The war in Yemen is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Largely started as an internal fight between rebels and their government, it's now a much more bloody battleground in the regional rivalry between Iran — which backs the rebels — and Saudi Arabia, which backs the government. An NPR team spent weeks working to get a picture of the war, which has often taken place beyond public view. NPR traveled with the Saudi military into Yemen, interviewed people in rebel-controlled zones, and then traveled to Djibouti, in East Africa, a destination for Yemeni refugees. What emerged were the stories of people like Ola Ali Salim.
Salim is a citizen of Yemen, now a refugee. She had one daughter with her husband, who supported the family by driving a motorcycle, carrying one or two passengers at a time on the back of the seat. Last year her husband was driving around the capital city, Sana'a, when it erupted in violence. A former president was trying to switch sides in the civil war and was killed. Sana'a was also being bombed by a Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels. Amid explosions and gunfire, Salim simply stopped hearing from her spouse. "He never called. We don't know any news of him, so the only explanation is that he's dead," she told NPR. "They didn't find the body." It was only her latest loss. In a separate incident, three of her cousins were killed in what she believed to be an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition – the only side in the battle with an air force.
In December, she packed a few belongings and traveled to the coast, hiding her grief beneath the black head covering, or niqab, which Yemeni women are expected to wear. She brought along her 12-year-old daughter. They boarded a small boat that bobbed across the Gulf of Aden in the middle of the night. They arrived in the African country of Djibouti, where NPR interviewed her. Djibouti can have something of the feel of the movie Casablanca — a former French African colony, which serves as a way station or last refuge for the desperate. But there was nothing romantic about Salim's flight. She lives in a United Nations refugee camp in a tent with a floor of desert sand. She was within sight of the water, and nearly within sight of the country where she lost her husband. The war that displaced Salim has a U.S. connection, which was on exhibit in Washington this week. Saudi Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman visited the White House and got a warm welcome from President Trump, who showed pictures of U.S. military hardware sold to Saudi Arabia.
A globalized conflict
The U.S. has provided targeting information, equipment and aircraft refueling to the Saudi air campaign, which has been widely criticized for being indiscriminate and killing civilians in places like hospitals, funerals and homes. Several thousand civilians have been killed since 2015, when the Saudis got into the war. On Tuesday, the day the prince met Trump, the U.S. Senate defeated a resolution 55-44 that would have limited what the U.S. can do to support the Saudi war effort. The issue will likely come up again. While both sides – the Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition — have killed, detained or displaced civilians, much of the international focus has been on how the Saudi-led campaign escalated the violence. The Saudis, along with a coalition that includes the United Arab Emirates, argue that they are countering a dangerous rebel faction backed by Iran. They note that Houthis have fired missiles – allegedly Iranian-made – into Saudi territory.
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