Yemen’s civil war intensified sharply almost a year ago when a Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened with air strikes, a naval blockade and ground troops to counter Houthi rebels intent on seizing the whole country.
The Houthis, Zaidi Shia tribesmen now allied with an old enemy, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, are seen by Riyadh as tools of regional arch-foe Iran, a charge they and Tehran deny.
“You feel like death is waiting in every place,” says Kholood al-Absi, 27, who lost her job with an oil services company in Sanaa late last year. “From the air it’s Saudi planes. From the ground it’s Houthis, car bombs, explosions, clashes. You feel the lives of Yemenis are very cheap.”
Reached by telephone at her home in the capital, she says: “I have a valid passport ... I’m just ready to go.”
But she admits it’s a fantasy for now. Her family would never let her travel as a single woman, even if she had enough money to study abroad and seek a new life.
Besides, she can’t imagine crowding into a refugee boat for Djibouti. “It’s very dangerous, so I think it’s better for me to die in my home than to die far away,” she laughs.
Malnourished children
About 170,000 people have fled Yemen so far, mostly to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. Most of them are not Yemenis, but returning refugees and other foreigners. The UN expects another 167,000 departures this year.
Given the immense hardships in Yemen, a greater refugee exodus might have been expected. People fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have flooded into the EU since early 2015 causing a crisis.
However, penned in by ocean and desert, with only Saudi Arabia and Oman as direct neighbours, Yemenis have no easy outlets - although Riyadh now allows those already in the kingdom to stay. Flights out are irregular at best. Former havens such as Jordan now demand visas and set tough conditions.
Mogib Abdullah, a Yemeni spokesman for UNHCR, says his countrymen have in the past tended not to migrate for work much further than Saudi Arabia, are culturally reluctant to become refugees, and view getting to Europe as a very difficult option.
The war has inflicted a devastating toll on 26m Yemenis struggling to survive in an already impoverished country beset by acute water scarcity, poor governance and corruption.
The UN estimates conservatively 6,000 people have been killed, about half of them civilians. It says four-fifths of Yemenis need outside aid. More than half have poor food supply and at least 320,000 children under five are severely malnourished. Upwards of 2.4m have been forcibly displaced.
