Nadia al-Sakkaf will never forget the night the rebels took the capital: their first move was to occupy the TV and radio stations and the newspaper offices to issue orders and control the news. So Yemen’s minister of information – an experienced journalist in her previous life – did the obvious thing: she took to Twitter.

It was 20 January when Houthi fighters stormed the seat of government in Sana’a, triggering the latest crisis convulsing the Middle East. Yemen had already seen its veteran president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, toppled in the wake of Arab spring protests. But the transition had gone badly wrong – largely because Saleh was still active – talks on a new constitution collapsed, and now outright civil war loomed.



The more I dig into why #Yemen is miserable,the sadder & angrier I become. Knowing so much isn't good for health, nor is being a politician — Nadia Sakkaf (@NadiaSakkaf) January 19, 2015

“It was around four in the morning,” Sakkaf told the Guardian in Doha, the Qatari capital. “Suddenly we heard bombs and gunfire and people were very scared. There was no news. Everyone was speculating. I started making calls and I found out the truth. The presidential palace had been attacked.

“I called the media institutions and I said: ‘Report this’ and they said: ‘We can’t because the Houthis are here. If we resist we’ll die’. They started playing their anthems and showing pictures of their leader. It was literally at gunpoint.

“The women journalists especially were very inhibited because the Houthis are very conservative. They said: ‘You should cover your faces and not wear makeup.’ They said: ‘There’s a new regime in town.’

“I ran to my computer and logged into my Twitter account. My first tweet said: ‘It’s a coup. The presidential palace has been attacked.’ It was very stressful. My husband kept the children out of the way. I felt more like a reporter than the minister of information. I wasn’t scared at the time but I was afterwards when I realised the implications. My name was everywhere. I had 20,000 more followers on Twitter in one day.”

Nearly six months on, Sakkaf is living in exile at a Riyadh hotel, trying with other members of the internationally recognised Yemeni government to continue the fight against the Houthis and backing the Saudi-led military intervention to defeat them and to restore President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.



Sakkaf’s media instincts were well honed: she was the editor-in-chief of the respected Yemen Times newspaper and a champion of women’s empowerment until the day before she was appointed information minister in late 2014.



Now, after a short humanitarian ceasefire, 1,850 people dead and half a million people homeless, she argues that the war is the result of decades of neglect of the Arab world’s poorest country and its 24 million people and that – however and whenever the conflict ends – it will urgently need greater regional support.

“I look at what is going on and my heart sinks. It’s not just about politics. It’s about the social texture of the country falling apart. Best friends are now enemies because they are affiliated with different factions. It’s not just about sects. It is geographic but it’s not just north and south. It’s as if the Yemeni people are resurrecting all their grievances from centuries ago and putting them all on the table today.”



Saudi air strikes, Sakkaf argues, are a means to an end and were necessary to avoid having a “dictatorship worse than before”, with Saleh working with his old enemies, the Houthis, amid attempts at secession by southern separatists and al-Qaida taking advantage of the chaos to pursue its own destructive agenda.

Sakkaf and loyalist colleagues are trying to use the crisis to persuade the Saudis and the other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to allow Yemen into this rich countries’ club to promote investment and allow impoverished Yemenis to work there again – as hundreds of thousands did before being thrown out when Saleh backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Prejudice and fear are woven into a complex relationship between Yemenis and Saudis, who have long promoted and bankrolled Salafi elements as well as key tribes in their troubled backyard. “I very much believe that had Yemen been part of the GCC none of this would have happened,” she says.

“What drives terrorism or extremism is poverty. That’s the bottom line. If people were content they would have too much to lose. Fundamentally it’s about poverty. If the Houthis had been educated they wouldn’t have been brainwashed this way.”

Sakkaf used to doubt the “conspiracy theory” about Iran’s backing for the Houthis – but now believes that Tehran gave them “strong support” and is exploiting the conflict for its own strategic purposes. But she insists it is a political problem, not a religious or sectarian one, as it is often painted.

“Yemenis have always felt excluded,” Sakkaf said. “They want to be seen as equals within the Gulf. We need to remind the GCC of their obligations to Yemen since there will be so much to do after the air strikes.”