A few nights before he was blown up by a car bomb, the governor of Aden was reclining on a purple velvet cushion, elaborating on his dreams for the port city, when a white smartphone started buzzing. He gave it a quick glance, winked and whispered: “It is the president.”



“Yes sir, I tried to call you earlier, I have a problem and I need your help,” he said, explaining that the Yemeni national airline had sold tickets for a flight from Dubai without obtaining landing permissions from the Saudi-led coalition. Since Yemeni militia backed by Saudi airstrikes retook the port city from Houthi rebels in July last year, Aden was officially back in government control but largely dependent on other countries for its security.

Aden – pulverised by air strikes and tank shells – represents the Saudi-backed government’s greatest success in Yemen’s civil war, yet with a victorious coalition of separatist militia, jihadis, Salafists and loyalist army units unravelling, and few sources of employment for the civilian population, the city is fragile. The Yemeni state shows no sign of re-establishing itself despite the return of its president from exile.

Aden’s governor, General Jaafar Saad, sat upright, his grin fading into concern as the president spoke. “Yes sir, I understand, but if the passengers show up at the airport and there is no flight they will topple Aden over my head.”

The Yemeni state shows no sign of re-establishing itself despite the return of its president

He picked up another phone and started calling officials in three countries: UAE army command in Abu Dhabi, Saudi airforce command in Riyadh and the airline director in Cairo.

“I want the airport to operate normally again. If I open the airport, I can bring NGOs, companies and investment into the city, get hotels running again and show the world that Aden is a safe place.”

Life was gradually coming back to Aden. A few cargo ships gingerly waited in the harbour, the markets were crowded and in the dusk hours the wet sands of the Arabian sea glittered with the reflections of women in black abayas and fathers in sarongs paddling with their children. Young men sat in their cars chewing khat, mesmerised by the orange sun sinking in the dark frothy waters.



“Just give me time and money and I will turn this city into the new miracle of the region,” he said. “We have everything. We just need stability.”

Fishermen in Aden. After months of war and siege the city is returning to life. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian

Obscuring the governor’s dreams of a new Dubai lies a poor and wretched city, broken by decades of misrule, corruption and civil war. Airstrikes and tank shells have created corridors of devastation where floors lie flattened like crumpled biscuits, columns hang in mid-air and buildings miraculously stand on one corner.

One thing does seem to be working well in Aden: electricity. The governor handed the power plants to the UAE Red Crescent, which provided massive generators. And some parts of the city function as they always have. Wooden dhows bring cattle from Somalia, passengers embark after a torturous 30-hour sea journey from Djibouti, and cargo ships empty cement on to the shore at what is now the country’s only functioning port.

The war has also kept international fishing trawlers away from Yemeni waters, and the fishermen are enjoying the abundance. In the morning, long and narrow boats pull into the harbour, and fisherman toss giant hammerhead sharks, tuna and swordfish into the waves, where they float until young men swim out from the dock to collect them, their muscles tense and glistening. By noon, the small fish market on shore is packed with black crows nibbling on hundreds of butchered fish heads, shark fins and long red swordfish tongues.

But those crows also gather on the blackened rafters of British-era bungalows, while tanks and artillery pieces on which the wealth of a poor nation was squandered for decades sit rusting on hilltops. The streets, ports, police stations and other official buildings belong not to the president or governor, but the dozens of field commanders and the tens of thousands of “resistance” fighters who jostle for power and resources in neighbourhoods ruled by an array of military councils.

No one knows how many fighters roam the streets; 50,000, the governor said, maybe as many as 65,000. Many of them joined the resistance after the Houthi rebels left.

Militiamen have become the city’s de facto rulers and administrators. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian

War is the city’s best employer. Those who fought to recapture Aden wanted a reward, and those who hadn’t see the resistance as the easiest way to earn a salary. Fighters are arriving daily from training camps in the countryside near Aden, some are trained in Saudi Arabia and others in Eritrea or Sudan. A founder of a powerful military council explained the rising numbers: “You can’t compete in elections or create a party. To achieve political goals, you need a military power to force the others to listen to you.”

