Yemen

Harry travels only in South Yemen, on a road trip from Seiyun on the edge of the Hadhramaut to the port city of al-Mukalla. The north is Houthi-controlled and completely off limits to him; the south he describes as fifty-fifty.

His summary after the first leg is the bluntest in the bundle: the situation these people are in is the worst of any country he has been to, and that, he says, is saying something.

Getting in

• Flights are the hard part. As far as Harry can find, the only route in is from Cairo, on Yemenia, at around $1,000 return. It is the only airline and the only flight he can get into the airport he needs.
• The visa required an HIV test and a hepatitis test.
• North Yemen is off limits — Houthi rebel territory. Everything on these pages is the south.
• The government requires every tourist to have armed security. Harry didn’t know this before arriving; the escort is issued by the police and is a condition of travelling to certain areas.

Observations

From I Ignored Western Media and Went to Yemen 🇾🇪

• The war, as Harry sets it out: a civil war between the Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, and the Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia and the West. Over 250,000 lives lost, millions displaced and dependent on aid, and what he calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
• The Houthi movement’s history: it began in the 1990s in northern Yemen as a religious group called the Believing Youth, radicalised after 9/11 — its slogan is God is great, death to America, death to Israel — and moved to armed rebellion, drawing in Saudi airstrikes and ground operations and reported Iranian support, turning the war into a Saudi–Iranian proxy conflict.
• Geography is the reason anyone outside cares. Yemen sits on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait; Harry’s figure for the Red Sea and Suez corridor is 12% of global trade, which makes disruption there worth doing.
• Money is the daily crisis, not the fighting. Cost of living is what people name first when Harry asks. The currency isn’t stable, so anything large — he is given a car as the example — is bought in Saudi riyals instead.
• Government jobs pay around $40 a month, so people hold several.
• Electricity runs three hours on, three hours off, and it used to be better.
• Guns are ordinary. His guide’s estimate is that 30–40% of people carry one wherever they go, and the market selling them sits open on a main road.
• Yemen is statistically the worst place in the world to be a woman, and Harry says the thing he as a man could most easily have overlooked is the most visible thing there is: everywhere he goes, there are no women on the streets. They are at home, they cannot drive, and he states that they are circumcised at birth.
• Islam is observed more devoutly than anywhere he has been — a whole town in the mosque at prayer time.
• Khat is the national pastime. A dry country with no alcohol, so the stimulant leaf is what people chew; Harry chews it for hours in the car and says the energy is real.
• The resilience is the thing he keeps returning to: people in the worst circumstances he has seen, smiling and not complaining.
• No tourism is coming, which he thinks means things get worse before better.

From Inside Yemen: A Country in Freefall 🇾🇪

• The numbers behind the ranking. Yemen is the worst place in the world to be a woman; 6% of women are in the workforce and over 50% of girls are married before 18. Harry’s account of why: patriarchal traditions in which men are the decision-makers, a legal system heavily shaped by Sharia, and a war that has destroyed the schools and healthcare that would be the way out.
• The dress rules run both ways. Asked what the male equivalent of the burka is, he is told men may not show anything above the knee — shorts are forbidden in Yemen. See cover up in conservative countries.
• Checkpoints are the daily friction, not the danger. Waits of up to an hour while one security shift hands over to the next. Harry names this as the only bad thing about Yemen and about countries like it.
• Khat comes from the north, which is Houthi-held, so it is expensive in the south. Good and bad grades, and the sellers do well out of it.
• People approach the camera with unusual confidence. Men stop to practise English, boys ride over to ask his football team. His comparison is India, where people also approach but are usually shy.
• What Yemenis say when asked for a message: they are against war anywhere, and Gaza is what they name.
• Saddam Hussein is a hero here. His picture is in car windows across al-Mukalla — a martyr for never betraying Muslims and for standing against the United States.
• The south does not always call itself Yemen. A man who invites Harry for tea insists this is South Arabia, a separate country until sixty years ago and British before that.
• Weddings vary enormously between tribes. The second one Harry is invited to is nothing like the first: a single day rather than three nights, the contract signed there and then, and four people marrying at once. What both have in common is that the bride is not present — she is at home. Obs: the video doesn’t say where this second wedding takes place, so it is recorded here rather than on a place page.
• Generators are how the rich opt out of the three-hours-on cycle. Harry recognises them from Lebanon, and notes that fossil fuel’s downside is not a problem anyone here has room to prioritise.
• His closing note is about himself, not the country: he says he now feels permanently grateful for water, electricity, food and a clean bed. The hope Yemenis themselves name is unity — that people recognise where their shared interest lies.

Places

• Seiyun
• Shibam
• Wadi Doan
• Al-Mukalla