Thomas Wictor

In Yemen, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) serve as propaganda arms of Ansar Allah, the radical Shi’ite terrorists known as the Houthis. Both NGOs have put out entirely fact-free indictments of the Saudi-led Coalition fighting to take control of Yemen from the Iran-backed Houthis. There’s simply no evidence for the claims that both HRW and AOAV make in their reports.

First we have Targeting Saada: Unlawful Coalition Airstrikes on Saada City in Yemen, by HRW. Saada is a Houthi stronghold, birthplace of the movement in 1992.

HRW based its investigation on interviews and examining sites. The NGO provides absolutely no proof for these statements.

One attack killed 27 members of a single family, including 17 children. The airstrikes also hit at least five markets for which there was no evidence of military activity.

These are what’s known as “lies.” If there was no military activity, the Coalition would not risk the lives of irreplaceable pilots. Nor would it expend expensive precision-guided munitions. The accusations made against the Coalition are belied by the photos of the bomb damage. It’s absolutely clear that extreme care is being taken to avoid civilian casualties.

This is said to be a “displaced persons’ camp” near Sana’a airport where 195 people were killed or injured by an air strike on March 26, 2015.

March 26 was the day that Operation Decisive Storm began. The Yemenis set up displaced person’s camps in less than one day? No, those buildings are obviously residences.

Also, you can see that the force of the explosion was directed forward, toward the camera, away from the buildings beside the target. The structure wasn’t leveled. Instead, the Coalition dropped an aerial munition that glided in from behind and struck at a shallow angle. It was a precision bombing.

So HRW wants me to believe that the same people who have the ability to hit targets with pinpoint accuracy are also wantonly bombing marketplaces and homes for no reason. That’s a childish lie. Nobody on earth uses a combination of precision and indiscriminate strikes. Nobody. It’s one or the other.

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s pilots drop unguided barrel bombs on everybody.

We have footage. In the case of Yemen, however, there’s literally not a shred of evidence to back up the claims of war crimes.

Human Rights Watch compiled the names and ages of 59 people killed in aerial attacks in Saada City between April 6 and May 11 on the basis of information from relatives, witnesses, medical staff, and local Houthi authorities.

They admit that they’re getting their information from the Houthis. I don’t know what to say, except that this report is entirely without value.

That’s not a crater. If it were, the cement water cistern would’ve fallen into it. Also, the shape of the depression is wrong. It has a flat spot on the bottom. That’s impossible.

Here are two genuine craters in Gaza, created by aerial munitions.

Both of those Gaza craters are the remains of buildings that were full of explosives. The hole in the ground in Sada’a was excavated, not the result of an aerial munition.

HRW debunks itself with the following two photos. The surgical nature of the air strikes is incredible.

Why would the Coalition terror-bomb civilians with such precision? Do you understand how insane it is to make that accusation? Why didn’t the Coalition carpet-bomb the entire neighborhood if it wanted to slaughter civilians? Nobody uses guided munitions to kill civilians. They’re used to limit civilian casualties.

The entire HRW report is like that. It shows photos of precision strikes and claims that they’re indiscriminate. Anyone with a functioning brain can see that the accusation is a lie.

Now State of Crisis: Explosive Weapons in Yemen, by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Action on Armed Violence (AOAV). Like the HRW report, it relies entirely on anecdotal evidence.

Two military-aged males, one bombed in his house and one at the market. Neither has head injuries, but both were wounded in the legs.

They’re fighters, injured in combat. It’s so obvious.

And what are we supposed to make of this? The UN and NGOs tell us that the Coalition is bombing civilians indiscriminately. Well, the green arrow shows March 26, the day the air campaign began.

Why didn’t the number of civilian injuries and deaths go through the roof? The number remained constant for a month, and then it dropped dramatically in May. On May 2, 2015, the Coalition landed about 35 Yemeni special operators in Crater. They were accompanied by 15 United Arab Emirates Presidential Guardsmen, likely the most skilled warriors in the world.

The Guardsmen were armed with Javelin antitank guided missiles (ATGMs).

From May 4, the Emiratis roamed Aden, blowing the hell out of the Houthis, the Saleh loyalists, and the Revolutionary Committee militias. Note that civilian casualties continued to drop as the 15 Guardsmen fought maybe 40,000 enemy with massively destructive ATGMs. The Coalition resupplied the Guardsmen with airdrops. Who knows how many missiles they fired?

On June 8 and June 24, the Houthis launched major attacks against Little Aden and Crater, where armed civilians, the Southern Movement, and Yemeni troops loyal to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi had held out since March 22.

So: When the Houthis dissolved the Yemeni parliament on February 6, 2015, civilians deaths and injuries spiked. There was no change in the civilian casualty rate when the Coalition began the air campaign, and then the number of people being killed and injured dropped like a stone, even though Emirati Presidential Guardsmen were engaged in heavy combat in Aden. Civilians only began dying in large numbers again when the Houthis attacked Little Aden and Crater in June.

This “bomb” is a prop.

As in all the images coming out of Gaza, it’s missing the tail. Not one “unexploded bomb” in Gaza ever had a tail, even though this part of the munition is securely bolted on and is almost never knocked off on impact. Here’s an inert MK-83 on an American training range.

The Yemeni “bomb” has much of the paint sanded off, and the back end is rusty. Someone had salvaged it from one of the many battlefields across the Middle East and emptied it of explosive. That’s just the harmless steel casing, which was placed by the road for the photo.

This image is staged.

There are no bandages or scars on the little boy’s head. Behind the blue curtain on the left is another military-aged male. And why is every Yemeni hospital cleaner and more advanced than the one I go to?

Finally, a word on the “methodology” that AOAV used to compile its fictional report.

It’s beyond belief. They just read Houthi lies.

I don’t know how Yemenis keep from hating the west. I hate the west for doing this. It makes me ashamed and angry enough to kill.