The field commander

Ali is one of Aden’s field commanders. A former manager of a mechanical workshop in Saudi Arabia, he was one of the first to pick up arms and fight when Houthi rebels and forces loyal to deposed former president Ali Abdulah Saleh invaded last March.

“It was a spontaneous resistance first, we didn’t have any clue on how to fight or attack, we went out in the morning, fired bullets at their bases and came back to sleep at our homes at night, we just wanted to fight.”

Flanked by a tight group of his men, Ali walked in an alleyway in the northern slums where the poor lived in concrete shacks that clung to the city without water or electricity. He pointed at destroyed buildings where snipers hid, a doorway where his friend was killed, a street corner where they buried their dead and the parched land where he was ambushed and injured.

“I lived the most beautiful days of my life in the war, we had no money and we scavenged for ammunition. Life was simple; you knew who was your enemy and who was your friend.

Pro-government fighters during the Independence Day military parade on 30 November 2015. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian

“The war brought everyone together, the southerners, the Salafis and even the jihadis. We were in contact with people we would have never dreamt of being with before. We met al-Qaida and we fought together, we helped them and they helped us because we had one common enemy.”

It was after the war, he says, that came the mercenaries, profiteers and the resistance.

The fighting had stopped in August, and yet there were no police and no state, he said. In the vacuum, Ali had become a judge, police chief, tribal leader and de facto military ruler of the slum.

In his base, a ramshackle police station, people gathered around him asking him to solve marital problems, release prisoners, denounce “northern agents” or just shake his hands. He had fired the former police chief. A few old investigating officers, now working under his command, sat on a long metal bench and wrote witness statements.

Everyone is holding an institution or a building as a hostage, and won’t leave it until he is given a tank Former army officer

He listened patiently to cases but as lunchtime approached Ali had to find money to feed his men. He usually called on businessmen, borrowed from friends or pestered generals for the money.

He pointed at the yard where two dozen of his men sat in the shade of a large tree: tribesmen, a couple of former special forces trained by the Americans and an old hardened leftist who had been at a Cuban militia school in the 1970s, and mostly poor slum dwellers who found themselves in the middle of war. “During the war we were 85 fighters, now we are more than 900,” Ali says.

The last time any of his men were paid was four months ago, when they got 200 Saudi riyals (£38) each. Since then Ali has been paying them 1,000 Yemeni riyals (£3) for their lunch and hoping this month salaries will be paid.

“The jihadis are luring them with better money, while the coalition just promise us salaries from one month to the next. We don’t want the coalition to build another airport, but to take care of these men. If they don’t get salaries and don’t get jobs we will be a new Libya,” he said.

An estimated 50,000-65,000 militiamen patrol the streets. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian

A wealthy businessman came to Ali’s aid with some money to feed his men. Group leaders distributed the cash, and another day passed.

“I am tired, I sleep for three hours only, my children are not going to school. I wonder if I should leave this and go back to my work,” one fighter said, his eyes strained with exhaustion. “We fought hard for this, but it has been months since we liberated the city and still there is no state.”

In the evening Ali attended a meeting with other commanders in an attempt to bring the city’s two largest military councils together. He sat in corner writing a Facebook post on his phone as the men around him traded accusations.

Many fighters joined the resistance because it is the only available job Late Aden governor Jaafar Saad

“Everyone is holding an institution or a building as a hostage, and won’t leave it until he is given a tank or armoured vehicles,” said a former army officer.

Ali now spoke. He told a war story about “the most difficult day in his life” when he lost all the men in his group and would have died himself, if it wasn’t for the bravery of another man who did not know him and who he had never met before.

“Back then we had no councils and we didn’t know who was fighting with us – we just fought,” he said to the silent room.

“The others side – the jihadis – they don’t differentiate between our council and your council. While we are sitting bickering they are organising and working and they can come and kill us all in our houses if we don’t unite.”

North v south

On Independence Day (30 November) marking the 1967 end of British rule in southern Yemen, battalions from the Southern Resistance council, the Popular Resistance council, newly formed army battalions, old army battalions and those attached to individual commanders lined up for a military parade in Aden.

