Ashraf’s[1] airways constricted and he couldn’t breathe. The grip around his throat tightened and the panic in his chest rose against the weight pressing down upon it. Although he was alone and had nothing but tears to fight back, the feeling of suffocation was no less real. It had been weeks since his last construction job ended, and he had spent the morning searching for work—just as he had every morning since then—but the military was the only party offering any pay. That pay was tempting, too. Ashraf had friends who were earning the equivalent of $800 USD a month to fight on the frontlines—and they were even paid in Saudi Riyals—not the plummeting Yemeni currency that just reached a new low in November in Hadramout, the southern province where Ashraf lives. Still, Ashraf couldn’t stomach the thought of shooting at fathers on the other side of those distant frontlines, knowing that many of them—like him—were simply desperate to feed their families. However, the decision not to travel and fight someone else’s battles had only left him fighting the phantoms of despair.
Ashraf had grown up in a middle-class family in southern Yemen. As a young man, he excelled in the sport of judo and was a well-known and beloved athlete in his hometown. However, after he got married, he went to work in Saudi Arabia so he could give his own children a middle-class upbringing. He had spent 18 long years working abroad, returning to Yemen only for brief visits. Over that time, his wife had four children and Ashraf called them every night when he finished work. He would hang up longing to go home to them, but also proudly picturing them in the small house that he built and furnished over the years while working as a driver and a construction worker in the kingdom to the north.
In 2017, the World Bank estimated that remittances sent from Yemenis in Saudi Arabia like Ashraf to their families in Yemen amounted to $2.3 billion USD annually. That same year, Saudi Arabia began a campaign to nationalize its workforce. Migrant workers were banned from certain professions and the monthly residency, work permit, and sponsor fees required for jobs they could hold legally went up.[2] By 2019, Ashraf could no longer afford to renew his work permit, so he returned to the Hadramout—where he discovered there was no longer any middle class. Yemen had only been at war for four years then, but the relatives and friends he had grown up with were either fighting on the frontlines or unable to make ends meet. Everyone was in debt. As Ashraf began searching for work in Yemen, he was thankful that he didn’t have to pay rent like many of the other workers who returned from Saudi around the same time. However, even though he owned his home, he was ashamed to go back to it on the days he didn’t find work and knew his children would go to bed on an empty stomach.
By April 2021, the number of Yemenis living abroad who had returned just to the coast of Hadramout had reached 16,600.[3] In 2022, over 65,700 Yemenis working in Saudi Arabia returned to Yemen as economic conditions and changes in work regulations continued to force out migrant workers.[4] Another 35,000 returned in the first eight months of 2023 according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).[5] Many of these returning Yemenis were hardly migrants, however. They had lived most of their lives in Saudi Arabia and considered it their home. Having played a large role in Saudi Arabia’s development over the decades, they never dreamed that a day would come when their professions would be transferred to Saudis and they would be expelled. Now, Ashraf was competing with them for work in Yemen—where there were no jobs to compete for. Some of Ashraf’s friends paid a lot of money to smugglers to take them back across Yemen’s northern border into Saudi Arabia where they planned to search for employment as undocumented foreign workers. However, most of them had been caught in the attempt to cross the border and repatriated to Yemen—now with more debt than they had before. A few had been shot by border guards.
Ashraf wandered toward the beach. Once, he’d thought of drowning himself in the ocean—but he realized that would just make things worse for his family and thought better of it. Still, his breathing was shallow as he reconsidered all of the impossible options left to him. How could he face his wife empty-handed again? He had taken all the food he could on credit from the local shops near his home and he was too proud to beg. “I might as well be drowning,” he thought.
Then Ashraf’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but he answered anyway. “Ashraf, we’re going to deliver your food basket this afternoon,” said the man on the other end of the line.
“What food basket?” asked Ashraf.
“We registered you for a food basket last month when you came asking about work as a security guard,” the man explained. “I’m sorry that we still don’t have any work for you, but we do have a food basket.”
Ashraf had asked every non-profit he knew of about work as a security guard, or any other kind of work. He had no idea which one was calling him now—but he didn’t care. “Thank you,” he said, as the tears he’d been fighting back began rolling down his cheeks. “I’m on my way home.”
