World: The American HuffPost website dealt with a report written by Carmen Rengel that touched on Spanish arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

“Spain sells arms to Saudi Arabia. It did so in the past and continues to do so now,” the report says, conforming Spain’s ignorance of the crimes committed because of the use of these weapons in the war on Yemen.

The report reported the findings of an investigation on those sales conducted by the Delàs d'Estudis per la Pau Center, which indicated that at least 35,000 tons of arms and ammunition have been loaded from Spain between 2016 and 2023 bound for the Middle Eastern country, which could have been used in the war in Yemen.

More than one million ammunition, bombs and explosives have been delivered to the facilities in Bilbao, Santander, Motril, Sagunto and Cádiz during this time, more than 1,200 containers with a sale value of 489 million euros, of the 2,000 million euros transferred in a decade in weapons, the investigation indicated.

“Researchers from the Center, based in Valencia, have detected at least 43 berths by the official shipping company of the Saudi Ministry of Defense in the aforementioned ports in the years investigated,” the report continued. 

"Everything indicates that very likely there have been many more," they add. “What this shipping company took was varied: ammunition, projectiles, fuzes, cartridges, propellant charges, 155-millimeter shots, warheads, bombs, grenades, smoke ammunition, illuminating ammunition, rockets with explosive charge, and Paveway II laser-guided bombs, in addition to URO-Vamtac patrol boats and military vehicles.”

The report noted that sales decreased between 2019 and 2020. It is “probably the result of continuous criticism by human rights organizations and activists. However, export numbers escalated in 2021 and the first half of 2022, and will continue to rise, as indicated by the permits, by about one billion in the first half of 2022.”

Global Disregard for the War Against Yemen 

Louis Arbid, who prepared the Center Delàs d'Estudis per la Pau document with others, explains the seriousness of the war in Yemen in which this material is allegedly used.

"It has been described as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Even so, it is an unknown conflict and ignored by a large part of the world. Saudi Arabia, an unscrupulous dictatorship. We have seen that it does not hesitate to assassinate as many opponents as possible. It intervened militarily in Yemen in 2015 after internal conflicts that date back to the Arab Springs. In this way, the Saudi kingdom maintains its biggest war conflict in Yemen. On the other hand, Spain constantly supplies it with weapons and, above all, ammunition. It is known that in the war in Yemen, brutality has continued against the civilian population, repeatedly bombarding civilian and family spaces," he added.

Despite the forcefulness of these data, he added, the governments continue to justify the sale. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, now in office, alluded in Congress to the responsibility and commitment to employees who depend on Arabian contracts in factories such as Navantia's in Cádiz. "Ideals cannot always be achieved," he said in his last speech on the matter, insisting that he maintains the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia to defend "the interests of Spain."

Spain is no exception. The countries around us behave in a similar way, Arbid added. "The militaristic culture is dominant in world geopolitics and the inertia in the way of conflict resolution means that, far from appeasing, these models of confrontation continue to increase in a sophisticated way to the detriment of diplomatic and negotiated channels," explains Arbide. 

Arbid continued: “Something is moving in Spain, beyond parliaments or governments. There is social protest, and there is opposition to the sale of arms to Arabia, even though it is an important source of employment in certain regions.”

 

#Yemen #Arms Sale #US-Saudi Aggression #Spain #Saudi Arabia About 1 year