Buying blow Al Mukalla

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Buying blow Al Mukalla

Amal Hussain, 7, is wasting away from hunger. The Saudi-led war in Yemen has pushed millions to the brink of starvation. Our editors explain why The Times has decided to publish such unsettling images. Chest heaving and eyes fluttering, the 3-year-old boy lay silently on a hospital bed in the highland town of Hajjah, a bag of bones fighting for breath. His father, Ali al-Hajaji, stood anxiously over him. Hajaji had already lost one son three weeks earlier to the epidemic of hunger sweeping across Yemen. Now he feared that a second was slipping away. But Mr. The devastating war in Yemen has gotten more attention recently as outrage over the killing of a Saudi dissident in Istanbul has turned a spotlight on Saudi actions elsewhere. The harshest criticism of the Saudi-led war has focused on the airstrikes that have killed thousands of civilians at weddings , funerals and on school buses , aided by American-supplied bombs and intelligence. But aid experts and United Nations officials say a more insidious form of warfare is also being waged in Yemen, an economic war that is exacting a far greater toll on civilians and now risks tipping the country into a famine of catastrophic proportions. Under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi-led coalition and its Yemeni allies have imposed a raft of punitive economic measures aimed at undercutting the Houthi rebels who control northern Yemen. But these actions — including periodic blockades, stringent import restrictions and withholding the salaries of about a million civil servants — have landed on the backs of civilians, laying the economy to waste and driving millions deeper into poverty. Those measures have inflicted a slow-burn toll: infrastructure destroyed, jobs lost, a weakening currency and soaring prices. But in recent weeks the economic collapse has gathered pace at alarming speed, causing top United Nations officials to revise their predictions of famine. The signs are everywhere, cutting across boundaries of class, tribe and region. Unpaid university professors issue desperate appeals for help on social media. Doctors and teachers are forced to sell their gold, land or cars to feed their families. On the streets of the capital, Sana, an elderly woman begs for alms with a loudspeaker. I have a house for rent. And in the hushed hunger wards, ailing infants hover between life and death. Of nearly two million malnourished children in Yemen, , are considered critically ill — a figure projected to rise by one quarter in the coming months. Mekkia Mahdi at the health clinic in Aslam, an impoverished northwestern town that has been swamped with refugees fleeing the fighting in Hudaydah, an embattled port city 90 miles to the south. Flitting between the beds at her spartan clinic, she cajoled mothers, dispensed orders to medics and spoon-fed milk to sickly infants. For some it was too late: the night before, an month old boy had died. He weighed five and a half pounds. Looking around her, Dr. She tugged on the flaccid skin of a drowsy 7-year-old girl with stick-like arms. Only bones. But Saudi officials have defended their actions, citing rockets fired across their border by the Houthis, an armed group professing Zaidi Islam, an offshoot of Shiism, that Saudi Arabia, a Sunni monarchy, views as a proxy for its regional rival, Iran. And the offensive to capture Hudaydah, which started in June, has endangered the main lifeline for imports to northern Yemen, displaced , people and edged many more closer to starvation. A famine here, Mr. Hajaji said. The burns were a mark of the rudimentary nature of life in Juberia, a cluster of mud-walled houses perched on a rocky ridge. To reach it, you cross a landscape of sandy pastures, camels and beehives, strewn with giant, rust-colored boulders, where women in black cloaks and yellow straw boaters toil in the fields. In the past, the men of the village worked as migrant laborers in Saudi Arabia, whose border is 80 miles away. They were often treated with disdain by their wealthy Saudi employers but they earned a wage. Hajaji worked on a suburban construction site in Mecca, the holy city visited by millions of Muslim pilgrims every year. Last year a young woman died of cholera, part of an epidemic that infected 1. In April, a coalition airstrike hit a wedding party in the district, killing 33 people, including the bride. A local boy who went to fight for the Houthis was killed in an airstrike. But for Mr. Hajaji, who had five sons under age 7, the deadliest blow was economic. He watched in dismay as the riyal lost half its value in the past year, causing prices to soar. Suddenly, groceries cost twice as much as they had before the war. Other villagers sold their assets, such as camels or land, to get money for food. Hajaji, whose family lived in a one-room, mud-walled hut, had nothing to sell. At first he relied on the generosity of neighbors. Then he pared back