In April 2021, Save the Children published a number of stories of children from Yemen who had been badly affected by the war there that had then been going on for six long years. One of the stories read as follows:
“Before the war, I had a good life; we had our own house and I was going to school, I was playing with my friends, I was feeling safe. I used to play football. I enjoyed playing football the most.”
“When the war started, my life was not the same. One day, an airstrike hit the area where we were. My dad died instantly and I was injured in the leg. I had an operation but my leg was broken in four different places so after the operation I couldn’t walk properly, I had to be held by someone.”
“Now I am not going to school because I recently had another operation in my leg and I am still recovering. I am really looking forward to going back to school when my leg is better.”
“When I grow up, I want to become a doctor so I can help people who are sick and injured. I hope Yemen will become as it was before the war so I can go back to Al-Mokha.”
Yemen: the Tyneside connection
It was in the late 19th century that sailors from what was then called Aden, but is now known as Yemen, began working the Tyneside port of South Shields. Slowly, but surely, some of the young men from Yemen began to settle in the Holborn area of South Shields, towards the river, near to where the Customs House theatre is now, and near a place called Mill Dam.
There were opportunities during the First World War for these young men from so far away, but once that conflict was over, South Shields men came home expecting life to carry on as before. So, it was that tensions gradually rose through the troubled twenties, until the Depression that came in the wake of the Wall Street Crash finally saw the situation reach crisis point.
By the summer of 1930, with work drying up, a rota system for those merchant sailors who were operating out of South Shields. A group called the Minority Movement, who opposed the National Union of Seamen, saw the rota as racist, with less opportunities for those seamen who hailed from Yemen and organised a picket of Mill Dam were boats set sail from.
So, it was that an agent provocateur called Hamilton stood in front of the Yemenis and abused them in racial tones and invited them to fight him. A riot between the Yemeni pickets and the police ensued, which saw a policeman called Harry Gash seriously injured and others also badly hurt.
There were two outcomes of the riot. The first was that a number of Yemenis were imprisoned, while others were deported. The second outcome followed on from the first; no longer seen as a threat, the Yemenis who remained were embraced by the people of South Shields and in the words of David Bean writing in the Guardian in March 1962, South Shields was “a study in integration”. It only remained for Muhamad Ali to have his third wedding blessed in a South Shields mosque, which of course, duly happened in 1977.
Yemen today
Yemen today is convulsed in a brutal civil war, which began in September 2014. It was then that Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa. Following that, Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and other countries, entered the war six months later in March 2015, alongside Yemen’s internationally recognized government. In February 2021, the Independent reported that, “the war has killed some 130,000 people and driven the Arab world’s poorest country to the brink of famine.” The death toll from the fighting is now thought to be over 150 000, with 377 000 killed directly or indirectly by late 2023 according to CAAT or Campaign Against Arm Trade.
At the end of 2022, UNICEF reported “more than 11,000 children have now been killed or maimed as a result of the conflict in Yemen, according to UNICEF – an average of four a day since the escalation of the conflict in 2015. As these are only the UN-verified incidents, the true toll of this conflict is likely to be far higher.”
There was a decline in armed conflict and cross-border attacks in 2024 compared to previous years, but it has still been noted by Amnesty that, “all parties to the long-standing conflict in Yemen continued to commit unlawful attacks and killings with impunity. The internationally recognized government of Yemen and the Huthi de facto authorities, which control different parts of the country, continued to harass, threaten, arbitrarily detain, forcibly disappear and prosecute journalists and activists for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression. The Huthi de facto authorities forcibly disappeared members of the Baha’i religious minority for exercising their right to freedom of religion and belief. All parties to the conflict restricted delivery of humanitarian aid. The Huthi de facto authorities continued to ban women from travelling without a male guardian, restricting their ability to work or receive humanitarian aid. All parties failed to provide justice for victims of crimes under international law and human rights violations.”
A forgotten conflict
The war in Yemen has now been going on for over ten years and has been exacerbated by it being dragged into wider conflicts in the Middle East. On 27th December it was reported that a number of Israeli air attacks had hit Yemen’s main airport just as the World Health Organization’s director-general said he was about to board a flight there, wounding one of the United Nations plane’s crew, the WHO chief was reported as saying.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X that he was just metres away from the attack on Sanaa airport on 26th December:
“As we were about to board our flight from Sanaa … the airport came under aerial bombardment. One of our plane’s crew members was injured. The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge – just a few metres from where we were – and the runway were damaged,” he said, adding that he and his colleagues were safe.
As in so many conflicts it is the most vulnerable, including children who are suffering the most from the conflict in Yemen. The Northeast has had a Yemeni community in South Shields for over a century now and it is interesting to note that South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck was the only Northeast MP to sign an Early Day Motion in 2023 on UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, that included the following wording: “That this House notes with concern the ongoing devastation of the war on Yemen, which has repeatedly been named one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world since the Saudi-led Coalition first launched airstrikes in March 2015; further notes that the Government continues to allow arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and continues to provide logistical support to Saudi forces in Yemen despite overwhelming evidence of serious violations of international humanitarian law.” A ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which had been deemed unlawful in 2019, was lifted by the Johnson Tory Government in 2020.
The conflict in Yemen has caused immense suffering, especially among children and we must all hope that it will end soon. For those of us in the Northeast the conflict has an extra poignancy, given our history of good relations between the Yemeni community and other local people in South Shields.
Supporting Yemen
You can donate to help the children of Yemen through UNICEF here and through Save The Children here.
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