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When President Joe Biden announced in February that he was ending US support for “offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” Aisha Jumaan, president of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, phoned her colleagues in Yemen. “I was calling them to say, ‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel,’” said Jumaan, who is Yemeni American.
Ten years ago today, government forces opened fire on protesters in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, killing 12 people.
It was not the most deadly display of violence against protesters since demonstrations calling for the removal of the country’s dictator of 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had begun, but it was the moment when it became clear to many that he would refuse to cede power. As such, it marked a crucial turning point in the uprising.
Taha al-Jalal, who I met in Sana’a in 2014 and later married after he moved to Italy, was 23 at the time and living at home in Sana’a with his parents and younger siblings. He was studying modern languages at the University of Sana’a, close to where the demonstrations had started in late January in an area that became known as “Change Square”.
by Yanis Iqbal / April 15th, 2021
The Yemeni city of Marib is in the thick of fighting between Houthi rebels and loyalists of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi’s government. Marib is the capital of Marib Governorate, lying roughly 100 miles northeast of the country’s capital in Sana’a. It was established after the 1984 discovery of oil deposits in the region and contains much of Yemen’s oil, gas, and electric resources. Marib is the last governorate under the control of the Hadi government, but it has been under increasing attack by the Houthis since early 2020. If seized by the Houthis, the resistance group can use that advantage in negotiations and even continue further south.