the family diet, until it consisted only of bread, tea and halas, a vine leaf that had always been a source of food but now occupied a central place in every meal. Soon his first son to fall ill, Shaadi, was vomiting and had diarrhea, classic symptoms of malnutrition. Hajaji wanted to take the ailing 4-year-old to the hospital, but that was out of the question: fuel prices had risen by 50 percent over the previous year. One morning in late September, Mr. Hajaji walked into his house to find Shaadi silent and immobile, with a yellow tinge to his skin. He kissed his son on the forehead, bundled him up in his arms, and walked along a winding hill path to the village mosque. That evening, after prayers, the village gathered to bury Shaadi. His grave, marked by a single broken rock, stood under a grove of Sidr trees that, in better times, were famous for their honey. A few weeks later, when Shaher took ill, Mr. Hajaji was determined to do something. In , the Saudi-backed Yemeni government transferred the operations of the central bank from the Houthi-controlled capital, Sana, to the southern city of Aden. The bank, whose policies are dictated by Saudi Arabia, a senior Western official said, started printing vast amounts of new money — at least billion riyals, according to one bank official. The new money caused an inflationary spiral that eroded the value of any savings people had. The bank also stopped paying salaries to civil servants in Houthi-controlled areas, where 80 percent of Yemenis live. With the government as the largest employer, hundreds of thousands of families in the north suddenly had no income. At the Sabeen hospital in Sana, Dr. Her husband, a retired soldier, is no longer getting his pension, and Dr. Rajumi has started to skimp on everyday pleasures, like fruit, meat and taxi rides, to make ends meet. Economic warfare takes other forms, too. In a recent paper, Martha Mundy, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, analyzed coalition airstrikes in Yemen, finding that their attacks on bridges, factories, fishing boats and even fields suggested that they aimed to destroy food production and distribution in Houthi-controlled areas. In September, the World Health Organization brokered the establishment of a humanitarian air bridge to allow the sickest Yemenis — cancer patients and others with life-threatening conditions — to fly to Egypt. Among those on the waiting list is Maimoona Naji, a year-old girl with a melon-size tumor on her left leg. At a hostel in Sana, her father, Ali Naji, said they had obtained visas and money to travel to India for emergency treatment. Their hopes soared in September when his daughter was told she would be on the first plane out of Sana once the airlift started. But the agreement has stalled, blocked by the Yemeni government, according to the senior Western official. Maimoona and dozens of other patients have been left stranded, the clock ticking on their illnesses. Naji, shuffling through reams of documents as tears welled up in his eyes. Where is the humanity in that? What did we do to deserve this? In Houthi-held areas, aid workers say, commanders level illegal taxes at checkpoints and frequently try to divert international relief aid to the families of soldiers, or to line their own pockets. At the United Nations on Tuesday, Mr. Lowcock, the humanitarian official, said that aid workers in Yemen faced obstacles including delayed visas, retracted work permits and interference in the work — problems, officials said privately, that were greatest in Houthi-held areas. Despite the harrowing scenes of suffering in the north, some Yemenis are getting rich. Upmarket parts of Sana are enjoying a mini real estate boom, partly fueled by Yemeni migrants returned from Saudi Arabia, but also by newly enriched Houthi officials. Local residents say they have seen Houthi officials from modest backgrounds driving around the city in Lexus four-wheel drives, or shopping in luxury stores, trailed by armed gunmen, to buy suits and perfumes. Tensions reached a climax this summer when the head of the United Nations migration agency was forced to leave Sana after clashing with the Houthi administration. In an interview, the Houthi vice foreign minister, Hussain al-Ezzi, denied reports of corruption, and insisted that tensions with the United Nations had been resolved. Only two famines have been officially declared by the United Nations in the past 20 years, in Somalia and South Sudan. A United Nations-led assessment due in mid-November will determine how close Yemen is to becoming the third. To stave it off, aid workers are not appealing for shipments of relief aid but for urgent measures to rescue the battered economy. The priority should be to stabilize the falling currency, she said, and to ensure that traders and shipping companies can import the food that Yemenis need. Saeed Al-Batati contributed reporting. The Khashoggi crisis has called attention to a largely overlooked Saudi-led war in Yemen. On a rare trip to the