Hakim, a local tribal leader, was already on his way from his village home to the customs office in Dhamar City for an important meeting with the governor when he received notice that the location of the meeting had changed. Hakim, along with a number of other prominent figures in Dhamar province, were due to meet with the governor in less than an hour to resolve some pending social, economic, and political issues. On that morning in 2017, Yemen’s current conflict had already raged for over two years, and the governor was hoping to better establish the role of local authorities in the province.
Thirty minutes after Hakim received notice of the new location for the meeting, he was just entering the city when it was shaken by the thundering explosions of several missiles slamming into the customs office. He was stunned as he watched dense clouds of smoke rising from the building where he had so recently been heading to meet the governor. After the first minutes of initial shock, Hakim began to make his way towards the customs office to see how he could help—after all, it could have been him buried under the rubble. A stout man, he moved more slowly than the younger men who passed him running towards the site of the strike to rescue whoever they could. Soon, ambulances and military crews were racing past Hakim in the streets—transporting the injured and the bodies of the dead to the nearest hospital. Hakim had never seen so much blood. Then he noticed a man sobbing into his mobile phone. “My wife,” thought Hakim, “I need to call my wife. She still thinks I was going to the customs office.”
However, when Hakim tried to dial his wife’s number all lines were busy. He couldn’t get through amongst all the other frantic calls of loved ones trying desperately to determine the fate of their family members. It was half an hour before he could finally reach his wife. She cried when she heard his voice. “It was a really difficult day for my friends and family and especially my wife,” says Hakim. “I remember my wife’s tears and the sound of her voice when a call finally connected and I told her, ‘Don’t worry, I’m okay.’”
Hakim did eventually meet with the governor and other local officials from around Dhamar that day, however today—more than six years later—Dhamari authorities are still struggling to establish any meaningful forms of local governance in the midst of Yemen’s ongoing conflict. Initially, Dhamar’s authorities were able to fund some of the budget required for local governance during the war by taxing trade that passed between areas controlled by Yemen’s Internationally Recognized Government (IRG) and the de facto Houthi authorities who hold Sana’a. Dhamar City lies 100 kilometers south of Sana’a along a main road that connects the city of Yarim to Yemen’s ancient capital. However, growing insecurity on that road has displaced trade eastwards since late 2018, bringing more hardships to the province and the people of Dhamar. Prior to the war, Dhamar’s poverty rate was just over 30 percent. Now, over 60 percent of the population—nearly 1.5 million people—need humanitarian assistance, while Dhamar also hosts nearly 200,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs). 192 schools in Dhamar have been damaged in the war and Dhamar is a province where teachers’ salaries are still not being paid—further disrupting education.[1]
Such impacts of war and conquest are not new to the people of Dhamar, however. The legendary Himyarite King Dhamar Ali Yahbir II, who ruled from 15-35 AD,[2] built Dhamar City in a basin 12 miles wide that lies 8,000 feet above sea level between two volcanic peaks. Due to its strategic location, the city’s subsequent development was largely shaped and augmented by various conflicts and occupations—including those of the Ethiopian Empire, the Persian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.[3] Dhamar emerged as one of the centers of Yemeni resistance to the Ottomans, and Dhamar’s Qasimi family was responsible for the Ottoman’s final expulsion from Yemen. The Qasimi’s then established a capital in the town of Doran, northwest of Dhamar City—while Dhamar City remained one of Yemen’s only historic city centers to lack the fortified walls and landmark gates that characterize most of Yemen’s ancient urban areas.[4]
The openness of this unfortified city is also reflected in its spiritual importance. Long a principal religious center of the Zaydi sect of Islam, dominant in Yemen for many centuries, Imam Sharaf Al-Din erected the Madrasah Al-Shamsiyyah—a theological school—in Dhamar City, completing it in 1543. He named the school after his son, Shams Al-Din. In addition to religious studies, the institution was famous for teaching mathematics, astronomy, literature, philosophy, and logic and it was a symbol of moderation and progress. Although located at a center of the Zaydi tradition, all four schools of Islamic jurisprudence were studied at the madrasah and religious scholars of all denominations graduated from it—alongside scientific, cultural, and literary figures who contributed to Yemen’s intellectual and scientific life. The madrasah’s educational role ended in the late 1980s, but the building remains a defining feature of the city to this day.[5]
