



In a blatant effort to drag attention away from war crimes in Yemen, the Saudi regime decided to lift its ban on women drivers. Whitney Webb explained in detail the real motives behind this decision in a recent article . As pointed out:





When Khaled bin Salman told reporters on Tuesday, regarding the recent decree, “this is the right time to do the right thing,” he certainly wasn’t kidding. Indeed, the timing of the decree could not have been more convenient for the Saudi kingdom, though the Saudi royal family made no mention of why it really was the “right time” to end its ban on women drivers.





Between now and this Friday, when the United Nation’s Human Rights Council concludes its ongoing session, the international body will vote on a resolution to decide whether or not to establish an independent, international probe into war crimes committed in Yemen.





The United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has consistently pushed the Human Rights Council to create an independent investigation into the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen, which began in March 2015. Since then, over ten thousand civilians have been killed and the Saudi’s blockade of Yemeni ports and its bombing of civilian infrastructure have led to 17 million Yemenis lacking access to clean water and food, as well as to the worst cholera epidemic in history.





The Saudi regime is clearly uncomfortable with the resolution. They have vowed to “not accept” the findings of the probe, were the resolution to pass, and have also threatened any nation that votes in favor of the probe with economic and political retaliation. Yet, now, with the international media fawning over the Saudi government’s human rights “progress,” international pressure against the kingdom may be reduced as its role in the destruction of Yemen again fades into the background.





But the US-backed war crimes in Yemen by Saudi Arabia are so cruel that there is no way that could somehow be drawn away from the international attention. As Larry Wilkerson said to Sharmini Peries and the Real News





This is the worst humanitarian disaster since World War II. People are dying left and right, young people, middle age, whatever you want to say, of cholera. They're dying of starvation and we have things like the Saudis, for example, using our precision-guided munitions and possibly even our intelligence and AWACs control, and certainly our refueling aircraft, doing such things as bombing the port side cranes that offload food and water. Now, they can't offload food and water because the Saudis bombed those cranes and that's just one example of a really unsavory and even heinous way of warfare that the Saudis have engaged in in Yemen.





As the war crimes in Yemen are more than evident, the US Congress finally decided to take action. As Peries said:





A growing movement in the US Congress is working to stop US support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. Last week, four US representatives, two Democrats: Ro Khanna from California and Mark Pocan from Wisconsin and two Republicans: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Walter Jones of North Carolina introduced House Resolution 81 which would invoke the War Powers Act to end US involvement in the civil war in Yemen.









It is extremely doubtful whether some countries with the biggest arms sales to Saudi Arabia, like US and UK, will change anything in their policy. We know that the military-industrial complex is very powerful in both of them. Only under socialist leaders, like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, there is hope that the arms sales and support to the brutal Saudi regime will be decisively reduced.



