Thursday, October 14, 2021

What is really going on in Yemen?

     Yemen, as of 2014 been going through a civil war. This all started from the failure of political transition from Ali Abdullah Saleh to Abdabbah Mansour Hadi. Hadi struggled with various problems such as corruption, attacks by Jihadisit (a militant Islamic movement that is looked at as threatening), and unemployment and food insecurity. With that said, the Houthi movement took advantage of the new president weakness and took control of the capital of Yemen Sanaa in 2014. This war mainly consisted of Houthis and Hadi-led military supported by Saudi Arabia.


    The Houthis movement started in the late 1980's and was primarily people from northern Yemen. Houthis became politically motivated under Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi. He started making the group politically motivated since he was against the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Ironically, Yemen's previous president had an alliance with Houthis which happened to fall through in 2017 and the Houthi's ended up killing President Saleh in order to take full control of the capital.



    As shown above most of Yemen is occupied by the Houthi forces which is possibly means they can expand to eastern Yemen. Also the red is labeled as the conflict zones meaning this is were most of crimes are most likely to occur.

    Throughout the war there’s been lots of attacks on Yemen soil. In November 2017, there was a launch of a ballistic missile towards Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Then in 2019 Saudi Arabia oil fields were attacked by Houthis but Saudi Arabia and the U.S. accused Iran for that. Attacks like this caused Yemen had worsen the humanitarian crisis. The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project claimed in October 2019 that there's been over 100,000 fatalities and by the end of 2019 more than 23,000 fatalities was recored making it the second most lethal war so far. Then the UN had verified the deaths of 7,700 civilians by March 2020. With that said, is classified as one of the poorest Arab countries with a $824 GDP per capita.




    Even for the civilians that do survive the attacks in the war still suffer. The Charity Save the Children estimated that 85,000 children with severe acute malnutrition might of died between April 2015 to October 2018. About 80% of the population needs humanitarian assistance. An estimated 2 million children are acutely malnourished along with 360,000 children under five are struggling to survive. An example of the civilians struggles during this war is expressed by Abdullah al-Ibbi. Abdullah is a local citizen of Yemen and one day he was going to have a late night meal with his wife and children however, he lost his loved ones that day. The family lived in Saada which is the Houthi territory. During this time there was intense aerial attacks by Saudi led coalition. There was an air strike that killed his wife and some of his children in just a matter of seconds. The air strike killed 27 of his family member however, luckily three of his oldest children survived. This a prime example of the injustices and struggles the Yemeni civilians are going through during this horrific war.

Citations:

Bakhsh, Sumaya. “Yemen: The Man Who Lost 27 Family Members in an Air Strike.” BBC News. BBC, November 4, 2016. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37791211.

“GDP per Capita (Current US$) - Yemen, Rep.” Data. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=YE.

“Who Are Yemen's Houthis?” Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/interview/who-are-yemens-houthis.

“Yemen Crisis: Why Is There a War?” BBC News. BBC, June 19, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423.

“Yemen's Tragedy: War, Stalemate, and Suffering.” Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/yemen-crisis?gclid=Cj0KCQjwnoqLBhD4ARIsAL5JedIUDDCIqDvHK4X-8phvX3T5LEyEoEAIRFOp-5tSxqRhSevK1ZrENA8aAgHsEALw_wcB.

























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