Furthermore, Dhamar City was also a spiritual center for Yemeni Jews, who called the city Hadoram. The zenith of Jewish life in Dhamar occurred in the 15th century and Dhamar’s Jews maintained a permanent rabbinical court and seven synagogues there. Most of Dhamar’s Jews lived in a walled quarter within the perimeter of Dhamar City that was accessible by four gates until the Mawza Expulsion.[6] However when Jews returned to Dhamar a year later, a new Jewish quarter was built outside the city’s perimeter. By the early 19th century Dhamar City still had a Jewish population of approximately 1,000—a number that declined to about 300 by the 1940s.[7] Dhamar’s Jewish community possessed two famous Torah scrolls to which pilgrimages were made until Dhamar’s remaining Jews immigrated to Israel.[8]
Beyond its strategic location at a historic crossroads of thought, imperial waves, and trade, Dhamar’s volcanic geology has also left it rich in natural resources. The province is a center of Yemen’s small and largely artisanal mining sector, where ascoria, zeolite, and agate[9] are extracted. It is also home to several natural mineral steam baths. However, perhaps most importantly, Dhamar’s rich volcanic soil has made it Yemen’s fifth most agriculturally productive province, accounting for more than five percent of agricultural production nationwide—including about 50 percent of Yemen’s annual potato crop. In 1977, a cooperative relationship with a Dutch organization developed the Dhamar valley into a hub for the cultivation of potatoes. The valley’s high altitude provided ideal conditions for potatoes, with drilled wells making irrigation water available throughout the area all year round. However, although Dhamar’s soils have continued to yield potato harvests throughout Yemen’s war—with animal power still used for most potato-growing operations—those yields have been decreasing. Yemen’s total annual potato output is down nearly 25 percent from over 303,000 metric tons in 2010 to 228,000 metric tons in 2021. This is particularly significant in view of Yemen’s ongoing food security crisis, since the potato produces more food and more energy per unit area and per unit time than any other crop according to the World Potato Congress.[10]
Within two years of the airstrike on Dhamar’s customs office, Hakim and his family had joined 4.5 million other Yemenis living in protracted displacement—representative of the attrition of local leadership all across Yemen. As conflict has raged on, governance around the country has been increasingly limited to parties that gained legitimacy through battle or other coercive means—or who simply govern on behalf of foreign interests by proxy.[11] Many of these parties benefit from the war economy, collecting fees without delivering services. Meanwhile, local leaders may face little choice other than to collaborate without the backing of partners committed to peace and the prosperity of the Yemeni people. Thus, the people of Dhamar, like Yemenis nationwide, continue to wait at the crossroads of hunger and conflict for the undoing of modern imperial schemes on Yemen’s land and resources. In the meantime, the return of local leaders like Hakim—who are skilled in traditional conflict resolution and invested in the long-term welfare of their communities—will remain an important step towards the emergence of representative governance in Yemen’s ancient centers of political, social, and economic destiny.
[1] https://yemenlg.org/governorates/dhamar/
[2] https://www.saba.ye/en/news519051.htm
[3] https://www.pastcities.com/showitem.php?item=dhamar-yemen&lang=en#gsc.tab=0
[4] https://www.archnet.org/authorities/4424, https://www.britannica.com/place/Dhamar-Yemen
[5] https://almadaniyamag.com/2019/05/28/the-madrasa-al-shamsiya-and-its-role-in-community-awareness-in-the-mid-twentieth-century/
[6] One of the traumatic events of Yemeni Jewish history occurred in 1679 when the Jews of Yemen were exiled to the arid region of Mawza—to which they largely traveled on foot through dangerous terrain. Survival was difficult in Mawza’s harsh environment, however the exile lasted only a year because the Yemeni communities that had expelled them needed their services and products. Upon return following the exile, Yemeni Jews found that their properties and possessions had been seized by their neighbors and the pain of this expulsion influenced the poetry of Shalom Shabazi, who was venerated by both Jews and Muslims in Yemen.
[7] http://archive.diarna.org/site/detail/public/2668/
[8] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/dham-x0101-r
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdn2JOqNbFk
[10] https://potatocongress.org/stories/challenges-and-opportunities-for-seed-availability-and-quality-in-yemen/
[11] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/yemen/conflict-yemen-more-proxy-war-peace-process
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