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cholera
War Makes the World Sick... Literally
The body of a single child, wasting away from the lack of the basic fluid that runs in my sink or yours, best captures the way war casualties ripple across time and populations.
Jul 09, 2025
War kills in so many ways. These days, Americans are bombarded with images from Gaza and elsewhere of people or broken bodies being ferried on stretchers from the rubble of homes and hospitals, by rescue workers whose thin bodies and stricken faces suggest they are barely better off than those they’re helping. Social media and journalists make us eyewitnesses to emaciated children too weak to cry. And yet, compared with air raids that crush and bloody instantaneously, a slower disaster, more difficult to capture (especially given our made-for-TikTok attention spans), consists of the hours that many people in war zones spend wasting away from infectious diseases of one sort or another.
Let me count a few of the ways.
In Iraq in 2004, three-month-old Ali tries to cry but he’s too weak to make a sound, since his body has been ravaged by diarrhea. Between 2003 and 2007, half of Iraq’s 18,000 doctors left the country due to the deteriorating security situation (with few intending to return). Health facilities had also been bombed out and destroyed. By then, about two-thirds of the deaths of children under the age of five, like Ali, were due to respiratory infections and diarrhea compounded by malnutrition.
Consider what it would do if someone you loved perished because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time in the storm of war that destroys infrastructure so central to our lives that normally we barely even notice its presence.
In Pakistan in 2017, one of a handful of countries that has yet to eliminate the polio virus, the father of a five-year-old boy is inconsolable when he learns that his son will never walk on his own again. Among displaced people in the Afghan-Pakistani border region where they lived, concerns about counterinsurgency air raids from U.S. and later Pakistani government and opposition forces, security threats toward vaccination teams in conflict-torn parts of that country, and suspicions among parents like that boy’s father that health workers had been sent by the U.S. government to sterilize Pakistani children, all prevented kids from getting the immunizations that they needed.
In Burkina Faso in 2019, three-year-old Abdoulaye dies after contracting malaria while in a shelter for people internally displaced by violence between government forces and Islamic militias. Malnourished and anemic, without direct access to a health clinic, he succumbs to a treatable illness.
In Fayetteville, North Carolina in 2020, as in other military towns across the U.S., rates of sexually transmitted infections like syphilis, herpes simplex, and HIV are among the highest in the country. Bases tend to drive up poverty among civilians by making the surrounding populations dependent on low-wage service work. And stressed-out, war-traumatized American soldiers are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior that spreads disease among the broader population.
In Ukraine in 2023, a soldier treated for severe burns dies of sepsis, despite being given multiple antibiotics. Doctors found klebsiella, a multi-drug-resistant pathogen, in his body. Despite successful efforts by the Ukrainian government to curb antimicrobial resistance in its population prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion, mounting casualties, along with shortages of supplies and personnel, mean that Ukrainian health workers now try to do whatever they can to keep soldiers alive. In the long term, antibiotic-resistant infections traceable to Ukrainian patients are already beginning to appear in places as distant as Japan.
In May 2025 in the Gaza strip, four-month-old Jenan dies from chronic diarrhea after losing half her bodyweight. She needed hypoallergenic milk formula, but aerial bombardments and blockades of basic food and medical supplies have made that once common product scarce. As anthropologist Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins points out, prior to the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, cases of diarrhea in young children there averaged about 2,000 per month. In April of the following year, however, such cases already numbered more than 100,000. Likewise, in the decade before the war, there were no large-scale epidemics in Gaza. In just the first seven months of that conflict, however, overcrowding in makeshift shelters, nutritional deficits, shortages of hygiene products—only 1 in every 3 Gazans has soap!—and contaminated water have led to new outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles, cholera, typhoid, and polio, exacerbated by widespread starvation.
At some level, it couldn’t be simpler. War destroys all too many of the modern amenities that make life possible. Preventable illness and death occur even in industrialized settings that are marked by inequality, lack of information, psychological trauma, or just the chaos of combat that hinders long-term thinking. In poor- and middle-income countries like Yemen, Syria, and Nigeria, infectious diseases were already among the top causes of death, even before the outbreak of significant conflicts. Their incidence, however, grew so much worse in wartime, especially among civilians who didn’t have the same access to doctors and medical hospitals as armed groups.
