of the war in Saudi Arabia.
On the other hand, the Gulf states' forces have been widely accused of attacks on non-military targets or civilians, such as hospitals and even weddings.
In 2019, the UAE withdrew its troops on the field due to international criticism of their conduct.
The support of the United States to the coalition has included the inflight refueling of Saudi warplanes, and in 2018 an anonymous U.S. official spilled that the country is also selling precision bombs to Saudi to be dropped on their targets in the Saudi-Yemen conflict, Reuters reported.
The source added that the U.S. is only offering limited intel for Saudi Arabia's defense and training regarding civilian casualty avoidance.
Cost of conflict
The war had a devastating impact on its people as one of the world's poorest nations also had a record of 233,000 individuals, based on the United Nations' information, and most of them were from indirect causes.
Saudi and Houthi maritime embargos of Yemen have also prevented the delivery or the shipments of food, medicines, and other supplies to survive the conflict.
In addition, the United Nations also stated that the coronavirus pandemic is out of control in the country as the health care institutions there have already collapsed due to the Saudi-Yemen conflict.
