🇾🇪 Yemen: Eleven Years of a Silent War

The conflict in Yemen, which began on the night of March 25–26, 2015, was initially expected to last only two weeks, yet it has endured for eleven years. The war was triggered after Houthi rebels, also known as Ansar Allah, seized the capital city of Sana'a in September 2014, leading the Yemeni government to relocate to the south and eventually to Saudi Arabia, where they requested military intervention. This intervention resulted in a massive air campaign, with over 25,000 strikes conducted within seven years.The humanitarian consequences have been catastrophic, characterized by pervasive hunger and the world's largest recorded cholera epidemic. Civilian life has been decimated by bombings that have targeted mosques, wedding ceremonies, and funerals. In one instance, a father was forced to use a traditional dagger to amputate his young son's leg to save him from the rubble of their destroyed home. International involvement has been significant; for example, a US-made bomb was used in a 2018 strike on a school bus, killing 44 children.The country’s infrastructure is in a state of ruin. A blockade on Yemen's borders was maintained from 2016 until April 2022, while more recent Israeli airstrikes destroyed the national airline's fleet and the main airport. Currently, only about half of the nation's medical facilities are operational, frequently lacking essential resources like water and electricity. Families often cannot afford even the minimal cost of transportation to reach these limited medical centers.The social impact is equally devastating, with 5 million internal refugees and millions of children unable to attend school. This vacuum has facilitated the recruitment of over one million new fighters by Houthi forces in a single year. Furthermore, the economic collapse is so profound that many civil servants, including the majority of teachers, work without pay in a nation where the state has effectively ceased to function. Those living in the most extreme poverty must often survive on just two dollars a day, which must cover all necessities from medicine to light.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-world-between-us--6886561/support.