Poverty is rife, thousands have died and children have joined the fighting – Yemen’s year of civil war has been a catastrophe

The basement has become the only refuge for the people of Sana’a.

A loud sound in the street, even the bang of a teacup on the table, is enough to send the children scurrying to that place they know all too well, after a year of airstrikes and destruction.



“You sit down for lunch and you put a cup on the table and it makes a sound and they flinch as if they expect it’s a bomb,” said Hisham al-Omeisy, a father of two children and political analyst based in the Yemeni capital.

“You now see a six-year-old saying, ‘When I grow up I want to be a pilot and bomb the Saudis because of what they’re doing to us’,” he added. “The social fabric has been ripped apart.”



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One year of war has left Yemen – already the Arab world’s poorest country – torn apart, with faltering peace prospects and fading hope that the country could one day be put back together.

Saudi Arabia launched its aerial bombing campaign on 26 March 2015, after the Riyadh-backed president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, was overthrown by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from northern Yemen.

Since then, the cities of Aden and Taiz have been reduced to rubble, militias reign supreme, militants from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula have seized control of strategic towns and Islamic State has established a foothold in the country.

The Guardian attempted to travel to Sana’a for the anniversary of the conflict, but repeated attempts to secure permission from the Saudi-backed government were not granted. Flights into Sana’a are stopped and searched in Saudi Arabia.

A UN-brokered truce is expected to come into effect in April, ahead of peace talks in Kuwait. After an airstrike on a market in Sana’a earlier this month killed dozens, Riyadh significantly scaled back its campaign in the capital.

But unemployment and poverty are rife in Sana’a, electricity has been non-existent for much of the last 10 months, prices have risen exponentially, thousands of civilians have died, child soldiers are fighting in horrific numbers, and 80% of the population is in need of humanitarian aid. Meanwhile, none of the stated goals of the Saudi military campaign have been accomplished.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yemeni tribesmen, loyal to Saudi-backed Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, during clashes with Houthi rebels west of Taiz. Photograph: Ahmad Al-Basha/AFP/Getty

The Houthis remain entrenched in Sana’a and the north, despite the destruction of much of their military gear, along with their ally – former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Aden – which was supposed to be a stepping stone for a broader campaign to reverse the Houthis’ military gains – is riven with conflict between rival militias and has suffered from Isis suicide bombings and assassinations, and the anti-Houthi militias in Taiz have endured a debilitating siege for months. Eliminating Houthi control of the capital remains as distant a prospect as ever.

“It’s not going to take just the end of the war to heal, it’s going to take a few generations,” said Omeisy. “Yemen has been pushed back almost to the time before the 1962 revolution, a time where it [had] radicals in control, rampant extremism, rampant poverty, a lack of a state and state services.”

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Meanwhile, the airstrikes continue. Omeisy moved his children from their school to one close to his house; many other families in the capital have pulled them out of school altogether rather than risk their death.

“They hit everything, hospitals, orphanages, schools,” he said. “You live in constant fear that your kids’ school could be the next target.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘No family in Yemen hasn’t lost someone – the circle of death has engulfed all’. Photograph: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty

Indeed, the last few months alone have seen hospitals belonging to the charity Médecins Sans Frontières being bombed with alarming regularity, particularly in the northern province of Sana’a – the home-base of the Houthis, prompting condemnation by the international community.

“There is a greater monstrosity in those who are fighting, even in the way they talk,” said Radhya al-Mutawakel, who heads Mwatana, a human rights group based in Sana’a. “The language of revenge is supreme.”

Many say that even if peace talks succeed in bringing the fighting to an end, it may be difficult to heal the rifts and prevent Yemen from descending into further violence. Already, few expect a Saudi withdrawal from the conflict to bring peace, now that much of Taiz and Aden are held by a conglomeration of Saudi-backed militias fighting the Houthis.

But the Saudi-lead coalition has not succeeded in stopping the bloodshed in the areas it holds: on Thursday, 22 people including women and children were killed in a triple suicide bomb attack on a coalition camp in Aden.

“Internecine conflict is deadlier than the coalition campaign,” Mutawakel said. “Under airstrikes you are under the mercy of chance, but civil war is much worse.

“We entered the heart of this war because of political collapse without any clear exit. We are trapped in the war.”

For now, the people of Sana’a get by with what they can. Those who can afford it have turned to solar panels, a burgeoning industry in a city without power, or generators.

Hospitals are mostly out of commission with few resources. One in three Yemeni children under five – 1.3 million – are now acutely malnourished, with nearly 10 million struggling to survive without clean water, according to the charity Save the Children.

“For millions of children here, the terror of airstrikes and shelling, and the destruction of everything around them has become a daily fact of life. This must not be allowed to continue,” said Edward Santiago, Save the Children’s country director in Yemen.

Few have escaped unscathed. “A lot of families in Yemen who never took part in fighting are now receiving their dead children from the frontlines,” said Mutawakel. “No family in Yemen hasn’t lost someone, the circle of death has engulfed all Yemenis.”