Aliya[1] married a journalist. They had two daughters together and lived happily until her husband’s political stances landed him in prison. Although he was eventually released, Aliya’s husband was never the same after that. Her heart broke, imagining what must have happened to him in prison as she attempted to comfort the deeply disturbed man who came home to her. Some days, she felt like she was going crazy herself. Still, her heart broke again when his family forced him to divorce her and took her two daughters from her. She coped with her grief by training to become a hairdresser so she could support herself. However, she soon married again and had three more children. She was grateful for a second chance at happiness.
Then Aliya’s second husband began to suffer from bouts with schizophrenia. His behavior grew aggressive, and he threatened her and her three children. Finally, he divorced her, too, and she returned to her work as a hairdresser to support the children. Nevertheless, when Aliya learned that he was wandering the streets and no one was caring for him, she went out and found him and made sure he got the specialized treatment he needed. He improved remarkably and eventually they remarried. However, not long after that Yemen’s war started, and they found themselves living on the frontlines of the battle for Taiz. Leaving all their belongings behind, they fled to Sana’a where the airstrikes that rocked the Yemeni capital through the first years of the conflict also shattered her husband’s fragile mind once again. Thus, Aliya once more returned to her work as a hairdresser to support her family through Yemen’s deepening humanitarian crisis. Although she soon had many clients, Aliya never earned enough to pay for her husband’s treatment and all their other household needs. Today, they are living in two rented rooms where they sometimes lack water, electricity, and food. Aliya’s children even had to drop out of school for a time, until a local non-profit began delivering food baskets to them every other month. For Aliya, that small measure of food security that has put her children back in school and allows her to pay for her husband’s medication is now a lifeline as she continues to fight for her family’s physical and psychological well-being in the daily pressures of Yemen’s war.
Soon, Yemeni families like Aliya’s will have lived through nine years of ongoing conflict—including a protracted battle for their hearts and minds in both the political and psychological spheres. Overt expression in Yemen has long been limited by censorship and the brutal reprisals that powerful interest groups visit on those who dare to voice ideas in opposition to their interests—like that experienced by Aliya’s first husband. Unable to overcome the trauma of his prison experience, he later died from gunshot wounds after he wandered into a street skirmish along frontlines near his home. Throughout the war years, journalists and writers like him have been called more dangerous than combatants and targeted and treated as combatants. They face harassment, threats, and detention from all sides of Yemen’s multilateral conflict. Some have even been killed. A total of 40 rights violations against Yemeni journalists were recorded in the first half of 2023 alone.[2]Meanwhile, social media influencers have also often been arrested and imprisoned for airing popular grievances[3] such as criticizing authorities for corruption, mismanagement, and failure to provide basic services.[4]
Alongside this battle to control wartime narratives in Yemen, unrelenting violence is also leaving deep psychological scars on Yemeni hearts and minds. In 2019, a German health care consulting firm[5] carried out a study on mental health conditions in Yemen in cooperation with the European Commission and Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population. This study found that 45 percent of Yemenis are living with post-traumatic stress disorder, 27 percent with depression, 25 percent with anxiety, 18 percent with schizophrenia, and four percent with phobia. These rates are met with limited to no access to specialized services as well as limited social acceptance of the conditions—leaving most Yemenis to handle them on their own. Meanwhile, for children, ongoing interrupted access to quality education remains a concern in terms of the cognitive and emotional development, as well as mental health, of 10.76 million school-aged girls and boys in Yemen.[6] This includes children like Ahmed, who are searching for ways to support their families while their parents live with debilitating psychological trauma.
Ahmed has four siblings, and his mother is a widow. When their home in Taiz was struck by artillery shells, she began to experience symptoms of early-onset dementia. The attack on their home forced them into displacement, and they moved in with an uncle who had already been displaced to Sana’a. Ahmed’s two older brothers live with autism, so he began to work to provide for his family but was unable to meet all their needs. Later, he traveled to Egypt with an acquaintance in search of a way to earn more income for his family. He worked in a restaurant there for a while, but now he lives in a refugee camp. In his absence, a local non-profit has been providing his family with a food basket every other month—a lifeline that may be cut next year as humanitarian aid for the long-suffering Yemeni people continues to dwindle amidst the emergence of new crises around the globe. Meanwhile, in the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement, Yemen’s mental health crisis—which can be glimpsed in a VICE News report[7] from August 2021—will also continue to deepen. Thus, Yemeni hearts and minds remain firmly in the crosshairs today, targeted by both the radicalizing narratives of Yemen’s warring parties as well as by the devastating psychological impacts of the nation’s relentless war.
[1] Names changed to protect vulnerable Yemenis living through conflict.
[2] https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/news/detail/category/press-releases/article/yemen-yjs-reports-40-media-violations-in-the-first-half-of-2023
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kw9EaXdvKU&t=127s
[4] https://www.thenationalnews.com/gulf-news/2023/01/09/five-yemeni-youtubers-abducted-by-houthis-minister-says/
[5] EPOS Consulting and Health Services
[6] https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/millions-people-yemen-face-trauma-and-socioeconomic-pressures-9-years-conflict-limited-services
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