The body of a single child, wasting away from the lack of the basic fluid that runs in my sink or yours, best captures the way war casualties ripple across time and populations. For every soldier who dies in battle, exponentially more people suffer deaths from malnutrition, disease, or trauma-related violence even after battles end. Preventable infections play a large role in this story.
The War on Children
Children are particularly vulnerable to sickness and death in armed conflicts because of their immature immune systems, greater nutritional needs, tendency to succumb more easily to dehydration, and reliance on families who may not even be around to care for them. A study of more than 15,000 armed-conflict events in 35 African countries found that children aged 10 or younger were far more likely to die if they lived within 100 kilometers of a battle zone than they would have in earlier periods of peacetime. Increases in mortality ranged from 3% to about 27%, varying with how many people also died in nearby battles. Strikingly, many more babies under the age of one died annually in the eight years following a conflict’s end than while the battles were going on—infectious disease being a primary killer.
Take Yemen as an example of how war may affect young children and their families over time. Since the start of that country’s civil war in 2015, cholera, a waterborne illness doctors have known how to prevent since 1954, has ravaged the most vulnerable members of that country’s population, particularly children, due to a lack of appropriate sanitation or reasonable access to healthcare. As of December 2017, more than a million people had contracted the disease, nearly half of them children, and more than 2,000 had died of the illness. Compare that to the more than 10,000 Yemenis estimated to have died in direct combat by that time, and you get an idea of how significantly death by illness counts among the casualties of war.
Nearly a decade later, in fact, there are hundreds of thousands of new cases of that illness in Yemen each year and hundreds of annual deaths, making up more than a third of all cases globally. When Rami discovered that his daughters, aged 10 and 7, had cholera, he managed to scrape together the equivalent of about $15 to travel to a clinic so that the family could get lifesaving fluids and information to prevent further cases. Many families like his, however, can’t afford such treatment, forcing all too many of them to delay care or even experience the unthinkable: losing a child.
Consider what it would do if someone you loved perished because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time in the storm of war that destroys infrastructure so central to our lives that normally we barely even notice its presence. I hope it’s an experience that neither you nor I ever have.
War and Displacement
Still, I think about such things every day, as I bet do many of my colleagues connected to the Costs of War Project. When we first launched that project in 2011, Professors Catherine Lutz, Neta Crawford, and I met with experts in armed conflict to discuss how we would cover the issue of war’s health impacts. Repeatedly, they reminded us of how hard it is to talk about war and health without understanding what it’s like for families to be forced to leave their homes in search of safety.
Unsurprisingly, refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) are uniquely vulnerable to disease and illness. Anyone who has gotten sick while traveling knows that the challenges of getting care are compounded by a lack of knowledge of the community you find yourself in. In the case of today’s more than 122 million war refugees or displaced people, stigma and harassment are frequent travel companions. According to one meta-analysis, more than one-fifth of refugee and IDP women have experienced some form of sexual violence while living in displacement settings. A study of more than 500 immigrants and refugees in Italy found that nearly half experienced physical violence, sexual abuse, harassment, or workplace discrimination.
How did we get to a time when our leaders seem loath to invest in healthcare and don’t even hide their disdain for poor people, a significant number of whom are military personnel and veterans?
The stories that extremist politicians tell about migrants—think of President Donald Trump’s tall tale of supposedly dog- and cat-eating Haitians in Springfield, Ohio—distract us from the social problems such politicians seem unwilling to deal with like loneliness and poverty. Displaced persons lack political clout and voting power in places that host them and, in actual war zones, fighters rarely respect shelters and camps designated for their survival.
For people who flee their homes, the basic boring stuff is lacking, too. Only 35% of refugees have clean drinking water where they live, while less than a fifth of them have access to toilets. Imagine how that would affect all of the higher-order things you value in your life, including gatherings with people you care about, if you couldn’t even find a decent place to wash your hands or brush your teeth!
Most of all, what stands out to me as both a social worker and a scholar of war is how people forced to leave their communities end up losing connections to health providers they trust. I can’t tell you how many individuals I’ve met in clinical and humanitarian settings who had declined to seek care for Covid-19, pneumonia, severe flu symptoms, and other illnesses because they lacked confidence that professionals in their host communities had their best interests at heart.
