'You can find nothing in the city now': Yemen reels after month-long air strikes
|
Version 0 of 1. Saudi Arabia’s four-week aerial assault on Yemen, designed to restore to power the country’s elected president, has left the Arab world’s poorest nation facing fuel shortages, hunger, interruptions to water and electricity, while almost 1,000 have been killed and many more injured. But according to interviews with ordinary Yemenis, a more serious long-term challenge will be to reconcile a gaping chasm between the antagonists in this conflict. On one side are the Houthis and their allies, troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, while on the other are those backing the current president, who saw the Houthis’ meteoric ascent to power as an affront to the country’s sovereignty. “[The] Saudi military campaign against Houthi criminals is welcomed in Taez to put an end for Houthi militias crimes and arrogance,” said Aymen al-Mikhalafi, a civil activist in the city, Yemen’s third largest, which was seized by the Houthis before the Saudi campaign. “Houthis want to divide Yemen and they were smashing any man standing in their way.” The Houthis, who hail from the northern province of Sa’ada and adhere to the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam, seized power after storming the capital Sana’a last year. They have since exiled the elected president, Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia, and launched an offensive on the southern port city of Aden, a stronghold of his supporters. Saudi Arabia launched air strikes in response to the power grab by the Houthis, who they accuse of acting as puppets of Iran, the kingdom’s regional rival. Mikhalafi accused the Houthis of looting homes, arbitrary torture and detention, as well as the killing of activists and journalists who opposed them in Taez, and limiting access to food and fuel. “My family had to flee the city to the countryside after Houthi militias controlled our neighbourhood and climbed the roofs to target people resistant to them,” he said. “They simply kicked us out of our house, it is a miracle that they did not shoot us.” Though he said he supported the Saudi campaign, believing it was primarily targeting the Houthis and their allies, he said his city had become a ghost town.“You can find nothing in the city now, water itself is unattainable. Even bridges are targeted now as Houthis are using them to transfer weapons,” he said. But he expressed hope that the Saudis would launch a reconstruction effort in Yemen after the war, and that dialogue would ultimately prevail. Related: Crisis in Yemen – the Guardian briefing “We hope that the Saudi military raids will not last long and Yemenis return to complete the dialogue they started ten months ago,” he said. But the view from Taez is not uniform. Yousif, a doctor at the military hospital there, said supplies were in dire shortage and the facility was receiving casualties daily during the air campaign, their operating room kept alight by a single generator. Food shortages are the norm now, hunger just a small shift in fortune away – a kilogram of wheat that used to cost $1 has risen tenfold in price. “Many wounded are laid on the floor, we have only 130 beds,” said the doctor, who walks an hour to his hospital because there is no more petrol for his car. “To ease the pressure on the morgue, which is filled with bodies, we took pictures of bodies and buried them if none of their relatives came to receive them the same day.” Many children also came to Yousif’s hospital, suffering phobias and panic from the air raids. “I have eight children and my sister is living with me too,” he said before the air campaign was halted. “My children find it difficult to go to school like most of the children now as they are awake all night.” “All basic food items can not be found in the market such as wheat, rice and milk,” said Kahlid al-Madah, the father of four children who works at the city’s council. He said the food crisis was aggravated by people panicking and stockpiling food as soon as the military campaign began. For Madah and his children, the end of the air war, when it comes, will be a major relief. “What I have at home might last for five or six days only,” he said. “I still have 20 kilos of wheat, a few kilos of rice and potatoes. We could not store any meat for lack of power and fuel... My salary is $150, I got it last month, there is no guarantee that I will get it this month.” Despite the ceasefire, the war has burned indelible wounds in his mind. He recalled an air strike in Mahan, a district of Taez, that killed 15 people, most of them women and children. “I was in the hospital and the bodies were flooding to the morgue,” he said. “I saw a child who was hit in his abdomen and his bowels came out of his body. There are horrible cases in the hospital that you can hardly look at.” Those deaths made Madah angry about the Saudi campaign. “The Saudis are looking for the 300 Skud rockets which pose a threat to them, but they are destroying the entire country,” he said. “The war can’t be merely against Houthis, it’s meant to humiliate the Yemeni people.” He added: “After Saudi aggression, I’m proud to declare in public my support to Houthis. The Saudi enemy does not make a difference between a Houthi and non-Houthi.” In the eastern province of Maarib, where many tribes oppose the Houthi rise, the split is even more apparent. “Life was like a hell under Houthis,” said Mohammad al-Obaidi, a university graduate from the city, who said the militia was collectively punishing members of tribes who fought it, and was besieging the city. “Any local attempting to come in or out of Maarib could not escape Houthi checkpoints scattered all over the province, equipped not only with light weapons but with heavy tanks,” he said. “You would be really lucky if you were held for three or four days, a lot of men just simply disappeared.” Obaidi said he backed the Saudi campaign, hoping it would change the power balance in Yemen. He said the Houthis had already abandoned many positions around the city because of the air strikes, and exiled citizens were back to take control of their city. Many of the tribes are well-armed and can fight, he said. “All the tribes in Marib are entirely in support of the Saudi military campaign,” he said. “We do not care if Hadi goes back or not but we want to get legitimacy and sovereignty back. We protested in thousands to topple Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011, how could the elected president be kicked out between day and night.” Saleh, who was ousted in Arab Spring-style protests, has allied with the Houthis and forces loyal to him have joined the assault. “The military campaign is not against the Yemeni people, it is against criminals and sectarians who want to divide Yemen,” Obaidi added, referring to the Saudi air strikes. “I myself am now holding my gun to defend my city.” The geopolitics of the conflict are a distant spectre for many in the capital, who see their lives trampled by a struggle for power that is apathetic to their suffering.“It is utterly distressing how our life was ruined by the political turmoil in Yemen,” said Ahmed Saeed, an engineer in Sana’a. Saeed, who is married to two women and has nine children, now lives in a home filled with relatives who have fled to him from the war, from brothers to married sons and their children. “The decision was to get together in a single house to share bread and water,” he said. But now even the water is scarce, the local well dry. As for the air raids, Saeed insisted they were imprecise, often destroying nearby homes. He recalled waking to calls for help one night recently, before working ten hours to recover the bodies of eight women, four children, and two elderly civilians from the rubble of their home near a Houthi military base. “I can’t understand how the Saudi military campaign can be in the interest of Yemen,” he said. “If the Saudis really care about Yemen, they would have solved all the problems by negotiations. Out of these spent billions on air raids to eliminate several thousand Houthis, they could donate two billion to the starving families in Yemen. We would be truly grateful to them.” “[The] Saudi military campaign has united Yemenis who were all against Houthis, now they all curse Saudis,” he said. “It is too obvious that the Saudis want to tell us: ‘Either we rule you or we kill you.’” |