Yemen: 2017 in Review

A displaced woman (Malkah Ahmed Saleh) with her daughters sitting at their
temporary home (camp). (Photo: UNICEF/Moohi Al-Zikri)

*A U.N. official warned days ago that, “Yemen could be the worst humanitarian crisis in 50 years.” As 2018 begins, these words reflect the increasingly deteriorating unspeakable human suffering in Yemen, after the UN had been calling Yemen throughout last year as the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

The poorest Arab nation with a population of around 25 million has been sent into destitution after nearly four years of war. 2017 has been a year of utter despair in light of countless human rights atrocities committed on multi-fronts; from the Saudi-led coalition to Saleh-Houthis’ forces and the U.S. counter-terrorism military operation, all sharing responsibility for creating unspeakable human suffering in Yemen. However, the killing of Saleh at the end of 2017 marks a historical transition that’s going to drastically change Yemen’s political map for years to come.


Human Suffering


Saleh’s violent death gives a glimpse into the gruesomeness of this war. Both combatants and noncombatant innocent civilians are caught up in the violence. While Houthis’ (and Saleh’s for a certain time, until his death) forces in Taiz continued their indiscriminate shelling or, as described by the UN Human Rights Office, the “unrelenting shelling,” against civilian inhabited areas for about three years, resulting in a terrible death toll, the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes since 2015 did not cease to hit non-military populated areas across many parts of Yemen. In 2017, markets, a migrant boat, a local inhabited hotel, among many other non-military targets were hit. The glaring example last year, however, was the story of the five-year-old Bouthina who survived an attack in August by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes hitting an apartment building in Sana’a, killing all her family.

The Yemen Data Project reveals that since 2015 nearly one-third of Saudi air raids hit non-military sites in Yemen. To rub salt into the wound, 2017, in particular, was when more US strikes hit Yemen than the past four years combined, with 125 strikes, under the U.S. war-on-terror military operations. Another glaring example of that was the U.S. Special forces’ first raid in Yemen’s al-Baydah province under U.S. president, Donald Trump, end of January 2017, killing dozens of women and children.

In parallel, Yemenis face a humanitarian catastrophe as the country's infrastructure is almost totally destroyed and humanitarian operations don’t have full access to some of the hardest hit communities in Yemen, following the Saudi-led coalition imposing a siege, in retaliation to a Houthi-fired missile hitting close to Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh airport in November. Despite progress in Saudis promising to open Houdaidah port and letting Aden port open, the humanitarian situation seems to be only worsening, proven by the UN’s recent announcement of the largest-ever emergency relief allocation - $50 million for UN aid-operations to come forward in 2018. This doesn’t reflect a success but rather an indication of how desperate the humanitarian situation is.

The current number of reported civilian casualties seems illogical given the conflicting reports from the U.N. that are not matching the scale of human suffering on the ground. More than a year ago, a UN official revealed that 10,000 civilians have been killed in Yemen but another recent UN report claimed that only 5,000 civilians have been killed since March 2015. As widespread famine threatens millions of lives, there is a new outbreak of disease, diphtheria, in addition to cholera; that’s probably the worst outbreak the world has ever seen, ripping more than 2,000 lives and reaching one million suspect cases. Also, UNICEF has been reporting since the beginning of 2017 that every 10 minutes a child dies in Yemen. In a situation like this, looking like the apocalypse, reports failed to match the real death toll throughout 2017.

While Yemenis are still counting the dead, the only slight of progress ever made in September 2017 was the establishment of an independent investigation committee by the UN Human Rights Council into the war crimes, thanks to great pressure and advocacy work done by international and local Yemeni Human Rights organizations since 2015. This is significant because campaigning clearly pays off and local and international civil society efforts in Yemen do matter. Nonetheless, the committee is due to begin its work later this year.



Yemen without Saleh


By December 2017, a political earthquake was to hit Yemen. Saleh’s death at the hands of the Houthis marked a violent end for an era and a defining point in Yemen’s political map. As ensuing days warring parties’ military operations intensified, Saleh’s death posed two critical aspects. One is that, whether Saleh genuinely desired to initiate negotiations away from Houthis or him forseeing the deadly path of his alliance with the Houthis, it’s confirmed today that Houthis’ politics are driven by violence.

The other aspect is, in spite of Houthis’ violent politics, Saleh’s absence has created for the first time in the course of Yemen’s nearly four years of war, one single centralized power in the north part of Yemen; that’s in the hands of the Houthis. Now more than ever, there has to be a regional and international political will to face this centralized power, reinvent a political solution and resolve the conflict.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen as in 2017 alone, both key international allies to Saudi Arabia; the US and the UK have found Yemen's war to be a lucrative business, profiting massively from the financial rewards of their arms sales to Saudi Arabia. With a tragic optimism, let us hope 2018 would bring the political will to end the Yemen war.