My Government’s Assault on Public Health
As Republicans in Congress passed a bill that would deprive millions of Americans of health insurance in the near term, as high-level officials spread disinformation about vaccines for once-eradicated illnesses like measles, and as public health workers and officials face threats of violence, all too many poor Americans are starting to experience the sorts of obstacles to healthcare common in war zones.
Meanwhile, with the Trump administration’s decisions earlier this year to fire at least 2,000 U.S. Agency for International Development workers and freeze foreign aid dollars used (in part) to treat and monitor infectious diseases elsewhere on this planet, the threat that a foreign pandemic might make it to this country has grown considerably.
To quote Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) at a recent town hall with constituents worried about losing healthcare, “We are all going to die.” While that is indeed so, it also matters how. A long life with access to basic services like immunizations and clean water is one of the differences between dying like a human being and dying like one of the wild animals I find in my rural area, infected by bacteria in the water or exhausted from heat exposure.
How, I wonder, did we Americans reach a place where many of us are silent or supportive of a strongman’s $45 million birthday military parade that closed roads to residents and commuters for days? How did we get to a time when our leaders seem loath to invest in healthcare and don’t even hide their disdain for poor people, a significant number of whom are military personnel and veterans?
I’m not sure I know what this country stands for anymore. I don’t know about you, but these days America sometimes feels to me like a treacherous foreign land.
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'We Cannot Allow This to Happen Again': Israeli War on Lebanon Sparks Cholera Resurgence
"We have already seen in Gaza how the lethal combination of mass displacement, attacks on healthcare, and lack of nutritious food and water can impact children's lives," said Save the Children's Lebanon director.
Oct 23, 2024
Israel's invasion and intense bombardment of Lebanon—including recent attacks on hospitals and other medical infrastructure—have sparked a potentially catastrophic health crisis in the country, with cholera and other diseases spreading among the more than a million people who have been displaced over the past month.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it was working to stem the spread of cholera after Lebanon's health ministry confirmed the country's first known case of the bacterial disease since a deadly outbreak that began in October 2022.
Particularly vulnerable to the worsening public health crisis are the hundreds of thousands of children who have been displaced by Israel's bombing and ground attacks. The United Nations Children's Fund stressed that cholera is a severe threat to kids under the age of 5, the unvaccinated, and those suffering from malnutrition.
The humanitarian group Save the Children said Tuesday that "over 400,000 children forced from their homes by the escalating conflict in Lebanon are at risk of skin diseases, cholera, and other waterborne diseases due to overcrowded, basic conditions in collective shelters and a lack of water and sanitation facilities."
Kamal Nasser El Deen, Save the Children Lebanon's emergency response coordinator, said Wednesday that he has been in "multiple" shelters in which families were forced to wait in long lines to access bathrooms.
"The facilities are inadequate for the number of people, and to make matters worse, the water supply is inconsistent," he continued. "This lack of clean, reliable water creates a significant risk for waterborne diseases. It's heartbreaking to know that these children, already displaced and vulnerable, face the additional threat of illness simply because basic needs like sanitation and clean water aren't being met."
"The international community must act now to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and exert pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children's country director in Lebanon, likened the intensifying health crisis to the dire conditions in Gaza, which the U.S.-armed Israeli military has decimated with more than a year of relentless bombings and ground attacks, obliterating the enclave's healthcare system and causing the reemergence of polio. Experts have also warned of a looming cholera outbreak in Gaza.
"Thousands of vulnerable children are now unprotected and with winter just round the corner and temperatures dropping, they will become even more susceptible to diseases such as measles, meningitis, and hepatitis A," Moorehead said of the Lebanon crisis. "We have already seen in Gaza how the lethal combination of mass displacement, attacks on healthcare, and lack of nutritious food and water can impact children's lives. We cannot allow this to happen again. The international community must act now to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and exert pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Save the Children's warning came as rescue teams searched the rubble for survivors in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that hit across the street from Beirut's main public hospital earlier this week, killing at least 18 people including four children.
"Hussein al-Ali, a nurse who was there when the attack happened, said it took him a few minutes to realize it was not the hospital that was hit. Dust and smoke covered the hospital lobby," The Associated Press reported Tuesday. "The glass in the dialysis unit, the pharmacy, and other rooms in the hospital was shattered. The false roof fell over his and his colleagues' heads."