front line, we found Yemenis fighting and dying in a war that has gone nowhere. Please upgrade your browser. Written by Declan Walsh. Saudi Arabia. Sparsely populated areas. Al Ghaydah. Al Mukalla. Densely populated areas. Where the Hunger Crisis Is Worst. Ali al-Hajaji and his wife, Mohamediah Mohammed, lost one son to hunger. Now they fear losing a second. When Shaher became ill, Mr. Hajaji tried a folk remedy and burned him, leaving scars on his chest. Shaadi, 4 years old, lies in a grave marked by a single broken rock. Bassam Mohammed Hassan, who suffers from severe malnutrition and cerebral palsy, at a hospital in Sana, Yemen. Ahmed Ibrahim al-Junid, 5 months old, in Aslam. Airstrikes have destroyed bridges, like this one in Bani Hassan, factories, fishing boats and fields, suggesting that disrupting the food supply may have been a goal. The fighting has displaced about a million Yemenis. Airstrikes have destroyed homes in the Old City of Sana. Wadah Askri Mesheel, 11 months old, arrived at a clinic in Aslam, Yemen, with severe malnutrition. He died eight hours later. In the hushed hunger wards, ailing infants hover between life and death.

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Buying blow Al Mukalla

During a trip to Yemen in mid, I visited the Socotra archipelago, where another chapter of the Yemeni conflict is being written today. I spent several days there, interviewing locals and visiting important places. Socotra, which was declared a natural reserve in , has an area of 3, square kilometers. The archipelago was a part of Hadhramawt Governorate, before becoming its own governorate in Socotra has a population of some 90, people, but in the last five years the number has increased dramatically because of the arrival of people fleeing the war in mainland Yemen, with some statistics estimating the population at , Most live in Hadibo, the capital. Both languages descend from the same origin, and Socotra and Mahra were united during the time of the Mahra Sultanate of Qishen and Socotra, until I flew to Socotra from Sayoun city in Hadhramawt. The officers asked everyone about the purpose of their visit, and then requested that we bring in a sponsor from the island before allowing us to enter. Traveling to Socotra is no longer easy for Yemenis. The only way to access the island is by flying Yemenia, the national carrier of Yemen, which flies there only once a week, a frequency requiring passengers to book long in advance. Since the United Arab Emirates UAE began operating the airport in and Saudi troops deployed to the island in , the security authorities have imposed a heavy fine on boat owners bringing passengers who are not from Socotra. However, there are two flights a week, sometimes more, to the island from Abu Dhabi airport. The fact that it is easier to visit Socotra from the UAE than it is from Yemen itself offers a glimpse of the current situation there. From the arrival hall at Socotra airport one immediately senses the changes in the island. According to local inhabitants, the Saudis brought telecommunications equipment with them to avoid using the Emirati telecommunications network, which has been the main operator in Socotra despite having received no license from the Yemeni government. The capital is where markets and public institutions are located. In the last five years, Hadibo has expanded and new houses have been built, showing how the island is being transformed as thousands of Yemenis have moved to Socotra, many to do business. Though Socotra was a tourist destination, visitors face difficulties finding good places to stay on the island. There are only three primitive motels in Hadibo, with a limited number of rooms. Yet when there were more visitors in the past from different nationalities, they preferred to camp in coastal areas of the island. In fact, Socotra is one of the most beautiful islands in the world. However, today Socotra has attracted a different kind of interest, this one from countries in the region, above all the UAE and Saudi Arabia. That is when Cyclone Chapala hit the Socotra archipelago, causing extensive damage. In many regards, this assistance proved to be a Trojan Horse. In February , the then-Yemeni prime minster, Khalid Bahah, signed several agreements with Emirati aid organizations to implement developmental projects in Socotra. Since that time, the UAE has expanded its involvement in Socotra through several means. It began by buying the loyalty of the local authorities by paying extra salaries to public servants as well as giving new cars to key officials. It has also paid salaries to tribal leaders, including the heads of smaller tribal groups. In addition, the UAE has unified Yemeni security institutions present in Socotra under one authority, centralizing security matters in the island. In terms of soft power, the UAE has built or renovated dozens of schools across the island, as well as building or expanding mosques, including family mosques. The UAE has provided school buses and has