Hidden Wounds of Yemen’s War
Shuaib Almosawa
On a recent evening, Ali al-Hajori, a man in his 60s, was begging on 70th Square in the western part of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. Mr. Hajori, whose lips were parched, would stop by each car pulling over at a public park and raise his right hand in an appeal for help. As the sun set over the war-torn country, Mr. Hajori walked back to a rented room, where he lived with his family, who have been starving.
About three years earlier, after intense bombing by Saudi Arabia, Mr. Hajori fled his home in Mahwit province, 75 miles northwest of Sana. He used to work as a farmer and picked up jobs in construction with his son to supplement their income.
He was also the beneficiary of a government-run program, which offered about $32 every three months to the poor, the unemployed, the people with disabilities. The war disrupted that source of support too.
More than three years of a military campaign — accompanied by naval and aerial blockades — by Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates backed by the United States… has reduced the people of Yemen to destitution and created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
The world pays fleeting attention to atrocities like the Aug. 9 massacre of 44 schoolchildren on a school trip in Saada province in northern Yemen in a Saudi airstrike, but as the world does not watch, the war continues to destroy the bodies and souls of Yemen’s besieged people.
About nine million Yemeni families depended for their survival on the salary family members drew from public sector jobs. The Central Bank of Yemen was key to the distribution of their salaries. The Saudis got the Central Bank relocated in September 2016 from Sanaa to the southern port city of Aden...
Around that time, humanitarian groups warned against the move, but the government headed by Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi promised to maintain the bank’s policy of paying employees their salaries irrespective of their location...
That promise is yet to be kept, with some rare exceptions. More than a million public sector employees, who supported about nine million families, were left without salaries and reduced to living on handouts.
For the past three months, the desperation has grown since the Saudi-led coalition began its offensive to capture the western port city of Hodeida, through which most of Yemen’s imports and humanitarian aid enter the country. Half of Hodeida’s 600,000 people have fled.
The coalition has bombed a water plant in Hodeida, and the sanitation services have been wrecked. Shelling by the Saudi coalition backed forces also hit private homes, a fish market and Hodeida’s main hospital.
Despite an official truce to let the United Nations negotiate a peace deal, the fighting continues. The effects of the war are increasingly visible on the streets of Sana. Food and fuel prices have increased two to three times and are out of reach for most residents and refugees. A 50-kilogram bag of wheat, which would cost 4,500 Yemeni rial before the war, sells for 12,000 Yemeni rial now.
As the war continues, the prices keep rising, as the value of the Yemeni rial continues falling against the dollar. The exchange rate has changed from 250 Yemeni rial for a dollar before the war to 550 Yemeni rial for a dollar.
The absence of jobs has forced a huge number of people to beg on the streets. At al-Rowaishan, one of the busiest roundabouts in central Sanaa, people reduced to begging move briskly from vehicle to vehicle during traffic jams, seeking help.
One recent afternoon I watched a man trying to get the beggars to form a line so that everyone could get a chance. As he tried to bring order, a boy of about 8 years jumped onto the hood of my friend’s car, carrying a bottle of yellow detergent and a piece of cloth, and set out to wash the windshield. My friend offered him some coins. The boy simply wanted to eat, to buy a sandwich.
Older men and women make up the majority of new beggars in Sanaa. But like Mr. Hajori, the displaced farmer, they can’t compete with the energetic boys and girls begging on the streets or hovering around restaurants for leftovers. You often see old women in black abayas standing outside restaurants in a line. They stand in silence and accept any food or gifts that are offered.
On a recent afternoon I was walking on Zero Street in Hadda, an upscale neighborhood, when a woman who was walking with her young daughter stopped me. I thought she was asking for directions. “My husband is alive but he hasn’t been paid. We ran out of everything,” she said. She has nothing to feed her family and sought help. “I have never asked for help before,” she said. Her husband and her family did not know she was begging. “Don’t be surprised!” she said. “You will soon see the entire nation on the street.”
Another day I was walking out of a popular restaurant in the city when a man in his 40s stopped me. “I am not seeking money,” he said. He took out an identity card from the defense ministry, which described him as a corporal. He was from Taiz, a city 172 miles south of Sanaa, where he owned a house. He had fled with his family to Sanaa two years earlier, after his brother was killed in an aerial bombing...
In Sanaa, he couldn’t find work. “My children cry from hunger,” he recalled. “It is painful and humiliating beyond limits.” He lied to his family about finding work in a restaurant and begged across the city. “Buy me some bread for the children if you can,” the corporal said to me, as tears welled in his eyes.
He is one of 22 million Yemenis who need aid, according to estimates by the United Nations — a staggering increase of six million from its 2015 estimate of 16 million…
Power games and intrigues move at their own pace as the populace is dying of hunger and disease. “The Saudis have destroyed us and destroyed the country,” said Mr. Hajori, the farmer-turned-beggar.
Source: NYT, Edited by website team
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