Some hospitals and clinics operated by humanitarian groups have been forced to shut down due to Israel's military campaign. The New York Times noted that facilities that have not been damaged by Israeli bombings "have been abandoned after staff fled, fearing for their safety."
"The ones that remain operational say they are quickly running out of beds as patients evacuated from other facilities are brought in," the newspaper added.
The WHO said last week that it had verified nearly two dozen attacks on healthcare in Lebanon since mid-September. Those attacks killed at least 72 patients and healthcare workers, according to the U.N. body.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Tuesday that he was "appalled" by Israel's strike near Beirut's public hospital.
"Hospitals, ambulances, and medical personnel are specifically protected under international humanitarian law because of their lifesaving function for the wounded and the sick," said Türk. "When conducting military operations in the vicinity of hospitals, parties to the conflict must assess the expected impact on healthcare services in relation to the principles of proportionality and precautions. Any incidents which affect hospitals must be subjected to a prompt and thorough investigation."
"I repeat the U.N.'s call for an immediate cessation to hostilities," he added, "and remind all parties that the protection of civilians must be the absolute top priority."
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Infectious Diseases Surging in Gaza Amid Israeli Siege, Healthcare System Collapse
"The humanitarian suffering in Gaza has already reached catastrophic levels, and it's set to get worse unless something changes immediately," said one human rights official.
Nov 09, 2023
The infectious disease outbreaks that doctors on the ground, public health officials, and humanitarian groups have been warning about for weeks in Gaza appear to be in full force, the World Health Organization said Thursday as it reiterated its call for a cease-fire to save lives.
The global public health organization said authorities have reported a surge in cases of diarrhea, with more than half of those affected children under the age of 5, as Israel's decision to cut off fuel access in the blockaded enclave has shut down water desalination plants and disrupted waste collection. The circumstances have created "an environment conducive to the rapid and widespread proliferation of insects, rodents that can carry and transit diseases."
By Thursday, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, all of Gaza's 120 municipal water wells were expected to be depleted.
Health officials in the blockaded enclave, where nearly 11,000 civilians have now been killed, are also reporting nearly 9,000 cases of scabies and lice; 12,600 cases of skin rashes; more than 1,000 reports of chickenpox; and nearly 55,000 cases of upper respiratory infections as roughly 1.5 million displaced people crowd into hospitals, churches, schools, and shelters in search of safety from Israel's relentless bombardment.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) warned that those disease outbreaks could soon give way to the spread of more deadly illnesses like cholera and typhoid due to 95% of residents' forced reliance on unsanitary water in the past month.
"The humanitarian suffering in Gaza has already reached catastrophic levels, and it's set to get worse unless something changes immediately," said Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies for IRC. "While the overwhelming driver of mortality remains the ongoing violence and destruction, a humanitarian ceasefire now would also serve to help aid agencies get ahead of a looming public health crisis within an already vast humanitarian crisis... The conditions are ripe for the spread of communicable and waterborne diseases—diseases that adversely affect children and lead to preventable deaths."
Al Jazeera reported earlier this month that experts have surmised Israel is intentionally leaving Palestinians in Gaza with a lack of safe drinking water, using "water access as a weapon of war" and intensifying the humanitarian catastrophe.
In overcrowded shelters run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, WHO said, an average of 160 people are sharing one toilet and there is only one shower for every 700 people, compounding the unsanitary conditions and raising the risk of disease outbreaks.
With aid convoys largely blocked at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, cleaning supplies as well as medicines have no way of getting to hospitals and shelters, and water supplies that humanitarian groups have managed to get through the crossing are only 4% of what is needed.
Medical workers also don't have sufficient personal protective equipment, making it more likely that they will acquire and transmit infections to the patients they are desperately trying to care for.
The impending colder weather is raising alarm over the potential for worsening malnutrition and food shortages, particularly for more than 50,000 pregnant people and about 337,000 children under the age of 5 in Gaza.
Kitchen said groups including the IRC are working to scale up their infection control programs as quickly as they can but warned that their efforts will remain severely obstructed as long as powerful countries including the United States refuse to support calls for a cease-fire.
