The Birth of a Civil War in Yemen in Counterpunch

Sana'a, Yemen

Over twenty years ago, I lived in Yemen. Decades later, I found myself receiving WhatsApp messages from friends and former students in Sana’a—as bombs rained down around them. Real-time updates from people I cared about, living through hell. That experience will never leave me.

What I didn’t expect was to see that same war discussed in a Signal group chat by U.S. officials—punctuated with emojis, fist bumps, and the tone of a frat party watching drone footage like it was Call of Duty.

This past Sunday, CounterPunch, one of the few American outlets with the guts to run it, published my longform piece:
👉 “Yemen in Flames: From Depraved Spectacle to Signalgate”

It’s a dark, sharp, and deeply personal chronicle of how Trump-era officials planned airstrikes on Yemen with the casual detachment of gamers, turning mass death into a grotesque kind of entertainment.

📌 From screenshots of chats to the dehumanization of entire populations, the piece shows how modern warfare has become performance art for sociopaths in positions of power.

📰 Read the full piece here: