A famine like no other; a war like no other. The situation in Yemen is a brooding threnody, an ode to destruction and death. The Yemen crisis has been described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with the numbers essaying a grim tale. What began as a stand against corruption and the economic conditions has taken a fatal turn; one is inevitably reminded of the great Percy Bysshe Shelley written sonnet, Ozymandias.
"Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
A country besieged by violence, Yemen leans, fractured and broken; one wonders how long will the country be able to go on like this. As per the United Nations Refugee Agency, 3 million have been forced to flee from their homes. The Grim Reaper is knocking on the doors of all, and many have opened theirs to let him in.
A brief history of what has happened so far. After Ali Abdullah Saleh decided to step down as the President of Yemen after 33 years in 2012, interim President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi decided to unite the country by forming a more inclusive constitution, but struggled to do so. However, the Houthis, an Islamic religious political group opposed his vision, stating that it divided Yemen into poor and wealthy regions. Sensing that the government had weakened under Hadi, the Houthis, with the help of Saleh, completed a coup d'etat. They stormed into Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, and took over the key government buildings, finally forcing Hadi to resign. Yemen, already besieged by a great water crisis, now had a full-blown war in their hands. Hadi fled for Saudi Arabia, and a military intervention was staged; an intervention which was supposed to last for mere weeks. 4 years have gone by, and those 4 years have seen people label the Yemen crisis as the worst humanitarian crisis ever.
"Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
A country besieged by violence, Yemen leans, fractured and broken; one wonders how long will the country be able to go on like this. As per the United Nations Refugee Agency, 3 million have been forced to flee from their homes. The Grim Reaper is knocking on the doors of all, and many have opened theirs to let him in.
A brief history of what has happened so far. After Ali Abdullah Saleh decided to step down as the President of Yemen after 33 years in 2012, interim President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi decided to unite the country by forming a more inclusive constitution, but struggled to do so. However, the Houthis, an Islamic religious political group opposed his vision, stating that it divided Yemen into poor and wealthy regions. Sensing that the government had weakened under Hadi, the Houthis, with the help of Saleh, completed a coup d'etat. They stormed into Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, and took over the key government buildings, finally forcing Hadi to resign. Yemen, already besieged by a great water crisis, now had a full-blown war in their hands. Hadi fled for Saudi Arabia, and a military intervention was staged; an intervention which was supposed to last for mere weeks. 4 years have gone by, and those 4 years have seen people label the Yemen crisis as the worst humanitarian crisis ever.
A daunting statistic perhaps shows the extent of the catastrophe. As per the United Nations Refugee Agency, nearly 400,000 children suffer from severe malnutrition. Each story that emerges is more terrifying than the previous one. "Yemen: The man who lost 27 family members in an air strike", reads one BBC article.
This truculent and inimical behaviour refuses to stop.
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