"Without a meaningful humanitarian cease-fire to allow the free flow of aid, the suffering of innocent Palestinian civilians will continue," said Kitchen. "Immediate and sustained diplomatic intervention is urgently needed to enable a humanitarian cease-fire, which would pave the way for addressing these pressing humanitarian and protection needs and halt the health catastrophe that will lead to more deaths, particularly among children."
WHO also reiterated its demand for "the unconditional release of all hostages [by Hamas] and a humanitarian cease-fire to prevent further death and suffering."
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Nearly 130,000 People 'Looking Death in the Eyes' in Horn of Africa, WHO Official Warns
"I've been working on and off in this region for almost 25 years now—and in terms of accumulated emergencies, this is bad as I've ever seen it," the expert said.
Mar 10, 2023
Extreme hunger fueled by the climate emergency, violence, and disease has nearly 130,000 people in the Horn of Africa—which has entered its sixth straight failed rainy season—facing starvation, while 48 million others suffer from crisis levels of food insecurity, a United Nations expert warned Friday.
Liesbeth Aelbrecht, a consultant on health and food insecurity for the World Health Organization (WHO) sounded the alarm on what she said was the worst situation she's ever seen in over two decades of work in a region that includes the nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.
"These 48 million people do include as many as 129,000 who are facing catastrophe," Aelbrecht told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland. "That means they are facing starvation and literally looking death in the eyes."
According to a report published earlier this year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR):
The Horn of Africa region continues to experience the longest and most severe drought on record, threatening lives and livelihoods, including millions of refugees and internally displaced people. Relentless drought and high food prices have weakened many people's ability to grow crops, raise livestock, and buy food... Harvests have yielded little and water sources have dried up. Conflict and insecurity continue to intersect with the drought emergency. As conditions continue to worsen, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee in search of safety and assistance.
UNHCR—which is appealing for $137 million "to respond to the immediate needs of affected populations" in the drought-stricken region—says 1,750,000 people have been internally displaced in Ethiopia and Somalia alone, while more than 180,000 refugees have crossed from Somalia and South Sudan into regions of Kenya and Ethiopia that are also suffering from drought.
The region is also experiencing soaring disease rates.
"All seven countries are battling measles, a deadly disease, Aelbrecht said. "Four of the countries are fighting cholera, South Sudan being one of them; they just declared an outbreak," she added. "Malaria, which we know is endemic in this region and remains the biggest cause reason for [medical] consultation, is really on the rise."
Cases of hepatitis, meningitis, and dengue are also increasing, with Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, reporting its first-ever dengue outbreak this year.
"The frequency of these disease outbreaks is directly linked to these extreme weather events and to climate change," Aelbrecht said. "I've been working on and off in this region for almost 25 years now—and in terms of accumulated emergencies, this is bad as I've ever seen it."
"We need to do anything possible to control these disease outbreaks," she added. "We know how to control cholera, what we need is really the resources to scale this up."
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'Dark Moment of Shame': With Explicit US Backing, Saudi Attack on Yemen's Humanitarian Lifeline Begins
"Suffering for Yemen on an even grander scale with blessing of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump. Congress must step in and demand an end to this complicity."
Jun 13, 2018
With a "green light" from the Trump administration and essential military support from the U.S. government, Saudi-led forces plowed ahead with an assault on the Yemeni port city of Hodeida on Wednesday, brushing aside dire warnings from international humanitarian organizations and a small group of American lawmakers that an attack on the key aid harbor could spark a full-blown famine and endanger millions of lives.
"We thought it could not get any worse, but unfortunately we were wrong."
--Jolien Veldwijk, CARE
Responding to the early stages of the attack--which began with an estimated 30 Saudi airstrikes within half an hour, guided by U.S. military intelligence--Win Without War wrote on Twitter that the attack is "a dark moment of shame for the United States. We could have stopped this."
Hodeidah is currently home to around 600,000 civilians, and around 80 percent of all humanitarian aid that flows into Yemen arrives at the city's port, which is currently controlled by Houthi rebels. International observers have warned that a military fight over the port city could halt life-saving food and medicine and cause the starvation of millions.
"Some civilians are entrapped, others forced from their homes," Jolien Veldwijk--acting country director for the humanitarian group CARE, which is still operating in Yemen--told Reuters on Wednesday as the U.S.-backed Saudi assault on Hodeida began. "We thought it could not get any worse, but unfortunately we were wrong."
