As British troops pulled out of Aden in 1967 the band of the Royal Marines struck up a tune to send them on their way – not Rule Britannia or Land of Hope and Glory but a Cockney song, Fings Ain't Wot They Used To Be. It was an ironic choice but, in the circumstances, probably the right one. "Fings...
Blog archive: Yemen
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29th June 2022
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7th April 2022After months of apparent deadlock, the last few days have brought tentative signs of a shift in Yemen's seven-year conflict. On Friday Hans Grundberg, the UN's special envoy, announced that the protagonists had agreed to a two-month ceasefire. The truce, which came...
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30th November 2021A Yemeni journalist has become the latest victim of Saudi Arabia's laws against religious disbelief. Thirty-year-old Ali Muhsin Abu Lahoum worked in Sana'a for the Yemen Times before moving to Saudi Arabia in 2015 and taking up a job with a TV station. More recently he is said to have been...
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17th February 2021The Yemeni city of Marib lies 120 km to the east of the capital, Sana'a, with mountainous territory in between. It was from Marib, in the early stages of the six-year war, that pro-government forces hoped to launch an assault against the Houthi rebels who had seized Sana'a. Since then, though, the...
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15th February 2021The US State Department confirmed on Friday that it is revoking a last-minute decision by the Trump administration to designate Yemen's Houthi movement as a terrorist organisation. The issue is not whether the Houthis deserve to be designated – their atrocities are well...
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28th January 2021When Antony Blinken, the newly-appointed US Secretary of State, gave his first press briefing on Wednesday the first topic to come up was the war in Yemen. It's rare for Yemen to receive much attention in Washington but there are signs that the Biden administration intends to take an active...
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1st January 2021The attack on Aden airport in war-torn Yemen which killed at least 25 people and injured more than 100 on Wednesday appears to have had a political purpose rather than a military one. Crowds had gathered to welcome a plane carrying ministers in one of the country's two rival governments....
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17th September 2020There are a few countries in the world where the coronavirus pandemic has not followed the course that scientists expected – and the reasons are puzzling. Yemen is one example in the Middle East and there are others in Africa such as Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and Somalia...
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13th July 2020When the coronavirus swept into the Yemeni city of Aden there was little to stand in its way. The war-torn country was already in the midst of a humanitarian crisis and this time last month people were falling ill and dying in untold numbers. Few received any medical treatment because the...
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14th June 2020Yemen's health system is "overwhelmed and collapsing" as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, the UN body that coordinates relief in emergencies and natural disasters has warned. People with symptoms are often not receiving health care in Yemen "due to a lack of resources or the inability...
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1st June 2020The health minister in one of Yemen's two rival governments has defended its policy of concealing information about the Covid-19 epidemic in the areas it controls. The virus appears to be spreading rapidly throughout the country – many deaths have been reported in the south – but the Houthi...
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27th May 2020There used to be about ten burials a day in the cemeteries of Yemen's second city, Aden, but since Covid-19 arrived the number has risen to around 80 a day. Although many of these deaths have not been properly investigated, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) which runs the city's only dedicated...
