As I went about my day on March 15, the thought that Yemen would find its way to the top of Trump’s foreign policy agenda so early in his second term was hardly at the top of my mind, much less that it might make headlines as part of an intelligence scandal involving the chief editor of The Atlantic. Having just returned to the southern port city of Aden — currently the seat of the country’s internationally recognized government — on one of my regular visits, I was quickly immersed in the uneven rhythm of lethargy and hyperactivity that tends to characterize life during Ramadan. My mind raced with thoughts of possible meetings and friends I should probably link up with. The pre-iftar quiet, combined with my colleague’s passion for punctuality, meant I had about half an hour to gaze at the sea as I waited for sunset and dinner at a favorite fish restaurant. Sufficiently stuffed, we then went to chew khat — Yemen’s favorite leafy social lubricant — with a senior government official and a few of his aides, just barely dodging the Islamic festive season’s inevitable early evening burst of traffic.
Khat chews tend to follow a familiar pattern, and this one was no exception. Pleasantries and updates are exchanged; eventually, topics shift to more serious subjects. Partway through a discussion on the administrative challenges facing the Yemeni government, our host was suddenly distracted by his phone. The news had broken: The U.S. had commenced a round of airstrikes in Sanaa. Although we were surprised at the time, the attacks seem inevitable in hindsight.
It’s been more than a decade since Ansar Allah, more commonly referred to as the Houthis — a Shiite-led revivalist group, militia and political movement — captured the bulk of northern Yemen in the fall of 2014. A Saudi-led military intervention to push back the Houthis allowed the internationally recognized government to return to Aden but stalled before making substantive progress toward taking Sanaa. As the Saudis have opened channels of communication with the group and shifted to de-escalating the conflict, a stalemate between the two has deepened. U.N.-led peace efforts have also failed to make any progress, enmeshing the divided country in a state of “no war, no peace.”
It was only after the Houthis decided to directly enter the fray after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, the punishing Israeli assault on Gaza and an ensuing slew of regional tensions, that Yemen was brought back into the headlines. The Houthis opted to use a weapons arsenal built through a mix of smuggling, alleged Iranian technical assistance and the spoils of state capture to attempt to shut down Red Sea shipping and launch a series of sporadic attacks on Israeli territory, in ostensible solidarity with beleaguered Palestinians. Although U.N. efforts to end the killing were derailed and a U.S.-led military operation to “deter and degrade” Houthi capacities saw the return of airstrikes for the first time since the detente with the Saudis, the group still managed to emerge emboldened by the time they joined the Israel-Hamas ceasefire on Jan. 15. Even if the comparative calm fueled hopes of a return to normalcy in the Red Sea and a potential political opening in Yemen itself, the fragility of the since-collapsed Gaza ceasefire — and the clash between the Houthis’ defiant rhetoric and the bellicose regional positioning of the incoming Trump administration — underlined the risks that the incipient lull would be short-lived.
While the ultimate trajectory of the administration’s intervention in Yemen is anyone’s guess, there’s little question that it has smashed said lull. In the days since March 15, the U.S. has carried out dozens of strikes targeting the Houthis, appearing to put some dents in their military capacity but, according to local reporting, also leading to the deaths of a number of civilians. The Houthis, for their part, appear as defiant as ever, even targeting Beersheba on the evening of March 18.
Most people in Aden have little, if any, affinity for the Houthis. The city still bears the scars from battles to repel the group’s attacks in 2015; its skyline is still dominated by the shells of once-glistening seaside hotels that were wrecked by ground fighting and airstrikes. A decade of U.N.-led peace talks has done little to convince many residents of Aden that the Houthis no longer constitute an existential threat. For backers of the secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC), whose forces effectively control the city’s security structure, the group represents a particularly aggressive example of northern dominance and demonstrates the need for South Yemen to reemerge as independent. Those who support Yemen’s continued unity tend to be just as pessimistic about any potential peace with the group, citing its hard-line religious ideology and autocratic governance.
Discussions of the latest developments, unsurprisingly a dominant focus among Aden’s chattering class, have nonetheless been rife with ambivalence. For many, of course, the image of an adversary getting pounded has been cause for celebration. Even the more jubilant expressions of Trump-facilitated schadenfreude, however, have been colored by the uncertainty over what comes next.
