‘Ruled by warlords eating from rubbish bins’: Yemenis reflect on one decade of devastating civil war

As Ramadan ended and Eid celebrations kicked off in Egypt’s capital at the end of March, a group of Yemenis gathered on a Nile felucca — a wooden sailing boat typically encountered across the Mediterranean — for revelry and respite from their troubles.

They are just a fraction of the estimated 600,000 Yemeni citizens now resident in Cairo. Before war in their home country broke out in March 2015, that number stood at just 70,000.

In the corner of the boat sat businessmen Tawfiq and Basim, chatting over mint tea, reflecting on what life must be like for those still in Yemen. “Children are being deprived of the joy of Eid,” lamented Basim. “They are deprived of smiling and the happiness of childhood.”

Since a Saudi-led coalition started launching airstrikes a decade ago to fight off an insurgent and increasingly radical militia called Ansar Allah – better known as the Houthis – over 230,000 people have been killed or died because of hunger and lack of access to medicine.

According to the UN, around half of Yemen’s 40 million inhabitants are in dire need of humanitarian assistance and protection services. The war has also caused an economic crisis with prices for basic goods skyrocketing out of reach for most due to hyperinflation, exacerbated by a breakaway currency in the Houthi-controlled north.

One of the most expensive things now, complains Tawfiq, are flights. “Yemenia Airlines is the most expensive airline in the world, and why is that? There’s no competition. War is the cause and war is the basis.”

A man glanced over disapprovingly, but refrained from joining the conversation. He later admitted to Euronews that he was a senior figure at the airline.

However, even in Yemen, the patchwork of competing authorities and militias makes travelling within the country a massive challenge. Before the war, driving from the capital Sana’a to the southern port of Aden would take a few hours. Now it often takes a full day.

“It is as if you are a stranger in your own country,” Basim told Euronews. “I hope for the end of the war and that we become one people, far from regionalism, partisanship, sectarianism.”

Tawfiq jumped in: “All countries have wars.”

“In Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, there is at least change. But for more than 10 years, we are now under the rule of warlords who eat from rubbish bins,” he retorted morosely.

“Where is our government? Where is the United Nations?”

‘Dancing on the heads of snakes’

Rising out of the Arabian Sea and giving way to craggy mountains and desert, Yemen is seen as one of the likely birthplaces for the Arabic language and civilization. It was also one of the first Silk Road trading routes, making it an important economic and cultural hub.

However, it was seldom ruled as one consolidated entity. Before unification under Ali Abdullah Saleh in 1990, Yemen’s south was for decades a Marxist-Leninist republic, while the north was ruled by a Zaydi Shi’a imamate – the sect from which the Houthis hail – supported by Saudi Arabia.

Even after unification, Saleh’s regime was plagued by the constant threat of civil strife, especially with early incarnations of the Houthis in the north. The president fought six wars with them in the early 2000s. As Saleh himself said, he was constantly “dancing on the heads of snakes”.

When revolutionary fervour swept across the Arab world in 2011, Yemen was ripe for change. Saleh’s forces reacted violently, once shooting and killing 45 protestors in what became known as the Friday of Dignity.

For protestors like Tawakkol Karman, this only spurred them on. Karman won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work and became known as “the mother of the revolution”.

Speaking to Euronews from the US, she was quick to push back against the idea that the revolution led to the chaos Yemen now finds itself in. “This is completely untrue,” she said.

“The fact is that the war in Yemen came as a result of the ‘counter-revolution’ by the Houthis usurping power in Sana’a in 2014, after three years of transitional democracy.”

For others, even the Houthi takeover itself wasn’t cause for immediate alarm. Campaigner and analyst Nadwa al-Dawsari explained that, back in 2014, “many of us Yemenis did not realise how dangerous the Houthis are and what they're capable of.”

“We had no idea that the Houthis were already in charge, and we didn't realise that they had an entire IRGC and Hezbollah expertise machine behind them,” al-Dawsari told Euronews.

What ensued became infamous. A lightning expansion by the Houthis, with the transitional president Hadi bundled out of the country at night to Saudi Arabia, who – in late March 2015 – launched the first of thousands of airstrikes to repel the Houthis.

A country redivided

The following years saw fierce fighting, with the Houthis laying millions of landmines across Yemen and the Saudi-led coalition launching over 25,000 airstrikes, killing almost 20,000 people, including 1,400 children, according to researchers.

Edmund Fitton-Brown, the British ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017, explained to Euronews that internal political changes in Saudi Arabia may have affected the coalition's decision to intervene.

“Mohammed bin Salman at that time was still emerging as a power in Saudi Arabia. And this was really his sort of first chance to make a big statement as a leader,” he said.

