Saudi Coalition Admits Error in Yemen Airstrike That Killed Dozens
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia sep 02: A Saudi-led coalition in Yemen acknowledged Saturday that an air attack last month that killed dozens of people, including children traveling on a bus, was unjustified, and it pledged to hold accountable anyone who contributed to the error.
The rare concession came after mounting international pressure, including from allies, to do more to limit civilian casualties in a 3½-year civil war in Yemen that has killed more than 10,000 people and pushed the already impoverished country to the brink of famine.
The Western-backed alliance fighting the Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen had said after the Aug. 9 airstrikes, at a market in Saada Province, that it had been targeting missile launchers that were used to attack southern Saudi Arabia a day earlier. The alliance accused the Houthis of using children as human shields.
The Joint Incident Assessment Team, an investigative body set up by the coalition, said Saturday that the strikes had been based on intelligence indicating the bus was carrying Houthi leaders, a legitimate military target, but that delays in executing the strike and receiving a no-strike order should be investigated further.
"There was a clear delay in preparing the fighter jet at the appropriate time and place,” which cost the coalition the chance “to target this bus as a military target in an open area in order to avoid such collateral damage,” the team’s legal adviser, Mansour Ahmed al-Mansour, told reporters in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
“Coalition forces should immediately review the application of their rules of engagement to ensure compliance,” he added.
The coalition later announced that it accepted those findings and pledged to hold accountable anyone who was proved to have made a mistake.
“The Joint Forces Command of the coalition expresses regret over the mistakes, extends its sympathies, condolences and solidarity to the families of the victims,” said a statement carried by the Saudi state news agency SPA.
The coalition said it would coordinate with the Yemeni government to compensate victims and would review the rules of engagement to prevent such episodes in the future.
The United States military welcomed the decision and praised the coalition’s move “to take legal measures to ensure accountability” and improve procedures to avoid future tragedies.
The Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White commented Saturday on the issue in a series of messages posted to Twitter.
The #DoD welcomes the #Saudi-led #Coalition’s announcement of the investigation findings of the targeting incident of August 9, 2018.
— Dana W. White - DoD (@ChiefPentSpox) September 2, 2018
Last week, a United Nations panel of human rights experts said that some coalition airstrikes may constitute war crimes. In Washington, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said American support for the Saudi-led coalition was not unconditional, but suggested it would continue as the coalition works to reduce the civilian toll.
The war has garnered relatively little public attention in the West, but there are signs that may be changing, particularly because of the role Western governments play in supplying arms to the coalition countries.
Saudi Arabia is leading an alliance of Sunni Muslim Arab states trying to restore the internationally recognized government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was ousted from the capital, Sana, by the Houthis in 2015.
The Houthis, who control the capital and most of the west of the country, regularly fire missiles on southern Saudi Arabia and occasionally aim for higher-value targets, such as Riyadh or facilities of the state oil company, Aramco.
The United Nations plans to convene talks in Geneva on Thursday, the first effort to negotiate the war in more than two years.
The war has devastated Yemen on several fronts, and scores of demonstrators in the southern city of Aden marched on Sunday against the deteriorating economic situation and weakening currency. The protesters blocked major roads and burned tires.
The Yemeni rial has lost more than half its value against the dollar since the start of the civil war. Soaring prices have put some basic commodities out of reach for many Yemenis, and the central bank has struggled to pay public sector salaries on which many depend as foreign exchange reserves dwindle.
The authorities have sought to boost liquidity by printing money, but the rial plunged to 350 to the dollar from 250 after the first batch of new notes was rolled out last year. It was trading at 440 to the dollar by the end of last year and crashed to around 500 in January.
Saudi Arabia has deposited $2 billion in Yemen’s central bank to shore up the rial, but the currency has since weakened further, to around 550 to the dollar.
Courtesy: nytimes.com
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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