At an iftar hosted by one of Aden’s most prominent journalists a few days into the strikes, the collective speculation over where things were headed was pervasive. After all, it’s not every Ramadan gathering that your host has to interrupt breaking fast to phone in updates to one of the region’s most popular satellite TV channels. But beneath the play-by-play of relatively distant strikes and targets lurked anxiety over how things could hit home. Would the Houthis opt to escalate internally, reigniting relatively static front lines? Would the shift in commercial activity and port traffic to Aden from Houthi-controlled areas, which most here hope will be spurred by the Trump administration’s designation of the group as a “foreign terrorist organization,” push the Houthis to sow chaos rather than cede advantage to their adversaries? Would divides and discord among various anti-Houthi factions do the work for them?
The resilience of Aden’s residents means life will go on regardless; as in any other conflict zone, people will find a way to get by, if only because they have no other choice. The buzz of Aden’s souks and its newly reopened mall, which was destroyed during the fighting in 2015, testifies that Ramadan is as festive as ever. As an outsider, the normalcy of life here — the daily hum of efforts to somehow carve out a life in a situation of perpetual uncertainty — feels almost poignant. But as much as I may gripe about the lack of media coverage about Yemen — except when it has pertained to the Trump administration mishandling sensitive information about the U.S. strikes — I can sympathize, at least on some level, with my journalist friends in the region, who have often struggled to find a hook for Yemen coverage. The quotidian struggles of those living in a country immersed in an (as yet) relatively intractable conflict don’t tend to generate headlines — even if they both reflect and shape the events that do.
From afar, it’s easy to see war through the prism of battlefields and gruff guys with guns. But during my recent time in Yemen, the bureaucrats working thanklessly to somehow hold things together have proven the most fascinating: the former expat who left a job working for local government in provincial Canada to spearhead reform efforts back home; the local officials attempting to make sure the lights stay on; my friend Mansour, an official with the thankless task of leading the Yemeni Central Bank’s efforts to keep the country’s monetary system afloat, even though he could easily be making far more, working far less, in a cushy private-sector job somewhere. How can one maintain a sense of duty and keep at it in the face of such adversity and with so many seemingly logical incentives to cash out?
This isn’t to dismiss the gruff guys with guns. Over the course of repeated trips with the same guards, I’ve grown to bond with our security detail — their quiet pride in their role providing security in uncertain times, their hopes for a better future for their kids, whom I’ve literally watched grow up through the photos their fathers excitedly share on their phones. It’s hard to view the various soldiers manning checkpoints as heavily armed, faceless specters when I’m saying almost tearful goodbyes to a pair of them every time I leave for the airport. It’s even harder to dismiss the ground-level protagonists of a conflict as simply — as the hackneyed framings often go — fighting for nothing when I’ve been able to vicariously experience the extent to which all of this, on a personal level, is a battle for survival and dignity.
I’m humble enough to admit that I don’t know where the situation in Yemen is heading. To be honest, I don’t think anyone does. It’s easy, however, to take a stab at what Yemen needs. The laundry lists of underfunded ministries, underprovided services and dire humanitarian and economic statistics simultaneously underline and overshadow the key requirement. People are craving some sign that there’s a way out — or at least a trajectory toward a form of stability that is stronger and more sustainable.
I’ve consistently found myself distracted on this trip by, oddly enough, Yemeni TV. As in much of the rest of the Islamic world, the abbreviated Ramadan television season is a key feature of the holy month in Yemen. The prime-time offerings of Yemen’s al-Saida channel have been a leitmotif of this trip: The popularity of the channel’s flagship series, “Durub al-Marjala,” is such that even senior government officials will interrupt meetings to catch the latest episode. Its signature Ramadan music punctuating advertising breaks instantly transports me to prewar Ramadans spent in Sanaa. The popular, if hackneyed, man-on-the-street trivia shows and the cacophony of self-consciously campy commercials for iconic locally manufactured products — Yemeni advertisers, it seems, love nothing more than to feature a group of rambunctious toddlers set to a catchy jingle — fuel a phantom nostalgia for a Yemeni childhood that I never actually experienced. The sheer ubiquity of it all suggests a tacit acknowledgment of a still-present collective identity, all the while fueling reminders of a more peaceful past that feels equal parts comforting and uncomfortable. I may just be easily distracted. Or perhaps all of this just serves to underline that a better Yemen is possible, if distant.
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