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Mideast Arms Supplies Continue Despite Falling Oil Prices  http://bit.ly/1VCdf5c

The continued decline in oil prices is threatening to have a direct and indirect impact on several fronts, including development aid, migrant workers and remittances, voluntary contributions to UN agencies, humanitarian assistance to refugees and infrastructure-building in the Gulf countries.

Still, the drop in oil revenues is unlikely to have any immediate impact on uninterrupted arms supplies to the Middle East – even as military conflicts and insurgencies in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Libya show no signs of de-escalation.

“The military intervention in Yemen by a coalition of Arab states, which began in 2015, was facilitated by high levels of arms imports” by several countries in the coalition, says a new report released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The nine-member Saudi-led coalition battling Youthi rebels in Yemen includes Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Sudan.

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