Seanad debates

Wednesday, 19 December 2018

10:30 am

Photo of Michael McDowellMichael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the motion. I acknowledge it is put in very neutral and understated terms. What is happening in Yemen is wholly unacceptable. The fact the war there is being prosecuted largely by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, using arms supplied by the British and the American Governments in order to militarise those states, is itself a matter of huge horror to me. The United States Senate recently expressed its views about the royal family in Saudi Arabia, which was a good shot across their bows. I commend Senator Higgins for bringing forward this motion. If I had been drafting the motion, it would have been in slightly more colourful terms.

For Members of this House who are interested in Middle Eastern affairs, there are three very good books, one being "The Ottoman Twilight", and the other two written by James Barr, one of which deals with what happened in the northern Arab lands between Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, and the other, published recently, is "Lords of the Desert", which describes the Anglo-American involvement in the Arabian peninsula. To put it mildly, "Lords of the Desert" does not make pretty reading. It is a long description of exploitation, selfishness, intrigue and viciousness. While the Americans and British are our allies, when President Trump says he is more concerned about €120 billion in arms sales than he is about the fate of Jamal Khashoggi, and, to use a phrase, one trumps the other completely in his eyes, that says more about President Trump and America than anything else. It is great that the United States Senate has rebuffed him on both counts, first, that it is hauling him back under the War Powers Act from involvement in this vicious war and, second, that it is sticking it to President Trump in regard to his moral absolution, if that man could confer it on anybody, in respect of the Khashoggi killing.

On reading Barr's book, "Lords of the Desert", one sees the situation as described is far more complicated than any of us can guess. It is not a conflict between the Saudis and the Iranians but a struggle that has gone on for centuries. The disputes between the different factions and tribes in Yemen, north and south, and the former British colony of Aden, are not of Iran's making and should not be considered as such.

Ireland is, by its Constitution, committed to the peaceful settlement of international disputes. This is a very important point; not every country has that written into its constitution but we do. We should be slightly more vocal about the values for which we stand, especially arising out of Khashoggi incident and what was going on in Yemen until recently, where cluster bombs were being used on civilians. Cluster bombs, which are now outlawed but which had been manufactured in the United Kingdom and America, were still being used from aeroplanes manufactured by those countries and flown by pilots trained by those countries on civilians in Yemen. That really is a terrible thing. We should not be behind the door on this, even if we are not perfect and we are not paragons ourselves. The geopolitical interests of the United States, as now expressed and promulgated by Donald Trump, are amoral, indefensible and wrong, and support for the Saudi-UAE coalition in waging a war in Yemen is wrong. Ireland, as a state, should call it out for what it is. The slaughter of so many civilians and the use of the war crime of mass starvation on the remaining civilians is completely indefensible. I welcome and support the motion put down by Senator Higgins and her colleagues.

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