The drop in humanitarian assistance has intensified the suffering of the Yemeni population. The amount of food and cash received has fallen, in many cases by half, and the number of beneficiaries has dropped from 14 million in 2019 to nine million in 2020.
These factors weaken people’s resilience and resistance to disease, as well as increasing the rates of malnutrition. In turn, this leads to added demands on medical services, which are the second most severely affected sector by the reduced funding.
Medical staff, who have only very occasionally received their state salaries (which are insufficient for a reasonable living standard at the best of times) for more than five years, had relied on the complementary payments from the humanitarian organisations. Due to lack of funding, these have been mostly stopped, meaning staff are now deserting the 50% of still-functioning medical facilities. These facilities are also running out of supplies, in addition to being under frequent military attacks from the various fighting groups.
Most food and medical supplies arrive through the port of Hodeida on the Red Sea, which has been under effective blockade for years. Fuel ships are also systematically held up by the Saudi-led coalition in agreement with the Internationally Recognised Government (IRG), ensuring a constant fuel crisis in the Huthi-controlled areas. This fuel is needed both to transport goods and to operate water-pumping stations and the multiplicity of private electricity generators that have replaced the state structures destroyed in the course of the war.
The humanitarian situation continues to be described as “the world’s worst” by the UN. One indicator that this is correct is the new trend of Yemenis leaving to seek refuge across the Red Sea.
After an initial exodus of refugees in 2015-6, most Yemenis chose to stay at home, while Ethiopians and Somalis continued to migrate into Yemen in hope of reaching the GCC. This has recently changed, with a major drop in arrivals, but also with a new flux of Yemenis leaving. March saw the third boat of Yemeni families this year arrive in Somalia’s Puntland.
Fighting escalates
Since early February, military action has focused on the renewed Huthi offensive threatening the city of Marib, about 170km east of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. This offensive, which began in early 2020, has recently reignited in intensity, with significant numbers of Saudi airstrikes preventing the Huthis from covering the remaining short distance of open ground that separates them from the city, though they have already occupied some of the more than 130 settlements of displaced Yemenis.
The importance of Marib is clear from the violence of the fighting. Anti-Huthi forces have depleted other fronts to strengthen the resistance in Marib, including contributions by groups whose relationship with the IRG is difficult, sometimes involving open hostility.
The Huthis persist despite very heavy losses on terrain unfavourable to their forces and equipment. But why is Marib so important and how come the Huthis are in a position to threaten it?
Marib is the only major city under the full control of the IRG. The Huthis may opt to bypass the city to reach the oil production facilities and take control of the road linking Saudi Arabia with the nearby governorates of Shabwa and Hadhramaut, which would then be within their reach. But taking Marib would increase their strength in any possible future negotiations.
Who are the Huthis?
The battle for Marib also raises the question of the rise of the Huthi movement: starting as a small dissident group in the far north of Yemen at the end of last century, Ansar Allah as the movement calls itself, now controls more than two-thirds of the country’s population living on about one-third of its territory. And militarily, it is on the offensive on different fronts.
The Huthis are Zaydis, a Shi’a faction whose theological differences are minimal with the country’s majority Sunni Shafi’i population, and the two groups lived in reasonable harmony for centuries.
The movement is fundamentalist and rose in opposition to the autocratic regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled Yemen from 1978 until he was ousted in 2011. Saleh’s regime encouraged the emergence of Salafi, ie Sunni, fundamentalism in the Huthi region, while neglecting its need for development investments.
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Helen Lackner | Radio Free (2021-05-07T00:00:00+00:00) After six years of war, what is happening in Yemen?. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/05/07/after-six-years-of-war-what-is-happening-in-yemen-2/
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