According to recent statistics, around three million Yemenis still live in Saudi Arabia[6]—and among them are hundreds of thousands from Ashraf’s home province. Many have lived in the kingdom for decades, and some were born and raised in Saudi Arabia and consider it their home. “My aunt has lived in Saudi Arabia for over 50 years,” says Naif, a representative of the non-profit that delivered Ashraf’s food basket. “She has three sons and four daughters who were born there and went to school there. The oldest is now 45 years old and they are still living there. I also have an uncle who has lived in Saudi Arabia for over 30 years. He got married there and worked there, but now he is unemployed due to the nationalization of the Saudi workforce. My wife’s brothers are also suffering the same reality as well as many other Yemenis that we know. Every family in Hadramout has ties and relatives in Saudi Arabia.”
In August 2023, Middle East Eye reported that expats in Saudi Arabia were required to pay a monthly work permit fee of about $211 USD as well as a monthly dependent fee of about $106 USD for any dependents who travel with them. The amount they have to pay to their sponsors varies.[7] Naif says the monthly residency fees are closer to $135 USD for each family member and, for some households, can amount to about 75 percent of their income. “My cousin is 40 years old and was born in Saudi Arabia and he’s still there with his wife and four children,” says Naif. “Now he’s paying the equivalent of about $800 USD a month just for them to have residency without considering their living expenses like rent, water, and electricity. Meanwhile, what he gets paid is less than $1,100 USD a month. If these unjust measures in Saudi Arabia do not change, all the Yemenis there will be forced to return to Yemen.”
According to Naif, when Yemenis are forced to return to war-torn Yemen due to the harsh economic realities they are facing in Saudi Arabia, they are “seeking refuge from ashes in the fire.” He explained that the 26-year-old son of one of his friends, who had no other options for work, enlisted with the Saudi-Led Coalition forces fighting the Houthis on the kingdom’s southern border with Yemen. “He was among thousands of young people looking for any job opportunity that paid enough to cover their basic living expenses and provide for their families,” says Naif. “However, he was killed fighting the Houthis. Many young men from Hadramout that we know personally were killed or injured on that front, when they honestly have no camel in that fight.[8] They were just looking for a bite to eat, which has become very hard to come by in their homeland, so they paid with their souls fighting for another country for the sake of their families’ basic needs.”
These realities have left fathers like Ashraf, desperate to support their families, fighting for their mental health in the midst of a collapsed economy. “Unemployment and sitting around without a job is psychologically devastating by itself, and even more so when you see that your family has nothing and is in constant need,” says Naif. “There are many cases of psychological breaks and family disputes and divorce and families falling apart under this pressure.”
Meanwhile, single men in Yemen without work are unable to get married. Although they are free from the pressure of supporting a wife and children—they are also denied the opportunity to contribute to strengthening the nation’s social fabric by establishing their own household. With work in Saudi Arabia no longer an option, many turn to joining one of the warring parties that will pay for foot soldiers in the conflict that continues to tear Yemen’s social fabric apart. “Families sacrifice their sons on the frontlines just to get their daily bread because the alternative is unemployment or illegal work like robbery or joining a gang or dealing drugs,” says Naif.
According to Naif, it is food baskets like the one he delivered to Ashraf, as well as other types of relief that is holding families and communities together in provinces like Hadramout after nearly nine years of war. “Supporting and helping the most deserving families with food and hygiene materials not only improves the health and the social and psychological condition of the whole family—it also increases our interconnectedness, compassion, love, solidarity, and empathy for others as a society,” says Naif. “It is the light that shines in these circumstances and the positive impact passes from person to person. There is still hope and we keep smiling in the hope that tomorrow will be better as long as mercy, love, and empathy for others exists.”
[1] Names have been changed to protect the identity of the Yemenis whose stories are shared in this piece.
[2] https://www.adhrb.org/2022/06/human-rights-violations-of-yemeni-migrant-workers-in-saudi-arabia/
[3] قناتنا عبر التلجرام قناة عدن لايف https://t.me/makggkbbhopdyt
[4] https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/acaps-thematic-report-yemen-social-impact-overview-2022-05-may-2023
[5] https://tarebhtoday.net/2023/09/07/36081/
[6] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/saudi-decision-to-limit-foreign-workers-shocks-war-weary-yemenis/2332296, https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/4588/13-rights-groups-complain-to-UN-over-Saudi-Arabia%E2%80%99s-laying-off-1000s-of-Yemeni-workers
[7] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/yemen-poverty-gamble-life-saudi-arabia-deadly-route
[8] An Arabic expression from pre-Islamic times that references a war that started over a female camel and lasted for 40 years. The war occurred in what is today southern Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen.
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