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the Trump administration has been considering deepening U.S. military involvement in the Saudi bombardment of Yemen, which has pushed eight million Yemenis to the brink of famine. In a report on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that the U.S. is providing the Saudis with "intelligence to fine-tune their list of airstrike targets" in Hodeida.
Martin Griffiths, United Nations special envoy to Yemen, wrote on Wednesday that he is "extremely concerned" with the Saudi-led military escalation and said he is working with both parties to avert further disaster.
In a statement responding to the potentially catastrophic attack on Hodeidah, Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, took aim at both the U.S. and the United Kingdom for providing crucial political and military support for the Saudi-led assault, arguing that such complicity reveals "the true face of their foreign policy."
"Trump and his close ally, [U.K. Prime Minister] Theresa May, have been escalating military involvement in Yemen without pushing for a political settlement to the Saudi-led war," German said. "Their total support for Saudi Arabia and its allies is making the world's worst humanitarian crisis even more severe. It gives an even greater urgency to those in favor of peace to build the biggest possible protest to Trump when he visits the U.K. in July."
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In Wake of 'Shameful' Vote by US Senate, New Cholera Warning for Yemen
"Let's not fool ourselves. Cholera is going to come back," says UNICEF's Middle East director
Mar 26, 2018
After a "shameful and unacceptable" vote by the U.S. Senate last week to kill a bill that would have halted the nation's military support for a Saudi-led war in Yemen, the U.N. agency for children is warning about the likelihood of another deadly cholera outbreak.
"In a few weeks from now the rainy season will start again and without a huge and immediate investment, cholera will again hit Yemeni children."
--Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF
"Let's not fool ourselves. Cholera is going to come back," Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said at a press conference in Jordan on Sunday.
"In a few weeks from now the rainy season will start again," he warned, "and without a huge and immediate investment, cholera will again hit Yemeni children."
"We are using endless time, energy, and money for issues that we should never have to negotiate. The lives of children should not be negotiable," Cappelaere added, referencing the months his agency spent fighting for a vaccination program in Yemen. "None of the parties in this war have shown for a single second any respect to the sacred principle of the protection of children."
The cholera outbreak has stemmed from, as Common Dreams previously reported "water and sanitation systems that have been bombed out of commission by Saudi Arabian airstrikes that receive direct support from the U.S. military." The humanitarian crisis has been exacerbated by Saudi blockades that prevent food and medical aid from reaching civilians.
On Monday, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) also warned of the massive public health crisis in Yemen and put responsibility for the disaster squarely at the feet of both the U.S. and U.K. governments, which have backed the Saudi assault on Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries.
"The U.S.- and U.K.-backed Saudi-led coalition has bombed civilians and blocked the delivery of life-saving healthcare and medicine. This is a violation of international humanitarian law and indefensible," said David Miliband, president and CEO of the IRC. "The facts don't lie: the U.S. and the U.K. government's financial and policy choices that support the Saudi-led coalition are prolonging the suffering and deepening the schisms in Yemen."
Since late April 2017, the World Health Organization has tallied more than a million suspected cases of cholera, an acute diarrhoeal disease that is contracted by ingesting food or water contaminated with bacteria, and "that can kill within hours if left untreated." Children under the age of 5 represented nearly a third of the suspected cases in Yemen.
Despite widespread devastation that has left Yemenis battling starvation in addition to diseases such as diphtheria and cholera, U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition has not ceased, and key members of the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis, continue to advocate for U.S. involvement.
While 44 senators attempted last Tuesday to end U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia without congressional approval, President Donald Trump met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) in D.C., who was on a "whitewash tour" to bolster U.S. support for his country.
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Yemen's Crisis Belongs to All of Us
But the voices crying out against war remain as marginalized and without political clout as ever.
Feb 01, 2018
What's a little cholera -- excuse me, the worst outbreak of this preventable disease in modern history -- compared to the needs of a smoothly functioning economy?
A week before he was kicked out of British Prime Minister Theresa May's cabinet for allegedly having watched pornography on his government computer, former First Secretary of State Damian Green was quoted in the Guardian as saying that British weapons sales to Saudi Arabia were necessary because: "Our defense industry is an extremely important creator of jobs and prosperity."
