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What You Need to Know About the Crisis in Yemen

What You Need to Know About the Crisis in Yemen
folder_openYemen access_time7 years ago
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Local Editor

As many voices are showing concern over the deteriorating situation in Yemen, the Times staff wrote some interesting facts you need to know about the crisis in the war-rigged nation:

What You Need to Know About the Crisis in Yemen

Yemen's 18-month war has claimed the lives of about 10,000 people, and now it is pushing the country to the brink of famine. More than 21 million Yemenis - 80% of the population - are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN.

Drowned by the noise of the US presidential elections and overshadowed by the conflict in Syria and Iraq, war and hunger have quietly ravaged Yemen. Like those of drowned Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi, face down in the surf, or Aleppo boy Omran Daqneesh in the back of an ambulance, the images of emaciated 18-year-old Yemeni woman Saida Ahmad Baghili beg a neglected question: how did we get here?

•A humanitarian crisis waiting to happen

Even before the war, Yemen was the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country. In 2012, some 44% of its population of 25 million were undernourished with about 5 million requiring emergency aid.

Much of Yemen's poverty is due to dire water shortages. In the capital Sanaa - which some forecast could run out of water by 2017 - less than half of residents are connected to the water supply. Even then tap water only flows about once every four days; and in the southern city of Taiz, it's once every month. Amid the poverty, political corruption and insurgency seethed.

Yet, it seems the world only really started to realize the depth of the crisis last week, when photographs of the teenage Baghili, who is suffering from severe malnutrition, were splashed across international news websites. In one shot, a skeletal Baghili lies in a fetal position on her bed at Yemen's Al Thawra Hospital. In another, her hands grip the armrests of a metal wheelchair; her cheeks have receded and her skin is stretched tightly over her protruding jawbone.

•It's a messy, brutal war, and the US has weighed in

Yemen's conflict has been characterized as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia but the situation is more nuanced.

Having dropped US-made cluster bombs on Yemeni cities, Saudi Arabia again provoked outcry from human rights groups when it bombed a funeral ceremony in Sanaa on Oct. 8. The attack martyred 140 people, injured 500 more and deeply embarrassed Washington.

Following the bombing, White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said that US security co-operation was not a "blank check," and that it was reviewing its "already significantly reduced support to the Saudi-led coalition."

But weeks before - in accordance with Saudi wishes - the US failed to back an independent international inquiry into war crimes committed in Yemen. And on Saturday, another Saudi-led airstrike martyred 58 people at a prison complex in western Yemen.

The Pentagon denied that Washington seeks a wider role in the conflict. However, direct US military involvement in Yemen came within days of the Sanaa funeral bombing.

On Oct. 10, the US fired retaliatory cruise missiles at radar installations territory after its Navy destroyer USS Mason came under fire in the Red Sea.

•Experts foresee a protracted conflict

The collapse of UN-sponsored talks in August, October's escalation and a recent cholera outbreak that added stress to Yemen's already failing healthcare system have led to speculation that the country could become "the next Syria."

Alexander Corbeil, lead analyst for Ottawa-based think tank The SecDev Group, told TIME that Yemen is unlikely to become a realm for regional power plays in the way that Syria has, in part because Washington and Riyadh have a vested interest in keeping other actors out.

At the same time, he forecast "a grinding, protracted conflict with huge humanitarian implications."

•The immediate roots of the conflict date back to the Arab Spring


Source: The Times, Edited by website team

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