WorldcrunchStay updated with comprehensive news on Yemen from Worldcrunch. Discover insights on Yemeni politics, economic strategies, societal issues, and cultural landmarks with translations from top international sources. Highlights include Sana’a, Yemeni history, and cultural events.
With more than 115 attacks since 2023, Yemen’s Houthis now offer ship operators a website to register vessels and avoid drone or missile strikes, a move that raises alarms among maritime security experts and highlights the rebels’ bid to control global shipping lanes.
As the Houthis turn politics into perpetual warfare and view the state as spoils, the international community, and UN specifically, must decide whether to treat them as legitimate actors or confront them as extremists threatening Yemen’s fragile sovereignty.
The Islamic Republic of Iran recently sent Ismail Qaani, the Revolutionary guards general who keeps ‘resurrecting’ after being reported as killed or maimed, to Baghdad to discuss rearming its proxy militias. This appears to be Tehran’s first act of regional interference since Israeli strikes in June.
A decade ago, Saudi Arabia plunged directly into the Yemeni quagmire, launching a military intervention alongside several coalition countries. Everyone expected the battle to be settled in weeks. But it soon became clear, this flash intervention would turn into an endless war, making Yemen a testing ground for broader regional policies and interests.
Israel has killed thousands of Hamas fighters. But the Gaza-based terrorist organization has not yet been completely destroyed, nor have its allied militias in the region.
The absence of documentation and an international accountability mechanism capable of deterring warring parties in Yemen has exacerbated the severity of violations related to sexual assault against children. These violations have spread across social media, revealing the extent of unspoken crimes that have yet to find their way to justice.
The Middle East needs a vision that emanates from the region itself, and includes clear reassurances to all parties.
Here, the opportunity appears for Egypt, which can play a vital role in helping neighboring countries shape this vision, after the Middle East that we knew since the Cold War has gone forever.
Amman and its allies, much like the skeptical secular Syrian opposition, await tangible actions on the ground to match the promises of pragmatist rhetoric from Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who is marketing himself as a statesman committed to building an inclusive new Syria that’s a good neighbor after abandoning extremist ideologies.
In the Middle East and North Africa, divisions are as stark as they can be. War-torn nations stand side-by-side with wealthy oil-rich countries where the elites feel disconnected from the rest of the region. But, as Yemeni freelance journalist and a human rights defender Afrah Nasser, warns, these inequalities breed monsters, and wealth will not prevent oil-rich countries from experiencing chaos and destruction.
The Houthis took control of Yemen’s capital Sanaa a decade ago in a religious coup masquerading as a revolution. Yet the Houthis have begun to speak more openly and boldly about their vision for the future of Yemen — and in doing so, may have planted the seeds of their defeat, exiled Yemeni journalist Afrah Nasser writes.
Many people, especially in the Arab region, hailed the Houthis’ attacks against Israel. But what they may not know is that Yemeni people have been caught in the crossfire.
Abdul Majeed al-Zindani was one of the most prominent founders of what was known as the “Islamic Movement” – the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in Yemen. He was sanctioned by the United States and United Nations’ Security Council over his links with al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
While the Palestinian cause is important for Iran and the Arab militias it backs, the return of this issue to the forefront may not benefit the resistance camp. And its tactic of strategic patience may not produce the intended results.
With their country in an intractable civil war, thousands of Yemeni women have been unable to obtain passports and other official documents without the permission of a male guardian or relative — as warring authorities have been systematically violating Yemeni law and women’s right to freedom of movement.
Using the methods of the Islamic regime in Tehran, the Yemeni fundamentalist insurgents have imposed repressive laws to control women’s movement and behavior.
Despite their country’s complicated situation on the economic, humanitarian and political levels, war-weary Yemenis are divided over the Houthis’ escalation in the Red Sea. The situation is raising concerns among Yemenis about their future.
The Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen are now using the conflict in Gaza as a justification for widening its reach. But the direct clash with the U.S. and others in the Red Sea may take a nine-year-long war to a whole other level.
Houthi rebels are now blocking the strategic Red Sea, by striking or seizing merchant ships, while also attempting to launch rockets into Israeli territory. This has sparked a strong response from the U.S and Britain, escalating a situation that could impact global security in major ways, with competing powers ready to cash in.
Three commercial ships traveling through the Red Sea were attacked by missiles launched by Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi rebels, while the U.S. Navy shot down three drones. Tensions that are linked to the ongoing war in Gaza conflict and that may serve as an indication as to Iran’s wider intentions.
In an interconnected world, we are faced again with the negative implications of the so-called “butterfly effect” when a localized conflict can have far-reaching consequences and trigger lasting crises. For our world’s broken food systems, the war in Ukraine should be a wake-up call.
Yemen’s itinerant beekeepers must follow the flowering season. But this nomadism, essential for their bees to produce this liquid gold known around the world, is hampered by the nation’s ongoing civil war.
“I try to tell what’s happening, but I try to be considerate, and also make poetic and beautiful images. It’s important to be sensitive, and acknowledge the complexity of what’s going on.” That’s how Italian photographer Lorenzo Tugnoli of the Contrasto agency recently described his work to the British Journal of Photography. A long-term project focused on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen just earned him the 2019 World Press Photo award for General News, Stories. Tugnoli recounted the stories behind five of his most powerful images from Yemen for this OneShot: Cinq video production. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/zru1H440qJU expand=1] Yemen Crisis — […]
AQAP, the local al-Qaeda branch, is determined to learn from its mistakes. They’ve learned that they can’t go too quickly and spill too much local blood.
Born in Egypt and educated in journalism at university, Mohannad Ghallab became an extremist and joined al-Qaeda after 9/11. He went on to become an influential voice for the terror group before being killed by a U.S. drone strike.
A view from Turkey on the new conflict that is not only shaking the map of the Middle East, but costing the lives of innocent victims.
Shia militiamen, Sunni clans, al-Qaida, Iran and Saudi Arabia all have their hands in the rapidly shifting sands of the poorest state in the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen is everybody’s business.
Old regime elements and al-Qaeda are both interested in fostering violence and widening instability as the Middle Eastern nation tries to stay on path to democracy.
Because of outdated tradition and economics, 14% of Yemeni girls are married off before their 15th birthday. But since the Arab spring, a movement is growing to stop this.
It’s her eyes that are so arresting. Big brown eyes looking at the camera. Nada Al-Ahdal holds that serious, penetrating, almost unwavering look the whole time – just under three minutes – she addresses viewers. Nada is 11 years old. If her parents had had their way, she would be married by now — married […]
For a long time, the only people interested in Yemen were Joseph Kessel and Al-Qaida. After the revolution that brought down 32 years of dictatorship, the interest of the West quickly waned, abandoning the country to its difficult political transition. It is an exhausted country, without a vision nor a hope of something better and […]