That statement is not the scandal -- just business as usual. And of course Great Britain only supplies a quarter of the weaponry Saudi Arabia imports to wage its devastating war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The United States supplies more than half, with 17 other countries also cashing in on this market.
This amounts to a huge portion of the world at war, with a lot of winners and only a few, easily ignored losers. The losers include most of the population of Yemen, which has become an abyss of hopelessness, with famine and infectious disease intensifying the hell they are being forced to endure, as international players struggle for regional domination.
This sort of insanity has been going on since the dawn of civilization. But the voices crying out against war remain as marginalized and without political clout as ever. War is too useful politically and economically to be susceptible to a moral challenge.
"Our understanding of war . . . is about as confused and unformed as theories of disease were roughly 200 years ago," Barbara Ehrenreich notes in her book Blood Rites.
This is an interesting observation, considering that "The cholera epidemic in Yemen has become the largest and fastest-spreading outbreak of the disease in modern history," with more than a million suspected cases reported, and some 2,200 deaths. "About 4,000 suspected cases are being reported daily, more than half of which are among children under 18," according to Kate Lyons of the Guardian. "Children under five account for a quarter of all cases."
Lyons quotes Tamer Kirolos, director of the Save the Children NGO in Yemen: "There's no doubt this is a man-made crisis," she said. "Cholera only rears its head when there's a complete and total breakdown in sanitation. All parties to the conflict must take responsibility for the health emergency we find ourselves in."
I repeat: This is a man-made crisis.
The results of this strategic game of power include the collapse of Yemen's sanitation and public health systems. And fewer and fewer Yemenis have access to . . . clean water, for God's sake.
And it's all part of the strategic game of power. In order to rout the Shiite rebels backed by Iran, the Saudi coalition "has aimed to destroy food production and distribution" with its bombing campaign, according to London School of Economics researcher Martha Mundy. When I read this, I couldn't help but think about Operation Ranch Hand, the U.S. strategy during the Vietnam War to destroy crops and forest cover by inundating the country with some 20 million gallons of herbicides, including the notorious Agent Orange.
What military or political end could possibly warrant such action? The reality of war transcends all description, all outrage.
And the global antiwar movement has, as far as I can tell, less traction than it did half a century ago. U.S. politics is unraveling, not realigning itself to create a sane, secure future. Donald Trump is the president.
Following his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has moved its iconic Doomsday Clock forward to two minutes to midnight, released a statement:
"Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions. Across the globe, nuclear weapons are poised to become more rather than less usable because of nations' investments in their nuclear arsenals. President Trump was clear in his State of the Union Address last night when he said 'we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal.' . . .
"Leaked copies of the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review suggest that the U.S. is about to embark on a less safe, less responsible and more expensive path. The Bulletin has highlighted concern about the direction that countries like the United States, China and Russia are moving, and momentum toward this new reality is increasing."
This is a man-made crisis. Or is it something less than that -- a crisis of the worst of human instincts? In Yemen, cholera and famine have been unleashed by men in pursuit of victory for their cause. The faces of suffering and dying children -- the consequences of this pursuit -- provoke shock. This is so clearly wrong, but geopolitically, does anything change?
Violence is still sold as a necessity of security. "We must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal." And it's still being bought, at least by those who think the violence is aimed at someone else.
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While US Backs Carnage, Norway Cites Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen and Halts Weapons Sales
While U.S. fuels war, Norway takes action to end its complicity in Saudi-led airstrikes
Jan 03, 2018
Citing grave concerns over the humanitarian crisis that's exploded in Yemen as a result of the U.S.-backed war in the impoverished country, Norway has taken action to curb its support of the violence and carnage.
The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Wednesday that the country would stop supplying weapons and ammunition to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is part of the Saudi-led coalition that has been carrying out airstrikes in Yemen for nearly three years.
"The armed conflict is serious and there is great concern about the humanitarian situation," said the ministry in a statement.
The Saudis' war against Houthi rebels has killed more than 10,000 civilians according to U.N. estimates, left three million displaced, and has set off a cholera epidemic that's affected more than a million people and killed more than 2,000. More than eight million Yemenis are "a step away" from famine due to a number of blockades imposed by the Saudis.
