Useful Dupes

In this week's Camino a Ítaca that time I stumbled into a war in Yemen. The Houthis are now playing into the hands of the Iranians and making their population suffer even more. Click over to read the original version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The disembodied voice on the other end of the crackly line was definitely nervous. “Troy, I need to know where you are right now.” It was my boss and while we had a good relationship, the question seemed a bit intrusive, seeing as I was on holiday during a semester break.

“I’m up in Sa’dah, near the border with Saudi Arabia,” I reluctantly replied. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he quickly answered. “You need to get the hell out of there as soon as possible and return here to the capital, Sana’a. A war has just broken out between the government and a rebel group. Get on the road as fast as you can before it is closed or gets bombed!”

Living and working in Yemen always had its surprises. It’s a country that is almost as heavily armed as the United States per capita. Men openly carry taped up, battered machine guns in the streets and everyone wears a long dagger in their belt, but a full-blown war was taking things to a completely new level.

Just the day before we had visited the region’s largest open-air arms market. It was filled with men trying out Kalashnikovs, bazookas, Spanish handguns, heavy artillery and even tanks. It was one stop shopping for the rebellion that was taking place around us.

That phone call was just over 20 years ago in 2003. A small group of Zaydi fundamentalists, Ansar Allah or as they are more commonly known, the Houthis, took up arms against the longstanding strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Fighting never ceased and they continued to seize more territory until, in 2015, they captured the capital, Sana'a, and deposed Saleh's successor, Abdrabbo Mansur Hadi, who ended up in exile in Saudi Arabia.

A year later, Riyadh lead oan international coalition, which included neighboring states like the United Arab Emirates, to restore Hadi to power. Since then, this Saudi coalition and the Iranian-backed Houthis have been waging a proxy war between the regional superpowers.

But all this was until October 7^th and the Hamas war crimes in Israel and the subsequent genocidal invasion of Gaza by the Israelis. Seizing on the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause locally, the Houthis began attacking Israeli-linked shipping vessels in the Bab al-Mandab strait and the Red Sea seaway that leads to the Suez Canal, thus threatening a substantial percentage of global ocean transport.

And then the tomahawk missiles began to rain down.

In retaliation to these attacks, US and British forces began hitting the Houthi forces with airstrikes and it’s the Yemeni people who once again suffer at the hands of outside forces.

Before the war in Gaza, Yemen was considered one of, if not the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. According to the UN, 4.5 million people have been displaced, while 24.1 million people, 80% of the population, are in need of humanitarian aid.

The last thing the country needs is to be drawn into an increasingly volatile conflict in the region. The first and immediate step that needs to be taken before the whole region is drawn into a wider scale war is a lasting cease fire 2000kms away in Gaza.