Hundreds of men, young and old, tribesmen in short sarongs and others of African decent stood in rows. Some units wore khaki trousers and white T-shirts while others had just a few military garments, casting a jacket over a sarong. Some wore boots or sandals but many were barefoot.

Resistance fighters at the frontline near the old south-north Yemen border. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian

The flags of the former South Yemen state with its communist red star fluttered from the podium, positioned next to the flags of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. There were portraits of King Salman of Saudi Arabia alongside South Yemen’s founding fathers, martyrs and heroes. Absent were any pictures of Yemen’s president or a single Yemeni flag.

Aden was in a state of dichotomy. On one hand it was the temporary capital of Yemen, ruled ostensibly by Hadi and his government, whose return to power had been the raison d’être for the war and the Saudi intervention. Yet Hadi rarely left his heavily guarded presidential compound perched high on top of a hill, while in the streets below most of the people saw the war as a war of liberation from northern rule from Sana’a, and Aden as the capital of an independent southern state.

The flag of South Yemen, which unified with the north in 1990, then lost to it in a 1994 civil war, fluttered over schools and government institutions and were painted on walls and shop fronts. “Since liberating Aden, neither Hadi nor the coalition have been able to build a state and they are not letting us build a one,” said a member of the Southern Resistance council.

“The coalition says all support comes through the legitimate government, I tell them fine but they are a name without a state. If there was a state we wouldn’t need the resistance to go solve problems and secure the street.”

The frontline stood along the dark and arid volcanic mountains, straddling the old north-south borders that once separated the two Yemeni states.

In the shade of one armoured vehicle, parked on the last bend of the road before the Houthi positions and piled high with bedding, plastic bags and sacks of food, sat a thin old commander, with a white moustache and few days’ stubble. His men – a unit of Yemeni fighters – said he had once been a colonel in the South Yemen army.

“You see that mountain?” He pointed at a distant ridge from where a sniper fired a occasional bullet that cracked overhead. “Beyond that it’s another country, like any other Arab country ... Lebanon, or Syria or Egypt. Over there, that’s not our war. We are here to defend if they want to come and attack us.”

Militiamen in Aden. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/The Guardian

A few metres ahead stood another group of fighters, jihadis affiliated with al-Qaida. They saw no borders separating them from the Houthis and they despised the southerners.

“Three days ago we advanced and took all these positions, and then we went to rest yesterday night and this morning they attacked and took the ridge,” shouted their commander, a young man with one leg shorter than the other.

One of his men taunted the southerners. “Why don’t you put a barrel there and stand behind it and see if the Houthis will respect the border?” (The borders were previously marked by barrels.)

“How dare you talk like this,” shouted an old fighter. “I have lost two brothers in this war, I swear by the great honour of the southern revolution.”

“That’s blasphemy – you should only swear by God,” said the jihadi. Guns were cocked. “This is why we are losing the war: because you are bunch of infidels.” The militia and jihadis faced off until others intervened. The southerners withdrew their tanks and armoured vehicles, leaving the jihadis at the frontline.

Funeral

The governor dismissed tensions between the militia and the jihadis with his confident reassuring smile, but his eyes were weary.

The militia were a problem of employment, he said. “Many of the fighters joined the resistance because being in the resistance is the only available job. I need to provide services, bring employment and gradually I will take the youth out of the militias.”

The jihadis were a different problem and he needed time to deal with them. “I meet with them, I even fulfill some of their requests,” he said. “It’s a long game. I need to build my security apparatus before I tackle them. It’s a game of patience and the longer it takes the more benefit I get.”

On Monday morning, the governor left his house according to his well-planned schedule and drove along the Gold Mohur beach before driving up a hill overlooking blue waters. The sky was blue and crisp and Aden’s volcanic hills sat majestically over the water.

Parked along the road was a white van with tinted windows. It exploded in a huge orange ball next to the governor’s convoy, turning his armoured car into mangled black wreckage.

The next day a large crowd walked in the governor’s funeral procession, following his coffin into the cemetery.

Ali stood under the shade of tree while his men nervously scanned the crowd for signs of danger. “If we don’t build a state, they will kill us all.”

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