Yemen’s collateral damage

The five year long bloody civil war that spiralled out of control soon after it broke out in 2015, has claimed the lives of "tens and thousands" of civilians. Yes "tens and thousands"—that's how the civilian casualties in Yemen is presented by the media because no accurate data is available. Why? The UN stopped updating the death toll in Yemen in 2017 when it had reached 10,000 fatalities. Independent research organisations though have tried to keep track of the casualty figures and estimates range between 60,000 and a couple of lakhs.

According to a UN report in early 2019, by the end of the year the death toll in Yemen was estimated to have been 233,000, or 0.8 percent of Yemen's population of nearly 30 million—102,000 lives lost to conflict while another 131,000 to diseases. 2019 has ended but we do not know for sure how many have died so far. And this is just one of the tragedies of Yemen.

While the dead are gone and are finally at peace, it is the living who are suffering: from hunger, from the pain of losing their loved ones, from the wounds of conflict, often wishing to join the dead.

The UN has termed the situation in Yemen "the world's worst humanitarian crisis". And why not? According to the UN, 10 million people in Yemen are on the brink of famine and 80 percent of the population are in need of aid.

"More than three million people have been displaced, cholera epidemics have killed hundreds, and at least 2.2 million children under 5 suffer from severe malnutrition", Al Jazeera recently reported citing the UN.

All this due to various factors that prevent aid from reaching the affected people. First of all, donors and the rich countries of the world are failing to live up to their pledged donation figures. As of August 2019, less than half of the pledged USD 2.6 billion has been raised to support the helpless Yemenis, resulting in the UN pulling the plug on life-saving programmes in the country.

And to rub salt on the Yemenis' wounds, more than half of the USD 2.6 billion aid had been pledged by countries involved in the war, including the Saudis and the US. No wonder aid was slow—if not absent altogether—in coming.

And even with the aid that is coming in the country—in cash or kind (including food and medicine supplies) most of it is not able to reach the affected people.

The indiscriminate bombing by the Saudi coalition in Yemen—often allegedly intentionally targeting civilian cites and key infrastructural positions such as bridges and important roads—has made it difficult to deliver essentials to the innocent civilians severely in need of them. Mostly because of damaged land connectivity.

And while this is a problem, what is trickier and more cumbersome is getting the aid, especially food supplies, out of the ports and to the affected people. Both the Iranian-backed Houthis—officially known as Ansar Allah—and the internationally-backed Yemeni government's coalition with the Saudis, are doing their best to turn humanitarian aid into weapons of political power. Both have been accused of hindering aid transportation to the affected areas/regions, often delaying issuing visas, charging extra payment for issuing visas, asking for a diverse range of documents, permits and seals at the various check-points the country has become riddled with, and often not authorising the agencies to distribute them among the affected people.

In one instance, the Houthis delayed the distribution of 2,000 tonnes of food that could have fed 160,000 people in the district of Aslam, where the people had been reduced to eating boiled leaves. According to an aid official quoted by Al Jazeera, by the time the Houthis gave the clearance in November, the food was spoiled "beyond the point of salvage". And despite the availability of food, the villagers were left with leaves to eat.

Not only that, the Houthis had also asked for a two percent tax on the aid and supplies that they would clear to distribute in areas held by them. And while they had to later back down on this incredulous demand under pressure from the international community, the Houthis are still persistent about the myriad other demands from the international community.

According to a UN aid official, almost 300,000 pregnant and nursing mothers and children under five years of age had not received nutritional supplements for more than six months because the Houthis "held beneficiaries hostage to the 2 percent" demand.

And the Houthis are not the only party seeking to use aid for political gains. According to Middle East Eye, in 2018, the Saudi-led coalition revealed a new plan to deliver "unprecedented relief to the people of Yemen". The plan was simple: Yemen Comprehensive Humanitarian Operations (YCHO) as the aid programme was called, aimed at "addressing immediate aid shortfalls while simultaneously building capacity for long-term improvement of humanitarian aid and commercial goods imports to Yemen". And how was this to be done? Through increasing the capacity of the ports in Yemen. But there was a catch: the ports excluded the ones not under the coalition's control—Hodeidah and Saleef. These two handled 80 percent of all of Yemen's imports. And of course, the Saudi-led coalition asked for cut down in the flow of cargo these two ports handled: meaning the starving people would be further starved. No wonder the Saudis had been accused by the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen of starvation politics with regard to the closure of the two said ports. The Houthis later had to withdraw from the ports of Hodeidah, Saleef and Ras Isa as part of a ceasefire deal reached in Sweden in December 2018.

But the war wages on amidst sporadic clashes, amidst the selfish interest of the warring parties. And the helpless civilians—often targeted intentionally by the various actors—become collateral damage. Just last week, while retaliating to Houthis downing a Saudi Tornado fighter jet, the Saudis launched airstrikes in al-Jawf killing 31 civilians, including 19 children.

While mercy flights have finally started carrying critically ill patients to Jordan, it is a tiny ray of hope that things might change for the better in Yemen. A permanent end to this atrocious civil war remains a far cry. Yemen still remains the world's worst humanitarian crisis, where people suffer and perish for the political and economic lust of the warring parties, and their suppliers of arms. Perhaps human suffering will persist as long as economic gain and political supremacy prevail over humanity.

Tasneem Tayeb is a columnist for The Daily Star.

Her Twitter handle is: @TayebTasneem