A recent American report monitored the most prominent crimes committed by the UAE in the region, during the term of former US President Donald Trump.
According to the Responsible StateCraft website, the UAE spent a ‘multibillion-dollar weapons gravy train’ to Washington to portray itself as the pillar of stability and progress in the Middle East.
The report emphasized that the harmful behavior of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in the region, with the support of Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, undermined the strategic interests of the United States in the Middle East.
The report said While the UAE claimed to withdraw its forces from Yemen at the end of 2019, according to the Quincy Institute’s Annelle Sheline, it continues to occupy key ports, airports, and infrastructure, while also funding separatist fights.“If the Biden administration is serious about addressing the factors driving violence in Yemen, the role of the UAE cannot be ignored,” she said.
Putting a stop to it permanently is what is at stake. “Selling more weapons to the Saudis and the Emiratis would further tangle the U.S. in their affairs,” says Sheline. “The current U.S. involvement in the devastating war on Yemen is the result of U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia.”
Hartung adds that the UAE has been intervening in the civil war in Libya, supplying weapons (in violation of U.N. resolutions) to the forces of rebel militia leader Gen. Khalifa Haftar, and “carrying out air and drone strikes in support of his military campaigns in the country, which are contrary to the objectives of the U.S. policy of supporting the U.N.-recognized government (the GNA, or Government of National Accord).”
The new administration confirmed it will be reviewing the deals. The Wall street Journal report suggests this is pro forma, and that the sales will likely go though anyway. But for critics of selling more weapons to the Kingdom and UAE, this is a welcome monkey wrench. It not only buys time for Congress to throw up more roadblocks, but signals that perhaps Biden is truly serious about ending U.S. assistance to the Saudi-led coalition, which has pummeled Yemen with American-made bombs for the last six years of its war, indiscriminately killing and wounding at least 17,500 civilians (as of early 2020), and sending the country into a tailspin of disease and famine.
