Britain is stoking the threat of terror attacks on home soil by helping Saudi Arabia blockade Yemen, a former international development secretary has warned.
Andrew Mitchell said Britain risked becoming “complicit in the destruction of a sovereign state” and breeding a new generation of anti-western radicals.
“Yemen is not starving, Yemen is being starved and Britain is part of a coalition that is blockading this country by both land and sea,” Mr Mitchell told The Daily Telegraph. “People are horrified about what is happening and we are stoking hatred in this generation and particularly the next generation.”
The UK’s “confused” policy would lead to “threats to Europe,” he said.
More than 10,000 people have died in the war between a Saudi-led coalition and Houthis who rebelled against the Yemeni government in 2014. Millions of civilians are starving due to blockades and airstrikes on infrastructure.
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Speaking yesterday after a trip to Yemen, Mr Mitchell said the government needed a “serious rethink” on its policy. Britain is not directly involved in the conflict but has sold Saudi Arabia £2.8 billion of aircraft, munitions and other weaponry, according to figures compiled by Campaign Against Arms Trade. Meanwhile the Department for International Development (DfId) has committed to spending £100 million on aid for Yemenis. Mr Mitchell, who led the department from 2010 to 2012, said arming the coalition while spending aid on its victims was “contradictory and inconsistent”.
British-made cluster bombs were dropped on Yemen by Saudi Arabia, the defence secretary admitted last month, raising fears that the munitions have been used to kill civilians. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, said there was no “clear risk” that British weapons were being used in attacks which breached human rights law.
Last year Oxfam said Britain was “in denial and disarray over its arms sales” to Saudi Arabia, which it said could be used to attack schools and hospitals. Riyadh drew international condemnation in October when a coalition airstrike killed 170 people attending a funeral.
Mr Johnson has dismissed calls for an arms embargo from two parliamentary committees. The issue caused tensions among MPs in September when two contradictory reports were published into allegations that British bombs were being used in Yemen.
Mr Mitchell opposes an embargo, and suggested Britain could instead influence how weapons are used to “stop Yemen being pounded back into the Stone Age.” However, he said, the chance to “redirect British policy will soon close”.
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“There is no way the coalition is going to win in Yemen, where attitudes every day are hardening,” he added.
“We are supporting President Hadi, who has virtually no support in Yemen and is the only president I have ever come across who has to make an official visit to his own country.”