THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary - August 11, 2018 - Topic 2

Endless war: on Saudi Arabia's strike in Yemen

The attack on a bus in a crowded market in southern Yemen that killed at least 45 people, most of them children, is the latest atrocity in the military intervention led by Saudi Arabia that began over three years ago. During this period, Riyadh has paid little attention to growing international criticism of its use of excessive force in Yemen, which plunged the country, among the poorest in West Asia, into what the United Nations calls the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis. The bus attack comes a week after Saudi war planes targeted the port city Hodeida, which is already under siege, killing at least 28 people and wounding dozens more. 

Since Saudi Arabia launched air strikes on Yemen’s Shia Houthi rebels, who captured huge swathes of territory, including the capital Sanaa, the civilian toll has been particularly high. The Saudi-led coalition, backed by the U.S., targeted public infrastructure, killed thousands of civilians, displaced hundreds of thousands more and even laid siege to major cities, blocking food and aid supplies. With no functional government in place and the rebels fighting the Saudi invasion, Yemen’s 28 million people have been practically abandoned by the world. In recent years, the country has had an unprecedented cholera outbreak that killed over 2,000 people. The health-care system has collapsed, millions of people have been cut off from regular access to clean water, and more than eight million people threatened by acute hunger.

Saudi Arabia has not been deterred by any of this. Nor has it come under any serious international pressure to halt its catastrophic campaign. Its response to the bus bombing has been callous: it said the attack was “a legitimate military action”, and accused the rebels of using children as human shields. The Saudis say the Houthi rebels are backed by Iran, its regional rival; also that its campaign has been on behalf of the internationally recognised government of Yemen. Curiously, Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi is nowhere to be seen; he is reported to be under house arrest in Riyadh. The military campaign has been a failure from a strategic point of view as well. After more than three years of relentless bombing, the rebels are still entrenched in their areas of influence, including Sanaa. It is high time the international community paid serious attention to the voices of the battered Yemenis. The U.S. continues to support this disastrous aggression, with other leading global powers failing to do anything more than condemn rights violations. The plight of Yemenis will get progressively worse unless enough pressure is brought to bear upon Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and the main architect of the Kingdom’s aggressive foreign policy. He should stop the war and push for a negotiated settlement between the Yemeni government and the rebels.

Vocabulary

Atrocity: an extremely wicked or cruel act, typically one involving physical violence or injury.

Example: War atrocities

Synonyms: abomination, cruelty, enormity, outrage, horror, monstrosity, obscenity

Intervention: the action or process of intervening.

Example: They are plants that grow naturally without human intervention

Plunge: an act of jumping or diving into water.

Example: We went straight from the sauna to take a cold plunge

Synonyms: dive, jump, nosedive, fall, pitch, drop, plummet, descent

Wound: inflict an injury on someone.

Example: The sergeant was seriously wounded

Synonyms: injure, hurt, harm, maim, mutilate, disable, incapacitate, cripple, lacerate

Displace: take over the place, position, or role of someone or something.

Example: In the northern states of India, Hindi has largely displaced English

Synonyms: replace, take the place of, supplant, supersede

Abandoned: having been deserted or cast off.

Example: An abandoned car

Synonyms: deserted, forsaken, cast aside/off, jilted, stranded, rejected

Catastrophic: extremely unfortunate or unsuccessful.

Example: Catastrophic mismanagement of the economy

Synonyms: disastrous, calamitous, cataclysmic, apocalyptic, ruinous, tragic

Recognise: acknowledge the existence, validity, or legality of.

Example: The defense is recognized in Mexican law

Synonyms: acknowledge, accept, admit, realize, be aware of, be conscious of, perceive

Entrench: establish an attitude, habit, or belief so firmly that change is very difficult or unlikely.

Example: Ageism is entrenched in our society

Synonyms: ingrained, established, well-established, confirmed, fixed, firm

Disastrous: causing great damage.

Example: A disastrous fire swept through the museum

Synonyms: catastrophic, calamitous, cataclysmic, tragic, devastating, ruinous, harmful

Aggression: hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront.

Example: His chin was jutting with aggression

Synonyms: hostility, aggressiveness, belligerence, bellicosity, force, violence