Norway exported nearly $10 million worth of weapons and ammunition to the UAE, which is part of the Saudi-led coalition, in 2016.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has garnered global condemnation for continuing to supply the Saudis with billions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition while also providing logistical military support for their assault on Yemen.
"Countries such as the USA, UK and France, which continue to supply coalition members with arms, are allowing Saudi Arabia and its allies to flagrantly flout international law and risk being complicit in grave violations, including war crimes," said Amnesty International in November.
On social media, critics urged the countries supporting the Saudis to take direct action to end their complicity, as Norway has.
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As 68 Die in One Day of Airstrikes, UN Denounces US-Backed War in Yemen
"As the conflict in which civilians have borne the brunt marks 1,000 days, I once again remind all parties that it has no military solution. There can only be a political solution."
Dec 28, 2017
The United Nations humanitarian coordinator denounced the U.S.-backed Saudi airstrike campaign in Yemen as "absurd and futile" on Thursday, as 68 civilian deaths were reported following two attacks in one day, and urged the Saudi coalition to seek negotiations to end the conflict.
"I remain deeply disturbed by mounting civilian casualties caused by escalated and indiscriminate attacks throughout Yemen," said Jamie McGoldrick in a statement. "As the conflict in which civilians have borne the brunt marks 1,000 days, I once again remind all parties that it has no military solution. There can only be a political solution."
Fifty-four people were killed and 32 were wounded in an airstrike that hit a marketplace in Taez province on Tuesday, while 14 family members were killed in a bombing in Hodeidah province that same day.
The Saudis have received support from the U.S., the U.K., and France in the form of fuel and weapons as they've carried out attacks in Yemen since 2015, fighting against the Houthi rebels.
The war has left the country--already one of the most impoverished in the world--on the brink of famine; fighting a cholera epidemic that's worsened rapidly, affecting more than a million people since April; and struggling to treat those affected by disease as the Saudis have imposed blockades, keeping food and medicine from reaching the country. More than 10,000 civilians have been killed in the violence.
"These incidents prove the complete disregard for human life that all parties, including the Saudi-led coalition, continue to show in this absurd war that has only resulted in the destruction of the country and the incommensurate suffering of its people," said McGoldrick.
In recent weeks, detractors of the U.S. government's support for the Saudis have ramped up their criticism, with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) slamming the U.S.-supported blockade as "barbaric" and calling on officials to ensure the Saudis are not using starvation as a weapon of war.
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'Hideous Milestone' in Yemen, says Red Cross, as U.S.-Backed War Results in One Million Cholera Cases
"This suffering is the direct result of a fractured healthcare system due to prolonged conflict in the country."
Dec 21, 2017
Marking a "hideous milestone" in Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday that the number of cholera cases in the country has passed one million--a direct result of the U.S.-backed war that has ravaged one of the world's most impoverished nations.
Eight months after the country's cholera outbreak began--stemming from water and sanitation systems that have been bombed out of commission by Saudi Arabian airstrikes that receive direct support from the U.S. military--humanitarian agencies have recorded 2,200 deaths from the disease, nearly a third of which were children.
In recent weeks, more than a dozen aid groups have called on the U.S., France, and the U.K. to stop supplying arms to the Saudis, whose bombing campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis since 2015--passing its 1,000th day this week.
In addition to the cholera crisis, the violence has left one of the world's poorest populations near famine and struggling with a diphtheria outbreak. More than 10,000 civilians have been killed in the war and nearly 80 percent of the country is without access to adequate food, clean water, and healthcare.
In addition to the lack of clean water and sanitation, blockades--also supported by the U.S.--have caused the country's health crises to spin out of control, preventing aid organizations from sending medical supplies.
Oxfam called the humanitarian crisis in Yemen "a man-made tragedy" on Thursday, while the International Rescue Committee expressed alarm at the cholera epidemic's milestone and the resurgence of other preventable diseases that have been eradicated in much of the world.
"This suffering is the direct result of a fractured healthcare system due to prolonged conflict in the country," said Michelle Gayer, Senior Director of Emergency Health at the IRC. "Cholera has plagued the Yemeni people since April, and now easily preventable diseases are beginning to wreak havoc on a population already in need. If the war continues, Yemen will see even more outbreaks of other diseases that have not been seen in years."
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