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“We guard our weapons as we guard secrets” — probably not very well. The story of how Singaporean and other countries’ weapons ended up in the hands of Yemeni rebel groups

Anonymous

On the off-chance the reduced media coverage doesn’t keep you from thinking about the Yemen crisis while you’re off making your morning coffee, chances are it probably appears to you as a clear dichotomous conflict. On one side, the Hadi government with the backing of the Saudi-led coalition; and on the other, the Houthis with their Shia-axis backing. 

 

However, this Manichean view is not just an oversimplification of the conflict’s many ever-changing belligerents, but also a narrative that reduces and localises a far-reaching conflict that sees indirect — and sometimes direct — participants ranging from the usual suspects like the USA, China, and France, but also smaller actors like Singapore, Serbia, and Bulgaria — all making profit off the major humanitarian conflict. 

 

All this still doesn’t yet include the predictable plot twist — cracks appearing in the Saudi coalition; members leaving; and the threat of increased violence and conflict as the various proxies and surrogates — the myriad of militia groups (with elements of AQAP, ISIL, etc), the secessionist Southern Transitional Council, and pro-Hadi forces, etc — of this once united-seeming front, as they gain territory, weapons, and equipment, have the yoke of Saudi and UAE control lifted from them. 

 

TL;DR: The conflict is a huge mess. What began as a civil war has devolved into a free-for-all with the proliferation of a wide range of different groups with conflicting ideologies and mutually exclusive visions of how Yemen should be administered. What led to this rapid escalation of the scale and violence of the conflict isn’t just the direct involvement of the Iranian axis and the Saudi coalition — but how states around the world have propped up various violent militias and armed groups through indirect weapon, equipment, and vehicle sales; and the lack of consistent pressure and concomitant threats from the global community to prevent states with troops on the ground from aiding weapon proliferation. 

 

However, none of this should come as a surprise — as Lord Palmerston once said, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests”. This article aims to give a quick overview of the various countries who have had their weapons, ordnance, vehicles and other war-waging equipment found with militia groups fighting in Yemen. 

 

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Armed Forces’ Code of Conduct states how the army should “guard [their] weapons as [they] guard secrets” — clearly this arms sale wasn’t the most transparent and wasn’t to the most accountable of actors. Other videos display militia convoys with US, French, Finnish and South African armoured vehicles and tanks, which match models that had been purchased by the UAE. 

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In the photo provided by the Yemeni Observer Twitter account (above; first image), Amnesty International identified a militia group known as The Giants in possession of Belgian minimi light machine gun, which were most likely initially sold to the UAE. Amnesty International observed similar weapon sales from Serbia to the UAE with its Zastava M02 Coyote machine gun and its M73 60mm mortar.

 

Countries identified by Amnesty International to have been involved in arms sales to the UAE, and are hence at risk of having their ordnance transferred to Yemeni militia groups are listed below:

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From the table, many developed countries leading the Western democratic liberal order have been engaged in arms sales to the UAE. What is especially worrying are how some European countries — such as France and Germany’s — are exporting equipment at all levels of the war-waging value chain. It seems highly ironic that states leading the global discourse on human rights are the same states exporting weapons that are depriving thousands of people of their basic human rights, and at the same time sowing the seeds for another major refugee crisis.

 

According to Amnesty International, of the countries that have been supplying arms to the UAE, only Denmark, Finland, Netherlands and Norway have announced suspending arms transfers to the UAE. These are weapons of war that have greatly exacerbated the scale and length of conflict in Yemen, and have done much to prolong the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. All of us need to take action to pressure our own respective governments to take action, before the consequences on the region become too intractable to mitigate.

Through an investigation conducted by Amnesty International, more than 20 countries were found to have had their weapon, vehicle, and equipment sales to the United Arab Emirates diverted to militia groups such as the Security Belt, Elite Force, and the Giants operating in Southern Yemen and Hodeidah. More pertinent is the further channeling of these weapons to more radical militias such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant 

 

In this photo provided by Arab24 (left), Amnesty International identified a militia group possessing a UAE Agrab Mk 2 vehicle, which consists of a 120mm mortar system produced by Singapore’s state-controlled Singapore Technologies, and a South African RG-31 Armoured Vehicle. The Singapore 

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