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*This article was first written for and published in Open Democracy, January 8, 2018. 

Yemen's war destroys lives - even beyond its own borders

Thousands have died and the economy has been derailed. For those abroad, including
embassy staff and students, that means no money.

*At the Yemeni embassy in Beirut, a DIY kitchen stands in the hall to the left. To the right, on the ground, a few pillows lay, leant on by a group of young men in their early 20s.

The young men are Yemeni students who have taken the embassy as a shelter for more than two years. I met them last month, but they did not hold any hope my interviews would solve their plight.

Nothing has improved for the students, even after Middle East Eye’s coverage last year; in fact, their misery has only grown larger.

The 76 students, some of their country's brightest, came to Lebanon on Yemeni scholarships in 2014 - but have received no financial support since. They were forced to go to classes and survive on their own in pricey Beirut.

With no financial support from the ministry and with families struggling with the raging war in Yemen, it has been impossible for the students to afford basic expenses including food, accommodation and medicine.

The makeshift kitchen for students in the Beirut embassy (MEE/Afrah Nasser)

Out of helplessness and protest, the students have turned to the embassy for refuge, and sleep in its empty rooms. The embassy has not been able to help them more than that - the embassy’s staff also have not been paid for nearly a year.

The humanitarian tragedy of Yemen war is not only seen in the raging famine in the country, but it is also felt beyond its borders. Yemenis dependent on stipends from Yemen’s public institutions are left to suffer.

Yemen’s economy has been in major decline, as the various rival groups fight over control of the central bank. Unpaid salaries for civil servants is the latest symptom - more than a million people have not been paid for three months, a situation that has had a catastrophic impact on millions of households.

Yemeni diplomatic staff have the same problem - whether in Lebanon, Malaysia, Sudan, Morocco or beyond. This comes after the Houthi-run Supreme Political Council, which controls the central bank, decreed that all embassies were their enemies and cut salaries.

Clearly, the economy has become a bargaining chip between the Houthi-Saleh alliance on one hand and Abd Rabbuh Hadi’s internationally recognised government on the other.


The embassy’s staff who spoke on the condition of anonymity stressed that it has been extremely difficult for the students and the embassy staff to file complaints to the “right” authorities, as there are a growing division and power struggle between Saleh and the Houthis’ newly-formed cabinet and the internationally recognised Hadi government-in-exile.

Both students and the embassy staff in Beirut express great despair.

"We were granted the scholarship because we were the country’s brightest students, then to end up in this agony is devastating,” said Ahmed al-Hamadi, a 24-year-old electronic student.

"Many students have mentally collapsed and some were put in jail because they were unable to afford the expense of renewing their student’ residency. From a bright student, you end up facing starvation and being regarded as a criminal."

No money, more problems

Students find it difficult to focus on studying when their empty stomachs churn, and the costs of accommodation and transport constantly haunt their thoughts.

Lebanese laws make it also impossible for the students to work. “It is illegal for anyone in Lebanon with a student visa to work," said Ali al-Ramim, 25, a mechanics student. "We could be caught, then imprisoned, subjected to deportation and a $5,000 fine."

All warring parties are blamed for the staff’s unpaid salaries and unpaid financial support to the students.

A photo of the students recently in the embassy in Beirut (MEE/Afrah Nasser)

“The division in Yemen’s government has also divided Yemen’s crumbling economy which should have been impartial, and we are the ones paying a high price,” one embassy staff member said.

“Today, when Yemenis are not killed by rockets, starving to death inside the country, or being displaced at a refugee camp in neighbouring countries or somewhere else, humiliation and despair accompany those who are abroad.”

“This war has caused horrific damage in every corner in Yemen, from Hadramout to Saadah and it also hunts those who escaped the war,” Mohammed Othman, 23, an electronics student said. 

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*This article was published first in Middle East Eye, today.

Save Yemen before the famine rages

One of Yemeni graffiti artist, Murad Subay's work in Sana'a street, reflecting on the humanitarian crisis. 

*The war in Yemen has been often described by media as the forgotten war and in my view, that’s an inaccurate description. It’s rather a lucrative war; lucrative to the West and the East. It has been nineteenth months since the Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US and Britain, began its airstrikes campaign. This came following an attempted coup d'etat against president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi by Yemen’s rebels group – the Houthis – in September 2014. Ever since, the West has been showing indifference to the tragedy in Yemen. As the US, UK and other Western countries have an interest in the arms sale with the Saudis, and a number of Arab countries are themselves members of the coalition, and the Houthi-Saleh coalition stands as deadly to thousands of Yemeni civilians, the international community is turning a blind eye to the atrocities in Yemen, mostly the silent death of thousands of Yemenis through starvation.