“Of course, it hasn't worked out particularly well for him … but I think they were conducting the campaign in reasonably good faith.”

Meanwhile, retired Saudi Major General Abdullah Al Qahtani contended that his country wasn’t involved enough, despite being intimately entangled in Yemeni affairs for decades and now housing the partially exiled Internationally Recognised Government.

Saudi Arabia also hosted ousted President Saleh, until he returned to Yemen to form an ill-fated alliance with the Houthis, who later killed him.

“If I have anything to say about Saudi Arabia’s mistakes in Yemen, it is that it did not impose, for a very long time, on our brothers in Yemen the importance of establishing an institutional state,” the major general told Euronews from Riyadh.

However, many inside Yemen felt very different about Saudi involvement, even if they disliked or opposed the Houthis. The devastation on the ground had a profound effect on Yemenis. Back on the felucca stood Ahmed in traditional Yemeni dress, including the jambiya dagger.

“I just hope that instead of supporting Yemen with missiles, they would support it with money. They would support it with things that benefit the country,” he sighed.

‘Under existential threat’

As Ahmed goes off to dance on the top deck, Leila Lutf Al-Thawr comes over. After the revolution, she created the centre-left, non-aligned Arab Hope Party. She hails from the capital and is desperate to return, but fears the consequences.

“I want to go back, but of course I'm worried that if I do, the Houthis will take me as a hostage,” Lutf Al-Thawr told Euronews.

Since taking over Sana’a, the Houthis have imposed an increasingly authoritarian state. They have been accused by the UN and human rights organisations of widespread use of arbitrary detention and execution.

The group has particularly targeted women and children, recruiting child soldiers and an all-female morality police force called the Zainabiyat, who have been documented as using vicious, often sexual violence against women.

Yet people like Leila worry that the Saudi-led campaign may have played into the Houthis’ hand. She shouts over the increasingly loud music that “the Houthis are so smart”.

“They know how and to manipulate their opposition’s actions,” she explained. “The Yemeni government, all of them, do not understand the situation in Yemen and how to move Yemenis. The Houthis know. They studied Yemeni society.”

A scholar who used to be close to the Houthi family but wanted to remain anonymous for their and their family’s safety, agreed, adding that the group play on the historical trauma felt by many Shi’a Muslims.

“Shi’ism arose from the marginalisation and killing of Imam Ali and the martyrdom of Hussein ibn Ali at the Battle of Karbala. Such events have provided long-lasting sources of grievance and mobilisation,” they explained.

In the year 680, Imam Husayn ibn Ali – grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and son of the fourth caliph Ali – and his small group of soldiers were outnumbered and massacred by an army sent by the Umayyad caliph Yazid I at the city of Karbala in northern Iraq. The fallout caused a religious schism between what are now known as the Sunni and Shi’a branches of Islam.

Speaking on the war itself, the scholar concluded that “it hardened (the Houthis’) ideological stance, reinforcing their sense of being under existential threat.”

From ceasefire to speedboats

In 2022, a more sustainable, if fragile, ceasefire was agreed by the parties in Yemen and the country uneasily relaxed into stalemate. The looming threat of gunfire and airstrikes somewhat receded. It led some to question the Houthis’ durability and ability to govern when there was no one to actively fight.

Then in November 2023, the Houthis launched a series of drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping they claimed was connected to Israel, in response to the latter’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

In the year that followed, they attacked over 90 vessels, hijacking one and sinking another. A US-led coalition responded with its own airstrikes on areas inside Yemen. For ordinary Yemeni citizens, the spectre of violence at any moment returned.

It has also given the Houthis a new enemy that jeopardised peace with old ones. Major General Al Qahtani said that, although Saudi Arabia wasn’t involved in the current strikes, it seemed like negotiations between his country and the Houthis had stalled.

Despite this, Tawakkol Karman is adamant that all is not lost. “I do not regret the revolution, nor am I pessimistic about the future, nor have I lost my revolutionary faith,” she says defiantly. “I have always believed that revolutions will ultimately triumph.”

As the felucca approached the dock, a smaller vessel bobbed past, two frayed and discoloured Saudi flags limping in the light breeze.

A shy young man sidled up. When asked about the situation in his homeland, quietly, he said, “The Houthis’ power is the Yemeni people. When they bomb and attack Israel or ships, the Yemeni people think they are protecting them.”

As Layla drives back from the celebrations, she shrugs and laughs sadly at the young man's comment.

“It's so silly, actually. They should have learned from before. From the Saudis, from everything that happened in Yemen for 10 years.”

“Ten years and nobody understands what was going on. It's really insane,” she ponders as she steers the car away from the bright Nile corniche and into the warren of Cairene streets.