After seven years of war, there is no end in sight to the suffering in Yemen. In this exclusive film we report on the situation in the north-west of Yemen, held by the Houthis. 21 million people live in this enclave. There, since 2015, out of sight, a dirty war has been going on.
Sana’a, North of Yemen. One of the most inaccessible places on the planet. For the past six years, Ansar Allah, a political and military movement created by powerful families from the North, has seized control. But Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are determined to reinstall the ousted Yemeni president. They see the Houthi rebels, who belong to the Zaydist branch of Islam, as heretics who pose a threat to Wahhabism. Using weapons provided by the West, they relentlessly bombard the North in a dirty war. Over 230,000 Yemenis have already died.
A strict, expertly maintained embargo is also starving the population. According to UN agencies, Yemen is facing one of the worst famines in the world with 400,000 children reportedly at risk of death. New diseases have appeared since the beginning of the war and there has been a sharp increase in babies born with abnormalities.
But the war in Yemen is about more than just competing religious ideologies. Yemen owns substantial and underexploited oil reserves and controls roads leading to the Suez canal.