Towards the end of Yemen’s post-uprising transitional period in 2014, Yemen started to witness a counter-revolution movement, manifested in Houthis-Saleh alliance, each motivated by its own agenda. Houthis were discontent with the new political realignment preparing Yemen for a new ruling system (Federalism) and led by their political agenda in restoring a religious imamate and resuming their hierarchical supremacy. Saleh was led by resentment and aiming at crushing those who helped oust him in 2011. Over the coming months, the alliance began an aggressive military campaign against Saleh’s oppositional forces, which included president Hadi, after the Houthis descended to Sana’a and militarily took over the capital and stormed into Hadi’s presidential palace. Consequently, Hadi escaped to Saudi Arabia and sought support. In the name of restoring legitimacy in Yemen, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition consisting of 11 Arab states and launched its airstrikes campaign.


Midst this complex conflict, Yemeni people pay a heavy price as they are directly and indirectly affected. The human cost in Yemen war has reached a critical stage, causing the death of at least 10,000 people, the displacement of more than 3 million people and a worsening humanitarian situation for 80% of Yemen’s 27 million population. One of the devastating impacts of the war is hunger and the predicted famine unfolding itself in front of the world’s eyes and next to some of the world’s richest countries. Over half of Yemen’s population – 14.4 million Yemenis unable to meet their food needs and 19.4 million people lacking clean water and sanitation. As children are the most vulnerable, it is estimated that 320,000 children in Yemen face severe malnutrition. All these indicators are nothing but an early warning of a looming famine.

Photos courtesy: Oxfam. 

Hunger Causes

Prior to the ongoing conflict, several factors made Yemen not only one of the poorest countries in the world but also the poorest Arab country in the Arab region. In light of major domestic events, Yemenis have been suffering a life under overlapping deprivations. The foremost event was the return of about one million Yemeni guest workers from Gulf countries to Yemen in 1990 following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait contributed greatly to needs of jobs, schools, healthcare and other basic social services. Then, in light of Yemen’s unification and the country’s failure to manage the challenges of integrating the North and the South’s economic systems and resolving the implications of the post-civil war period; all these events and much more had a devastating impact on the developmental growth of the country.

In 2009, nearly half of Yemen’s population were living under the poverty line. To be poor in Yemen meant to be food insecure, with no clean water, illiterate and unable to afford feeding your kids nutritious food. Thus, Yemen was repeatedly ranked at the bottom in the Human Development Index. Yemen even failed to achieve decreasing the hunger rate, which was one of the UN’s millennium goals. While all these figures were emerging, Yemen’s ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh was busy piling up his wealth in billions.

Midst of a milieu of ongoing instability, corruption and unequal distribution of national wealth, and out of social inequality and major economic grievances, Yemen’s 2011 uprising broke out leading the country into a vicious circle of one political crisis after another impacting the already fragile economy to decline further.

As Yemen has been rolling into an eco-political shock after another over years, the ongoing conflict has tremendously exacerbated the food safety. For a country that relies on the import of 90 percent of its food commodities, it’s extremely difficult to cope with the current dire humanitarian situation. The World Food Program explains, “fuel shortages and import restrictions have reduced the availability of essential food commodities in the country.” As Yemen was already crumbling by the ongoing conflict, the occurrence of a couple of natural disasters in the past few years; from flash floods to powerful cyclone have had an appalling effect on the situation.

Photo courtesy: Oxfam.

Man-Made Famine

Although the war is a contributory factor, hunger in Yemen is largely a man-made catastrophe for which both the Saudis and the Houthis bear vast responsibility. They are both using food as a systematic and strategic weapon in the war. A blockade over Yemen’s main ports has been placed by the Saudi-led coalition since the beginning of the war, denying flights and shipments of fuel, food and medicine supplies. According to a UN reporter, the Saudis as well forbid aid agencies from delivering humanitarian aid to Houthi-controlled areas. Over the past few months, a number of bridges used to transport UN food aid have been bombed by the coalition. In parallel, the Houthi-Saleh coalition has systematically put people to death in battled areas by denying besieged people access to water and food; this is evident formerly in Aden and currently in Taiz. As a quick solution, a black market for goods is thriving in the country, where only those few who can afford the high prices in the market can buy. The World Bank today estimates that almost all Yemen’s population live under the poverty line.