distributed scholarships to study in Emirati universities. It has also sponsored social activities such as group marriages. Its most significant project is the establishment of the Sheikh Khalifa Hospital to provide medical treatment for islanders, while those requiring surgery are sent to the UAE. The Emirati presence in Socotra pushed the Saudis to also think about expanding their influence in the strategic island. The Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen began implementing humanitarian projects to guarantee the loyalty of islanders and maintain a foothold there. Competition between the Saudis and Emiratis is immediately visible, leading to polarization in the island. A consequence of this is that each country has financed projects even in remote parts of Socotra where the population is small. It was notable that in April , more than two years after Cyclone Chapala, the UAE sent a military force of around men to Socotra. They took over the airport, the seaport, and vital facilities. It is possible that the Emiratis decided to affirm their presence more forcefully in Socotra because of developments in Mahra Governorate, where Saudi Arabia had deployed its forces in November The Omani approach is focused on strengthening the Yemeni government and the local population of Socotra against the UAE. The inhabitants find themselves caught in the middle, dreaming of the days when the only storms they had to worry about were those caused by nature. The main building of Socotra airport. It is the most important gate to the island, and the only one during the monsoon season between April and October, when winds blowing from the southwest interrupt maritime traffic. The Socotra airport perimeter where Saudi military forces are stationed. According to local sources the forces number between 2, and 3, Street vendors in the Hadibo market. During March and April purchases increase, as most of the islanders store large quantities of food before the monsoon season begins. These merchants have settled in the island and become a part of the island community. The fish market in Hadibo. Socotra is well known for its fisheries as fishing is the main occupation of the islanders. The institutions of local authority are concentrated on the main road of Hadibo, shown here. The current governor, Ramzi Mahroos, whose office is located there, is the principal governmental official standing against attempts by the United Arab Emirates to control the island. Haluf port, which only receives smaller ships. Close to it, a small new port is being built by the United Arab Emirates for its own ships. His name is familiar among the islanders as he is the man responsible for all Emirati actions on the island. Revealingly, the building is protected by South Asian guards, not locals. Many of the islanders who benefit from the assistance of the United Arab Emirates show their gratitude by raising the Emirati flag above their homes. Emirati restaurants close to a fish factory own by Emiratis. They initiated investment projects without licenses from the Yemeni authorities. An uninhabited coastal area. Given the large coastal areas of Socotra that are not inhabited or guarded, the island is frequently used by smugglers active between Yemen and the Horn of Africa. The collective memory of grievances among the tribes of Socotra and Mahra reflects the unified history of the two areas, which plays a significant role in their geopolitical situation today. The remnants of a tank near the sea. However, much of this equipment has disappeared due to the negligence of the Yemeni authorities. The signs of humanitarian and developmental projects are widespread across the island regardless of how small is the project. The photo shows a large sign identifying a project for a cable and small generator to supply a medical center. A village in the Duksum area. The inhabitants of mountain villages face many difficulties as they do not have easy access to public services, and their situation worsens during monsoon season. A family mosque in the Daiham area. Mosques are present everywhere across Socotra, especially small ones built by families. A community college in Socotra. One of the educational challenges is that most of the students on the island speak Socotriyya, while the curriculum is in Arabic. Therefore, they spend a long time learning Arabic before being able to absorb the curriculum. Moreover, Socotriyya is not given attention from the educational institutions in Yemen. Photo of a dragon blood tree in the Duksum mountains. The dragon blood tree is an iconic tree with a long history of commercial use that has come to define the visual identity of Socotra, covering mountainous areas of the island. The Houq cave, which is 3 kilometers long and is located in the northeastern part of the island. Given the frequent storms in Socotra, islanders used to live in caves, before regrouping in well protected settlements. Children of Socotra after their daily swimming activity.

Buying blow Al Mukalla