Silence is a War Crime

Millions of Yemenis are not only poor today but they are also in despair and hungry for both peace and food. As more than 21 million of people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance inside Yemen, this catastrophe is more than anywhere else in the world, including Syria. As human rights issues blogger and activist, I am frustrated by the world’s apathy over the tragedy in Yemen. I always write and give talks about the situation in Yemen, and after describing the devastating current picture, I try to ask the world to imagine that Yemen was hit by an earthquake, hoping that this would encourage them to rally and help this impoverished nation. Instead Yemenis are met with worldwide indifference and left to die in silence. Not taking an action to save Yemen before the famine rages is a choice the the international community is making which unfortunately will be regarded as a disgrace to the international humanitarian system (22 September 2016).

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*This essay was originally published in Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation's website on September 29, 2016.

The world must save Yemen from this man-made famine

Photo courtesy/ UNICEF

“I wish there is no war in Yemen. I wish that we have electricity and water back and that we live happily. And that we eat until we are full.”

So says a 10-year old Yemeni kid, reflecting on his dreams of a return to peace in war-ravaged Yemen, a conflict that is pushing millions of people into famine, with 320,000 of children already facing severe malnutrition. Despite the lack of specific figures, reports show that a lot of children were born and died during the ongoing conflict due to the collapsing health system and severe malnutrition.

Eighteen months of war has certainly plunged the already impoverished country beyond destitution. The severe impact of the war was well-described last year by Red Cross chief, Peter Maurer, who wrote that, “Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years.” The scale of devastation is on the rise by the day; there’s a type of death in Yemen which is unmeasurable, since if the bullets and shelling don’t kill you, the lack of food, water and medicine will. I lost count of my relatives, friends and friends’ relatives who have died in the wake of the catastrophic humanitarian situation. In light of Yemen’s failed peace talks and the early warnings of Yemen slipping into famine, Yemenis are unsurprisingly hungry both for food and peace.

Photo courtesy/ Akram Alrasny

Food as a weapon of war

Just as wars are never a coincidence, neither is hunger - it’s man-made. Hunger was already prevalent in Yemen long before war erupted in March 2015. Yemen had been in a state of chronic food insecurity for years, ranking near the bottom of the Human Development Index, while ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh was piling up his wealth in billions.

Yemen’s 2011 uprising caused the economy to decline. Besides corruption, social inequality and unequal distribution of national wealth, progress in economic and social development over recent years has been slow, mainly as a result of the political crisis, ongoing instability and weak governance, as the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation pointed out in 2014.

Today, the situation has been tremendously exacerbated by the ongoing conflict. Among the many drivers for hunger in Yemen are fuel shortages and import restrictions which have reduced the availability of essential food commodities in the country, which overwhelmingly relies on the import of some 90 percent of its staple foods, as pointed out by World Food Programme.

The most crucial factor causing hunger in Yemen, though, is that all warring parties have used food as a weapon of war. The Saudi-led coalition has been imposing a blockade of Yemen’s main ports, jeopardising the survival of millions of Yemenis who are in urgent need of imported fuel, food, medicine and other commodities. When humanitarian aid agencies exert efforts to provide assistance, the Saudis dictates that any humanitarian operation to be conducted in Yemen must be barred from delivery to Houthi-controlled areas, according to a UN reporter.

Moreover, the coalition has bombed several bridges used to transport 90 percent of UN food supply in the country. At the same time, the Houthi-Saleh forces have also used food as a weapon in areas they are contesting, currently in Taiz and formerly in Aden, where it has been impossible for residents to have access to water, fuel, and food supplies while being besieged. Consequently, a black market emerged with skyrocketing prices for rare commodities only few can afford to purchase.

With that said, deprivation and starvation are the common norm in Yemen today. Before the war, the World Bank estimated that 50 percent of Yemen’s population were under the poverty line, while today it estimates that figure has rocketed to 80 percent of the population.

Photo courtesy/ UNICEF

Stop the famine

These shocking statistics warn that Yemenis soon will be put to death by starvation, as the war has no end in sight. As long the world remains indifferent and timely action to prevent it is not taken, all indicators show a famine is all but inevitable.

As a human rights issues blogger, nothing I have witnessed in Yemen’s human rights situation cuts me as painfully deep as witnessing my country slipping into mass hunger. I strongly believe hunger is the gravest human rights abuse in Yemen. And how shameful it is that a famine is unfolding here in a region surrounded by some of the world’s richest countries.

The expected famine must be stopped before it sweeps the country. Report after report shows people’s accounts of starvation and suffering. What is the world waiting for, I wonder: till Yemenis’ bodies pile up with nobody strong enough to dig the graves?

Famine can be mitigated if more humanitarian and diplomatic action is taken by the international community. Yemen needs the world’s solidarity to stop the looming famine that could become a cause of shame to the global humanitarian system with irreversible consequences for Yemen's 28 million population.

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*This piece was originally published in Middleeasteye.com on 31 August 2016.